(electronic music) >> Hi everybody, welcome back to Supercloud 2. I'm Dave Vellante with my co-host John Furrier. We're here at our tricked out Palo Alto studio. We're going live wall to wall all day. We're inserting a number of pre-recorded interviews, folks like Walmart. We just heard from Nir Zuk of Palo Alto Networks, and I'm really pleased to welcome in David Flynn. David Flynn, you may know as one of the people behind Fusion-io, completely changed the way in which people think about storing data, accessing data. David Flynn now the founder and CEO of a company called Hammerspace. David, good to see you, thanks for coming on. >> David: Good to see you too. >> And Dr. Nelu Mihai is the CEO and founder of Cloud of Clouds. He's actually built a Supercloud. We're going to get into that. Nelu, thanks for coming on. >> Thank you, Happy New Year. >> Yeah, Happy New Year. So I'm going to start right off with a little debate that's going on in the community if you guys would bring out this slide. So Bob Muglia early today, he gave a definition of Supercloud. He felt like we had to tighten ours up a little bit. He said a Supercloud is a platform, underscoring platform, that provides programmatically consistent services hosted on heterogeneous cloud providers. Now, Nelu, we have this shared doc, and you've been in there. You responded, you said, well, hold on. Supercloud really needs to be an architecture, or else we're going to have this stove pipe of stove pipes, really. And then you went on with more detail, what's the information model? What's the execution model? How are users going to interact with Supercloud? So I start with you, why architecture? The inference is that a platform, the platform provider's responsible for the architecture? Why does that not work in your view? >> No, the, it's a very interesting question. So whenever I think about platform, what's the connotation, you think about monolithic system? Yeah, I mean, I don't know whether it's true or or not, but there is this connotation of of monolithic. On the other hand, if you look at what's a problem right now with HyperClouds, from the customer perspective, they're very complex. There is a heterogeneous world where actually every single one of this HyperClouds has their own architecture. You need rocket scientists to build a cloud applications. Always there is this contradiction between cost and performance. They fight each other. And I'm quoting here a former friend of mine from Bell Labs who work at AWS who used to say "Cloud is cheap as long as you don't use it too much." (group chuckles) So clearly we need something that kind of plays from the principle point of view the role of an operating system, that seats on top of this heterogeneous HyperCloud, and there's nothing wrong by having these proprietary HyperClouds, think about processors, think about operating system and so on, so forth. But in order to build a system that is simple enough, I think we need to go deeper and understand. >> So the argument, the counterargument to that, David, is you'll never get there. You need a proprietary system to get to market sooner, to solve today's problem. Now I don't know where you stand on this platform versus architecture. I haven't asked you, but. >> I think there are aspects of both for sure. I mean it needs to be an architecture in the sense that it's broad based and open and so forth. But you know, platform, you could say as long as people can instantiate it themselves, on their own infrastructure, as long as it's something that can be deployed as, you know, software defined, you don't want the concept of platform being the monolith, you know, combined hardware and software. So it really depends on what you're focused on when you're saying platform, you know, I'd say as long as they software defined thing, to where it can literally run anywhere. I mean, because I really think what we're talking about here is the original concept of cloud computing. The ability to run anything anywhere, without having to care about the physical infrastructure. And what we have today is not that, the cloud today is a big mainframe in the sky, that just happens to be large enough that once you select which region, generally you have enough resources. But, you know, nowadays you don't even necessarily have enough resources in one region. and then you're kind of stuck. So we haven't really gotten to that utility model of computing. And you're also asked to rewrite your application, you know, to abandon the conveniences of high performance file access. You got to rewrite it to use object storage stuff. We have to get away from that. >> Okay, I want to just drill on that, 'cause I think I like that point about, there's not enough availability, but on the developer cloud, the original AWS premise was targeting developers, 'cause at that time, you have to provision a Sun box get a Cisco DSU/CSU, now you get on the cloud. But I think you're giving up the scale question, 'cause I think right now, scale is huge, enterprise grade versus cloud for developers. >> That's Right. >> Because I mean look at, Amazon, Azure, they got compute, they got storage, they got queuing, and some stuff. If you're doing a startup, you throw your app up there, localhost to cloud, no big deal. It's the scale thing that gets me- >> And you can tell by the fact that, in regions that are under high demand, right, like in London or LA, at least with the clients we work with in the median entertainment space, it costs twice as much for the exact same cloud instances that do the exact same amount of work, as somewhere out in rural Canada. So why is it you have such a cost differential, it has to do with that supply and demand, and the fact that the clouds aren't really the ability to run anything anywhere. Even within the same cloud vendor, you're stuck in a specific region. >> And that was never the original promise, right? I mean it was, we turned it into that. But the original promise was get rid of the heavy lifting of IT. >> Not have to run your own, yeah, exactly. >> And then it became, wow, okay I can run anywhere. And then you know, it's like web 2.0. You know people say why Supercloud, you and I talked about this, why do you need a name for Supercloud? It's like web 2.0. >> It's what Cloud was supposed to be. >> It's what cloud was supposed to be, (group laughing and talking) exactly, right. >> Cloud was supposed to be run anything anywhere, or at least that's what we took it as. But you're right, originally it was just, oh don't have to run your own infrastructure, and you can choose somebody else's infrastructure. >> And you did that >> But you're still bound to that. >> Dave: And People said I want more, right? >> But how do we go from here? >> That's, that's actually, that's a very good point, because indeed when the first HyperClouds were designed, were designed really focus on customers. I think Supercloud is an opportunity to design in the right way. Also having in mind the computer science rigor. And we should take advantage of that, because in fact actually, if cloud would've been designed properly from the beginning, probably wouldn't have needed Supercloud. >> David: You wouldn't have to have been asked to rewrite your application. >> That's correct. (group laughs) >> To use REST interfaces to your storage. >> Revisist history is always a good one. But look, cloud is great. I mean your point is cloud is a good thing. Don't hold it back. >> It is a very good thing. >> Let it continue. >> Let it go as as it is. >> Yeah, let that thing continue to grow. Don't impose restrictions on the cloud. Just refactor what you need to for scale or enterprise grade or availability. >> And you would agree with that, is that true or is it problem you're solving? >> Well yeah, I mean it, what the cloud is doing is absolutely necessary. What the public cloud vendors are doing is absolutely necessary. But what's been missing is how to provide a consistent interface, especially to persistent data. And have it be available across different regions, and across different clouds. 'cause data is a highly localized thing in current architecture. It only exists as rendered by the storage system that you put it in. Whether that's a legacy thing like a NetApp or an Isilon or even a cloud data service. It's localized to a specific region of the cloud in which you put that. We have to delocalize data, and provide a consistent interface to it across all sites. That's high performance, local access, but to global data. >> And so Walmart earlier today described their, what we call Supercloud, they call it the Walmart cloud native platform. And they use this triplet model. They have AWS and Azure, no, oh sorry, no AWS. They have Azure and GCP and then on-prem, where all the VMs live. When you, you know, probe, it turns out that it's only stateless in the cloud. (John laughs) So, the state stuff- >> Well let's just admit it, there is no such thing as stateless, because even the application binaries and libraries are state. >> Well I'm happy that I'm hearing that. >> Yeah, okay. >> Because actually I have a lot of debate (indistinct). If you think about no software running on a (indistinct) machine is stateless. >> David: Exactly. >> This is something that was- >> David: And that's data that needs to be distributed and provided consistently >> (indistinct) >> Across all the clouds, >> And actually, it's a nonsense, but- >> Dave: So it's an illusion, okay. (group talks over each other) >> (indistinct) you guys talk about stateless. >> Well, see, people make the confusion between state and persistent state, okay. Persistent state it's a different thing. State is a different thing. So, but anyway, I want to go back to your point, because there's a lot of debate here. People are talking about data, some people are talking about logic, some people are talking about networking. In my opinion is this triplet, which is data logic and connectivity, that has equal importance. And actually depending on the application, can have the center of gravity moving towards data, moving towards what I call execution units or workloads. And connectivity is actually the most important part of it. >> David: (indistinct). >> Some people are saying move the logic towards the data, some other people, and you are saying actually, that no, you have to build a distributed data mesh. What I'm saying is actually, you have to consider all these three variables, all these vector in order to decide, based on application, what's the most important. Because sometimes- >> John: So the application chooses >> That's correct. >> Well it it's what operating systems were in the past, was principally the thing that runs and manages the jobs, the job scheduler, and the thing that provides your persistent data (indistinct). >> Okay. So we finally got operating system into the equation, thank you. (group laughs) >> Nelu: I actually have a PhD in operating system. >> Cause what we're talking about is an operating system. So forget platform or architecture, it's an operating environment. Let's use it as a general term. >> All right. I think that's about it for me. >> All right, let's take (indistinct). Nelu, I want ask you quick, 'cause I want to give a, 'cause I believe it's an operating system. I think it's going to be a reset, refactored. You wrote to me, "The model of Supercloud has to be open theoretical, has to satisfy the rigors of computer science, and customer requirements." So unique to today, if the OS is going to be refactored, it's not going to be, may or may not be Red Hat or somebody else. This new OS, obviously requirements are for customers too but is what's the computer science that is needed? Where are we, what's the missing? Where's the science in this shift? It's not your standard OS it's not like an- (group talks over each other) >> I would beg to differ. >> (indistinct) truly an operation environment. But the, if you think about, and make analogies, what you need when you design a distributed system, well you need an information model, yeah. You need to figure out how the data is located and distributed. You need a model for the execution units, and you need a way to describe the interactions between all these objects. And it is my opinion that we need to go deeper and formalize these operations in order to make a step forward. And when we design Supercloud, and design something that is better than the current HyperClouds. And actually that is when we design something better, you make a system more efficient and it's going to be better from the cost point of view, from the performance point of view. But we need to add some math into all this customer focus centering and I really admire AWS and their executive team focusing on the customer. But now it's time to go back and see, if we apply some computer science, if you try to formalize to build a theoretical model of cloud, can we build a system that is better than existing ones? >> So David, how do you- >> this is what I'm saying. >> That's a good question >> How do You see the operating system of a, or operating environment of a decentralized cloud? >> Well I think it's layered. I mean we have operating systems that can run systems quite efficiently. Linux has sort of one in the data center, but we're talking about a layer on top of that. And I think we're seeing the emergence of that. For example, on the job scheduling side of things, Kubernetes makes a really good example. You know, you break the workload into the most granular units of compute, the containerized microservice, and then you use a declarative model to state what is needed and give the system the degrees of freedom that it can choose how to instantiate it. Because the thing about these distributed systems, is that the complexity explodes, right? Running a piece of hardware, running a single server is not a problem, even with all the many cores and everything like that. It's when you start adding in the networking, and making it so that you have many of them. And then when it's going across whole different data centers, you know, so, at that level the way you solve this is not manually (group laughs) and not procedurally. You have to change the language so it's intent based, it's a declarative model, and what you're stating is what is intended, and you're leaving it to more advanced techniques, like machine learning to decide how to instantiate that service across the cluster, which is what Kubernetes does, or how to instantiate the data across the diverse storage infrastructure. And that's what we do. >> So that's a very good point because actually what has been neglected with HyperClouds is really optimization and automation. But in order to be able to do both of these things, you need, I'm going back and I'm stubborn, you need to have a mathematical model, a theoretical model because what does automation mean? It means that we have to put machines to do the work instead of us, and machines work with what? Formula, with algorithms, they don't work with services. So I think Supercloud is an opportunity to underscore the importance of optimization and automation- >> Totally agree. >> In HyperCloud, and actually by doing that, we can also have an interesting connotation. We are also contributing to save our planet, because if you think right now. we're consuming a lot of energy on this HyperClouds and also all this AI applications, and I think we can do better and build the same kind of application using less energy. >> So yeah, great point, love that call out, the- you know, Dave and I always joke about the old, 'cause we're old, we talk about, you know, (Nelu Laughs) old history, OS/2 versus DOS, okay, OS's, OS/2 is silly better, first threaded OS, DOS never went away. So how does legacy play into this conversation? Because I buy the theoretical, I love the conversation. Okay, I think it's an OS, totally see it that way myself. What's the blocker? Is there a legacy that drags it back? Is the anchor dragging from legacy? Is there a DOS OS/2 moment? Is there an opportunity to flip the script? This is- >> I think that's a perfect example of why we need to support the existing interfaces, Operating Systems, real operating systems like Linux, understands how to present data, it's called a file system, block devices, things that that plumb in there. And by, you know, going to a REST interface and S3 and telling people they have to rewrite their applications, you can't even consume your application binaries that way, the OS doesn't know how to pull that sort of thing. So we, to get to cloud, to get to the ability to host massive numbers of tenants within a centralized infrastructure, you know, we abandoned these lower level interfaces to the OS and we have to go back to that. It's the reason why DOS ultimately won, is it had the momentum of the install base. We're seeing the same thing here. Whatever it is, it has to be a real file system and not a come down file system >> Nelu, what's your reaction, 'cause you're in the theoretical bandwagon. Let's get your reaction. >> No, I think it's a good, I'll give, you made a good analogy between OS/2 and DOS, but I'll go even farther saying, if you think about the evolution operating system didn't stop the evolution of underlying microprocessors, hardware, and so on and so forth. On the contrary, it was a catalyst for that. So because everybody could develop their own hardware, without worrying that the applications on top of operating system are going to modify. The same thing is going to happen with Supercloud. You're going to have the AWSs, you're going to have the Azure and the the GCP continue to evolve in their own way proprietary. But if we create on top of it the right interface >> The open, this is why open is important. >> That's correct, because actually you're going to see sometime ago, everybody was saying, remember venture capitals were saying, "AWS killed the world, nobody's going to come." Now you see what Oracle is doing, and then you're going to see other players. >> It's funny, Amazon's trying to be more like Microsoft. Microsoft's trying to be more like Amazon and Google- Oracle's just trying to say they have cloud. >> That's, that's correct, (group laughs) so, my point is, you're going to see a multiplication of this HyperClouds and cloud technology. So, the system has to be open in order to accommodate what it is and what is going to come. Okay, so it's open. >> So the the legacy- so legacy is an opportunity, not a blocker in your mind. And you see- >> That's correct, I think we should allow them to continue to to to be their own actually. But maybe you're going to find a way to connect with it. >> Amazon's the processor, and they're on the 80 80 80 right? >> That's correct. >> You're saying you love people trying to get put to work. >> That's a good analogy. >> But, performance levels you say good luck, right? >> Well yeah, we have to be able to take traditional applications, high performance applications, those that consume file system and persistent data. Those things have to be able to run anywhere. You need to be able to put, put them onto, you know, more elastic infrastructure. So, we have to actually get cloud to where it lives up to its billing. >> And that's what you're solving for, with Hammerspace, >> That's what we're solving for, making it possible- >> Give me the bumper sticker. >> Solving for how do you have massive quantities of unstructured file data? At the end of the day, all data ultimately is unstructured data. Have that persistent data available, across any data center, within any cloud, within any region on-prem, at the edge. And have not just the same APIs, but have the exact same data sets, and not sucked over a straw remote, but at extreme high performance, local access. So how do you have local access to globally shared distributed data? And that's what we're doing. We are orchestrating data globally across all different forms of storage infrastructure, so you have a consistent access at the highest performance levels, at the lowest level innate built into the OS, how to consume it as (indistinct) >> So are you going into the- all the clouds and natively building in there, or are you off cloud? >> So This is software that can run on cloud instances and provide high performance file within the cloud. It can take file data that's on-prem. Again, it's software, it can run in virtual or on physical servers. And it abstracts the data from the existing storage infrastructure, and makes the data visible and consumable and orchestratable across any of it. >> And what's the elevator pitch for Cloud of Cloud, give that too. >> Well, Cloud of Clouds creates a theoretical model of cloud, and it describes every single object in the cloud. Where is data, execution units, and connectivity, with one single class of very simple object. And I can, I can give you (indistinct) >> And the problem that solves is what? >> The problem that solves is, it creates this mathematical model that is necessary in order to do other interesting things, such as optimization, using sata engines, using automation, applying ML for instance. Or deep learning to automate all this clouds, if you think about in the industrial field, we know how to manage and automate huge plants. Why wouldn't it do the same thing in cloud? It's the same thing you- >> That's what you mean by theoretical model. >> Nelu: That's correct. >> Lay out the architecture, almost the bones of skeleton or something, or, and then- >> That's correct, and then on top of it you can actually build a platform, You can create your services, >> when you say math, you mean you put numbers to it, you kind of index it. >> You quantify this thing and you apply mathematical- It's really about, I can disclose this thing. It's really about describing the cloud as a knowledge graph for every single object in the graph for node, an edge is a vector. And then once you have this model, then you can apply the field theory, and linear algebra to do operation with these vectors. And it's, this creates a very interesting opportunity to let the math do this thing for us. >> Okay, so what happens with hyperscale, or it's like AWS in your model. >> So in, in my model actually, >> Are they happy with this, or they >> I'm very happy with that. >> Will they be happy with you? >> We create an interface to every single HyperCloud. We actually, we don't need to interface with the thousands of APIs, but you know, if we have the 80 20 rule, and we map these APIs into this graph, and then every single operation that is done in this graph is done from the beginning, in an optimized manner and also automation ready. >> That's going to be great. David, I want us to go back to you before we close real quick. You've had a lot of experience, multiple ventures on the front end. You talked to a lot of customers who've been innovating. Where are the classic (indistinct)? Cause you, you used to sell and invent product around the old school enterprises with storage, you know that that trajectory storage is still critical to store the data. Where's the classic enterprise grade mindset right now? Those customers that were buying, that are buying storage, they're in the cloud, they're lifting and shifting. They not yet put the throttle on DevOps. When they look at this Supercloud thing, Are they like a deer in the headlights, or are they like getting it? What's the, what's the classic enterprise look like? >> You're seeing people at different stages of adoption. Some folks are trying to get to the cloud, some folks are trying to repatriate from the cloud, because they've realized it's better to own than to rent when you use a lot of it. And so people are at very different stages of the journey. But the one thing that's constant is that there's always change. And the change here has to do with being able to change the location where you're doing your computing. So being able to support traditional workloads in the cloud, being able to run things at the edge, and being able to rationalize where the data ought to exist, and with a declarative model, intent-based, business objective-based, be able to swipe a mouse and have the data get redistributed and positioned across different vendors, across different clouds, that, we're seeing that as really top of mind right now, because everybody's at some point on this journey, trying to go somewhere, and it involves taking their data with them. (John laughs) >> Guys, great conversation. Thanks so much for coming on, for John, Dave. Stay tuned, we got a great analyst power panel coming right up. More from Palo Alto, Supercloud 2. Be right back. (bouncy music)

>>This past May, The Cube in collaboration with Influx data shared with you the latest innovations in Time series databases. We talked at length about why a purpose built time series database for many use cases, was a superior alternative to general purpose databases trying to do the same thing. Now, you may, you may remember the time series data is any data that's stamped in time, and if it's stamped, it can be analyzed historically. And when we introduced the concept to the community, we talked about how in theory, those time slices could be taken, you know, every hour, every minute, every second, you know, down to the millisecond and how the world was moving toward realtime or near realtime data analysis to support physical infrastructure like sensors and other devices and IOT equipment. A time series databases have had to evolve to efficiently support realtime data in emerging use cases in iot T and other use cases. >>And to do that, new architectural innovations have to be brought to bear. As is often the case, open source software is the linchpin to those innovations. Hello and welcome to Evolving Influx DB into the smart Data platform, made possible by influx data and produced by the Cube. My name is Dave Valante and I'll be your host today. Now, in this program, we're going to dig pretty deep into what's happening with Time series data generally, and specifically how Influx DB is evolving to support new workloads and demands and data, and specifically around data analytics use cases in real time. Now, first we're gonna hear from Brian Gilmore, who is the director of IOT and emerging technologies at Influx Data. And we're gonna talk about the continued evolution of Influx DB and the new capabilities enabled by open source generally and specific tools. And in this program, you're gonna hear a lot about things like Rust, implementation of Apache Arrow, the use of par k and tooling such as data fusion, which powering a new engine for Influx db. >>Now, these innovations, they evolve the idea of time series analysis by dramatically increasing the granularity of time series data by compressing the historical time slices, if you will, from, for example, minutes down to milliseconds. And at the same time, enabling real time analytics with an architecture that can process data much faster and much more efficiently. Now, after Brian, we're gonna hear from Anna East Dos Georgio, who is a developer advocate at In Flux Data. And we're gonna get into the why of these open source capabilities and how they contribute to the evolution of the Influx DB platform. And then we're gonna close the program with Tim Yokum, he's the director of engineering at Influx Data, and he's gonna explain how the Influx DB community actually evolved the data engine in mid-flight and which decisions went into the innovations that are coming to the market. Thank you for being here. We hope you enjoy the program. Let's get started. Okay, we're kicking things off with Brian Gilmore. He's the director of i t and emerging Technology at Influx State of Bryan. Welcome to the program. Thanks for coming on. >>Thanks Dave. Great to be here. I appreciate the time. >>Hey, explain why Influx db, you know, needs a new engine. Was there something wrong with the current engine? What's going on there? >>No, no, not at all. I mean, I think it's, for us, it's been about staying ahead of the market. I think, you know, if we think about what our customers are coming to us sort of with now, you know, related to requests like sql, you know, query support, things like that, we have to figure out a way to, to execute those for them in a way that will scale long term. And then we also, we wanna make sure we're innovating, we're sort of staying ahead of the market as well and sort of anticipating those future needs. So, you know, this is really a, a transparent change for our customers. I mean, I think we'll be adding new capabilities over time that sort of leverage this new engine, but you know, initially the customers who are using us are gonna see just great improvements in performance, you know, especially those that are working at the top end of the, of the workload scale, you know, the massive data volumes and things like that. >>Yeah, and we're gonna get into that today and the architecture and the like, but what was the catalyst for the enhancements? I mean, when and how did this all come about? >>Well, I mean, like three years ago we were primarily on premises, right? I mean, I think we had our open source, we had an enterprise product, you know, and, and sort of shifting that technology, especially the open source code base to a service basis where we were hosting it through, you know, multiple cloud providers. That was, that was, that was a long journey I guess, you know, phase one was, you know, we wanted to host enterprise for our customers, so we sort of created a service that we just managed and ran our enterprise product for them. You know, phase two of this cloud effort was to, to optimize for like multi-tenant, multi-cloud, be able to, to host it in a truly like sass manner where we could use, you know, some type of customer activity or consumption as the, the pricing vector, you know, And, and that was sort of the birth of the, of the real first influx DB cloud, you know, which has been really successful. >>We've seen, I think, like 60,000 people sign up and we've got tons and tons of, of both enterprises as well as like new companies, developers, and of course a lot of home hobbyists and enthusiasts who are using out on a, on a daily basis, you know, and having that sort of big pool of, of very diverse and very customers to chat with as they're using the product, as they're giving us feedback, et cetera, has has, you know, pointed us in a really good direction in terms of making sure we're continuously improving that and then also making these big leaps as we're doing with this, with this new engine. >>Right. So you've called it a transparent change for customers, so I'm presuming it's non-disruptive, but I really wanna understand how much of a pivot this is and what, what does it take to make that shift from, you know, time series, you know, specialist to real time analytics and being able to support both? >>Yeah, I mean, it's much more of an evolution, I think, than like a shift or a pivot. You know, time series data is always gonna be fundamental and sort of the basis of the solutions that we offer our customers, and then also the ones that they're building on the sort of raw APIs of our platform themselves. You know, the time series market is one that we've worked diligently to lead. I mean, I think when it comes to like metrics, especially like sensor data and app and infrastructure metrics, if we're being honest though, I think our, our user base is well aware that the way we were architected was much more towards those sort of like backwards looking historical type analytics, which are key for troubleshooting and making sure you don't, you know, run into the same problem twice. But, you know, we had to ask ourselves like, what can we do to like better handle those queries from a performance and a, and a, you know, a time to response on the queries, and can we get that to the point where the results sets are coming back so quickly from the time of query that we can like limit that window down to minutes and then seconds. >>And now with this new engine, we're really starting to talk about a query window that could be like returning results in, in, you know, milliseconds of time since it hit the, the, the ingest queue. And that's, that's really getting to the point where as your data is available, you can use it and you can query it, you can visualize it, and you can do all those sort of magical things with it, you know? And I think getting all of that to a place where we're saying like, yes to the customer on, you know, all of the, the real time queries, the, the multiple language query support, but, you know, it was hard, but we're now at a spot where we can start introducing that to, you know, a a limited number of customers, strategic customers and strategic availability zones to start. But you know, everybody over time. >>So you're basically going from what happened to in, you can still do that obviously, but to what's happening now in the moment? >>Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you think about time, it's always sort of past, right? I mean, like in the moment right now, whether you're talking about like a millisecond ago or a minute ago, you know, that's, that's pretty much right now, I think for most people, especially in these use cases where you have other sort of components of latency induced by the, by the underlying data collection, the architecture, the infrastructure, the, you know, the, the devices and you know, the sort of highly distributed nature of all of this. So yeah, I mean, getting, getting a customer or a user to be able to use the data as soon as it is available is what we're after here. >>I always thought, you know, real, I always thought of real time as before you lose the customer, but now in this context, maybe it's before the machine blows up. >>Yeah, it's, it's, I mean it is operationally or operational real time is different, you know, and that's one of the things that really triggered us to know that we were, we were heading in the right direction, is just how many sort of operational customers we have. You know, everything from like aerospace and defense. We've got companies monitoring satellites, we've got tons of industrial users, users using us as a processes storing on the plant floor, you know, and, and if we can satisfy their sort of demands for like real time historical perspective, that's awesome. I think what we're gonna do here is we're gonna start to like edge into the real time that they're used to in terms of, you know, the millisecond response times that they expect of their control systems. Certainly not their, their historians and databases. >>I, is this available, these innovations to influx DB cloud customers only who can access this capability? >>Yeah. I mean, commercially and today, yes. You know, I think we want to emphasize that's a, for now our goal is to get our latest and greatest and our best to everybody over time. Of course. You know, one of the things we had to do here was like we double down on sort of our, our commitment to open source and availability. So like anybody today can take a look at the, the libraries in on our GitHub and, you know, can ex inspect it and even can try to, you know, implement or execute some of it themselves in their own infrastructure. You know, we are, we're committed to bringing our sort of latest and greatest to our cloud customers first for a couple of reasons. Number one, you know, there are big workloads and they have high expectations of us. I think number two, it also gives us the opportunity to monitor a little bit more closely how it's working, how they're using it, like how the system itself is performing. >>And so just, you know, being careful, maybe a little cautious in terms of, of, of how big we go with this right away. Just sort of both limits, you know, the risk of, of, you know, any issues that can come with new software rollouts. We haven't seen anything so far, but also it does give us the opportunity to have like meaningful conversations with a small group of users who are using the products, but once we get through that and they give us two thumbs up on it, it'll be like, open the gates and let everybody in. It's gonna be exciting time for the whole ecosystem. >>Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And you can do some experimentation and, you know, using the cloud resources. Let's dig into some of the architectural and technical innovations that are gonna help deliver on this vision. What, what should we know there? >>Well, I mean, I think foundationally we built the, the new core on Rust. You know, this is a new very sort of popular systems language, you know, it's extremely efficient, but it's also built for speed and memory safety, which goes back to that us being able to like deliver it in a way that is, you know, something we can inspect very closely, but then also rely on the fact that it's going to behave well. And if it does find error conditions, I mean, we, we've loved working with Go and, you know, a lot of our libraries will continue to, to be sort of implemented in Go, but you know, when it came to this particular new engine, you know, that power performance and stability rust was critical. On top of that, like, we've also integrated Apache Arrow and Apache Parque for persistence. I think for anybody who's really familiar with the nuts and bolts of our backend and our TSI and our, our time series merged Trees, this is a big break from that, you know, arrow on the sort of in MI side and then Par K in the on disk side. >>It, it allows us to, to present, you know, a unified set of APIs for those really fast real time inquiries that we talked about, as well as for very large, you know, historical sort of bulk data archives in that PARQUE format, which is also cool because there's an entire ecosystem sort of popping up around Parque in terms of the machine learning community, you know, and getting that all to work, we had to glue it together with aero flight. That's sort of what we're using as our, our RPC component. You know, it handles the orchestration and the, the transportation of the Coer data. Now we're moving to like a true Coer database model for this, this version of the engine, you know, and it removes a lot of overhead for us in terms of having to manage all that serialization, the deserialization, and, you know, to that again, like blurring that line between real time and historical data. It's, you know, it's, it's highly optimized for both streaming micro batch and then batches, but true streaming as well. >>Yeah. Again, I mean, it's funny you mentioned Rust. It is, it's been around for a long time, but it's popularity is, is, you know, really starting to hit that steep part of the S-curve. And, and we're gonna dig into to more of that, but give us any, is there anything else that we should know about Bryan? Give us the last word? >>Well, I mean, I think first I'd like everybody sort of watching just to like, take a look at what we're offering in terms of early access in beta programs. I mean, if, if, if you wanna participate or if you wanna work sort of in terms of early access with the, with the new engine, please reach out to the team. I'm sure you know, there's a lot of communications going out and, you know, it'll be highly featured on our, our website, you know, but reach out to the team, believe it or not, like we have a lot more going on than just the new engine. And so there are also other programs, things we're, we're offering to customers in terms of the user interface, data collection and things like that. And, you know, if you're a customer of ours and you have a sales team, a commercial team that you work with, you can reach out to them and see what you can get access to because we can flip a lot of stuff on, especially in cloud through feature flags. >>But if there's something new that you wanna try out, we'd just love to hear from you. And then, you know, our goal would be that as we give you access to all of these new cool features that, you know, you would give us continuous feedback on these products and services, not only like what you need today, but then what you'll need tomorrow to, to sort of build the next versions of your business. Because, you know, the whole database, the ecosystem as it expands out into to, you know, this vertically oriented stack of cloud services and enterprise databases and edge databases, you know, it's gonna be what we all make it together, not just, you know, those of us who were employed by Influx db. And then finally, I would just say please, like watch in ice in Tim's sessions, Like these are two of our best and brightest. They're totally brilliant, completely pragmatic, and they are most of all customer obsessed, which is amazing. And there's no better takes, like honestly on the, the sort of technical details of this, then there's, especially when it comes to like the value that these investments will, will bring to our customers and our communities. So encourage you to, to, you know, pay more attention to them than you did to me, for sure. >>Brian Gilmore, great stuff. Really appreciate your time. Thank you. >>Yeah, thanks Dave. It was awesome. Look forward to it. >>Yeah, me too. Looking forward to see how the, the community actually applies these new innovations and goes, goes beyond just the historical into the real time, really hot area. As Brian said in a moment, I'll be right back with Anna East Dos Georgio to dig into the critical aspects of key open source components of the Influx DB engine, including Rust, Arrow, Parque, data fusion. Keep it right there. You don't want to miss this.

>>This past May, The Cube in collaboration with Influx data shared with you the latest innovations in Time series databases. We talked at length about why a purpose built time series database for many use cases, was a superior alternative to general purpose databases trying to do the same thing. Now, you may, you may remember the time series data is any data that's stamped in time, and if it's stamped, it can be analyzed historically. And when we introduced the concept to the community, we talked about how in theory, those time slices could be taken, you know, every hour, every minute, every second, you know, down to the millisecond and how the world was moving toward realtime or near realtime data analysis to support physical infrastructure like sensors and other devices and IOT equipment. A time series databases have had to evolve to efficiently support realtime data in emerging use cases in iot T and other use cases. >>And to do that, new architectural innovations have to be brought to bear. As is often the case, open source software is the linchpin to those innovations. Hello and welcome to Evolving Influx DB into the smart Data platform, made possible by influx data and produced by the Cube. My name is Dave Valante and I'll be your host today. Now in this program we're going to dig pretty deep into what's happening with Time series data generally, and specifically how Influx DB is evolving to support new workloads and demands and data, and specifically around data analytics use cases in real time. Now, first we're gonna hear from Brian Gilmore, who is the director of IOT and emerging technologies at Influx Data. And we're gonna talk about the continued evolution of Influx DB and the new capabilities enabled by open source generally and specific tools. And in this program you're gonna hear a lot about things like Rust, implementation of Apache Arrow, the use of par k and tooling such as data fusion, which powering a new engine for Influx db. >>Now, these innovations, they evolve the idea of time series analysis by dramatically increasing the granularity of time series data by compressing the historical time slices, if you will, from, for example, minutes down to milliseconds. And at the same time, enabling real time analytics with an architecture that can process data much faster and much more efficiently. Now, after Brian, we're gonna hear from Anna East Dos Georgio, who is a developer advocate at In Flux Data. And we're gonna get into the why of these open source capabilities and how they contribute to the evolution of the Influx DB platform. And then we're gonna close the program with Tim Yokum, he's the director of engineering at Influx Data, and he's gonna explain how the Influx DB community actually evolved the data engine in mid-flight and which decisions went into the innovations that are coming to the market. Thank you for being here. We hope you enjoy the program. Let's get started. Okay, we're kicking things off with Brian Gilmore. He's the director of i t and emerging Technology at Influx State of Bryan. Welcome to the program. Thanks for coming on. >>Thanks Dave. Great to be here. I appreciate the time. >>Hey, explain why Influx db, you know, needs a new engine. Was there something wrong with the current engine? What's going on there? >>No, no, not at all. I mean, I think it's, for us, it's been about staying ahead of the market. I think, you know, if we think about what our customers are coming to us sort of with now, you know, related to requests like sql, you know, query support, things like that, we have to figure out a way to, to execute those for them in a way that will scale long term. And then we also, we wanna make sure we're innovating, we're sort of staying ahead of the market as well and sort of anticipating those future needs. So, you know, this is really a, a transparent change for our customers. I mean, I think we'll be adding new capabilities over time that sort of leverage this new engine, but you know, initially the customers who are using us are gonna see just great improvements in performance, you know, especially those that are working at the top end of the, of the workload scale, you know, the massive data volumes and things like that. >>Yeah, and we're gonna get into that today and the architecture and the like, but what was the catalyst for the enhancements? I mean, when and how did this all come about? >>Well, I mean, like three years ago we were primarily on premises, right? I mean, I think we had our open source, we had an enterprise product, you know, and, and sort of shifting that technology, especially the open source code base to a service basis where we were hosting it through, you know, multiple cloud providers. That was, that was, that was a long journey I guess, you know, phase one was, you know, we wanted to host enterprise for our customers, so we sort of created a service that we just managed and ran our enterprise product for them. You know, phase two of this cloud effort was to, to optimize for like multi-tenant, multi-cloud, be able to, to host it in a truly like sass manner where we could use, you know, some type of customer activity or consumption as the, the pricing vector, you know, And, and that was sort of the birth of the, of the real first influx DB cloud, you know, which has been really successful. >>We've seen, I think like 60,000 people sign up and we've got tons and tons of, of both enterprises as well as like new companies, developers, and of course a lot of home hobbyists and enthusiasts who are using out on a, on a daily basis, you know, and having that sort of big pool of, of very diverse and very customers to chat with as they're using the product, as they're giving us feedback, et cetera, has has, you know, pointed us in a really good direction in terms of making sure we're continuously improving that and then also making these big leaps as we're doing with this, with this new engine. >>Right. So you've called it a transparent change for customers, so I'm presuming it's non-disruptive, but I really wanna understand how much of a pivot this is and what, what does it take to make that shift from, you know, time series, you know, specialist to real time analytics and being able to support both? >>Yeah, I mean, it's much more of an evolution, I think, than like a shift or a pivot. You know, time series data is always gonna be fundamental and sort of the basis of the solutions that we offer our customers, and then also the ones that they're building on the sort of raw APIs of our platform themselves. You know, the time series market is one that we've worked diligently to lead. I mean, I think when it comes to like metrics, especially like sensor data and app and infrastructure metrics, if we're being honest though, I think our, our user base is well aware that the way we were architected was much more towards those sort of like backwards looking historical type analytics, which are key for troubleshooting and making sure you don't, you know, run into the same problem twice. But, you know, we had to ask ourselves like, what can we do to like better handle those queries from a performance and a, and a, you know, a time to response on the queries, and can we get that to the point where the results sets are coming back so quickly from the time of query that we can like limit that window down to minutes and then seconds. >>And now with this new engine, we're really starting to talk about a query window that could be like returning results in, in, you know, milliseconds of time since it hit the, the, the ingest queue. And that's, that's really getting to the point where as your data is available, you can use it and you can query it, you can visualize it, and you can do all those sort of magical things with it, you know? And I think getting all of that to a place where we're saying like, yes to the customer on, you know, all of the, the real time queries, the, the multiple language query support, but, you know, it was hard, but we're now at a spot where we can start introducing that to, you know, a a limited number of customers, strategic customers and strategic availability zones to start. But you know, everybody over time. >>So you're basically going from what happened to in, you can still do that obviously, but to what's happening now in the moment? >>Yeah, yeah. I mean if you think about time, it's always sort of past, right? I mean, like in the moment right now, whether you're talking about like a millisecond ago or a minute ago, you know, that's, that's pretty much right now, I think for most people, especially in these use cases where you have other sort of components of latency induced by the, by the underlying data collection, the architecture, the infrastructure, the, you know, the, the devices and you know, the sort of highly distributed nature of all of this. So yeah, I mean, getting, getting a customer or a user to be able to use the data as soon as it is available is what we're after here. >>I always thought, you know, real, I always thought of real time as before you lose the customer, but now in this context, maybe it's before the machine blows up. >>Yeah, it's, it's, I mean it is operationally or operational real time is different, you know, and that's one of the things that really triggered us to know that we were, we were heading in the right direction, is just how many sort of operational customers we have. You know, everything from like aerospace and defense. We've got companies monitoring satellites, we've got tons of industrial users, users using us as a processes storing on the plant floor, you know, and, and if we can satisfy their sort of demands for like real time historical perspective, that's awesome. I think what we're gonna do here is we're gonna start to like edge into the real time that they're used to in terms of, you know, the millisecond response times that they expect of their control systems, certainly not their, their historians and databases. >>I, is this available, these innovations to influx DB cloud customers only who can access this capability? >>Yeah. I mean commercially and today, yes. You know, I think we want to emphasize that's a, for now our goal is to get our latest and greatest and our best to everybody over time. Of course. You know, one of the things we had to do here was like we double down on sort of our, our commitment to open source and availability. So like anybody today can take a look at the, the libraries in on our GitHub and, you know, can ex inspect it and even can try to, you know, implement or execute some of it themselves in their own infrastructure. You know, we are, we're committed to bringing our sort of latest and greatest to our cloud customers first for a couple of reasons. Number one, you know, there are big workloads and they have high expectations of us. I think number two, it also gives us the opportunity to monitor a little bit more closely how it's working, how they're using it, like how the system itself is performing. >>And so just, you know, being careful, maybe a little cautious in terms of, of, of how big we go with this right away, just sort of both limits, you know, the risk of, of, you know, any issues that can come with new software rollouts. We haven't seen anything so far, but also it does give us the opportunity to have like meaningful conversations with a small group of users who are using the products, but once we get through that and they give us two thumbs up on it, it'll be like, open the gates and let everybody in. It's gonna be exciting time for the whole ecosystem. >>Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And you can do some experimentation and, you know, using the cloud resources. Let's dig into some of the architectural and technical innovations that are gonna help deliver on this vision. What, what should we know there? >>Well, I mean, I think foundationally we built the, the new core on Rust. You know, this is a new very sort of popular systems language, you know, it's extremely efficient, but it's also built for speed and memory safety, which goes back to that us being able to like deliver it in a way that is, you know, something we can inspect very closely, but then also rely on the fact that it's going to behave well. And if it does find error conditions, I mean we, we've loved working with Go and, you know, a lot of our libraries will continue to, to be sort of implemented in Go, but you know, when it came to this particular new engine, you know, that power performance and stability rust was critical. On top of that, like, we've also integrated Apache Arrow and Apache Parque for persistence. I think for anybody who's really familiar with the nuts and bolts of our backend and our TSI and our, our time series merged Trees, this is a big break from that, you know, arrow on the sort of in MI side and then Par K in the on disk side. >>It, it allows us to, to present, you know, a unified set of APIs for those really fast real time inquiries that we talked about, as well as for very large, you know, historical sort of bulk data archives in that PARQUE format, which is also cool because there's an entire ecosystem sort of popping up around Parque in terms of the machine learning community, you know, and getting that all to work, we had to glue it together with aero flight. That's sort of what we're using as our, our RPC component. You know, it handles the orchestration and the, the transportation of the Coer data. Now we're moving to like a true Coer database model for this, this version of the engine, you know, and it removes a lot of overhead for us in terms of having to manage all that serialization, the deserialization, and, you know, to that again, like blurring that line between real time and historical data. It's, you know, it's, it's highly optimized for both streaming micro batch and then batches, but true streaming as well. >>Yeah. Again, I mean, it's funny you mentioned Rust. It is, it's been around for a long time, but it's popularity is, is you know, really starting to hit that steep part of the S-curve. And, and we're gonna dig into to more of that, but give us any, is there anything else that we should know about Bryan? Give us the last word? >>Well, I mean, I think first I'd like everybody sort of watching just to like take a look at what we're offering in terms of early access in beta programs. I mean, if, if, if you wanna participate or if you wanna work sort of in terms of early access with the, with the new engine, please reach out to the team. I'm sure you know, there's a lot of communications going out and you know, it'll be highly featured on our, our website, you know, but reach out to the team, believe it or not, like we have a lot more going on than just the new engine. And so there are also other programs, things we're, we're offering to customers in terms of the user interface, data collection and things like that. And, you know, if you're a customer of ours and you have a sales team, a commercial team that you work with, you can reach out to them and see what you can get access to because we can flip a lot of stuff on, especially in cloud through feature flags. >>But if there's something new that you wanna try out, we'd just love to hear from you. And then, you know, our goal would be that as we give you access to all of these new cool features that, you know, you would give us continuous feedback on these products and services, not only like what you need today, but then what you'll need tomorrow to, to sort of build the next versions of your business. Because you know, the whole database, the ecosystem as it expands out into to, you know, this vertically oriented stack of cloud services and enterprise databases and edge databases, you know, it's gonna be what we all make it together, not just, you know, those of us who were employed by Influx db. And then finally I would just say please, like watch in ICE in Tim's sessions, like these are two of our best and brightest, They're totally brilliant, completely pragmatic, and they are most of all customer obsessed, which is amazing. And there's no better takes, like honestly on the, the sort of technical details of this, then there's, especially when it comes to like the value that these investments will, will bring to our customers and our communities. So encourage you to, to, you know, pay more attention to them than you did to me, for sure. >>Brian Gilmore, great stuff. Really appreciate your time. Thank you. >>Yeah, thanks Dave. It was awesome. Look forward to it. >>Yeah, me too. Looking forward to see how the, the community actually applies these new innovations and goes, goes beyond just the historical into the real time really hot area. As Brian said in a moment, I'll be right back with Anna East dos Georgio to dig into the critical aspects of key open source components of the Influx DB engine, including Rust, Arrow, Parque, data fusion. Keep it right there. You don't wanna miss this >>Time series Data is everywhere. The number of sensors, systems and applications generating time series data increases every day. All these data sources producing so much data can cause analysis paralysis. Influx DB is an entire platform designed with everything you need to quickly build applications that generate value from time series data influx. DB Cloud is a serverless solution, which means you don't need to buy or manage your own servers. There's no need to worry about provisioning because you only pay for what you use. Influx DB Cloud is fully managed so you get the newest features and enhancements as they're added to the platform's code base. It also means you can spend time building solutions and delivering value to your users instead of wasting time and effort managing something else. Influx TVB Cloud offers a range of security features to protect your data, multiple layers of redundancy ensure you don't lose any data access controls ensure that only the people who should see your data can see it. >>And encryption protects your data at rest and in transit between any of our regions or cloud providers. InfluxDB uses a single API across the entire platform suite so you can build on open source, deploy to the cloud and then then easily query data in the cloud at the edge or on prem using the same scripts. And InfluxDB is schemaless automatically adjusting to changes in the shape of your data without requiring changes in your application. Logic. InfluxDB Cloud is production ready from day one. All it needs is your data and your imagination. Get started today@influxdata.com slash cloud. >>Okay, we're back. I'm Dave Valante with a Cube and you're watching evolving Influx DB into the smart data platform made possible by influx data. Anna ETOs Georgio is here, she's a developer advocate for influx data and we're gonna dig into the rationale and value contribution behind several open source technologies that Influx DB is leveraging to increase the granularity of time series analysis analysis and bring the world of data into real-time analytics and is welcome to the program. Thanks for coming on. >>Hi, thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. >>Oh, you're very welcome. Okay, so IX is being touted as this next gen open source core for Influx db. And my understanding is that it leverages in memory of course for speed. It's a kilo store, so it gives you a compression efficiency, it's gonna give you faster query speeds, you store files and object storage, so you got very cost effective approach. Are these the salient points on the platform? I know there are probably dozens of other features, but what are the high level value points that people should understand? >>Sure, that's a great question. So some of the main requirements that IOx is trying to achieve and some of the most impressive ones to me, the first one is that it aims to have no limits on cardinality and also allow you to write any kind of event data that you want, whether that's live tag or a field. It also wants to deliver the best in class performance on analytics queries. In addition to our already well served metrics queries, we also wanna have operator control over memory usage. So you should be able to define how much memory is used for buffering caching and query processing. Some other really important parts is the ability to have bulk data export and import super useful. Also broader ecosystem compatibility where possible we aim to use and embrace emerging standards in the data analytics ecosystem and have compatibility with things like sql, Python, and maybe even pandas in the future. >>Okay, so lot there. Now we talked to Brian about how you're using Rust and which is not a new programming language and of course we had some drama around Rust during the pandemic with the Mozilla layoffs, but the formation of the Rust Foundation really addressed any of those concerns. You got big guns like Amazon and Google and Microsoft throwing their collective weights behind it. It's really, the adoption is really starting to get steep on the S-curve. So lots of platforms, lots of adoption with rust, but why rust as an alternative to say c plus plus for example? >>Sure, that's a great question. So Russ was chosen because of his exceptional performance and reliability. So while Russ is synt tactically similar to c plus plus and it has similar performance, it also compiles to a native code like c plus plus. But unlike c plus plus, it also has much better memory safety. So memory safety is protection against bugs or security vulnerabilities that lead to excessive memory usage or memory leaks. And rust achieves this memory safety due to its like innovative type system. Additionally, it doesn't allow for dangling pointers. And dangling pointers are the main classes of errors that lead to exploitable security vulnerabilities in languages like c plus plus. So Russ like helps meet that requirement of having no limits on ality, for example, because it's, we're also using the Russ implementation of Apache Arrow and this control over memory and also Russ Russ's packaging system called crates IO offers everything that you need out of the box to have features like AY and a weight to fix race conditions, to protection against buffering overflows and to ensure thread safe async cashing structures as well. So essentially it's just like has all the control, all the fine grain control, you need to take advantage of memory and all your resources as well as possible so that you can handle those really, really high ity use cases. >>Yeah, and the more I learn about the, the new engine and, and the platform IOCs et cetera, you know, you, you see things like, you know, the old days not even to even today you do a lot of garbage collection in these, in these systems and there's an inverse, you know, impact relative to performance. So it looks like you really, you know, the community is modernizing the platform, but I wanna talk about Apache Arrow for a moment. It it's designed to address the constraints that are associated with analyzing large data sets. We, we know that, but please explain why, what, what is Arrow and and what does it bring to Influx db? >>Sure, yeah. So Arrow is a, a framework for defining in memory calmer data. And so much of the efficiency and performance of IOx comes from taking advantage of calmer data structures. And I will, if you don't mind, take a moment to kind of of illustrate why column or data structures are so valuable. Let's pretend that we are gathering field data about the temperature in our room and also maybe the temperature of our stove. And in our table we have those two temperature values as well as maybe a measurement value, timestamp value, maybe some other tag values that describe what room and what house, et cetera we're getting this data from. And so you can picture this table where we have like two rows with the two temperature values for both our room and the stove. Well usually our room temperature is regulated so those values don't change very often. >>So when you have calm oriented st calm oriented storage, essentially you take each row, each column and group it together. And so if that's the case and you're just taking temperature values from the room and a lot of those temperature values are the same, then you'll, you might be able to imagine how equal values will then enable each other and when they neighbor each other in the storage format, this provides a really perfect opportunity for cheap compression. And then this cheap compression enables high cardinality use cases. It also enables for faster scan rates. So if you wanna define like the men and max value of the temperature in the room across a thousand different points, you only have to get those a thousand different points in order to answer that question and you have those immediately available to you. But let's contrast this with a row oriented storage solution instead so that we can understand better the benefits of calmer oriented storage. >>So if you had a row oriented storage, you'd first have to look at every field like the temperature in, in the room and the temperature of the stove. You'd have to go across every tag value that maybe describes where the room is located or what model the stove is. And every timestamp you'd then have to pluck out that one temperature value that you want at that one time stamp and do that for every single row. So you're scanning across a ton more data and that's why Rowe Oriented doesn't provide the same efficiency as calmer and Apache Arrow is in memory calmer data, commoner data fit framework. So that's where a lot of the advantages come >>From. Okay. So you basically described like a traditional database, a row approach, but I've seen like a lot of traditional database say, okay, now we've got, we can handle colo format versus what you're talking about is really, you know, kind of native i, is it not as effective? Is the, is the foreman not as effective because it's largely a, a bolt on? Can you, can you like elucidate on that front? >>Yeah, it's, it's not as effective because you have more expensive compression and because you can't scan across the values as quickly. And so those are, that's pretty much the main reasons why, why RO row oriented storage isn't as efficient as calm, calmer oriented storage. Yeah. >>Got it. So let's talk about Arrow Data Fusion. What is data fusion? I know it's written in Rust, but what does it bring to the table here? >>Sure. So it's an extensible query execution framework and it uses Arrow as it's in memory format. So the way that it helps in influx DB IOCs is that okay, it's great if you can write unlimited amount of cardinality into influx Cbis, but if you don't have a query engine that can successfully query that data, then I don't know how much value it is for you. So Data fusion helps enable the, the query process and transformation of that data. It also has a PANDAS API so that you could take advantage of PANDAS data frames as well and all of the machine learning tools associated with Pandas. >>Okay. You're also leveraging Par K in the platform cause we heard a lot about Par K in the middle of the last decade cuz as a storage format to improve on Hadoop column stores. What are you doing with Parque and why is it important? >>Sure. So parque is the column oriented durable file format. So it's important because it'll enable bulk import, bulk export, it has compatibility with Python and Pandas, so it supports a broader ecosystem. Par K files also take very little disc disc space and they're faster to scan because again, they're column oriented in particular, I think PAR K files are like 16 times cheaper than CSV files, just as kind of a point of reference. And so that's essentially a lot of the, the benefits of par k. >>Got it. Very popular. So and he's, what exactly is influx data focusing on as a committer to these projects? What is your focus? What's the value that you're bringing to the community? >>Sure. So Influx DB first has contributed a lot of different, different things to the Apache ecosystem. For example, they contribute an implementation of Apache Arrow and go and that will support clearing with flux. Also, there has been a quite a few contributions to data fusion for things like memory optimization and supportive additional SQL features like support for timestamp, arithmetic and support for exist clauses and support for memory control. So yeah, Influx has contributed a a lot to the Apache ecosystem and continues to do so. And I think kind of the idea here is that if you can improve these upstream projects and then the long term strategy here is that the more you contribute and build those up, then the more you will perpetuate that cycle of improvement and the more we will invest in our own project as well. So it's just that kind of symbiotic relationship and appreciation of the open source community. >>Yeah. Got it. You got that virtuous cycle going, the people call the flywheel. Give us your last thoughts and kind of summarize, you know, where what, what the big takeaways are from your perspective. >>So I think the big takeaway is that influx data is doing a lot of really exciting things with Influx DB IOx and I really encourage, if you are interested in learning more about the technologies that Influx is leveraging to produce IOCs, the challenges associated with it and all of the hard work questions and you just wanna learn more, then I would encourage you to go to the monthly Tech talks and community office hours and they are on every second Wednesday of the month at 8:30 AM Pacific time. There's also a community forums and a community Slack channel look for the influx DDB unders IAC channel specifically to learn more about how to join those office hours and those monthly tech tech talks as well as ask any questions they have about iacs, what to expect and what you'd like to learn more about. I as a developer advocate, I wanna answer your questions. So if there's a particular technology or stack that you wanna dive deeper into and want more explanation about how INFLUX DB leverages it to build IOCs, I will be really excited to produce content on that topic for you. >>Yeah, that's awesome. You guys have a really rich community, collaborate with your peers, solve problems, and, and you guys super responsive, so really appreciate that. All right, thank you so much Anise for explaining all this open source stuff to the audience and why it's important to the future of data. >>Thank you. I really appreciate it. >>All right, you're very welcome. Okay, stay right there and in a moment I'll be back with Tim Yoakum, he's the director of engineering for Influx Data and we're gonna talk about how you update a SAS engine while the plane is flying at 30,000 feet. You don't wanna miss this. >>I'm really glad that we went with InfluxDB Cloud for our hosting because it has saved us a ton of time. It's helped us move faster, it's saved us money. And also InfluxDB has good support. My name's Alex Nada. I am CTO at Noble nine. Noble Nine is a platform to measure and manage service level objectives, which is a great way of measuring the reliability of your systems. You can essentially think of an slo, the product we're providing to our customers as a bunch of time series. So we need a way to store that data and the corresponding time series that are related to those. The main reason that we settled on InfluxDB as we were shopping around is that InfluxDB has a very flexible query language and as a general purpose time series database, it basically had the set of features we were looking for. >>As our platform has grown, we found InfluxDB Cloud to be a really scalable solution. We can quickly iterate on new features and functionality because Influx Cloud is entirely managed, it probably saved us at least a full additional person on our team. We also have the option of running InfluxDB Enterprise, which gives us the ability to even host off the cloud or in a private cloud if that's preferred by a customer. Influx data has been really flexible in adapting to the hosting requirements that we have. They listened to the challenges we were facing and they helped us solve it. As we've continued to grow, I'm really happy we have influx data by our side. >>Okay, we're back with Tim Yokum, who is the director of engineering at Influx Data. Tim, welcome. Good to see you. >>Good to see you. Thanks for having me. >>You're really welcome. Listen, we've been covering open source software in the cube for more than a decade, and we've kind of watched the innovation from the big data ecosystem. The cloud has been being built out on open source, mobile, social platforms, key databases, and of course influx DB and influx data has been a big consumer and contributor of open source software. So my question to you is, where have you seen the biggest bang for the buck from open source software? >>So yeah, you know, influx really, we thrive at the intersection of commercial services and open, so open source software. So OSS keeps us on the cutting edge. We benefit from OSS in delivering our own service from our core storage engine technologies to web services temping engines. Our, our team stays lean and focused because we build on proven tools. We really build on the shoulders of giants and like you've mentioned, even better, we contribute a lot back to the projects that we use as well as our own product influx db. >>You know, but I gotta ask you, Tim, because one of the challenge that that we've seen in particular, you saw this in the heyday of Hadoop, the, the innovations come so fast and furious and as a software company you gotta place bets, you gotta, you know, commit people and sometimes those bets can be risky and not pay off well, how have you managed this challenge? >>Oh, it moves fast. Yeah, that, that's a benefit though because it, the community moves so quickly that today's hot technology can be tomorrow's dinosaur. And what we, what we tend to do is, is we fail fast and fail often. We try a lot of things. You know, you look at Kubernetes for example, that ecosystem is driven by thousands of intelligent developers, engineers, builders, they're adding value every day. So we have to really keep up with that. And as the stack changes, we, we try different technologies, we try different methods, and at the end of the day, we come up with a better platform as a result of just the constant change in the environment. It is a challenge for us, but it's, it's something that we just do every day. >>So we have a survey partner down in New York City called Enterprise Technology Research etr, and they do these quarterly surveys of about 1500 CIOs, IT practitioners, and they really have a good pulse on what's happening with spending. And the data shows that containers generally, but specifically Kubernetes is one of the areas that has kind of, it's been off the charts and seen the most significant adoption and velocity particularly, you know, along with cloud. But, but really Kubernetes is just, you know, still up until the right consistently even with, you know, the macro headwinds and all, all of the stuff that we're sick of talking about. But, so what are you doing with Kubernetes in the platform? >>Yeah, it, it's really central to our ability to run the product. When we first started out, we were just on AWS and, and the way we were running was, was a little bit like containers junior. Now we're running Kubernetes everywhere at aws, Azure, Google Cloud. It allows us to have a consistent experience across three different cloud providers and we can manage that in code so our developers can focus on delivering services, not trying to learn the intricacies of Amazon, Azure, and Google and figure out how to deliver services on those three clouds with all of their differences. >>Just to follow up on that, is it, no. So I presume it's sounds like there's a PAs layer there to allow you guys to have a consistent experience across clouds and out to the edge, you know, wherever is that, is that correct? >>Yeah, so we've basically built more or less platform engineering, This is the new hot phrase, you know, it, it's, Kubernetes has made a lot of things easy for us because we've built a platform that our developers can lean on and they only have to learn one way of deploying their application, managing their application. And so that, that just gets all of the underlying infrastructure out of the way and, and lets them focus on delivering influx cloud. >>Yeah, and I know I'm taking a little bit of a tangent, but is that, that, I'll call it a PAs layer if I can use that term. Is that, are there specific attributes to Influx db or is it kind of just generally off the shelf paths? You know, are there, is, is there any purpose built capability there that, that is, is value add or is it pretty much generic? >>So we really build, we, we look at things through, with a build versus buy through a, a build versus by lens. Some things we want to leverage cloud provider services, for instance, Postgres databases for metadata, perhaps we'll get that off of our plate, let someone else run that. We're going to deploy a platform that our engineers can, can deliver on that has consistency that is, is all generated from code that we can as a, as an SRE group, as an ops team, that we can manage with very few people really, and we can stamp out clusters across multiple regions and in no time. >>So how, so sometimes you build, sometimes you buy it. How do you make those decisions and and what does that mean for the, for the platform and for customers? >>Yeah, so what we're doing is, it's like everybody else will do, we're we're looking for trade offs that make sense. You know, we really want to protect our customers data. So we look for services that support our own software with the most uptime, reliability, and durability we can get. Some things are just going to be easier to have a cloud provider take care of on our behalf. We make that transparent for our own team. And of course for customers you don't even see that, but we don't want to try to reinvent the wheel, like I had mentioned with SQL data stores for metadata, perhaps let's build on top of what of these three large cloud providers have already perfected. And we can then focus on our platform engineering and we can have our developers then focus on the influx data, software, influx, cloud software. >>So take it to the customer level, what does it mean for them? What's the value that they're gonna get out of all these innovations that we've been been talking about today and what can they expect in the future? >>So first of all, people who use the OSS product are really gonna be at home on our cloud platform. You can run it on your desktop machine, on a single server, what have you, but then you want to scale up. We have some 270 terabytes of data across, over 4 billion series keys that people have stored. So there's a proven ability to scale now in terms of the open source, open source software and how we've developed the platform. You're getting highly available high cardinality time series platform. We manage it and, and really as, as I mentioned earlier, we can keep up with the state of the art. We keep reinventing, we keep deploying things in real time. We deploy to our platform every day repeatedly all the time. And it's that continuous deployment that allows us to continue testing things in flight, rolling things out that change new features, better ways of doing deployments, safer ways of doing deployments. >>All of that happens behind the scenes. And like we had mentioned earlier, Kubernetes, I mean that, that allows us to get that done. We couldn't do it without having that platform as a, as a base layer for us to then put our software on. So we, we iterate quickly. When you're on the, the Influx cloud platform, you really are able to, to take advantage of new features immediately. We roll things out every day and as those things go into production, you have, you have the ability to, to use them. And so in the end we want you to focus on getting actual insights from your data instead of running infrastructure, you know, let, let us do that for you. So, >>And that makes sense, but so is the, is the, are the innovations that we're talking about in the evolution of Influx db, do, do you see that as sort of a natural evolution for existing customers? I, is it, I'm sure the answer is both, but is it opening up new territory for customers? Can you add some color to that? >>Yeah, it really is it, it's a little bit of both. Any engineer will say, well, it depends. So cloud native technologies are, are really the hot thing. Iot, industrial iot especially, people want to just shove tons of data out there and be able to do queries immediately and they don't wanna manage infrastructure. What we've started to see are people that use the cloud service as their, their data store backbone and then they use edge computing with R OSS product to ingest data from say, multiple production lines and downsample that data, send the rest of that data off influx cloud where the heavy processing takes place. So really us being in all the different clouds and iterating on that and being in all sorts of different regions allows for people to really get out of the, the business of man trying to manage that big data, have us take care of that. And of course as we change the platform end users benefit from that immediately. And, >>And so obviously taking away a lot of the heavy lifting for the infrastructure, would you say the same thing about security, especially as you go out to IOT and the Edge? How should we be thinking about the value that you bring from a security perspective? >>Yeah, we take, we take security super seriously. It, it's built into our dna. We do a lot of work to ensure that our platform is secure, that the data we store is, is kept private. It's of course always a concern. You see in the news all the time, companies being compromised, you know, that's something that you can have an entire team working on, which we do to make sure that the data that you have, whether it's in transit, whether it's at rest, is always kept secure, is only viewable by you. You know, you look at things like software, bill of materials, if you're running this yourself, you have to go vet all sorts of different pieces of software. And we do that, you know, as we use new tools. That's something that, that's just part of our jobs to make sure that the platform that we're running it has, has fully vetted software and, and with open source especially, that's a lot of work. And so it's, it's definitely new territory. Supply chain attacks are, are definitely happening at a higher clip than they used to, but that is, that is really just part of a day in the, the life for folks like us that are, are building platforms. >>Yeah, and that's key. I mean especially when you start getting into the, the, you know, we talk about IOT and the operations technologies, the engineers running the, that infrastructure, you know, historically, as you know, Tim, they, they would air gap everything. That's how they kept it safe. But that's not feasible anymore. Everything's >>That >>Connected now, right? And so you've gotta have a partner that is again, take away that heavy lifting to r and d so you can focus on some of the other activities. Right. Give us the, the last word and the, the key takeaways from your perspective. >>Well, you know, from my perspective I see it as, as a a two lane approach with, with influx, with Anytime series data, you know, you've got a lot of stuff that you're gonna run on-prem, what you had mentioned, air gaping. Sure there's plenty of need for that, but at the end of the day, people that don't want to run big data centers, people that want torus their data to, to a company that's, that's got a full platform set up for them that they can build on, send that data over to the cloud, the cloud is not going away. I think more hybrid approach is, is where the future lives and that's what we're prepared for. >>Tim, really appreciate you coming to the program. Great stuff. Good to see you. >>Thanks very much. Appreciate it. >>Okay, in a moment I'll be back to wrap up. Today's session, you're watching The Cube. >>Are you looking for some help getting started with InfluxDB Telegraph or Flux Check >>Out Influx DB University >>Where you can find our entire catalog of free training that will help you make the most of your time series data >>Get >>Started for free@influxdbu.com. >>We'll see you in class. >>Okay, so we heard today from three experts on time series and data, how the Influx DB platform is evolving to support new ways of analyzing large data sets very efficiently and effectively in real time. And we learned that key open source components like Apache Arrow and the Rust Programming environment Data fusion par K are being leveraged to support realtime data analytics at scale. We also learned about the contributions in importance of open source software and how the Influx DB community is evolving the platform with minimal disruption to support new workloads, new use cases, and the future of realtime data analytics. Now remember these sessions, they're all available on demand. You can go to the cube.net to find those. Don't forget to check out silicon angle.com for all the news related to things enterprise and emerging tech. And you should also check out influx data.com. There you can learn about the company's products. You'll find developer resources like free courses. You could join the developer community and work with your peers to learn and solve problems. And there are plenty of other resources around use cases and customer stories on the website. This is Dave Valante. Thank you for watching Evolving Influx DB into the smart data platform, made possible by influx data and brought to you by the Cube, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage.

>>This past May, The Cube in collaboration with Influx data shared with you the latest innovations in Time series databases. We talked at length about why a purpose built time series database for many use cases, was a superior alternative to general purpose databases trying to do the same thing. Now, you may, you may remember the time series data is any data that's stamped in time, and if it's stamped, it can be analyzed historically. And when we introduced the concept to the community, we talked about how in theory, those time slices could be taken, you know, every hour, every minute, every second, you know, down to the millisecond and how the world was moving toward realtime or near realtime data analysis to support physical infrastructure like sensors and other devices and IOT equipment. A time series databases have had to evolve to efficiently support realtime data in emerging use cases in iot T and other use cases. >>And to do that, new architectural innovations have to be brought to bear. As is often the case, open source software is the linchpin to those innovations. Hello and welcome to Evolving Influx DB into the smart Data platform, made possible by influx data and produced by the Cube. My name is Dave Valante and I'll be your host today. Now in this program we're going to dig pretty deep into what's happening with Time series data generally, and specifically how Influx DB is evolving to support new workloads and demands and data, and specifically around data analytics use cases in real time. Now, first we're gonna hear from Brian Gilmore, who is the director of IOT and emerging technologies at Influx Data. And we're gonna talk about the continued evolution of Influx DB and the new capabilities enabled by open source generally and specific tools. And in this program you're gonna hear a lot about things like Rust, implementation of Apache Arrow, the use of par k and tooling such as data fusion, which powering a new engine for Influx db. >>Now, these innovations, they evolve the idea of time series analysis by dramatically increasing the granularity of time series data by compressing the historical time slices, if you will, from, for example, minutes down to milliseconds. And at the same time, enabling real time analytics with an architecture that can process data much faster and much more efficiently. Now, after Brian, we're gonna hear from Anna East Dos Georgio, who is a developer advocate at In Flux Data. And we're gonna get into the why of these open source capabilities and how they contribute to the evolution of the Influx DB platform. And then we're gonna close the program with Tim Yokum, he's the director of engineering at Influx Data, and he's gonna explain how the Influx DB community actually evolved the data engine in mid-flight and which decisions went into the innovations that are coming to the market. Thank you for being here. We hope you enjoy the program. Let's get started. Okay, we're kicking things off with Brian Gilmore. He's the director of i t and emerging Technology at Influx State of Bryan. Welcome to the program. Thanks for coming on. >>Thanks Dave. Great to be here. I appreciate the time. >>Hey, explain why Influx db, you know, needs a new engine. Was there something wrong with the current engine? What's going on there? >>No, no, not at all. I mean, I think it's, for us, it's been about staying ahead of the market. I think, you know, if we think about what our customers are coming to us sort of with now, you know, related to requests like sql, you know, query support, things like that, we have to figure out a way to, to execute those for them in a way that will scale long term. And then we also, we wanna make sure we're innovating, we're sort of staying ahead of the market as well and sort of anticipating those future needs. So, you know, this is really a, a transparent change for our customers. I mean, I think we'll be adding new capabilities over time that sort of leverage this new engine, but you know, initially the customers who are using us are gonna see just great improvements in performance, you know, especially those that are working at the top end of the, of the workload scale, you know, the massive data volumes and things like that. >>Yeah, and we're gonna get into that today and the architecture and the like, but what was the catalyst for the enhancements? I mean, when and how did this all come about? >>Well, I mean, like three years ago we were primarily on premises, right? I mean, I think we had our open source, we had an enterprise product, you know, and, and sort of shifting that technology, especially the open source code base to a service basis where we were hosting it through, you know, multiple cloud providers. That was, that was, that was a long journey I guess, you know, phase one was, you know, we wanted to host enterprise for our customers, so we sort of created a service that we just managed and ran our enterprise product for them. You know, phase two of this cloud effort was to, to optimize for like multi-tenant, multi-cloud, be able to, to host it in a truly like sass manner where we could use, you know, some type of customer activity or consumption as the, the pricing vector, you know, And, and that was sort of the birth of the, of the real first influx DB cloud, you know, which has been really successful. >>We've seen, I think like 60,000 people sign up and we've got tons and tons of, of both enterprises as well as like new companies, developers, and of course a lot of home hobbyists and enthusiasts who are using out on a, on a daily basis, you know, and having that sort of big pool of, of very diverse and very customers to chat with as they're using the product, as they're giving us feedback, et cetera, has has, you know, pointed us in a really good direction in terms of making sure we're continuously improving that and then also making these big leaps as we're doing with this, with this new engine. >>Right. So you've called it a transparent change for customers, so I'm presuming it's non-disruptive, but I really wanna understand how much of a pivot this is and what, what does it take to make that shift from, you know, time series, you know, specialist to real time analytics and being able to support both? >>Yeah, I mean, it's much more of an evolution, I think, than like a shift or a pivot. You know, time series data is always gonna be fundamental and sort of the basis of the solutions that we offer our customers, and then also the ones that they're building on the sort of raw APIs of our platform themselves. You know, the time series market is one that we've worked diligently to lead. I mean, I think when it comes to like metrics, especially like sensor data and app and infrastructure metrics, if we're being honest though, I think our, our user base is well aware that the way we were architected was much more towards those sort of like backwards looking historical type analytics, which are key for troubleshooting and making sure you don't, you know, run into the same problem twice. But, you know, we had to ask ourselves like, what can we do to like better handle those queries from a performance and a, and a, you know, a time to response on the queries, and can we get that to the point where the results sets are coming back so quickly from the time of query that we can like limit that window down to minutes and then seconds. >>And now with this new engine, we're really starting to talk about a query window that could be like returning results in, in, you know, milliseconds of time since it hit the, the, the ingest queue. And that's, that's really getting to the point where as your data is available, you can use it and you can query it, you can visualize it, and you can do all those sort of magical things with it, you know? And I think getting all of that to a place where we're saying like, yes to the customer on, you know, all of the, the real time queries, the, the multiple language query support, but, you know, it was hard, but we're now at a spot where we can start introducing that to, you know, a a limited number of customers, strategic customers and strategic availability zones to start. But you know, everybody over time. >>So you're basically going from what happened to in, you can still do that obviously, but to what's happening now in the moment? >>Yeah, yeah. I mean if you think about time, it's always sort of past, right? I mean, like in the moment right now, whether you're talking about like a millisecond ago or a minute ago, you know, that's, that's pretty much right now, I think for most people, especially in these use cases where you have other sort of components of latency induced by the, by the underlying data collection, the architecture, the infrastructure, the, you know, the, the devices and you know, the sort of highly distributed nature of all of this. So yeah, I mean, getting, getting a customer or a user to be able to use the data as soon as it is available is what we're after here. >>I always thought, you know, real, I always thought of real time as before you lose the customer, but now in this context, maybe it's before the machine blows up. >>Yeah, it's, it's, I mean it is operationally or operational real time is different, you know, and that's one of the things that really triggered us to know that we were, we were heading in the right direction, is just how many sort of operational customers we have. You know, everything from like aerospace and defense. We've got companies monitoring satellites, we've got tons of industrial users, users using us as a processes storing on the plant floor, you know, and, and if we can satisfy their sort of demands for like real time historical perspective, that's awesome. I think what we're gonna do here is we're gonna start to like edge into the real time that they're used to in terms of, you know, the millisecond response times that they expect of their control systems, certainly not their, their historians and databases. >>I, is this available, these innovations to influx DB cloud customers only who can access this capability? >>Yeah. I mean commercially and today, yes. You know, I think we want to emphasize that's a, for now our goal is to get our latest and greatest and our best to everybody over time. Of course. You know, one of the things we had to do here was like we double down on sort of our, our commitment to open source and availability. So like anybody today can take a look at the, the libraries in on our GitHub and, you know, can ex inspect it and even can try to, you know, implement or execute some of it themselves in their own infrastructure. You know, we are, we're committed to bringing our sort of latest and greatest to our cloud customers first for a couple of reasons. Number one, you know, there are big workloads and they have high expectations of us. I think number two, it also gives us the opportunity to monitor a little bit more closely how it's working, how they're using it, like how the system itself is performing. >>And so just, you know, being careful, maybe a little cautious in terms of, of, of how big we go with this right away, just sort of both limits, you know, the risk of, of, you know, any issues that can come with new software rollouts. We haven't seen anything so far, but also it does give us the opportunity to have like meaningful conversations with a small group of users who are using the products, but once we get through that and they give us two thumbs up on it, it'll be like, open the gates and let everybody in. It's gonna be exciting time for the whole ecosystem. >>Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And you can do some experimentation and, you know, using the cloud resources. Let's dig into some of the architectural and technical innovations that are gonna help deliver on this vision. What, what should we know there? >>Well, I mean, I think foundationally we built the, the new core on Rust. You know, this is a new very sort of popular systems language, you know, it's extremely efficient, but it's also built for speed and memory safety, which goes back to that us being able to like deliver it in a way that is, you know, something we can inspect very closely, but then also rely on the fact that it's going to behave well. And if it does find error conditions, I mean we, we've loved working with Go and, you know, a lot of our libraries will continue to, to be sort of implemented in Go, but you know, when it came to this particular new engine, you know, that power performance and stability rust was critical. On top of that, like, we've also integrated Apache Arrow and Apache Parque for persistence. I think for anybody who's really familiar with the nuts and bolts of our backend and our TSI and our, our time series merged Trees, this is a big break from that, you know, arrow on the sort of in MI side and then Par K in the on disk side. >>It, it allows us to, to present, you know, a unified set of APIs for those really fast real time inquiries that we talked about, as well as for very large, you know, historical sort of bulk data archives in that PARQUE format, which is also cool because there's an entire ecosystem sort of popping up around Parque in terms of the machine learning community, you know, and getting that all to work, we had to glue it together with aero flight. That's sort of what we're using as our, our RPC component. You know, it handles the orchestration and the, the transportation of the Coer data. Now we're moving to like a true Coer database model for this, this version of the engine, you know, and it removes a lot of overhead for us in terms of having to manage all that serialization, the deserialization, and, you know, to that again, like blurring that line between real time and historical data. It's, you know, it's, it's highly optimized for both streaming micro batch and then batches, but true streaming as well. >>Yeah. Again, I mean, it's funny you mentioned Rust. It is, it's been around for a long time, but it's popularity is, is you know, really starting to hit that steep part of the S-curve. And, and we're gonna dig into to more of that, but give us any, is there anything else that we should know about Bryan? Give us the last word? >>Well, I mean, I think first I'd like everybody sort of watching just to like take a look at what we're offering in terms of early access in beta programs. I mean, if, if, if you wanna participate or if you wanna work sort of in terms of early access with the, with the new engine, please reach out to the team. I'm sure you know, there's a lot of communications going out and you know, it'll be highly featured on our, our website, you know, but reach out to the team, believe it or not, like we have a lot more going on than just the new engine. And so there are also other programs, things we're, we're offering to customers in terms of the user interface, data collection and things like that. And, you know, if you're a customer of ours and you have a sales team, a commercial team that you work with, you can reach out to them and see what you can get access to because we can flip a lot of stuff on, especially in cloud through feature flags. >>But if there's something new that you wanna try out, we'd just love to hear from you. And then, you know, our goal would be that as we give you access to all of these new cool features that, you know, you would give us continuous feedback on these products and services, not only like what you need today, but then what you'll need tomorrow to, to sort of build the next versions of your business. Because you know, the whole database, the ecosystem as it expands out into to, you know, this vertically oriented stack of cloud services and enterprise databases and edge databases, you know, it's gonna be what we all make it together, not just, you know, those of us who were employed by Influx db. And then finally I would just say please, like watch in ICE in Tim's sessions, like these are two of our best and brightest, They're totally brilliant, completely pragmatic, and they are most of all customer obsessed, which is amazing. And there's no better takes, like honestly on the, the sort of technical details of this, then there's, especially when it comes to like the value that these investments will, will bring to our customers and our communities. So encourage you to, to, you know, pay more attention to them than you did to me, for sure. >>Brian Gilmore, great stuff. Really appreciate your time. Thank you. >>Yeah, thanks Dave. It was awesome. Look forward to it. >>Yeah, me too. Looking forward to see how the, the community actually applies these new innovations and goes, goes beyond just the historical into the real time really hot area. As Brian said in a moment, I'll be right back with Anna East dos Georgio to dig into the critical aspects of key open source components of the Influx DB engine, including Rust, Arrow, Parque, data fusion. Keep it right there. You don't wanna miss this >>Time series Data is everywhere. The number of sensors, systems and applications generating time series data increases every day. All these data sources producing so much data can cause analysis paralysis. Influx DB is an entire platform designed with everything you need to quickly build applications that generate value from time series data influx. DB Cloud is a serverless solution, which means you don't need to buy or manage your own servers. There's no need to worry about provisioning because you only pay for what you use. Influx DB Cloud is fully managed so you get the newest features and enhancements as they're added to the platform's code base. It also means you can spend time building solutions and delivering value to your users instead of wasting time and effort managing something else. Influx TVB Cloud offers a range of security features to protect your data, multiple layers of redundancy ensure you don't lose any data access controls ensure that only the people who should see your data can see it. >>And encryption protects your data at rest and in transit between any of our regions or cloud providers. InfluxDB uses a single API across the entire platform suite so you can build on open source, deploy to the cloud and then then easily query data in the cloud at the edge or on prem using the same scripts. And InfluxDB is schemaless automatically adjusting to changes in the shape of your data without requiring changes in your application. Logic. InfluxDB Cloud is production ready from day one. All it needs is your data and your imagination. Get started today@influxdata.com slash cloud. >>Okay, we're back. I'm Dave Valante with a Cube and you're watching evolving Influx DB into the smart data platform made possible by influx data. Anna ETOs Georgio is here, she's a developer advocate for influx data and we're gonna dig into the rationale and value contribution behind several open source technologies that Influx DB is leveraging to increase the granularity of time series analysis analysis and bring the world of data into real-time analytics and is welcome to the program. Thanks for coming on. >>Hi, thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. >>Oh, you're very welcome. Okay, so IX is being touted as this next gen open source core for Influx db. And my understanding is that it leverages in memory of course for speed. It's a kilo store, so it gives you a compression efficiency, it's gonna give you faster query speeds, you store files and object storage, so you got very cost effective approach. Are these the salient points on the platform? I know there are probably dozens of other features, but what are the high level value points that people should understand? >>Sure, that's a great question. So some of the main requirements that IOx is trying to achieve and some of the most impressive ones to me, the first one is that it aims to have no limits on cardinality and also allow you to write any kind of event data that you want, whether that's live tag or a field. It also wants to deliver the best in class performance on analytics queries. In addition to our already well served metrics queries, we also wanna have operator control over memory usage. So you should be able to define how much memory is used for buffering caching and query processing. Some other really important parts is the ability to have bulk data export and import super useful. Also broader ecosystem compatibility where possible we aim to use and embrace emerging standards in the data analytics ecosystem and have compatibility with things like sql, Python, and maybe even pandas in the future. >>Okay, so lot there. Now we talked to Brian about how you're using Rust and which is not a new programming language and of course we had some drama around Rust during the pandemic with the Mozilla layoffs, but the formation of the Rust Foundation really addressed any of those concerns. You got big guns like Amazon and Google and Microsoft throwing their collective weights behind it. It's really, the adoption is really starting to get steep on the S-curve. So lots of platforms, lots of adoption with rust, but why rust as an alternative to say c plus plus for example? >>Sure, that's a great question. So Russ was chosen because of his exceptional performance and reliability. So while Russ is synt tactically similar to c plus plus and it has similar performance, it also compiles to a native code like c plus plus. But unlike c plus plus, it also has much better memory safety. So memory safety is protection against bugs or security vulnerabilities that lead to excessive memory usage or memory leaks. And rust achieves this memory safety due to its like innovative type system. Additionally, it doesn't allow for dangling pointers. And dangling pointers are the main classes of errors that lead to exploitable security vulnerabilities in languages like c plus plus. So Russ like helps meet that requirement of having no limits on ality, for example, because it's, we're also using the Russ implementation of Apache Arrow and this control over memory and also Russ Russ's packaging system called crates IO offers everything that you need out of the box to have features like AY and a weight to fix race conditions, to protection against buffering overflows and to ensure thread safe async cashing structures as well. So essentially it's just like has all the control, all the fine grain control, you need to take advantage of memory and all your resources as well as possible so that you can handle those really, really high ity use cases. >>Yeah, and the more I learn about the, the new engine and, and the platform IOCs et cetera, you know, you, you see things like, you know, the old days not even to even today you do a lot of garbage collection in these, in these systems and there's an inverse, you know, impact relative to performance. So it looks like you really, you know, the community is modernizing the platform, but I wanna talk about Apache Arrow for a moment. It it's designed to address the constraints that are associated with analyzing large data sets. We, we know that, but please explain why, what, what is Arrow and and what does it bring to Influx db? >>Sure, yeah. So Arrow is a, a framework for defining in memory calmer data. And so much of the efficiency and performance of IOx comes from taking advantage of calmer data structures. And I will, if you don't mind, take a moment to kind of of illustrate why column or data structures are so valuable. Let's pretend that we are gathering field data about the temperature in our room and also maybe the temperature of our stove. And in our table we have those two temperature values as well as maybe a measurement value, timestamp value, maybe some other tag values that describe what room and what house, et cetera we're getting this data from. And so you can picture this table where we have like two rows with the two temperature values for both our room and the stove. Well usually our room temperature is regulated so those values don't change very often. >>So when you have calm oriented st calm oriented storage, essentially you take each row, each column and group it together. And so if that's the case and you're just taking temperature values from the room and a lot of those temperature values are the same, then you'll, you might be able to imagine how equal values will then enable each other and when they neighbor each other in the storage format, this provides a really perfect opportunity for cheap compression. And then this cheap compression enables high cardinality use cases. It also enables for faster scan rates. So if you wanna define like the men and max value of the temperature in the room across a thousand different points, you only have to get those a thousand different points in order to answer that question and you have those immediately available to you. But let's contrast this with a row oriented storage solution instead so that we can understand better the benefits of calmer oriented storage. >>So if you had a row oriented storage, you'd first have to look at every field like the temperature in, in the room and the temperature of the stove. You'd have to go across every tag value that maybe describes where the room is located or what model the stove is. And every timestamp you'd then have to pluck out that one temperature value that you want at that one time stamp and do that for every single row. So you're scanning across a ton more data and that's why Rowe Oriented doesn't provide the same efficiency as calmer and Apache Arrow is in memory calmer data, commoner data fit framework. So that's where a lot of the advantages come >>From. Okay. So you basically described like a traditional database, a row approach, but I've seen like a lot of traditional database say, okay, now we've got, we can handle colo format versus what you're talking about is really, you know, kind of native i, is it not as effective? Is the, is the foreman not as effective because it's largely a, a bolt on? Can you, can you like elucidate on that front? >>Yeah, it's, it's not as effective because you have more expensive compression and because you can't scan across the values as quickly. And so those are, that's pretty much the main reasons why, why RO row oriented storage isn't as efficient as calm, calmer oriented storage. Yeah. >>Got it. So let's talk about Arrow Data Fusion. What is data fusion? I know it's written in Rust, but what does it bring to the table here? >>Sure. So it's an extensible query execution framework and it uses Arrow as it's in memory format. So the way that it helps in influx DB IOCs is that okay, it's great if you can write unlimited amount of cardinality into influx Cbis, but if you don't have a query engine that can successfully query that data, then I don't know how much value it is for you. So Data fusion helps enable the, the query process and transformation of that data. It also has a PANDAS API so that you could take advantage of PANDAS data frames as well and all of the machine learning tools associated with Pandas. >>Okay. You're also leveraging Par K in the platform cause we heard a lot about Par K in the middle of the last decade cuz as a storage format to improve on Hadoop column stores. What are you doing with Parque and why is it important? >>Sure. So parque is the column oriented durable file format. So it's important because it'll enable bulk import, bulk export, it has compatibility with Python and Pandas, so it supports a broader ecosystem. Par K files also take very little disc disc space and they're faster to scan because again, they're column oriented in particular, I think PAR K files are like 16 times cheaper than CSV files, just as kind of a point of reference. And so that's essentially a lot of the, the benefits of par k. >>Got it. Very popular. So and he's, what exactly is influx data focusing on as a committer to these projects? What is your focus? What's the value that you're bringing to the community? >>Sure. So Influx DB first has contributed a lot of different, different things to the Apache ecosystem. For example, they contribute an implementation of Apache Arrow and go and that will support clearing with flux. Also, there has been a quite a few contributions to data fusion for things like memory optimization and supportive additional SQL features like support for timestamp, arithmetic and support for exist clauses and support for memory control. So yeah, Influx has contributed a a lot to the Apache ecosystem and continues to do so. And I think kind of the idea here is that if you can improve these upstream projects and then the long term strategy here is that the more you contribute and build those up, then the more you will perpetuate that cycle of improvement and the more we will invest in our own project as well. So it's just that kind of symbiotic relationship and appreciation of the open source community. >>Yeah. Got it. You got that virtuous cycle going, the people call the flywheel. Give us your last thoughts and kind of summarize, you know, where what, what the big takeaways are from your perspective. >>So I think the big takeaway is that influx data is doing a lot of really exciting things with Influx DB IOx and I really encourage, if you are interested in learning more about the technologies that Influx is leveraging to produce IOCs, the challenges associated with it and all of the hard work questions and you just wanna learn more, then I would encourage you to go to the monthly Tech talks and community office hours and they are on every second Wednesday of the month at 8:30 AM Pacific time. There's also a community forums and a community Slack channel look for the influx DDB unders IAC channel specifically to learn more about how to join those office hours and those monthly tech tech talks as well as ask any questions they have about iacs, what to expect and what you'd like to learn more about. I as a developer advocate, I wanna answer your questions. So if there's a particular technology or stack that you wanna dive deeper into and want more explanation about how INFLUX DB leverages it to build IOCs, I will be really excited to produce content on that topic for you. >>Yeah, that's awesome. You guys have a really rich community, collaborate with your peers, solve problems, and, and you guys super responsive, so really appreciate that. All right, thank you so much Anise for explaining all this open source stuff to the audience and why it's important to the future of data. >>Thank you. I really appreciate it. >>All right, you're very welcome. Okay, stay right there and in a moment I'll be back with Tim Yoakum, he's the director of engineering for Influx Data and we're gonna talk about how you update a SAS engine while the plane is flying at 30,000 feet. You don't wanna miss this. >>I'm really glad that we went with InfluxDB Cloud for our hosting because it has saved us a ton of time. It's helped us move faster, it's saved us money. And also InfluxDB has good support. My name's Alex Nada. I am CTO at Noble nine. Noble Nine is a platform to measure and manage service level objectives, which is a great way of measuring the reliability of your systems. You can essentially think of an slo, the product we're providing to our customers as a bunch of time series. So we need a way to store that data and the corresponding time series that are related to those. The main reason that we settled on InfluxDB as we were shopping around is that InfluxDB has a very flexible query language and as a general purpose time series database, it basically had the set of features we were looking for. >>As our platform has grown, we found InfluxDB Cloud to be a really scalable solution. We can quickly iterate on new features and functionality because Influx Cloud is entirely managed, it probably saved us at least a full additional person on our team. We also have the option of running InfluxDB Enterprise, which gives us the ability to even host off the cloud or in a private cloud if that's preferred by a customer. Influx data has been really flexible in adapting to the hosting requirements that we have. They listened to the challenges we were facing and they helped us solve it. As we've continued to grow, I'm really happy we have influx data by our side. >>Okay, we're back with Tim Yokum, who is the director of engineering at Influx Data. Tim, welcome. Good to see you. >>Good to see you. Thanks for having me. >>You're really welcome. Listen, we've been covering open source software in the cube for more than a decade, and we've kind of watched the innovation from the big data ecosystem. The cloud has been being built out on open source, mobile, social platforms, key databases, and of course influx DB and influx data has been a big consumer and contributor of open source software. So my question to you is, where have you seen the biggest bang for the buck from open source software? >>So yeah, you know, influx really, we thrive at the intersection of commercial services and open, so open source software. So OSS keeps us on the cutting edge. We benefit from OSS in delivering our own service from our core storage engine technologies to web services temping engines. Our, our team stays lean and focused because we build on proven tools. We really build on the shoulders of giants and like you've mentioned, even better, we contribute a lot back to the projects that we use as well as our own product influx db. >>You know, but I gotta ask you, Tim, because one of the challenge that that we've seen in particular, you saw this in the heyday of Hadoop, the, the innovations come so fast and furious and as a software company you gotta place bets, you gotta, you know, commit people and sometimes those bets can be risky and not pay off well, how have you managed this challenge? >>Oh, it moves fast. Yeah, that, that's a benefit though because it, the community moves so quickly that today's hot technology can be tomorrow's dinosaur. And what we, what we tend to do is, is we fail fast and fail often. We try a lot of things. You know, you look at Kubernetes for example, that ecosystem is driven by thousands of intelligent developers, engineers, builders, they're adding value every day. So we have to really keep up with that. And as the stack changes, we, we try different technologies, we try different methods, and at the end of the day, we come up with a better platform as a result of just the constant change in the environment. It is a challenge for us, but it's, it's something that we just do every day. >>So we have a survey partner down in New York City called Enterprise Technology Research etr, and they do these quarterly surveys of about 1500 CIOs, IT practitioners, and they really have a good pulse on what's happening with spending. And the data shows that containers generally, but specifically Kubernetes is one of the areas that has kind of, it's been off the charts and seen the most significant adoption and velocity particularly, you know, along with cloud. But, but really Kubernetes is just, you know, still up until the right consistently even with, you know, the macro headwinds and all, all of the stuff that we're sick of talking about. But, so what are you doing with Kubernetes in the platform? >>Yeah, it, it's really central to our ability to run the product. When we first started out, we were just on AWS and, and the way we were running was, was a little bit like containers junior. Now we're running Kubernetes everywhere at aws, Azure, Google Cloud. It allows us to have a consistent experience across three different cloud providers and we can manage that in code so our developers can focus on delivering services, not trying to learn the intricacies of Amazon, Azure, and Google and figure out how to deliver services on those three clouds with all of their differences. >>Just to follow up on that, is it, no. So I presume it's sounds like there's a PAs layer there to allow you guys to have a consistent experience across clouds and out to the edge, you know, wherever is that, is that correct? >>Yeah, so we've basically built more or less platform engineering, This is the new hot phrase, you know, it, it's, Kubernetes has made a lot of things easy for us because we've built a platform that our developers can lean on and they only have to learn one way of deploying their application, managing their application. And so that, that just gets all of the underlying infrastructure out of the way and, and lets them focus on delivering influx cloud. >>Yeah, and I know I'm taking a little bit of a tangent, but is that, that, I'll call it a PAs layer if I can use that term. Is that, are there specific attributes to Influx db or is it kind of just generally off the shelf paths? You know, are there, is, is there any purpose built capability there that, that is, is value add or is it pretty much generic? >>So we really build, we, we look at things through, with a build versus buy through a, a build versus by lens. Some things we want to leverage cloud provider services, for instance, Postgres databases for metadata, perhaps we'll get that off of our plate, let someone else run that. We're going to deploy a platform that our engineers can, can deliver on that has consistency that is, is all generated from code that we can as a, as an SRE group, as an ops team, that we can manage with very few people really, and we can stamp out clusters across multiple regions and in no time. >>So how, so sometimes you build, sometimes you buy it. How do you make those decisions and and what does that mean for the, for the platform and for customers? >>Yeah, so what we're doing is, it's like everybody else will do, we're we're looking for trade offs that make sense. You know, we really want to protect our customers data. So we look for services that support our own software with the most uptime, reliability, and durability we can get. Some things are just going to be easier to have a cloud provider take care of on our behalf. We make that transparent for our own team. And of course for customers you don't even see that, but we don't want to try to reinvent the wheel, like I had mentioned with SQL data stores for metadata, perhaps let's build on top of what of these three large cloud providers have already perfected. And we can then focus on our platform engineering and we can have our developers then focus on the influx data, software, influx, cloud software. >>So take it to the customer level, what does it mean for them? What's the value that they're gonna get out of all these innovations that we've been been talking about today and what can they expect in the future? >>So first of all, people who use the OSS product are really gonna be at home on our cloud platform. You can run it on your desktop machine, on a single server, what have you, but then you want to scale up. We have some 270 terabytes of data across, over 4 billion series keys that people have stored. So there's a proven ability to scale now in terms of the open source, open source software and how we've developed the platform. You're getting highly available high cardinality time series platform. We manage it and, and really as, as I mentioned earlier, we can keep up with the state of the art. We keep reinventing, we keep deploying things in real time. We deploy to our platform every day repeatedly all the time. And it's that continuous deployment that allows us to continue testing things in flight, rolling things out that change new features, better ways of doing deployments, safer ways of doing deployments. >>All of that happens behind the scenes. And like we had mentioned earlier, Kubernetes, I mean that, that allows us to get that done. We couldn't do it without having that platform as a, as a base layer for us to then put our software on. So we, we iterate quickly. When you're on the, the Influx cloud platform, you really are able to, to take advantage of new features immediately. We roll things out every day and as those things go into production, you have, you have the ability to, to use them. And so in the end we want you to focus on getting actual insights from your data instead of running infrastructure, you know, let, let us do that for you. So, >>And that makes sense, but so is the, is the, are the innovations that we're talking about in the evolution of Influx db, do, do you see that as sort of a natural evolution for existing customers? I, is it, I'm sure the answer is both, but is it opening up new territory for customers? Can you add some color to that? >>Yeah, it really is it, it's a little bit of both. Any engineer will say, well, it depends. So cloud native technologies are, are really the hot thing. Iot, industrial iot especially, people want to just shove tons of data out there and be able to do queries immediately and they don't wanna manage infrastructure. What we've started to see are people that use the cloud service as their, their data store backbone and then they use edge computing with R OSS product to ingest data from say, multiple production lines and downsample that data, send the rest of that data off influx cloud where the heavy processing takes place. So really us being in all the different clouds and iterating on that and being in all sorts of different regions allows for people to really get out of the, the business of man trying to manage that big data, have us take care of that. And of course as we change the platform end users benefit from that immediately. And, >>And so obviously taking away a lot of the heavy lifting for the infrastructure, would you say the same thing about security, especially as you go out to IOT and the Edge? How should we be thinking about the value that you bring from a security perspective? >>Yeah, we take, we take security super seriously. It, it's built into our dna. We do a lot of work to ensure that our platform is secure, that the data we store is, is kept private. It's of course always a concern. You see in the news all the time, companies being compromised, you know, that's something that you can have an entire team working on, which we do to make sure that the data that you have, whether it's in transit, whether it's at rest, is always kept secure, is only viewable by you. You know, you look at things like software, bill of materials, if you're running this yourself, you have to go vet all sorts of different pieces of software. And we do that, you know, as we use new tools. That's something that, that's just part of our jobs to make sure that the platform that we're running it has, has fully vetted software and, and with open source especially, that's a lot of work. And so it's, it's definitely new territory. Supply chain attacks are, are definitely happening at a higher clip than they used to, but that is, that is really just part of a day in the, the life for folks like us that are, are building platforms. >>Yeah, and that's key. I mean especially when you start getting into the, the, you know, we talk about IOT and the operations technologies, the engineers running the, that infrastructure, you know, historically, as you know, Tim, they, they would air gap everything. That's how they kept it safe. But that's not feasible anymore. Everything's >>That >>Connected now, right? And so you've gotta have a partner that is again, take away that heavy lifting to r and d so you can focus on some of the other activities. Right. Give us the, the last word and the, the key takeaways from your perspective. >>Well, you know, from my perspective I see it as, as a a two lane approach with, with influx, with Anytime series data, you know, you've got a lot of stuff that you're gonna run on-prem, what you had mentioned, air gaping. Sure there's plenty of need for that, but at the end of the day, people that don't want to run big data centers, people that want torus their data to, to a company that's, that's got a full platform set up for them that they can build on, send that data over to the cloud, the cloud is not going away. I think more hybrid approach is, is where the future lives and that's what we're prepared for. >>Tim, really appreciate you coming to the program. Great stuff. Good to see you. >>Thanks very much. Appreciate it. >>Okay, in a moment I'll be back to wrap up. Today's session, you're watching The Cube. >>Are you looking for some help getting started with InfluxDB Telegraph or Flux Check >>Out Influx DB University >>Where you can find our entire catalog of free training that will help you make the most of your time series data >>Get >>Started for free@influxdbu.com. >>We'll see you in class. >>Okay, so we heard today from three experts on time series and data, how the Influx DB platform is evolving to support new ways of analyzing large data sets very efficiently and effectively in real time. And we learned that key open source components like Apache Arrow and the Rust Programming environment Data fusion par K are being leveraged to support realtime data analytics at scale. We also learned about the contributions in importance of open source software and how the Influx DB community is evolving the platform with minimal disruption to support new workloads, new use cases, and the future of realtime data analytics. Now remember these sessions, they're all available on demand. You can go to the cube.net to find those. Don't forget to check out silicon angle.com for all the news related to things enterprise and emerging tech. And you should also check out influx data.com. There you can learn about the company's products. You'll find developer resources like free courses. You could join the developer community and work with your peers to learn and solve problems. And there are plenty of other resources around use cases and customer stories on the website. This is Dave Valante. Thank you for watching Evolving Influx DB into the smart data platform, made possible by influx data and brought to you by the Cube, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage.

(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE. We're covering Red Hat Summit 2022. We're going to wrap up now, Dave Vellante, Paul Gillin. We want to introduce you to Stephanie Chan, who's our new correspondent. Stephanie, one of your first events, your very first CUBE event. So welcome. >> Thank you. >> Up from NYC. Smaller event, but intimate. You got a chance to meet some folks last night at some of the after parties. What are your overall impressions? What'd you learn this week? >> So this has been my first in-person event in over two years. And even though, like you said, is on the smaller scale, roughly around 1000 attendees, versus it's usual eight to 10,000 attendees. There's so much energy, and excitement, and openness in these events and sessions. Even before and after the sessions people have been mingling and socializing and hanging out. So, I think a lot of people appreciate these in-person events and are really excited to be here. >> Cool. So, you also sat in some of the keynotes, right? Pretty technical, right? Which is kind of new to sort of your genre, right? I mean, I know you got a financial background but, so what'd you think of the keynotes? What'd you think of the format, the theater in the round? Any impressions of that? >> So, I think there's three things that are really consistent in these Red Hat Summit keynotes. There's always a history lesson. There's always, you know, emphasis in the culture of openness. And, there's also inspirational stories about how people utilize open source. And I found a lot of those examples really compelling and interesting. For instance, people use open source in (indistinct), and even in space. So I really enjoyed, you know, learning about all these different people and stories. What about you guys? What do you think were the big takeaways and the best stories that came out of the keynotes? >> Paul, want to start? >> Clearly the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 is a major rollout. They do that only about every three years. So that's a big deal to this audience. I think what they did in the area of security, with rolling out sigstore, which is a major new, I think an important new project that was sort of incubated at Red Hat. And they're trying to put in to create an open source ecosystem around that now. And the alliances. I'm usually not that much on partnerships, but the Accenture and the Microsoft partnerships do seem to be significant to the company. And, finally, the GM partnership which I think was maybe kind of the bombshell that they sort of rushed in at the last minute. But I think has the biggest potential impact on Red Hat and its partner ecosystem that is really going to anchor their edge architecture going forward. So I didn't see it so much on the product front, but the sense of Red Hat spreading its wings, and partnering with more companies, and seeing its itself as really the center of an ecosystem indicates that they are, you know, they're in a very solid position in their business. >> Yeah, and also like the pandemic has really forced us into this new normal, right? So customer demand is changing. There has been the shift to remote. There's always going to be a new normal according to Paul, and open source carries us through that. So how do you guys think Red Hat has helped its portfolio through this new normal and the shift? >> I mean, when you think of Red Hat, you think of Linux. I mean, that's where it all started. You think OpenShift which is the application development platforms. Linux is the OS. OpenShift is the application development platform for Kubernetes. And then of course, Ansible is the automation framework. And I agree with you, ecosystem is really the other piece of this. So, I mean, I think you take those three pieces and extend that into the open source community. There's a lot of innovation that's going around each of those, but ecosystems are the key. We heard from Stefanie Chiras, that fundamental, I mean, you can't do this without those gap fillers and those partnerships. And then another thing that's notable here is, you know, this was, I mean, IBM was just another brand, right? I mean, if anything it was probably a sub-brand, I mean, you didn't hear much about IBM. You certainly had no IBM presence, even though they're right across the street running Think. No Arvind present, no keynote from Arvind, no, you know, Big Blue washing. And so, I think that's a testament to Arvind himself. We heard that from Paul Cormier, he said, hey, this guy's been great, he's left us alone. And he's allowed us to continue innovating. It's good news. IBM has not polluted Red Hat. >> Yes, I think that the Red Hat was, I said at the opening, I think Red Hat is kind of the tail wagging the dog right now. And their position seems very solid in the market. Clearly the market has come to them in terms of their evangelism of open source. They've remained true to their business model. And I think that gives them credibility that, you know, a lot of other open source companies have lacked. They have stuck with the plan for over 20 years now and have really not changed it, and it's paying off. I think they're emerging as a company that you can trust to do business with. >> Now I want to throw in something else here. I thought the conversation with IDC analyst, Jim Mercer, was interesting when he said that they surveyed customers and they wanted to get the security from their platform vendor, versus having to buy these bespoke tools. And it makes a lot of sense to me. I don't think that's going to happen, right? Because you're going to have an identity specialist. You're going to have an endpoint specialist. You're going to have a threat detection specialist. And they're going to be best of breed, you know, Red Hat's never going to be all of those things. What they can do is partner with those companies through APIs, through open source integrations, they can add them in as part of the ecosystem and maybe be the steward of that. Maybe that's the answer. They're never going to be the best at all those different security disciplines. There's no way in the world, Red Hat, that's going to happen. But they could be the integration point. And that would be, that would be a simplifying layer to the equation. >> And I think it's smart. You know, they're not pretending to be an identity in access management or an anti-malware company, or even a zero trust company. They are sticking to their knitting, which is operating system and developers. Evangelizing DevSecOps, which is a good thing. And, that's what they're going to do. You know, you have to admire this company. It has never gotten outside of its swim lane. I think it's understood well really what it wants to be good at. And, you know, in the software business knowing what not to do is more important than knowing what to do. Is companies that fail are usually the ones that get overextended, this company has never overextended itself. >> What else do you want to know? >> And a term that kept popping up was multicloud, or otherwise known as metacloud. We know what the cloud is, but- >> Oh, supercloud, metacloud. >> Supercloud, yeah, here we go. We know what the cloud is but, what does metacloud mean to you guys? And why has it been so popular in these conversations? >> I'm going to boot this to Dave, because he's the expert on this. >> Well, expert or not, but I mean, again, we've coined this term supercloud. And the idea behind the supercloud or what Ashesh called metacloud, I like his name, cause it allows Web 3.0 to come into the equation. But the idea is that instead of building on each individual cloud and have compatibility with that cloud, you build a layer across clouds. So you do the hard work as a platform supplier to hide the underlying primitives and APIs from the end customer, or the end developer, they can then add value on top of that. And that abstraction layer spans on-prem, clouds, across clouds, ultimately out to the edge. And it's new, a new value layer that builds on top of the hyperscale infrastructure, or existing data center infrastructure, or emerging edge infrastructure. And the reason why that is important is because it's so damn complicated, number one. Number two, every company's becoming a software company, a technology company. They're bringing their services through digital transformation to their customers. And you've got to have a cloud to do that. You're not going to build your own data center. That's like Charles Wang says, not Charles Wang. (Paul laughing) Charles Phillips. We were just talking about CA. Charles Phillips. Friends don't let friends build data centers. So that supercloud concept, or what Ashesh calls metacloud, is this new layer that's going to be powered by ecosystems and platform companies. And I think it's real. I think it's- >> And OpenShift, OpenShift is a great, you know, key card for them or leverage for them because it is perhaps the best known Kubernetes platform. And you can see here they're really doubling down on adding features to OpenShift, security features, scalability. And they see it as potentially this metacloud, this supercloud abstraction layer. >> And what we said is, in order to have a supercloud you got to have a superpaz layer and OpenShift is that superpaz layer. >> So you had conversations with a lot of people within the past two days. Some people include companies, from Verizon, Intel, Accenture. Which conversation stood out to you the most? >> Which, I'm sorry. >> Which conversation stood out to you the most? (Paul sighs) >> The conversation with Stu Miniman was pretty interesting because we talked about culture. And really, he has a lot of credibility in that area because he's not a Red Hat. You know, he hasn't been a Red Hat forever, he's fairly new to the company. And got a sense from him that the culture there really is what they say it is. It's a culture of openness and that's, you know, that's as important as technology for a company's success. >> I mean, this was really good content. I mean, there were a lot, I mean Stefanie's awesome. Stefanie Chiras, we're talking about the ecosystem. Chris Wright, you know, digging into some of the CTO stuff. Ashesh, who coined metacloud, I love that. The whole in vehicle operating system conversation was great. The security discussion that we just had. You know, the conversations with Accenture were super thoughtful. Of course, Paul Cormier was a highlight. I think that one's going to be a well viewed interview, for sure. And, you know, I think that the customer conversations are great. Red Hat did a really good job of carrying the keynote conversations, which were abbreviated this year, to theCUBE. >> Right. >> I give 'em a lot of kudos for that. And because, theCUBE, it allows us to double click, go deeper, peel the onion a little bit, you know, all the buzz words, and cliches. But it's true. You get to clarify some of the things you heard, which were, you know, the keynotes were, were scripted, but tight. And so we had some good follow up questions. I thought it was super useful. I know I'm leaving somebody out, but- >> We're also able to interview representatives from Intel and Nvidia, which at a software conference you don't typically do. I mean, there's the assimilation, the combination of hardware and software. It's very clear that, and this came out in the keynote, that Red Hat sees hardware as matter. It matters. It's important again. And it's going to be a source of innovation in the future. That came through clearly. >> Yeah. The hardware matters theme, you know, the old days you would have an operating system and the hardware were intrinsically linked. MVS in the mainframe, VAX, VMS in the digital mini computers. DG had its own operating system. Wang had his own operating system. Prime with Prime OS. You remember these days? >> Oh my God. >> Right? (Paul laughs) And then of course Microsoft. >> And then x86, everything got abstracted. >> Right. >> Everything became x86 and now it's all atomizing again. >> Although WinTel, right? I mean, MS-DOS and Windows were intrinsically linked for many, many years with Intel x86. And it wasn't until, you know, well, and then, you know, Sun Solaris, but it wasn't until Linux kind of blew that apart. And the internet is built on the lamp stack. And of course, Linux is the fundamental foundation for Red Hat. So my point is, that the operating system and the hardware have always been very closely tied together. Whether it's security, or IO, or registries and memory management, everything controlled by the OS are very close to the hardware. And so that's why I think you've got an affinity in Red Hat to hardware. >> But Linux is breaking that bond, don't you think? >> Yes, but it still has to understand the underlying hardware. >> Right. >> You heard today, how taking advantage of Nvidia, and the AI capabilities. You're seeing that with ARM, you're seeing that with Intel. How you can optimize the operating system to take advantage of new generations of CPU, and NPU, and CPU, and PU, XPU, you know, across the board. >> Yep. >> Well, I really enjoyed this conference and it really stressed how important open source is to a lot of different industries. >> Great. Well, thanks for coming on. Paul, thank you. Great co-hosting with you. And thank you. >> Always, Dave. >> For watching theCUBE. We'll be on the road, next week we're at KubeCon in Valencia, Spain. We're at VeeamON. We got a ton of stuff going on. Check out thecube.net. Check out siliconangle.com for all the news. Wikibon.com. We publish there weekly, our breaking analysis series. Thanks for watching everybody. Dave Vellante, for Paul Gillin, and Stephanie Chan. Thanks to the crew. Shout out, Andrew, Alex, Sonya. Amazing job, Sonya. Steven, thanks you guys for coming out here. Mark, good job corresponding. Go to SiliconANGLE, Mark's written some great stuff. And thank you for watching. We'll see you next time. (calm music)

(bright music) >> Okay, we're back in theCUBE. We said we were signing off for the night, but during the hallway track, we ran into old friend Stu Miniman who was the Director of Market Insights at Red Hat. Stu, friend of theCUBE done the thousands of CUBE interviews. >> Dave, it's great to be here. Thanks for pulling me on, you and I hosted Red Hat Summit before. It's great to see Paul here. I was actually, I was talking to some of the Red Hatters walking around Boston. It's great to have an event here. Boston's got strong presence and I understand, I think was either first or second year, they had it over... What's the building they're tearing down right down the road here. Was that the World Trade Center? I think that's where they actually held it, the first time they were here. We hosted theCUBE >> So they moved up. >> at the Hines Convention Center. We did theCUBE for summit at the BCEC next door. And of course, with the pandemic being what it was, we're a little smaller, nice intimate event here. It's great to be able to room the hall, see a whole bunch of people and lots watching online. >> It's great, it's around the same size as those, remember those Vertica Big Data events that we used to have here. And I like that you were commenting out at the theater and the around this morning for the keynotes, that was good. And the keynotes being compressed, I think, is real value for the attendees, you know? 'Cause people come to these events, they want to see each other, you know? They want to... It's like the band getting back together. And so when you're stuck in the keynote room, it's like, "Oh, it's okay, it's time to go." >> I don't know that any of us used to sitting at home where I could just click to another tab or pause it or run for, do something for the family, or a quick bio break. It's the three-hour keynote I hope has been retired. >> But it's an interesting point though, that the virtual event really is driving the physical and this, the way Red Hat marketed this event was very much around the virtual attendee. Physical was almost an afterthought, so. >> Right, this is an invite only for in-person. So you're absolutely right. It's optimizing the things that are being streamed, the online audience is the big audience. And we just happy to be in here to clap and do some things see around what you're doing. >> Wonderful see that becoming the norm. >> I think like virtual Stu, you know this well when virtual first came in, nobody had a clue with what they were doing. It was really hard. They tried different things, they tried to take the physical and just jam it into the virtual. That didn't work, they tried doing fun things. They would bring in a famous person or a comedian. And that kind of worked, I guess, but everybody showed up for that and then left. And I think they're trying to figure it out what this hybrid thing is. I've seen it both ways. I've seen situations like this, where they're really sensitive to the virtual. I've seen others where that's the FOMO of the physical, people want physical. So, yeah, I think it depends. I mean, reinvent last year was heavy physical. >> Yeah, with 15,000 people there. >> Pretty long keynotes, you know? So maybe Amazon can get away with it, but I think most companies aren't going to be able to. So what is the market telling you? What are these insights? >> So Dave just talking about Amazon, obviously, the world I live in cloud and that discussion of cloud, the journey that customers are going on is where we're spending a lot of the discussions. So, it was great to hear in the keynote, talked about our deep partnerships with the cloud providers and what we're doing to help people with, you like to call it super cloud, some call it hybrid, or multi-cloud... >> New name. (crosstalk) Meta-Cloud, come on. >> All right, you know if Che's my executive, so it's wonderful. >> Love it. >> But we'll see, if I could put on my VR Goggles and that will help me move things. But I love like the partnership announcement with General Motors today because not every company has the needs of software driven electric vehicles all over the place. But the technology that we build for them actually has ramifications everywhere. We've working to take Kubernetes and make it smaller over time. So things that we do at the edge benefit the cloud, benefit what we do in the data center, it's that advancement of science and technology just lifts all boats. >> So what's your take on all this? The EV and software on wheels. I mean, Tesla obviously has a huge lead. It's kind of like the Amazon of vehicles, right? It's sort of inspired a whole new wave of innovation. Now you've got every automobile manufacturer kind of go and after. That is the future of vehicles is something you followed or something you have an opinion on Stu? >> Absolutely. It's driving innovation in some ways, the way the DOS drove innovation on the desktop, if you remember the 64K DOS limit, for years, that was... The software developers came up with some amazing ways to work within that 64K limit. Then when it was gone, we got bloatware, but it actually does enforce a level of discipline on you to try to figure out how to make software run better, run more efficiently. And that has upstream impacts on the enterprise products. >> Well, right. So following your analogy, you talk about the enablement to the desktop, Linux was a huge influence on allowing the individual person to write code and write software, and what's happening in the EV, it's software platform. All of these innovations that we're seeing across industries, it's how is software transforming things. We go back to the mark end reasons, software's eating the world, open source is the way that software is developed. Who's at the intersection of all those? We think we have a nice part to play in that. I loved tha- Dave, I don't know if you caught at the end of the keynote, Matt Hicks basically said, "Our mission isn't just to write enterprise software. "Our mission is based off of open source because open source unlocks innovation for the world." And that's one of the things that drew me to Red Hat, it's not just tech in good places, but allowing underrepresented, different countries to participate in what's happening with software. And we can all move that ball forward. >> Well, can we declare victory for open source because it's not just open source products, but everything that's developed today, whether proprietary or open has open source in it. >> Paul, I agree. Open source is the development model period, today. Are there some places that there's proprietary? Absolutely. But I had a discussion with Deepak Singh who's been on theCUBE many times. He said like, our default is, we start with open source code. I mean, even Amazon when you start talking about that. >> I said this, the $70 billion business on open source. >> Exactly. >> Necessarily give it back, but that say, Hey, this is... All's fair in tech and more. >> It is interesting how the managed service model has sort of rescued open source, open source companies, that were trying to do the Red Hat model. No one's ever really successfully duplicated the Red Hat model. A lot of companies were floundering and failing. And then the managed service option came along. And so now they're all cloud service providers. >> So the only thing I'd say is that there are some other peers we have in the industry that are built off open source they're doing okay. The recent example, GitLab and Hashicorp, both went public. Hashi is doing some managed services, but it's not the majority of their product. Look at a company like Mongo, they've heavily pivoted toward the managed service. It is where we see the largest growth in our area. The products that we have again with Amazon, with Microsoft, huge growth, lots of interest. It's one of the things I spend most of my time talking on. >> I think Databricks is another interesting example 'cause Cloudera was the now company and they had the sort of open core, and then they had the proprietary piece, and they've obviously didn't work. Databricks when they developed Spark out of Berkeley, everybody thought they were going to do kind of a similar model. Instead, they went for all in managed services. And it's really worked well, I think they were ahead of that curve and you're seeing it now is it's what customers want. >> Well, I mean, Dave, you cover the database market pretty heavily. How many different open source database options are there today? And that's one of the things we're solving. When you look at what is Red Hat doing in the cloud? Okay, I've got lots of databases. Well, we have something called, it's Red Hat Open Database Access, which is from a developer, I don't want to have to think about, I've got six different databases, which one, where's the repository? How does all that happen? We give that consistency, it's tied into OpenShift, so it can help abstract some of those pieces. we've got same Kafka streaming and we've got APIs. So it's frameworks and enablers to help bridge that gap between the complexity that's out there, in the cloud and for the developer tool chain. >> That's really important role you guys play though because you had this proliferation, you mentioned Mongo. So many others, Presto and Starbursts, et cetera, so many other open source options out there now. And companies, developers want to work with multiple databases within the same application. And you have a role in making that easy. >> Yeah, so and that is, if you talk about the question I get all the time is, what's next for Kubernetes? Dave, you and I did a preview for KubeCon and it's automation and simplicity that we need to be. It's not enough to just say, "Hey, we've got APIs." It's like Dave, we used to say, "We've got standards? Great." Everybody's implementation was a little bit different. So we have API Sprawl today. So it's building that ecosystem. You've been talking to a number of our partners. We are very active in the community and trying to do things that can lift up the community, help the developers, help that cloud native ecosystem, help our customers move faster. >> Yeah API's better than scripts, but they got to be managed, right? So, and that's really what you guys are doing that's different. You're not trying to own everything, right? It's sort of antithetical to how billions and trillions are made in the IT industry. >> I remember a few years ago we talked here, and you look at the size that Red Hat is. And the question is, could Red Hat have monetized more if the model was a little different? It's like, well maybe, but that's not the why. I love that they actually had Simon Sinek come in and work with Red Hat and that open, unlocks the world. Like that's the core, it's the why. When I join, they're like, here's a book of Red Hat, you can get it online and that why of what we do, so we never have to think of how do we get there. We did an acquisition in the security space a year ago, StackRox, took us a year, it's open source. Stackrox.io, it's community driven, open source project there because we could have said, "Oh, well, yeah, it's kind of open source and there's pieces that are open source, but we want it to be fully open source." You just talked to Gunnar about how he's RHEL nine, based off CentOS stream, and now developing out in the open with that model, so. >> Well, you were always a big fan of Whitehurst culture book, right? It makes a difference. >> The open organization and right, Red Hat? That culture is special. It's definitely interesting. So first of all, most companies are built with the hierarchy in mind. Had a friend of mine that when he joined Red Hat, he's like, I don't understand, it's almost like you have like lots of individual contractors, all doing their things 'cause Red Hat works on thousands of projects. But I remember talking to Rackspace years ago when OpenStack was a thing and they're like, "How do you figure out what to work on?" "Oh, well we hired great people and they work on what's important to them." And I'm like, "That doesn't sound like a business." And he is like, "Well, we struggle sometimes to that balance." Red Hat has found that balance because we work on a lot of different projects and there are people inside Red Hat that are, you know, they care more about the project than they do the business, but there's the overall view as to where we participate and where we productize because we're not creating IP because it's all an open source. So it's the monetizations, the relationships we have our customers, the ecosystems that we build. And so that is special. And I'll tell you that my line has been Red Hat on the inside is even more Red Hat. The debates and the discussions are brutal. I mean, technical people tearing things apart, questioning things and you can't be thin skinned. And the other thing is, what's great is new people. I've talked to so many people that started at Red Hat as interns and will stay for seven, eight years. And they come there and they have as much of a seat at the table, and when I talk to new people, your job, is if you don't understand something or you think we might be able to do it differently, you better speak up because we want your opinion and we'll take that, everybody takes that into consideration. It's not like, does the decision go all the way up to this executive? And it's like, no, it's done more at the team. >> The cultural contrast between that and your parent, IBM, couldn't be more dramatic. And we talked earlier with Paul Cormier about has IBM really walked the walk when it comes to leaving Red Hat alone. Naturally he said, "Yes." Well what's your perspective. >> Yeah, are there some big blue people across the street or something I heard that did this event, but look, do we interact with IBM? Of course. One of the reasons that IBM and IBM Services, both products and services should be able to help get us breadth in the marketplace. There are times that we go arm and arm into customer meetings and there are times that customers tell us, "I like Red Hat, I don't like IBM." And there's other ones that have been like, "Well, I'm a long time IBM, I'm not sure about Red Hat." And we have to be able to meet all of those customers where they are. But from my standpoint, I've got a Red Hat badge, I've got a Red Hat email, I've got Red Hat benefits. So we are fiercely independent. And you know, Paul, we've done blogs and there's lots of articles been written is, Red Hat will stay Red Hat. I didn't happen to catch Arvin I know was on CNBC today and talking at their event, but I'm sure Red Hat got mentioned, but... >> Well, he talks about Red Hat all time. >> But in his call he's talking backwards. >> It's interesting that he's not here, greeting this audience, right? It's again, almost by design, right? >> But maybe that's supposed to be... >> Hundreds of yards away. >> And one of the questions being in the cloud group is I'm not out pitching IBM Cloud, you know? If a customer comes to me and asks about, we have a deep partnership and IBM will be happy to tell you about our integrations, as opposed to, I'm happy to go into a deep discussion of what we're doing with Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. So that's how we do it. It's very different Dave, from you and I watch really closely the VMware-EMC, VMware-Dell, and how that relationship. This one is different. We are owned by IBM, but we mostly, it does IBM fund initiatives and have certain strategic things that are done, absolutely. But we maintain Red Hat. >> But there are similarities. I mean, VMware crowd didn't want to talk about EMC, but they had to, they were kind of forced to. Whereas, you're not being forced to. >> And then once Dell came in there, it was joint product development. >> I always thought a spin in. Would've been the more effective, of course, Michael Dell and Egon wouldn't have gotten their $40 billion out. But I think a spin in was more natural based on where they were going. And it would've been, I think, a more dominant position in the marketplace. They would've had more software, but again, financially it wouldn't have made as much sense, but that whole dynamic is different. I mean, but people said they were going to look at VMware as a model and it's been largely different because remember, VMware of course was a separate company, now is a fully separate company. Red Hat was integrated, we thought, okay, are they going to get blue washed? We're watching and watching, and watching, you had said, well, if the Red Hat culture isn't permeating IBM, then it's a failure. And I don't know if that's happening, but it's definitely... >> I think a long time for that. >> It's definitely been preserved. >> I mean, Dave, I know I read one article at the beginning of the year is, can Arvin make IBM, Microsoft Junior? Follow the same turnaround that Satya Nadella drove over there. IBM I think making some progress, I mean, I read and watch what you and the team are all writing about it. And I'll withhold judgment on IBM. Obviously, there's certain financial things that we'd love to see IBM succeed. We worry about our business. We do our thing and IBM shares our results and they've been solid, so. >> Microsoft had such massive cash flow that even bomber couldn't screw it up. Well, I mean, this is true, right? I mean, you think about how were relevant Microsoft was in the conversation during his tenure and yet they never got really... They maintained a position so that when the Nadella came in, they were able to reascend and now are becoming that dominant player. I mean, IBM just doesn't have that cash flow and that luxury, but I mean, if he pulls it off, he'll be the CEO of the decade. >> You mentioned partners earlier, big concern when the acquisition was first announced, was that the Dells and the HP's and the such wouldn't want to work with Red Hat anymore, you've sort of been here through that transition. Is that an issue? >> Not that I've seen, no. I mean, the hardware suppliers, the ISVs, the GSIs are all very important. It was great to see, I think you had Accenture on theCUBE today, obviously very important partner as we go to the cloud. IBM's another important partner, not only for IBM Cloud, but IBM Services, deep partnership with Azure and AWS. So those partners and from a technology standpoint, the cloud native ecosystem, we talked about, it's not just a Red Hat product. I constantly have to talk about, look, we have a lot of pieces, but your developers are going to have other tools that they're going to use and the security space. There is no such thing as a silver bullet. So I've been having some great conversations here already this week with some of our partners that are helping us to round out that whole solution, help our customers because it has to be, it's an ecosystem. And we're one of the drivers to help that move forward. >> Well, I mean, we were at Dell Tech World last week, and there's a lot of talk about DevSecOps and DevOps and Dell being more developer friendly. Obviously they got a long way to go, but you can't have that take that posture and not have a relationship with Red Hat. If all you got is Pivotal and VMware, and Tansu >> I was thrilled to hear the OpenShift mention in the keynote when they talked about what they were doing. >> How could you not, how could you have any credibility if you're just like, Oh, Pivotal, Pivotal, Pivotal, Tansu, Tansu. Tansu is doing its thing. And they smart strategy. >> VMware is also a partner of ours, but that we would hope that with VMware being independent, that does open the door for us to do more with them. >> Yeah, because you guys have had a weird relationship with them, under ownership of EMC and then Dell, right? And then the whole IBM thing. But it's just a different world now. Ecosystems are forming and reforming, and Dell's building out its own cloud and it's got to have... Look at Amazon, I wrote about this. I said, "Can you envision the day where Dell actually offers competitive products in its suite, in its service offering?" I mean, it's hard to see, they're not there yet. They're not even close. And they have this high say/do ratio, or really it's a low say/do, they say high say/do, but look at what they did with Nutanix. You look over- (chuckles) would tell if it's the Cisco relationship. So it's got to get better at that. And it will, I really do believe. That's new thinking and same thing with HPE. And, I don't know about Lenovo that not as much of an ecosystem play, but certainly Dell and HPE. >> Absolutely. Michael Dell would always love to poke at HPE and HP really went very far down the path of their own products. They went away from their services organization that used to be more like IBM, that would offer lots of different offerings and very much, it was HP Invent. Well, if we didn't invent it, you're not getting it from us. So Dell, we'll see, as you said, the ecosystems are definitely forming, converging and going in lots of different directions. >> But your position is, Hey, we're here, we're here to help. >> Yeah, we're here. We have customers, one of the best proof points I have is the solution that we have with Amazon. Amazon doesn't do the engineering work to make us a native offering if they didn't have the customer demand because Amazon's driven off of data. So they came to us, they worked with us. It's a lot of work to be able to make that happen, but you want to make it frictionless for customers so that they can adopt that. That's a long path. >> All right, so evening event, there's a customer event this evening upstairs in the lobby. Microsoft is having a little shin dig, and then serves a lot of customer dinners going on. So Stu, we'll see you out there tonight. >> All right, thanks you. >> Were watching a brewing somewhere. >> Keynotes tomorrow, a lot of good sessions and enablement, and yeah, it's great to be in person to be able to bump some people, meet some people and, Hey, I'm still a year and a half in still meeting a lot of my peers in person for the first time. >> Yeah, and that's kind of weird, isn't it? Imagine. And then we kick off tomorrow at 10:00 AM. Actually, Stephanie Chiras is coming on. There she is in the background. She's always a great guest and maybe do a little kickoff and have some fun tomorrow. So this is Dave Vellante for Stu Miniman, Paul Gillin, who's my co-host. You're watching theCUBEs coverage of Red Hat Summit 2022. We'll see you tomorrow. (bright music)

More bottoms up and have more technical early adopters. And generally speaking, they're free to use. They're free to try. They're very commonly community source or open source companies where you have a large technical community that's supporting them. So there's a, there's kind of a new normal now I think in great enterprise software and it starts with great technical founders with great products and great bottoms of emotions. And I think there's no better place to, uh, service those people than in the cloud and uh, in, in your community. >>Well, first of all, congratulations, and by the way, you got a great pedigree and great background, super smart, but Myer of your work and your, and, and your founding, but let's face it. Enterprise is hot because digital transformation is all companies there's no, I mean, consumer is enterprise now, everything is what was once a niche. No, I won't say niche category, but you know, not for the faint of heart, you know, investors, >>You know, it's so funny that you say that enterprise is hot because you, and I feel that way now. <laugh> but remember, like right now there's also a tech and VC conference in Miami <laugh> and it's covering cryptocurrencies and FCS and web three. So I think beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder <laugh> but no, I, I will tell you, >>Ts is one big enterprise, cuz you gotta have imutability you got performance issues. You have, I IOPS issues. >>Well, and, and I think all of us here that are, uh, may maybe students of history and have been involved in open source in the cloud would say that we're, you know, much of what we're doing is, uh, the predecessors of the web web three movement. And many of us I think are contributors to the web three >>Movement. The hype is definitely one web three. Yeah. >>But, >>But you know, >>For sure. Yeah, no, but now you're taking us further east of Miami. So, uh, you know, look, I think, I, I think, um, what is unquestioned with the case now? And maybe it's, it's more obvious the more time you spend in this world is this is the fastest growing part of enterprise software. And if you include cloud infrastructure and cloud infrastructure spend, you know, it is by many measures over, uh, $500 billion in growing, you know, 20 to 30% a year. So it it's a, it's a just incredibly fast, well, >>Let's get, let's get into some of the cultural and the, the shifts that are happening, cuz again, you, you have the luxury of being in enterprise when it was hard, it's getting easier and more cooler. I get it and more relevant <laugh> but there's also the hype of like the web three, for instance, but you know, for, uh, um, um, the CEO snowflake, okay. Has wrote a book and Dave Valenti and I were talking about it and uh, Frank Luman has says, there's no playbooks. We always ask the CEOs, what's your playbook. And he's like, there's no playbook, situational awareness, always Trump's playbooks. So in the enterprise playbook, oh, higher, a direct sales force and SAS kind of crushed that now SAS is being redefined, right. So what is SAS is snowflake assassin or is that a platform? So again, new unit economics are emerging, whole new situation, you got web three. So to me there's a cultural shift, the young entrepreneurs, the, uh, user experience, they look at Facebook and say, ah, you know, they own all my data and you know, we know that that cliche, um, they, you know, the product. So as this next gen, the gen Z and the millennials come in and our customers and the founders, they're looking at things a little bit differently and the tech better. >>Yeah. I mean, I mean, I think we can, we can see a lot of common across all successful startups and the overall adoption of technology. Um, and, and I would tell you, this is all one big giant revolution. I call it the user driven revolution. Right. It's the rise of the user. Yeah. And you might say product like growth is currently the hottest trend in enterprise software. It's actually like growth, right. They're one and the same. So sometimes people think the product, uh, is what is driving growth. >>You just pull the product >>Through. Exactly, exactly. And so that's that I, that I think is really this revolution that you see, and, and it does extend into things like cryptocurrencies and web three and, you know, sort of like the control that is taken back by the user. Um, but you know, many would say that, that the origins of this, but maybe started with open source where users were contributors, you know, contributors were users and looking back decades and seeing how it, how it fast forward to today. I think that's really the trend that we're all writing. It's enabling these end users. And these end users in our world are developers, data engineers, cybersecurity practitioners, right. They're really the, and they're really the, the beneficiaries and the most, you know, kind of valued people in >>This. I wanna come back to the data engineers in a second, but I wanna make a comment and get your reaction to, I have a, I'm a gen Xer technically. So for not a boomer, but I have some boomer friends who are a little bit older than me who have, you know, experienced the sixties. And I have what been saying on the cube for probably about eight years now that we are gonna hit digital hippie revolution, meaning a rebellion against in the sixties was rebellion against the fifties and the man and, you know, summer of love. That was a cultural differentiation from the other one other group, the predecessors. So we're kind of having that digital moment now where it's like, Hey boomers, Hey people, we're not gonna do that anymore. You, we hate how you organize shit. >>Right. But isn't this just technology. I mean, isn't it, isn't it like there used to be the old adage, like, you know, you would never get fired for buying IBM, but now it's like, you obviously probably would get fired if you bought IBM. And I mean, it's just like the, the, I think, I think >>During the mainframe days, those renegades were breaking into Stanford, starting the home group. So what I'm trying to get at is that, do you see the young cultural revolution also, culturally, just, this is my identity NFTs to me speak volumes about my, I wanna associate with NFTs, not single sign on. Well, >>Absolutely. And, and I think like, I think you're hitting on something, which is like this convergence of, of, you know, societal it'll trends with technology trends and how that manifests in our world is yes. I think like there is unquestionably almost a religion yeah. Around the way in which a product is built. Right. And we can use open source, one example of that religion. Some people will say, look, I'll just never try a product in the cloud if it's not open source. Yeah. I think cloud, native's another example of that, right? It's either it's, you know, it either is cloud native or it's not. And I think a lot of people will look at a product and say, look, you know, you were not designed in the cloud era. Therefore I just won't try you. And sometimes, um, like it or not, it's a religious decision, right? Yeah. It's so it's something that people just believe to be true almost without, uh, necessarily caring >>About data. Data drives all decision making. Let me ask you this next question. As a VC. Now you look at pitch, well, you've been a VC for many years, but you also have the founder entrepreneurial mindset, but you can get empathize with the founders. You know, hustle is a big part of the, that first founder check, right? You gotta convince someone to part with their ch their money and the first money in which you do a lot of it's about believing in the person. So faking it till you make it is hard. Now you, the data's there, you either have it cloud native, you either have the adaption or traction. So honesty is a big part of that pitch. You can't fake it. >>Oh, AB absolutely. You know, there used to be this concept of like the persona of an entrepreneur. Right. And the persona of the entrepreneur would be, you know, so somebody who was a great salesperson or somebody who tell a great story, and I still think that that's important, right. It still is a human need for people to believe in narratives and stories. Yeah. But having said that you're right. The proof is in the pudding, right. At some point you click download and you try the product and it does what it says it gonna it's gonna do, or it doesn't, or it either stands up to the load test or it doesn't. And so I, I feel like in the new economy that we live in, really, it's a shift from maybe the storytellers and the creators to, to the builders, right. The people that know how to build great product. And in some ways the people that can build great product yeah. Stand out from the crowd. And they're the ones that can build communities around their products. And, you know, in some ways can, um, you know, kind of own more of the narrative of because their product begins exactly >>The volume you back to the user led growth. >>Exactly. And it's the religion of, I just love your product. Right. And I, I, I, um, Doug song is the founder of du security used to say, Hey, like, you know, the, the really like in today's world of like consumption based software, like the user is only gonna give you 90 seconds to figure out whether or not you're a company that's easy to do business with. Right. And so you can say, and do all the things that you want about how easy you are to work with. But if the product isn't easy to install, if it's not easy to try, if it's not, if, if the it's gotta speak to the, >>Speak to the user, but let me ask a question now that for the people watching, who are maybe entrepreneurial entre, preneurs, um, masterclass here in session. So I have to ask you, do you prefer, um, an entrepreneur come in and say, look at John. Here's where I'm at. Okay. First of all, storytelling's fine with you an extrovert or introvert, have your style, sell the story in a way that's authentic, but do you, what do you prefer to say? Here's where I'm at? Look, I have an idea. Here's my traction. I think here's my MVP prototype. I need help. Or do, do you wanna just see more stats? What's the, what's the preferred way that you like to see entrepreneurs come in and engage? >>There's tons of different styles, man. I think the single most important thing that every founder should know is that we, we don't invest in what things are today. We invest in what we think something will become. Right. And I think that's why we all get up in the morning and try to build something different, right? It's that we see the world a different way. We want it to be a different way. And we wanna work every single moment of the day to try to make that vision a reality. So I think the more that you can show people where you want to be the, of more likely somebody is gonna align with your vision and, and wanna invest in you and wanna be along for the ride. So I, I wholeheartedly believe in showing off what you got today, because eventually we all get down to like, where are we and what are we gonna do together? But, um, no, I, you gotta >>Show the >>Path. I think the single most important thing for any founder and VC relationship is that they have the same vision. Uh, if you have the same vision, you can, you can get through bumps in the road, you can get through short term spills. You can all sorts of things in the middle. The journey can happen. Yeah. But it doesn't matter as much if you share the same long term vision, >>Don't flake out and, and be fashionable with the latest trends because it's over before you can get there. >>Exactly. I think many people that, that do what we do for a living, we'll say, you know, ultimately the future is relatively easy to predict, but it's the timing that's impossible to predict. <laugh> so you, you know, you sort of have to balance the, you know, we, we know that the world is going in this way and therefore we're gonna invest a lot of money to try to make this a reality. Uh, but some times it happens in six months. Sometimes it takes six years. Sometimes it takes 16 years. Uh, >>What's the hottest thing in enterprise that you see the biggest wave that people should pay attention to that you're looking at right now with Bel partners, Tebel dot your site. What's the big wave. What's your big >>Wave. There's three big trends that we invest in. And the they're the only things we do day in, day out one is the explosion and open source software. So I think many people think that all software is unquestionably moving to an open source model in some form or another yeah. Tons of reasons to debate whether or not that is gonna happen, an alwa timeline >>Happening forever. >>But, uh, it is, it is accelerating faster than we've ever seen. So I, I think it's, it's one big, massive wave that we continue to ride. Um, second is the rise of data engineering. Uh, I think data engineering is in and of itself now, a category of software. It's not just that we store data. It's now we move data and we develop applications on data. And, uh, I think data is in and of itself as big of a market as any of the other markets that we invest in. Uh, and finally, it's the gift that keeps on giving. I've spent my entire career in it. We still feel that security is a market that is underinvested. It is, it continues to be the place where people need to continue to invest and spend more money. Yeah. Uh, and those are the three major trends that we run >>And security, you think we all need a dessert do over, right? I mean, do we need you do over in security or is what's the core problem? I, >>I, I keep using this word underinvested because I think it's the right way to think about the problem. I think if you, I think people generally speaking, look at cybersecurity as an add-on. Yeah. But if you think about it, the whole economy is moving online. And so in, in some ways like security is core to protecting the digital economy. And so it's, it shouldn't be an afterthought, right? It should be core to what everyone is doing. And that's why I think relative to the trillions of dollars that are at stake, uh, I believe the market size for cybersecurity is run $150 billion. And it still is a fraction of what we're, >>What we're and national security even boom is booming now. So you get the convergence of national security, geopolitics, internet digital that's >>Right. You mean arguably, right? I mean, arguably again, it's the area of the world that people should be spending more time and more money given what to stake. >>I love your thesis. I gotta, I gotta say, you gotta love your firm. Love. You're doing we're big supporters, your mission. Congratulations on your entrepreneurial venture. And, uh, we'll be, we'll be talking and maybe see a Cuban. Uh, absolutely not. Certainly EU maybe even north Americans in Detroit this year. >>Huge fan of what you guys are doing here. Thank you so much for helping me on the show. >>Guess be VC Johnson here on the cube. Check him out. Founder for founders here on the cube, more coverage from San Francisco, California. After this short break, stay with us. Everyone. Welcome to the cue here. Live in San Francisco. K warn you for AWS summit 2022 we're live we're back with events. Also we're virtual. We got hybrid all kinds of events. This year, of course, summit in New York city is happening this summer. We'll be there with the cube as well. I'm John. Again, John host of the cube. Got a great guest here, Justin Kobe owner, and CEO of innovative solutions. Their booth is right behind us. Justin, welcome to the cube. >>Thank you. Thank you for having me. >>So we're just chatting, uh, uh, off camera about some of the work you're doing. You're the owner of and CEO. Yeah. Of innovative. Yeah. So tell us the story. What do you guys do? What's the elevator pitch. >>Yeah. <laugh> so the elevator pitch is we are, uh, a hundred percent focused on small to mid-size businesses that are moving to the cloud, or have already moved to the cloud and really trying to understand how to best control security, compliance, all the good stuff that comes along with it. Um, exclusively focused on AWS and, um, you know, about 110 people, uh, based in Rochester, New York, that's where our headquarters is, but now we have offices down in Austin, Texas, up in Toronto, uh, Canada, as well as Chicago. Um, and obviously in New York, uh, you know, the business was never like this, uh, five years ago, um, founded in 1989, made the decision in 2018 to pivot and go all in on the cloud. And, uh, I've been a part of the company for about 18 years, bought the company about five years ago. And it's been a great ride. >>It's interesting. The manages services are interesting with cloud cause a lot of the heavy liftings done by a of us. So we had Matt on your team on earlier talking about some of the edge stuff. Yeah. But you guys are a managed cloud service. You got cloud advisory, you know, the classic service that's needed, but the demands coming from cloud migrations and application modernization, but obviously data is a huge part of it. Huge. How is this factoring into what you guys do and your growth cuz you guys are the number one partner on the SMB side for edge. Yeah. For AWS, you got results coming in. Where's the, where's the forcing function. What's the pressure point. What's the demand like? >>Yeah. It's a great question. Every CEO I talk to, that's a small mids to size business. They're all trying to understand how to leverage technology better to help either drive a revenue target for their own business, uh, help with customer service as so much has gone remote now. And we're all having problems or troubles or issues trying to hire talent. And um, you know, tech is really at the, at the forefront and the center of that. So most customers are coming to us and they're of like, listen, we gotta move to the cloud or we move some things to the cloud and we want to do that better. And um, there's this big misnomer that when you move to the cloud, you gotta automatically modernize. Yeah. And what we try to help as many customers understand as possible is lifting and shifting, moving the stuff that you maybe currently have OnPrem and a data center to the cloud first is a first step. And then so, uh, progressively working through a modernization strategy is always the better approach. And so we spend a lot of time with small to mid-size businesses who don't have the technology talent on staff to be able to do >>That. Yeah. And they want to get set up. But the, the dynamic of like latency is huge. We're seeing that edge product is a big part of it. This is not a one-off happening around everywhere. It is not it's manufacturing, it's the physical plant or location >>Literally. >>And so, and you're seeing more IOT devices. What's that like right now from a challenge and problem statement standpoint, are the customers, not staff, is the it staff kind of old school? Is it new skills? What's the core problem. And you guys solve >>In the SMB space. The core issue nine outta 10 times is people get enamored with the latest and greatest. And the reality is not everything that's cloud based. Not all cloud services are the latest and greatest. Some things have been around for quite some time and our hardened solutions. And so, um, what we try to do with, to technology staff that has traditional on-prem, uh, let's just say skill sets and they're trying to move to a cloud-based workload is we try to help those customers through education and through some practical, let's just call it use case. Um, whether that's a proof of concept that we're doing or whether that's, we're gonna migrate a small workload over, we try to give them the confidence to be able to not, not necessarily go it alone, but, but to, to, to have the, uh, the Gusto and to really have the, um, the, the opportunity to, to do that in a wise way. Um, and what I find is that most CEOs that I talk to yeah. Feel like, listen, at the end of the day, I'm gonna be spending money in one place or another, whether that's on primer in the cloud, I just want know that I'm doing that way. That helps me grow as quickly as possible status quo. I think every, every business owner knows that COVID taught us anything that status quo is, uh, is, is no. No. Good. >>How about factoring in the, the agility and speed equation? Does that come up a lot? It >>Does. I think, um, I think there's also this idea that if, uh, if we do a deep dive analysis and we really take a surgical approach to things, um, we're gonna be better off. And the reality is the faster you move with anything cloud based, the better you are. And so there's this assumption that we gotta get it right the first time. Yeah. In the cloud, if you start down your journey in one way and you realize midway that it's not the right, let's just say the right place to go. It's not like buying a piece of iron that you put in the closet and now you own it in the cloud. You can turn those services on and off. It's a, gives you a much higher density for making decisions and failing >>Forward. Well actually shutting down the abandoning, the projects that early, not worrying about it, you got it mean most people don't abandon stuff cuz they're like, oh, I own it. >>Exactly. >>And they get, they get used to it. Like, and then they wait too long. >>That's exactly. >>Yeah. Frog and boiling water, as we used to say, oh, it's a great analogy. So I mean, this, this is a dynamic. That's interesting. I wanna get more thoughts on it because like I'm a, if I'm a CEO of a company, like, okay, I gotta make my number. Yeah. I gotta keep my people motivated. Yeah. And I gotta move faster. So this is where you guys come in. I get the whole thing. And by the way, great service, um, professional services in the cloud right now are so hot because so hot, you can build it and then have option optionality. You got path decisions, you got new services to take advantage of. It's almost too much for customers. It is. I mean, everyone I talked to at reinvent, that's a customer. Well, how many announcements did Andy jazzy announcer Adam? You know, the 5,000 announcement or whatever. They did huge amounts. Right. Keeping track of it all. Oh, is huge. So what's the, what's the, um, the mission of, of your company. How does, how do you talk to that alignment? Yeah. Not just processes. I can get that like values as companies, cuz they're betting on you and your people. >>They are, they are >>Values. >>Our mission is, is very simple. We want to help every small to midsize business leverage the power of the cloud. Here's the reality. We believe wholeheartedly. This is our vision that every company is going to become a technology company. So we go to market with this idea that every customer's trying to leverage the power of the cloud in some way, shape or form, whether they know it or don't know it. And number two, they're gonna become a 10 a company in the process of that because everything is so tech-centric. And so when you talk about speed and agility, when you talk about the, the endless options and the endless permutations of solutions that a customer can buy in the cloud, how are you gonna ask a team of one or two people in your it department to make all those decisions going it alone or trying to learn it as you go, it only gets you so far working with a partner. >>I'll just give you some perspective. We work with about a thousand small to midsize business customers. More than 50% of those customers are on our managed services. Meaning they know that we have their back and we're the safety net. So when a customer is saying, right, I'm gonna spend a couple thousand and dollars a month in the cloud. They know that that bill, isn't gonna jump to $10,000 a month going in alone. Who's there to help protect that. Number two, if you have a security posture and let's just say your high profile and you're gonna potentially be more vulnerable to security attacks. If you have a partner that's offering you some managed services. Now you, again, you've got that backstop and you've got those services and tooling. We, we offer, um, seven different products, uh, that are part of our managed services that give the customer the tooling, that for them to go out and buy on their own for a customer to go out today and go buy a new Relic solution on their own. It, it would cost 'em a four, >>The training alone would be insane. A risk factor. I mean the cost. Yes, absolutely opportunity cost is huge, >>Huge, absolutely enormous training and development. Something. I think that is often, you know, it's often overlooked technologists. Typically they want to get their skills up. They, they love to get the, the stickers and the badges and the pins, um, at innovative in 2018. When, uh, when we, he made the decision to go all in on the club, I said to the organization, you know, we have this idea that we're gonna pivot and be aligned with AWS in such a way that it's gonna really require us all to get certified. My executive assistant at the time looks at me. She said, even me, I said, yeah, even you, why can't you get certified? Yeah. And so we made, uh, a conscious, it wasn't requirement. It still isn't today to make sure everybody in the company has the opportunity to become certified. Even the people that are answering the phones at the front >>Desk and she could be running the Kubernetes clusters. I >>Love it. It's >>Amazing. >>But I'll tell you what, when that customer calls and they have a real Kubernetes issue, she'll be able to assist and get >>The right people with. And that's a cultural factor that you guys have. So, so again, this is back to my whole point out SMBs and businesses in general, small and large it staffs are turning over the gen Z and millennials are in the workforce. They were provisioning top of rack switches. Right. First of all. And so if you're a business, there's also the, I call the buildout, um, uh, return factor, ROI piece. At what point in time as an owner, SMB, do I get to ROI? Yeah. I gotta hire a person to manage it. That person's gonna have five zillion job offers. Yep. Uh, maybe who knows? Right. I got cyber security issues. Where am I gonna find a cyber person? Yeah. A data compliance. I need a data scientist and a compliance person. Right. Maybe one in the same. Right. Good luck. Trying to find a data scientist. Who's also a compliance person. Yep. And the list goes on. I can just continue. Absolutely. I need an SRE to manage the, the, uh, the sock report and we can pen test. Right. >>Right. >>These are, these are >>Like critical issues. >>This is just like, these are the table stakes. >>Yeah. And, and every, every business owner's thinking about this, >>That's, that's what, at least a million in loading, if not three or more Just to get that app going. Yeah. Then it's like, where's the app. Yeah. So there's no cloud migration. There's no modernization on the app side. No. And they remind AI and ML. >>That's right. That's right. So to try to go it alone, to me, it's hard. It it's incredibly difficult. And the other thing is, is there's not a lot of partners, so the partner, >>No one's raising their hand boss. I'll do all that exactly. In the it department. >>Exactly. >>So like, can we just call up, uh, you know, our old vendor that's >>Right. <laugh> right. Our old vendor. I like it, >>But that's so true. I mean, when I think about how, if I was a business owner starting a business today and I had to build my team, um, and the amount of investment that it would take to get those people skilled up and then the risk factor of those people now having the skills and being so much more in demand and being recruited away, that's a real, that's a real issue. And so how you build your culture around that is, is very important. It's something that we talk about every, with every one of our small to mid-size >>Businesses. So just, I want get, I want to get your story as CEO. Okay. Take us through your journey. You said you bought the company and your progression to, to being the owner and CEO of innovative yeah. Award winning guys doing great. Uh, great bet on a good call. Yeah. Things are good. Tell your story. What's your journey? >>It's real simple. I was, uh, I was a sophomore at the Rochester Institute of technology in 2003. And, uh, I knew that I, I was going to school for it and I, I knew I wanted to be in tech. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn't wanna code or configure routers and switches. So I had this great opportunity with the local it company that was doing managed services. We didn't call it at that time innovative solutions to come in and, uh, jump on the phone and dial for dollars. I was gonna cold call and introduced other, uh, small to midsize businesses locally in Rochester, New York go to Western New York, um, who innovative was now. We were 19 people at the time. Yeah. I came in, I did an internship for six months and I loved it. I learned more in those six months than I probably did in my first couple of years at, uh, at RT long story short. >>Um, for about seven years, I worked, uh, to really help develop, uh, sales process and methodology for the business so that we could grow and scale. And we grew to about 30 people. And, um, I went to the owners at the time in 2000 and I was like, Hey, I'm growing the value of this business. And who knows where you guys are gonna be another five years? What do you think about making me an owner? And they were like, listen, you got long ways before you're gonna be an owner. But if you stick it out in your patient, we'll, um, we'll work through a succession plan with you. And I said, okay, there were four other individuals at the time that were gonna also buy the business with me. >>And they were the owners, no outside capital, >>None zero, well, 2014 comes around. And, uh, the other folks that were gonna buy into the business with me that were also working at innovative for different reasons. They all decided that it wasn't for them. One started a family. The other didn't wanna put capital in. Didn't wanna write a check. Um, the other had a real big problem with having to write a check. If we couldn't make payroll, I'm like, well, that's kind of like, if we're own, we're gonna have to like cover that stuff. <laugh> so >>It's called the pucker factor. >>Exactly. So, uh, I sat down with the CEO in early 2015 and, uh, we made the decision that I was gonna buy the three partners out, um, go through an earn out process, uh, coupled with, uh, an interesting financial strategy that wouldn't strap the BI cuz they cared very much. The company still had the opportunity to keep going. So in 2016 I bought the business, um, became the sole owner. And, and at that point we, um, we really focused hard on what do we want this company to be? We had built this company to this point. Yeah. And, uh, and by 2018 we knew that pivoting all going all in on the cloud was important for us. And we haven't looked back. >>And at that time, the proof points were coming clearer and clearer 2012 through 15 was the early adopters, the builders, the startups and early enterprises. Yes. The capital ones of the world. Exactly the, uh, and those kinds of big enterprises. The GA I don't wanna say gamblers, but ones that were very savvy. The innovators, the FinTech folks. Yep. The hardcore glass eating enterprises >>Agreed, agreed to find a small to midsize business to migrate completely to the cloud is as infrastructure was considered, that just didn't happen as often. Um, what we were seeing where the, a lot of our small to midsize business customers, they wanted to leverage cloud based backup, or they wanted to leverage a cloud for disaster recovery because it lent itself. Well, early days, our most common cloud customer though, was the customer that wanted to move messaging and collaboration. The, the Microsoft suite to the cloud. And a lot of 'em dipped their toe in the water. But by 2017 we knew infrastructure was around the corner. Yeah. And so, uh, we only had two customers on AWS at the time. Um, and we, uh, we, we made the decision to go all in >>Justin. Great to have you on the cube. Thank you. Let's wrap up. Uh, tell me the hottest product that you have. Is it migrations? Is the app modernization? Is it data? What's the hot product and then put a plugin for the company. Awesome. >>So, uh, there's no question. Every customer is looking migrate workloads and try to figure out how to modernize for the future. We have very interesting, sophisticated yet elegant funding solutions to help customers with the cash flow, uh, constraints that come along with those migrations. So any SMB that's thinking about migrating into the cloud, they should be talking innovative solutions. We know how to do it in a way that allows those customer is not to be cash strapped and gives them an opportunity to move forward in a controlled, contained way so they can modernize. So >>Like insurance, basically for them not insurance class in the classic sense, but you help them out on the, on the cash exposure. >>Absolutely. We are known for that and we're known for being creative with those customers and being empathetic to where they are in their journey. >>And that's the cloud upside is all about doubling down on the variable win that's right. Seeing the value and ING down on it. Absolutely not praying for it. Yeah. <laugh> all right, Justin. Thanks for coming on. You really appreciate >>It. Thank you very much for having me. >>Okay. This is the cube coverage here live in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching. We're back with more great coverage for two days after this short break >>Live on the floor in San Francisco for Aus summit. I'm John for host of the cube here for the next two days, getting all the actual back in person we're at AWS reinvent a few months ago. Now we're back events are coming back and we're happy to be here with the cube. Bring all the action. Also virtual. We have a hybrid cube, check out the cube.net, Silicon angle.com for all the coverage. After the event. We've got a great guest ticking off here. Matthew Park, director of solutions, architecture with innovation solutions. The booth is right here. Matthew, welcome to the cube. >>Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here. >>So we're back in person. You're from Tennessee. We were chatting before you came on camera. Um, it's great to be back through events. It's >>Amazing. This is the first, uh, summit I've been to, to in what two, three >>Years. That's awesome. We'll be at the, uh, a AWS summit in New York as well. A lot of developers and the big story this year is as developers look at cloud going distributed computing, you got on premises, you got public cloud, you got the edge. Essentially the cloud operations is running everything devs sec ops, everyone kind of sees that you got containers, you got Benet, he's got cloud native. So the, the game is pretty much laid out. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and the edge is with the actions you guys are number one, premier partner at SMB for edge. >>That's >>Right. Tell us about what you guys doing at innovative and, uh, what you do. >>That's right. Uh, so I'm the director of solutions architecture. Uh, me and my team are responsible for building out the solutions. The at our around, especially the edge public cloud for us edge is anything outside of an AWS availability zone. Uh, we are deploying that in countries that don't have AWS infrastructure in region. They don't have it. Uh, give >>An example, >>Uh, example would be Panama. We have a customer there that, uh, needs to deploy some financial tech data and compute is legally required to be in Panama, but they love AWS and they want to deploy AWS services in region. Uh, so they've taken E EKS anywhere. We've put storage gateway and, uh, snowball, uh, in region inside the country and they're running or FinTech on top of AWS services inside Panama. >>You know, what's interesting, Matthew is that we've been covering Aw since 2013 with the cube about their events. And we watched the progression and jazzy was, uh, was in charge and became the CEO. Now Adam slaps in charge, but the edge has always been that thing they've been trying to avoid. I don't wanna say trying to avoid, of course, Amazon would listens to the customer. They work backwards from the customer. We all know that. Uh, but the real issue was they were they're bread and butters EC two and S three. And then now they got tons of services and the cloud is obviously successful and seeing that, but the edge brings up a whole nother level. >>It does >>Computing. >>It >>Does. That's not centralized in the public cloud now they got regions. So what is the issue with the edge what's driving? The behavior. Outpost came out as a reaction to competitive threats and also customer momentum around OT, uh, operational technologies. And it merging. We see with the data at the edge, you got five GM having. So it's pretty obvious, but there was a slow transition. What was the driver for the edge? What's the driver now for edge action for AWS >>Data in is the driver for the edge. Data has gravity, right? And it's pulling compute back to where the customer's generating that data and that's happening over and over again. You said it best outpost was a reaction to a competitive situation. Whereas today we have over 15 AWS edge services and those are all reactions to things that customers need inside their data centers on location or in the field like with media companies. >>Outpost is interesting. We always use the riff on the cube, uh, cause it's basically Amazon in a box, pushed in the data center, running native, all this stuff, but now cloud native operations are kind of becoming standard. You're starting to see some standard. Deepak syncs group is doing some amazing work with opensource Raul's team on the AI side, obviously, uh, you got SW who's giving the keynote tomorrow. You got the big AI machine learning big part of that edge. Now you can say, okay, outpost, is it relevant today? In other words, did outpost do its job? Cause EKS anywhere seems to be getting a lot of momentum. You see local zones, the regions are kicking ass for Amazon. This edge piece is evolving. What's your take on EKS anywhere versus say outpost? >>Yeah, I think outpost did its job. It made customers that were looking at outpost really consider, do I wanna invest in this hardware? Do I, do I wanna have, um, this outpost in my datas center, do I want to manage this over the long term? A lot of those customers just transitioned to the public cloud. They went into AWS proper. Some of those customers stayed on prem because they did have use cases that were, uh, not a good fit for outpost. They weren't a good fit. Uh, in the customer's mind for the public AWS cloud inside an availability zone now happening is as AWS is pushing these services out and saying, we're gonna meet you where you are with 5g. We're gonna meet you where you are with wavelength. We're gonna meet you where you are with EKS anywhere. Uh, I think it has really reduced the amount of times that we have conversations about outposts and it's really increased. We can deploy fast. We don't have to spin up outpost hardware can go deploy EKS anywhere in your VMware environment. And it's increasing the speed of adoption >>For sure. Right? So you guys are making a lot of good business decisions around managed cloud service. That's right. Innovative. Does that get the cloud advisory, the classic professional services for the specific edge piece and, and doing that outside of the availability zones and regions for AWS, um, customers in these new areas that you're helping out are they want cloud, like they want to have modernization a modern applications. Obviously they got data machine learning and AI, all part of that. What's the main product or, or, or gap that you're filling for AWS, uh, outside of their availability zones or their regions that you guys are delivering. What's the key is that they don't have a footprint. Is it that it's not big enough for them? What's the real gap. What's why, why are you so successful? >>So what customers want when they look towards the cloud is they want to focus on what's making them money as a business. They wanna focus on their applications. They wanna focus on their customers. So they look towards AWS cloud and a AWS. You take the infrastructure, you take, uh, some of the higher layers and we'll focus on our revenue generating business, but there's a gap there between infrastructure and revenue generating business that innovative slides into, uh, we help manage the AWS environment. Uh, we help build out these things in local data centers for 32 plus year old company. We have traditional on-premises people that know about deploying hardware that know about deploying VMware to host EKS anywhere. But we also have most of our company totally focused on the AWS cloud. So we're that gap in helping deploy these AWS services, manage them over the long term. So our customers can go to just primarily and totally focusing on their revenue generating business. So >>Basically you guys are basically building AWS edges, >>Correct? >>For correct companies, correct? Mainly because the, the needs are there, you got data, you got certain products, whether it's, you know, low latency type requirements, right. And then they still work with the regions, right. It's all tied together, right. Is that how it >>Works? Right. And, and our customers, even the ones in the edge, they also want us to build out the AWS environment inside the availability zone, because we're always gonna have a failback scenario. If we're gonna deploy fin in the Caribbean, we're gonna talk about hurricanes. And we're gonna talk about failing back into the AWS availability zones. So innovative is filling that gap across the board, whether it be inside the AWS cloud or on the AWS edge. >>All right. So I gotta ask you on the, since you're at the edge in these areas, I won't say underserved, but developing areas where now have data and you have applications that are tapping into that, that requirement. It makes total sense. We're seeing that across the board. So it's not like it's a, it's an outlier it's actually growing. Yeah. There's also the crypto angle. You got the blockchain. Are you seeing any traction at the edge with blockchain? Because a lot of people are looking at the web three in these areas like Panama, you mentioned FinTech. And in, in the islands there a lot of, lot of, lot of web three happening. What's your, what your view on the web three world right now, relative >>To we, we have some customers actually deploying crypto, especially, um, especially in the Caribbean. I keep bringing the Caribbean up, but it's, it's top of my mind right now we have customers that are deploying crypto. A lot of, uh, countries are choosing crypto to underlie parts of their central banks. Yeah. Um, so it's, it's up and coming. Uh, I, I have some, you know, personal views that, that crypto is still searching for a use case. Yeah. And, uh, I think it's searching a lot and, and we're there to help customers search for that use case. Uh, but, but crypto, as a, as a, uh, technology, um, lives really well on the AWS edge. Yeah. Uh, and, and we're having more and more people talk to us about that. Yeah. And ask for assistance in the infrastructure, because they're developing new cryptocurrencies every day. Yeah. It's not like they're deploying Ethereum or anything specific. They're actually developing new currencies and, and putting them out there on >>It's interesting. I mean, first of all, we've been doing crypto for many, many years. We have our own little, um, you know, project going on. But if you look talk to all the crypto people that say, look, we do a smart contract, we use the blockchain. It's kind of over a lot of overhead and it's not really their technical already, but it's a cultural shift, but there's underserved use cases around use of money, but they're all using the blockchain just for like smart contracts, for instance, or certain transactions. And they go to Amazon for the database. Yeah. <laugh> they all don't tell anyone we're using a centralized service. Well, what happened to decentralized? >>Yeah. And that's, and that's the conversation performance issue. Yeah. And, and it's a cost issue. Yeah. And it's a development issue. Um, so I think more and more as, as some of these, uh, currencies maybe come up, some of the smart contracts get into, uh, they find their use cases. I think we'll start talking about how does that really live on, on AWS and, and what does it look like to build decentralized applications, but with AWS hardware and services. >>Right. So take me through, uh, a use case of a customer Matthew around the edge. Okay. So I'm a customer, pretend I'm a customer, Hey, you know, I'm, we're in an underserved area. I want to modernize my business. And I got my developers that are totally peaked up on cloud, but we've identified that it's just a lot of overhead latency issues. I need to have a local edge and serve my a, I also want all the benefit of the cloud. So I want the modern, and I wanna migrate to the cloud for all those cloud benefits and the goodness of the cloud. What's the answer. >>Yeah. Uh, big thing is, uh, industrial manufacturing, right? That's, that's one of the best use cases, uh, inside industrial manufacturing, we can pull in many of the AWS edge services we can bring in, uh, private 5g, uh, so that all the, uh, equipment that, that manufacturing plant can be hooked up, they don't have to pay huge overheads to deploy 5g it's, uh, better than wifi for the industrial space. Um, when we take computing down to that industrial area, uh, because we wanna do pre-procesing on the data. Yeah. We want to gather some analytics. We deploy that with a regular commercially available hardware running VMware, and we deploy EKS anywhere on that. Inside of that manufacturing plant, we can do pre-procesing on things coming out of the robotics, depending on what we're manufacturing. Right. And then we can take those refined analytics and for very low cost with maybe a little bit longer latency transmit those back, um, to the AWS availability zone, the, the standard >>For data, data lake, or whatever, >>To the data lake. Yeah. Data lake house, whatever it might be. Um, and we can do additional data science on that once it gets to the AWS cloud. Uh, but a lot of that, uh, just in time business decisions, just time manufacturing decisions can all take place on an AWS service or services inside that manufacturing plant. And that's, that's one of the best use cases that we're >>Seeing. And I think, I mean, we've been seeing this on the queue for many, many years, moving data around is very expensive. Yeah. But also compute going to the data that saves that cost yeah. On the data transfer also on the benefits of the latency. So I have to ask you, by the way, that's standard best practice now for the folks watching don't move the data unless you have to. Um, but those new things are developing. So I wanna ask you what new patterns are you seeing emerging once this new architecture's in place? Love that idea, localize everything right at the edge, manufacturing, industrial, whatever, the use case, retail, whatever it is. Right. But now what does that change in the, in the core cloud? There's a, there's a system element here. Yeah. What's the new pattern. There's >>Actually an organizational element as well, because once you have to start making the decision, do I put this compute at the point of use or do I put this compute in the cloud? Uh, now you start thinking about where business decisions should be taking place. Uh, so not only are you changing your architecture, you're actually changing your organization because you're thinking, you're thinking about a dichotomy you didn't have before. Uh, so now you say, okay, this can take place here. Uh, and maybe, maybe this decision can wait. Right. And then how do I visualize that? By >>The way, it could be a bot tube doing the work for management. Yeah. <laugh> exactly. You got observability going, right. But you gotta change the database architecture on the back. So there's new things developing. You've got more benefit. There >>Are, there are, and we have more and more people that, that want to talk less about databases and want to talk about data lakes because of this. They want to talk more about customers are starting to talk about throwing away data. Uh, you know, for the past maybe decade. Yeah. It's been store everything. And one day we will have a data science team that we hire in our organization to do analytics on this decade of data. And well, >>I mean, that's, that's a great point. We don't have time to drill into, maybe we do another session this, but the one pattern we're seeing come of the past year is that throwing away data's bad. Even data lakes that so-called turn into data swamps, actually, it's not the case. You look at data, brick, snowflake, and other successes out there. And even time series data, which may seem irrelevant efforts over actually matters when people start retrain their machine learning algorithms. Yep. So as data becomes co as we call it in our last showcase, we did a whole whole an event on this. The data's good in real time and in the lake. Yeah. Because the iteration of the data feeds the machine learning training. Things are getting better with the old data. So it's not throw away. It's not just business benefits. Yeah. There's all kinds of new scale. There >>Are. And, and we have, uh, many customers that are running petabyte level. Um, they're, they're essentially data factories on, on, on premises, right? They're, they're creating so much data and they're starting to say, okay, we could analyze this, uh, in the cloud, we could transition it. We could move petabytes of data to AWS cloud, or we can run, uh, computational workloads on premises. We can really do some analytics on this data transition, uh, those high level and sort of raw analytics back to AWS run 'em through machine learning. Um, and we don't have to transition 10, 12 petabytes of data into AWS. >>So I gotta end the segment on a, on a, kind of a, um, fun, I was told to ask you about your personal background on premise architect, Aus cloud, and skydiving instructor. How does that all work together? What tell, what does this mean? >>Yeah. Uh, I, >>You jumped out a plane and got a job. You got a customer to jump >>Out kind of. So I was, you jumped out. I was teaching Scott eing, uh, before I, before I started in the cloud space, this was 13, 14 years ago. I was a, I still am a Scott I instructor. Uh, I was teaching Scott eing and I heard out of the corner of my ear, uh, a guy that owned an MSP that was lamenting about, um, you know, storing data and how his customers are working. And he can't find enough people to operate all these workloads. So I walked over and said, Hey, this is, this is what I went to school for. Like, I'd love to, you know, I was living in a tent in the woods, teaching skydiving. I was like, I'd love to not live in a tent in the woods. So, uh, I started in the first day there, we had a, and, uh, EC two had just come out <laugh> um, and, uh, like, >>This is amazing. >>Yeah. And so we had this discussion, we should start moving customers here. And, uh, and that totally revolutionized that business, um, that, that led to, uh, that that guy actually still owns a skydiving airport. But, um, but through all of that, and through being in on premises, migrated me and myself, my career into the cloud, and now it feels like, uh, almost, almost looking back and saying, now let's take what we learned in the cloud and, and apply those lessons and those services to premises. >>So it's such a great story. You know, I was gonna, you know, you know, the, the, the, the whole, you know, growth mindset pack your own parachute, you know, uh, exactly. You know, the cloud in the early days was pretty much will the shoot open. Yeah. It was pretty much, you had to roll your own cloud at that time. And so, you know, you, you jump on a plane, you gotta make sure that parachute is gonna open. >>And so was Kubernetes by the way, 2015 or so when, uh, when that was coming out, it was, I mean, it was, it was still, and I, maybe it does still feel like that to some people, right. Yeah. But, uh, it was, it was the same kind of feeling that we had in the early days of AWS, the same feeling we have when we >>It's much now with you guys, it's more like a tandem jump. Yeah. You know, but, but it's a lot of, lot of this cutting stuff like jumping out of an airplane. Yeah. You guys, the right equipment, you gotta do the right things. Exactly. >>Right. >>Matthew, thanks for coming on the cube. Really appreciate it. Absolutely great conversation. Thanks for having me. Okay. The cubes here, lot in San Francisco for AWS summit, I'm John for your host of the cube. Uh, we'll be at a summit in New York coming up in the summer as well. Look up for that. Look at this calendar for all the cube, actually@thecube.net. We'll right back with our next segment after this break. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone to San Francisco live coverage here, we're at the cube, a summit 2022. We're back in person. I'm John furry host of the cube. We'll be at the, a us summit in New York city this summer, check us out then. But right now, two days in San Francisco getting all coverage, what's going on in the cloud, we got a cube alumni and friend of the cube, my dos car CEO, investor, a Sierra, and also an investor and a bunch of startups, angel investor. Gonna do great to see you. Thanks for coming on the cube. Good to see you. Good to see you, Pam. Cool. How are you? Good. >>How are you? >>So congratulations on all your investments. Uh, you've made a lot of great successes, uh, over the past couple years, uh, and your company raising, uh, some good cash as Sarah so give us the update. How much cash have you guys raised? What's the status of the company product what's going on? First >>Of all, thank you for having me. We're back to be business with you never while after. Great to see you. Um, so is a company started around four years back. I invested with a few of the investors and now I'm the CEO there. Um, we have raised close to a hundred million there. Uh, the investors are people like nor west Menlo, true ventures, coast, lo ventures, Ram Shera, and all those people, all known guys that Antibe chime Paul Mayard web. So a whole bunch of operating people and, uh, Silicon valley vs are involved. >>And has it gone? >>It's going well. We are doing really well. We are going almost 300% year over year. Uh, for last three years, the space ISR is going after is what I call the applying AI for customer service. It operations, it help desk the same place I used to work at ServiceNow. We are partners with ServiceNow to take, how can we argument for employees and customers, Salesforce, and ServiceNow to take it to the next stage? Well, >>I love having you on the cube, Dave and I, and Dave Valenti as well loves having you on too, because you not only bring the entrepreneurial CEO experience, you're an investor. You're like a, you're like a guest analyst. <laugh>, >>You know, >>You >>Get, the comment is fun to talk to you though. >>You get the commentary, you, your, your finger on the pulse. Um, so I gotta ask you obviously, AI and machine learning, machine learning AI, or you want to phrase it. Isn't every application. Now, AI first, uh, you're seeing a lot of that going on. You're starting to see companies build the modern applications at the top of the stack. So the cloud scale has hit. We're seeing cloud out scale. You predicted that we talked about in the cube many times. Now you have that past layer with a lot more services and cloud native becoming a standard layer. Containerizations growing Docker just raised a hundred million on our $2 billion valuation back from the dead after they pivoted from an enterprise services. So open source developers are booming. Um, where's the action. I mean, is there data control, plane emerging, AI needs data. There's a lot of challenges around this. There's a lot of discussions and a lot of companies being funded observability there's 10 million observability companies. Data is the key. This is what's your angle on this. What's your take. Yeah, >>No, look, I think I'll give you the view that I see, right? I, from my side, obviously data is very clear. So the things that room system of record that you and me talked about, the next layer is called system of intelligence. That's where the AI will play. Like we talk cloud native, it'll be called AI. NA NA is a new buzzword and using the AI for customer service, it operations. You talk about observability. I call it AI ops, applying AOPs for good old it operation management, cloud management. So you'll see the AOPs applied for whole list of, uh, application from observability doing the CMDB, predicting the events insurance. So I see a lot of work clicking for AIOps and AI service desk. What needs to be helped desk with ServiceNow BMC <inaudible> you see a new ALA emerging as a system of intelligence. Uh, the next would be is applying AI with workflow automation. So that's where you'll see a lot of things called customer workflows, employee workflows. So think of what UI path automation, anywhere ServiceNow are doing, that area will be driven with AI workflows. So you'll see AI going >>Off is RPA a company is AI, is RPA a feature of something bigger? Or can someone have a company on RPA UI S one will be at their event this summer? Um, or is it a product company? I mean, I mean, RPA is almost, should be embedded in everything. >>It's a feature. It is very good point. Very, very good thinking. So one is, it's a category for sure. Like, as we thought, it's a category, it's an area where RPA may change the name. I call it much more about automation, workflow automation, but RPA and automation is a category. Um, it's a company also, but that automation should be a, in every area. Yeah. Like we call cloud NA and AI NATO it'll become automation. NA yeah. And that's your thinking. >>It's almost interesting me. I think about the, what you're talking about what's coming to mind is I'm kind having flashbacks to the old software model of middleware. Remember at middleware, it was very easy to understand it was middleware. It sat between two things and then the middle and it was software was action. Now you have all kinds of workflows abstractions everywhere. Right? So multiple databases, it's not a monolithic thing. Right? Right. So as you break that down, is this the new modern middleware? Because what you're talking about is data workflows, but they might be siloed or they integrated. I mean, these are the challenges. This is crazy. What's the, >>So don't about the databases become all polyglot databases. I call this one polyglot automation. So you need automation as a layer, as a category, but you also need to put automation in every area, like, as you were talking about, it should be part of ServiceNow. It should be part of ISRA, like every company, every Salesforce. So that's why you see MuleSoft and Salesforce buying RPA companies. So you'll see all the SaaS companies could cloud companies having an automation as a core. So it's like how you have a database and compute and sales and networking. You'll also will have an automation as a layer <inaudible> inside every stack. >>All right. So I wanna shift gears a little bit and get your perspective on what's going on behind us. You can see, uh, behind us, you got the expo hall. You got, um, we're back to vents, but you got, you know, am Clume Ove, uh, Dynatrace data dog, innovative all the companies out here that we know, we interview them all. They're trying to be suppliers to this growing enterprise market. Right. Okay. But now you also got the entrepreneurial equation. Okay. We're gonna have John Sado on from Deibel later today. He's a former NEA guy and we always talk to Jerry, Jen, we know all the, the VCs. What does the startups look like? What does the state of the, in your mind, cause you, I know you invest the entrepreneurial founder situation. Cloud's bigger. Mm-hmm <affirmative> global, right? Data's part of it. You mentioned data's. Yes. Basically. Data's everything. What's it like for a first an entrepreneur right now who's starting a company. What's the white space. What's the attack plan. How do they get in the market? How do they engineer everything? >>Very good. So I'll give it to, uh, two things that I'm seeing out there. Remember leaders, how Amazon created the startups 15 years back, everybody built on Amazon now, Azure and GCP. The next layer would be is people don't just build on Amazon. They're gonna build it on top of snowflake. Companies are snowflake becomes a data platform, right? People will build on snowflake. Right? So I see my old boss flagman try to build companies on snowflake. So you don't build it just on Amazon. You build it on Amazon and snowflake. Snowflake will become your data store. Snowflake will become your data layer. Right? So I think that's the next level of <inaudible> trying to do that. So if I'm doing observability AI ops, if I'm doing next level of Splunk SIM, I'm gonna build it on snowflake, on Salesforce, on Amazon, on Azure, et cetera. >>It's interesting. You know, Jerry Chan has it put out a thesis of a couple months ago called castles in the cloud where your Mo is what you do in the cloud. Not necessarily in, in the, in the IP. Um, Dave LAN and I had last reinvent, coined the term super cloud, right? He's got a lot of traction and a lot of people throwing, throwing mud at us, but we were, our thesis was, is that what Snowflake's doing? What Goldman S Sachs is doing. You starting to see these clouds on top of clouds. So Amazon's got this huge CapEx advantage, and guys, Charles Fitzgerald out there who we like was kind of shitting on us saying, Hey, you guys terrible, they didn't get it. Like, yeah, I don't think he gets it, but that's a whole, can't wait to debate him publicly on this. <laugh> cause he's cool. Um, but snowflake is on Amazon. Now. They say they're on Azure now. Cause they've got a bigger market and they're public, but ultimately without a AWS snowflake doesn't exist. And, and they're reimagining the data warehouse with the cloud, right? That's the billion dollar opportunity. It >>Is. It is. They both are very tight. So imagine what Frank has done at snowflake and Amazon. So if I'm a startup today, I want to build everything on Amazon where possible whatever is, I cannot build. I'll make the pass layer. Remember the middle layer pass will be snowflake so I can build it on snowflake. I can use them for data layer if I really need to size build it on force.com Salesforce. Yeah. Right. So I think that's where you'll see. So >>Basically the, if you're an entrepreneur, the, the north star in terms of the, the outcome is be a super cloud. >>It is, >>That's the application on another big CapEx ride, the CapEx of AWS or cloud, >>And that reduce your product development, your go to market and you get use the snowflake marketplace to drive your engagement. Yeah. >>Yeah. How are, how is Amazon and the clouds dealing with these big whales, the snowflakes of the world? I mean, I know they got a great relationship, uh, but snowflake now has to run a company they're public. Yeah. So, I mean, I'll say, I think they had Redshift. Amazon has got Redshift. Um, but Snowflake's a big customer in the, they're probably paying AWS, I think big bills too. So >>Joe on very good. Cause it's like how Netflix is and Amazon prime, right. Netflix runs on Amazon, but Amazon has Amazon prime that co-optation will be there. So Amazon will have Redshift, but Amazon is also partnering with, uh, snowflake to have native snowflake data warehouses or data layer. So I think depending on the application use case, you have to use each of the above. I think snowflake is here for a long term. Yeah. Yeah. So if I'm building an application, I want to use snowflake then writing from stats. >>Well, I think that it comes back down to entrepreneurial hustle. Do you have a better product? Right. Product value will ultimately determine it as long as the cloud doesn't, you know, foreclose, your, you that's right with some sort of internal hack. Uh, but I think, I think the general question that I have is that I, I think it's okay to have a super cloud like that because the rising tide is still happening at some point, when does the rising tide stop and do the people shopping up their knives, it gets more competitive or is it just an infinite growth? So >>I think it's growth. You call it cloud scale, you invented the word cloud scale. So I think look, cloud will continually agree, increase. I think there's as long as there more movement from on, uh, OnPrem to the classical data center, I think there's no reason at this point, the rumor, the old lift and shift that's happening in like my business. I see people lift and shifting from the it operations. It helpless, even the customer service service now and, uh, ticket data from BMCs CAS like Microfocus, all those workloads are shifted to the cloud, right? So cloud ticketing system is happening. Cloud system of record is happening. So I think this train has still a long way to go >>Made. I wanna get your thoughts for the folks watching that are, uh, enterprise buyers are practitioners, not suppliers to the more market, feel free to text me or DMing. The next question's really about the buying side, which is if I'm a customer, what's the current, um, appetite for startup products, cuz you know, the big enterprises now and you know, small, medium, large and large enterprise are all buying new companies cuz a startup can go from zero to relevant very quickly. So that means now enterprises are engaging heavily with startups. What's it like what's is there a change in order of magnitude of the relationship between the startup selling to, or growing startup selling to an enterprise? Um, have you seen changes there? I mean I'm seeing some stuff, but why don't get your thoughts on that? What, >>No, it is. If I growing by or 2007 or eight, when I used to talk to you back then and Amazon started very small, right? We are an Amazon summit here. So I think enterprises on the average used to spend nothing with startups. It's almost like 0% or 1% today. Most companies are already spending 20, 30% with startups. Like if I look at a CIO or line of business, it's gone. Yeah. Can it go more? I think it can in the next four, five years. Yeah. Spending on the startups. >>Yeah. And check out, uh, AWS startups.com. That's a site that we built for the startup community for buyers and startups. And I want to get your reaction because I reference the URL cause it's like, there's like a bunch of companies we've been promoting because the solutions that startups have actually are new stuff. Yes. It's bending, it's shifting for security or using data differently or um, building tools and platforms for data engineering. Right. Which is a new persona that's emerging. So you know, a lot of good resources there. Um, and goes back now to the data question. Now, getting back to your, what you're working on now is what's your thoughts around this new, um, data engineering persona, you mentioned AIOps, we've been seeing AIOps IOPS booming and that's creating a new developer paradigm that's right. Which we call coin data as code data as code is like infrastructure is code, but it's for data, right? It's developing with data, right? Retraining machine learnings, going back to the data lake, getting data to make, to do analysis, to make the machine learning better post event or post action. So this, this data engineers like an SRE for data, it's a new, scalable role we're seeing. Do you see the same thing? Do you agree? Um, do you disagree or can you share >>Yourself a lot of first is I see the AIOP solutions in the future should be not looking back. I need to be like we are in San Francisco bay. That means earthquake prediction. Right? I want AOPs to predict when the outages are gonna happen. When there's a performance issue. I don't think most AOPs vendors have not gone there yet. Like I spend a lot of time with data dog, Cisco app Dyna, right? Dynatrace, all this solution. We will go future towards predict to proactive solution with AOPs. But what you bring up a very good point on the data side. I think like we have a Amazon marketplace and Amazon for startup, there should be data exchange where you want to create for AOPs and AI service desk. Customers are give the data, share the data because we thought the data algorithms are useless. I can them, but I gotta train them, modify them, tweak them, make them >>Better, >>Make them better. Yeah. And I think their whole data exchange is the industry has not thought through something you and me talk many times. Yeah. Yeah. I think the whole, that area is very important. >>You've always been on, um, on the Vanguard of data because, uh, it's been really fun. Yeah. >>Going back to big data days back in 2009, you know, >>Look at, look how much data Rick has grown. >>It is. They doubled the >>Key cloud air kinda went private. So good stuff, man. What are you working on right now? Give a, give a, um, plug for what you're working on. You'll still investing. >>I do still invest, but look, I'm a hundred percent on ISRA right now. I'm the CEO there. Yeah. Okay. So right. ISRA is my number one baby right now. So I'm looking at that growing customers and my customers are some of them, you like it's zoom auto desk McAfee, uh, grand to so all the top customers, um, mainly for it help desk customer service. AIOps those are three product lines and going after enterprise and commercial deals. >>And when should someone buy your product? What's what's their need? What category is it? >>I think they look whenever somebody needs to buy the product is if you need AOP solution to predict, keep your lights on predict is one area. If you want to improve employee experience, you are using a slack teams and you want to automate all your workflows. That's another value problem. Third is customer service. You don't want to hire more people to do it. Some of the areas where you want to scale your company, grow your company, eliminate the cost customer service. >>Great stuff, man. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Congratulations on the success of your company and your investments. Thanks for coming on the cube. Okay. I'm John fur here at the cube live in San Francisco for day one of two days of coverage of Aish summit 2022. And we're gonna be at Aus summit in San, uh, in New York in the summer. So look for that on this calendar, of course go to eight of us, startups.com. I mentioned that it's decipher all the hot startups and of course the cube.net and Silicon angle.com. Thanks for watching. We'll be back more coverage after this short break. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone. This the cubes coverage here in San Francisco, California, a Davis summit, 2022, the beginning of the event season, as it comes back, little bit smaller footprint, a lot of hybrid events going on, but this is actually a physical event, a summit in new York's coming in the summer. We'll be there too with the cube on the set. We're getting back in the groove psych to be back. We were at reinvent, uh, as well, and we'll see more and more cube, but you're can see a lot of virtual cube outta hybrid cube. We wanna get all those conversations, try to get more interviews, more flow going. But right now I'm excited to have Corey Quinn here on the back on the cube chief cloud economists with bill group. He's the founder, uh, and chief content person always got great angles, fun comedy, authoritative Corey. Great to see you. Thank >>You. Thanks. Coming on. Sure is a lot of words to describe is shit posting, which is how I describe what I tend to do. Most days, >>Shit posting is an art form now. And if you look at mark, Andrew's been doing a lot of shit posting lately. All a billionaires are shit hosting, but they don't know how to do it. Like they're not >>Doing it right? So there's something opportunity there. It's like here's how to be even more obnoxious and incisive. It's honestly the most terrifying scenario for anyone is if I have that kind of budget to throw at my endeavors, it's like, I get excited with a nonsense I can do with a $20 gift card for an AWS credit compared to, oh well, if I could buy a midsize island, do begin doing this from, oh, then we're having fun. >>This shit posting trend. Interesting. I was watching a thread go on about, saw someone didn't get a job because of their shit posting and the employer didn't get it. And then someone on this side I'll hire the guy cuz I get that's highly intelligent shit posting. So for the audience that doesn't know what shit posting is, what is shit posting? >>It's more or less talking about the world of enter prize technology, which even that sentence is hard to finish without falling asleep and toppling out of my chair in front of everyone on the livestream. But it's doing it in such a way that brings it to life that says the quiet part. A lot of the audience is thinking, but generally doesn't say either because they're polite or not a jackass or more prosaically are worried about getting fired for better or worse. I don't don't have that particular constraint, >>Which is why people love you. So let's talk about what you, what you think is, uh, worthy and not worthy in the industry right now, obviously, uh, coupons coming up in Spain, which they're having a physical event, you see the growth of cloud native Amazon's of all the Adams, especially new CEO. Andy's move on to be the chief of all Amazon. Just so I'm the cover of was it time met magazine? Um, he's under a lot of stress. Amazon's changed. Invoice has changed. What's working. What's not, what's rising, what's falling. What's hot. What's not, >>It's easy to sit here and criticize almost anything. These folks do. They're they're effectively in a fishbowl, but I have trouble imagining the logistics. It takes to wind up handling the catering for a relatively downscale event like this one this year, let alone running a 1.7 million employee company having to balance all the competing challenges and pressures and the rest. I, I just can't fathom what it would be like to look at all of AWS. And it's, it's sprawling immense that dominates our entire industry and say, okay, this is a good start, but I, I wanna focus on something with a broader remit. What is that? How do you even get into that position? And you can't win once you're there. All you can do is hold onto the tiger and hope you don't get mold. >>Well, there's a lot of force for good conversations. Seeing a lot of that going on, Amazon's trying to port eight of us is trying to portray themselves as you know, the Pathfinder, you know, you're the pioneer, um, force for good. And I get that and I think that's a good angle as cloud goes mainstream. There's still the question of, we had a guy on just earlier, who was a skydiving instructor and we were joking about the early days of cloud. Like that was like skydiving, build a parachute open, you know, and now same kind of thing. As you move to edge, things are like reliable in some areas, but still new, new fringe, new areas. That's crazy. Well, >>Since the last time we've spoken, uh, Steve Schmidt is now the CISO for all of Amazon and his backfill replacement. The AWS CISO is CJ. Moses who as a hobby races, a as a semi-pro race car driver to my understanding, which either, I don't know what direction to take that in either. This is what he does to relax or ultimately, or ultimately it's. Huh? That, that certainly says something about risk assessment. I'm not entirely sure what, but okay. <laugh> either way, sounds like more exciting. Like I better >>Have a replacement ready <laugh> I, in case something goes wrong on the track, highly >>Available >>CSOs. I gotta say one of the things I do like in the recent trend is that the tech companies are getting into the formula one, which I was never a fan of until I watched that Netflix series. But when you look at the formula one, it's pretty cool. Cause it's got some tech angles, I get the whole data instrumentation thing, but the most coolest thing about formula one is they have these new rigs out. Yeah. Where you can actually race in east sports with other people in pure simulation of the race car. You gotta get the latest and videographic card, but it's basically a tricked out PC with amazing monitors and you have all the equipment of F1 and you're basically simulating racing. >>Oh, it's great too. And I can see the appeal of these tech companies getting into it because these things are basically rocket shifts. When those cars go, like they're sitting there, we can instrument every last part of what is going on inside that vehicle. And then AWS crops up. And we can bill on every one of those dimensions too. And it's like slow down their hasty pudding one step at a time. But I do see the appeal. >>So I gotta ask you about, uh, what's going on in your world. I know you have a lot of great success. We've been following you in the queue for many, many years. Got a great newsletter, check out Corey Quinn's newsletter, uh, screaming in the cloud program. Uh, you're on the cutting edge and you've got a great balance between really being snarky and, and, and really being delivering content. That's exciting, uh, for people, uh, with a little bit of an edge, um, how's that going? Uh, what's the blowback, any blowback late? Has there been uptick? What was, what are some of the things you're hearing from your audience, more Corey, more Corey. And then of course the, the PR team's calling you >>The weird thing about having an audience beyond a certain size is far and away as a landslide. The most common response I get is silence where it's high. I'm emailing an awful lot of people at last week in AWS every week and okay. They must not have heard me it. That is not actually true. People just generally don't respond to email because who responds to email newsletters. That sounds like something, a lunatic might do same story with response to live streams and podcasts. It's like, I'm gonna call into that am radio show and give them a piece of my mind. People generally don't do >>That. We should do that. Actually. I think you're people would call in, oh, >>I, I think >>I guarantee we had that right now. People would call in and say, Corey, what do you think about X? >>Yeah. It not, everyone understands the full context of what I do. And in fact, increasingly few people do and that's fine. I, I keep forgetting that sometimes people do not see what I'm doing in the same light that I do. And that's fine. Blowback has been largely minimal. Honestly, I am surprised about anything by how little I have gotten over the last five years of doing this, but it would be easier to dismiss me if I weren't generally. Right. When, okay, so you launch this new service and it seems pretty crappy to me cuz when I try and build something, it falls over and begs for help. And people might not like hearing that, but it's what customers are finding too. Yeah. I really am the voice of the >>Customer. You know, I always joke with Dave Alane about how John Fort's always at, uh, um, reinvent getting the interview with jazzy now, Andy we're there, you're there. And so we have these rituals at the events. It's all cool. Um, one of the rituals I like about your, um, your content is you like to get on the naming product names. Um, and, and, and, and, and kind of goof on that. Now why I like is because I used to work at ETT Packard where they used to name things as like engineers, HP 1 0, 0 5, or we can't call, we >>Have a new monitor. How are we gonna name it? Throw the wireless keyboard down the stairs again. And then there you go. Yeah. >>It's and the old joke at HP was if they, if they invented SU sushi, they'd say, yeah, we can't call sushi. It's cold, dead fish. That's what it is. And so the joke was cold. Dead fish is a better name than sushi. So you know is fun. So what's the, what are the, how's the Amazon doing in there? Have they changed their naming, uh, strategy, uh, on some of their, their >>Producting. So they're going in different directions. When they named Amazon Aurora, they decided to explore a new theme of Disney princesses as they go down those paths. And some things are more descriptive. Some people are clearly getting bonused on number of words, they can shove into it. Like the better a service is the longer it's name. Like AWS systems manager, session manager is a great one. I love the service ridiculous name. They have a systems manager, parameter store, which is great. They have secrets manager, which does the same thing. It's two words less, but that one costs money in a way that systems manage your parameter store does not. It's fun. >>What's your, what's your favorite combination of acronyms >>Combination >>Of gots. You got EMR, you got EC two, you got S3 SQS. Well, RedShift's not an acronym you >>Gets is one of my personal favorites because it's either elastic block store or elastic bean stock, depending entirely on the context of the conversation, they >>Shook up bean stock or is that still around? Oh, >>They never turn anything off. They're like the anti Google, Google turns things off while they're still building it. Whereas Amazon is like, well, we built this thing in 2005 and everyone hates it, but while we certainly can't change it, now it has three customers on it. John three <laugh>. Okay. Simple BV still haunts our dreams. >>I, I actually got an email on, I saw one of my, uh, servers, all these C twos were being deprecated and I got an email I'm I couldn't figure out. Why can you just like roll it over? Why, why are you telling me? Just like, give me something else. All right. Okay. So let me talk about, uh, the other things I want to ask you, is that like, okay. So as Amazon better in some areas where do they need more work in your opinion? Because obviously they're all interested in new stuff and they tend to like put it out there for their end to end customers. But then they've got ecosystem partners who actually have the same product. Yes. And, and this has been well documented. So it's, it's not controversial. It's just that Amazon's got a database Snowflake's got out database service. So Redshift, snowflake data breach is out there. So you got this co-op petition. Yes. How's that going? And what do you hearing about the reaction to any of that stuff? >>Depends on who you ask. They love to basically trot out a bunch of their partners who will say nice things about them. And it very much has heirs of, let's be honest, a hostage video, but okay. Cuz these companies do partner with, and they cannot afford to rock the boat too far. I'm not partnered with anyone. I can say what I want. And they're basically restricted to taking away my birthday at worse so I can live with that. >>All right. So I gotta ask about multicloud. Cause obviously the other cloud shows are coming up. Amazon hated that word multicloud. Um, a lot of people though saying, you know, it's not a real good marketing word. Like multicloud sounds like, you know, root canal. Mm-hmm <affirmative> right. So is there a better description for multicloud? >>Multiple single >>Cloudant loves that term. Yeah. >>You know, you're building in multiple single points of failure, do it for the right reasons or don't do it as a default. I believe not doing it is probably the right answer. However, and if I were, if I were Amazon, I wouldn't want to talk about my multi-cloud either as the industry leader, let's talk about other clouds, bad direction to go in from a market cap perspective. It doesn't end well for you, but regardless of what they want to talk about, or don't want to talk about what they say, what they don't say, I tune all of it out. And I look at what customers are doing and multi-cloud exists in a variety of forms. Some brilliant, some brain dead. It depends a lot on, but my general response is when someone gets on stage from a company and tells me to do a thing that directly benefits their company. I am skeptical at best. Yeah. When customers get on stage and say, this is what we're doing because it solves problems. That's when I shut up and listen. >>Yeah, course. Awesome. Corey, I gotta ask you a question cause I know you we've been, you know, fellow journeyman and the, and the cloud journey going to all the events and then the pandemic hit. We now in the third year, who knows what it's gonna gonna end. Certainly events are gonna look different. They're gonna be either changing footprint with the virtual piece, new group formations. Community's gonna emerge. You've got a pretty big community growing and it's growing like crazy. What's the weirdest or coolest thing or just big changes you've seen with the pandemic, uh, from your perspective, cuz you've been in the you're in the middle of the whitewater rafting. You've seen the events you circle offline. You saw the online piece, come in, you're commentating, you're calling balls and strikes in the industry. You got a great team developing over there. Duck build group. What's the big aha moment that you saw with the pandemic. Weird, funny, serious, real in the industry and with customers what's >>Accessibility. Reinvent is a great example. When in the before times it's open to anyone who wants to attend, who can pony up two grand and a week in Las Vegas and get to Las Vegas from wherever they happen to be by moving virtually suddenly it, it embraces the reality that talent is evenly. Distributed. Opportunity is not. And that means that suddenly these things are accessible to a wide swath of audience and potential customer base and the rest that hadn't been invited to the table previously, it's imperative that we not lose that. It's nice to go out and talk to people and have people come up and try and smell my hair from time to time, I smelled delightful. Let me assure you. But it was, but it's also nice to be. >>I have a product for you if you want, you know? Oh, >>Oh excellent. I look forward to it. What is it? Pudding? Why not? <laugh> >>What else have you seen? So when accessibility for talent. Yes. Which by the way is totally home run. What weird things have happened that you've seen? Um, that's >>Uh, it's, it's weird, but it's good that an awful lot of people giving presentation have learned to tighten their message and get to the damn point because most people are not gonna get up from a front row seat in a conference hall, midway through your Aing talk and go somewhere else. But they will change a browser tab and you won't get them back. You've gotta be on point. You've gotta be compelling if it's going to be a virtual discussion. Yeah. >>And you turn off your iMessage too. >>Oh yes. It's always fun in the, in the meetings when you're ho to someone and their colleague is messaging them about, should we tell 'em about this? And I'm sitting there reading it and it's >>This guy is really weird. Like, >>Yes I am and I bring it into the conversation and then everyone's uncomfortable. It goes, wow. Why >>Not? I love when my wife yells at me over I message. When I'm on a business call, like, do you wanna take that about no, I'm good. >>No, no. It's better off. I don't the only entire sure. It's >>Fine. My kids text. Yeah, it's fine. Again, that's another weird thing. And, and then group behavior is weird. Now people are looking at, um, communities differently. Yes. Very much so, because if you're fatigued on content, people are looking for the personal aspect. You're starting to see much more of like yeah. Another virtual event. They gotta get better. One and two who's there. >>Yeah. >>The person >>That's a big part of it too is the human stories are what are being more and more interesting. Don't get up here and tell me about your product and how brilliant you are and how you built it. That's great. If I'm you, or if I wanna work with you or I want to compete with you or I want to put on my engineering hat and build it myself. Cause why would I buy anything? That's more than $8. But instead, tell me about the problem. Tell me about the painful spot that you specialize in. Yeah. Tell me a story there. >>I, I think >>That gets a glimpse in a hook and makes >>More, more, I think you nailed it. Scaling storytelling. Yes. And access to better people because they don't have to be there in person. I just did a thing. I never, we never would've done the queue. We did. Uh, Amazon stepped up in sponsors. Thank you, Amazon for sponsoring international women's day, we did 30 interviews, APAC. We did five regions and I interviewed this, these women in Asia, Pacific eight, PJ, they call for in this world. And they're amazing. I never would've done those interviews cuz I never, would've seen 'em at an event. I never would've been in pan or Singapore, uh, to access them. And now they're in the index, they're in the network. They're collaborating on LinkedIn. So a threads are developing around connections that I've never seen before. Yes. Around the content. >>Absolutely >>Content value plus and >>Effecting. And that is the next big revelation of this industry is going to realize you have different companies. And, and I Amazon's case different service teams all competing with each other, but you have the container group and you have the database group and you have the message cuing group. But customers don't really want to build things from spare parts. They want a solution to a problem. I want to build an app that does Twitter for pets or whatever it is I'm trying to do. I don't wanna basically have to pick and choose and fill my shopping cart with all these different things. I want something that's gonna basically give me what I'm trying to get as close to turnkey as possible. Moving up the stack. That is the future. And just how it gets here is gonna be >>Well we're here at Corey Quinn, the master of the master of content here in the a ecosystem. Of course we we've been following up from the beginning. His great guy, check out his blog, his site, his newsletter screaming podcast. Corey, final question for, uh, what are you here doing? What's on your agenda this week in San Francisco and give a plug for the duck build group. What are you guys doing? I know you're hiring some people what's on the table for the company. What's your focus this week and put a plug in for the group. >>I'm here as a customer and basically getting outta my cage cuz I do live here. It's nice to actually get out and talk to folks who are doing interesting things at the duck bill group. We solved one problem. We fixed the horrifying AWS bill, both from engineering and architecture, advising as well as negotiating AWS contracts because it turns out those things are big and complicated. And of course my side media projects last week in aws.com, we are, it it's more or less a content operation where I in my continual and ongoing love affair with the sound of my own voice. >><laugh> and you're good. It's good content it's on, on point fun, Starky and relevant. So thanks for coming to the cube and sharing with us. Appreciate it. No >>Thank you button. >>You. Okay. This the cube covers here in San Francisco, California, the cube is back going to events. These are the summits, Amazon web services summits. They happen all over the world. We'll be in New York and obviously we're here in San Francisco this week. I'm John fur. Keep, keep it right here. We'll be back with more coverage after this short break. Okay. Welcome back everyone. This's the cubes covers here in San Francisco, California, we're live on the show floor of AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for host of the cube and remember AWS summit in New York city coming up this summer, we'll be there as well. And of course reinvent the end of the year for all the cube coverage on cloud computing and AWS two great guests here from the APN global APN Sege chef Jenko and Jeff Grimes partner lead Jeff and Sege is doing partnerships global APN >>AWS global startup program. Yeah. >>Okay. Say that again. >>AWS. We'll start >>Program. That's the official name. >>I love >>It too long, too long for me. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, >>Of course. >>Appreciate it. Tell us about what's going on with you guys. What's the, how was you guys organized? You guys we're obviously we're in San Francisco bay area, Silicon valley, zillions of startups here, New York. It's got another one we're gonna be at tons of startups. A lot of 'em getting funded, big growth and cloud big growth and data secure hot in all sectors. >>Absolutely. >>So maybe, maybe we could just start with the global startup program. Um, it's essentially a white glove service that we provide to startups that are built on AWS. And the intention there is to help identify use cases that are being built on top of AWS. And for these startups, we want to pro vibe white glove support in co building products together. Right. Um, co-marketing and co-selling essentially, um, you know, the use cases that our customers need solved, um, that either they don't want to build themselves or are perhaps more innovative. Um, so the, a AWS global startup program provides white glove support. Dedicat at headcount for each one of those pillars. Um, and within our program, we've also provided incentives, programs go to market activities like the AWS startup showcase that we've built for these startups. >>Yeah. By the way, AWS startup, AWS startups.com is the URL, check it out. Okay. So partnerships are key. Jeff, what's your role? >>Yeah. So I'm responsible for leading the overall effort for the AWS global startup program. Um, so I've got a team of partner managers that are located throughout the us, uh, managing a few hundred startup ISVs right now. <laugh> >>Yeah, you got a >>Lot. We've got a lot. >>There's a lot. I gotta, I gotta ask a tough question. Okay. I'm I'm a startup founder. I got a team. I just got my series a we're grown. I'm trying to hire people. I'm super busy. What's in it for me. Yeah. What do you guys bring to the table? I love the white glove service, but translate that what's in it for what do I get out of it? What's >>A story. Good question. I focus, I think. Yeah, because we get, we get to see a lot of partners building their businesses on AWS. So, you know, from our perspective, helping these partners focus on what, what do we truly need to build by working backwards from customer feedback, right? How do we effectively go to market? Because we've seen startups do various things, um, through trial and error, um, and also just messaging, right? Because oftentimes partners or rather startups, um, try to boil the ocean with many different use cases. So we really help them, um, sort of laser focus on what are you really good at and how can we bring that to the customer as quickly as possible? >>Yeah. I mean, it's truly about helping that founder accelerate the growth of their company, right. And there's a lot that you can do with AWS, but focus is truly the key word there because they're gonna be able to find their little piece of real estate and absolutely deliver incredible outcomes for our customers. And then they can start their growth curve there. >>What are some of the coolest things you've seen with the APN that you can share publicly? I know you got a lot going on there, a lot of confidentiality. Um, but you know, we're here a lot of great partners on the floor here. I'm glad we're back at events. Uh, a lot of stuff going on digitally with virtual stuff and, and hybrid. What are some of the cool things you guys have seen in the APN that you can point to? >>Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can point to few, you can take them. So, um, I think what's been fun over the years for me personally, I came from a startup brand sales at an early stage startup and, and I went through the whole thing. So I have a deep appreciation for what these guys are going through. And what's been interesting to see for me is taking some of these early stage guys, watching them progress, go public, get acquired and see that big day mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, and being able to point to very specific items that we help them to get to that point. Uh, and it's just a really fun journey to watch. >>Yeah. I, and part of the reason why I really, um, love working at the AWS, uh, global startup program is working with passionate founders. Um, I just met with a founder today that it's gonna, he's gonna build a very big business one day, um, and watching them grow through these stages and supporting that growth. Um, I like to think of our program as a catalyst for enterprise is sort of scale. Yeah. Um, and through that we provide visibility, credibility and growth opportunities. >>Yeah. A lot, a lot of partners too. What I found talking to staff founders is when they have that milestone, they work so hard for it. Whether it's a B round C round Republic or get bought. Yeah. Um, then they take a deep breath and they look back at wow, what a journey it's been. So it's kind of emotional for sure. But still it's a grind. Right? You gotta, I mean, when you get funding, it's still day one. You don't stop. It's no celebrate, you got a big round or valuation. You still gotta execute >>And look it's hypercompetitive and it's brutally difficult. And our job is to try to make that a little less difficult and navigate those waters. Right. Where ever everyone's going after similar things. >>Yeah. And I think as a group element too, I observe that startups that I, I meet through the APN has been interesting because they feel part of AWS. Yeah, totally. As a group of community, as a vibe there. Um, I know they're hustling, they're trying to make things happen. But at the same time, Amazon throws a huge halo effect. I mean, that's a huge factor. I mean, you guys are the number one cloud in the business, the growth in every sector is booming. Yeah. And if you're a startup, you don't have that luxury yet. And look at companies like snowflake that built on top of AWS. I mean, people are winning by building on AWS. >>Yeah. And our, our, our program really validates their technology first. So we have, what's all the foundation's technical review that we put all of our startups through before we go to market. So that when enterprise customers are looking at startup technology, they know that it's already been vetted. And, um, to take that a step further and help these partners differentiate, we use programs like the competency programs, the DevOps competencies, the security competency, which continues to help, um, provide sort of a platform for these startups, help them differentiate. And also there's go to market benefits that are associated with that. >>Okay. So let me ask the, the question that's probably on everyone's mind, who's watching, certainly I asked this a lot. There's a lot of companies startups out there who makes the cut, is there a criteria cut? It's not like it's sports team or anything, but like sure. Like there's activate program, which is like, there's hundreds of thousands of startups out there. Not everyone is at the APN. Right? Correct. So ISVs again, that's a whole nother, that's a more mature partner that might have, you know, huge market cap or growth. How, how do you guys focus? How do you guys focus? I mean, you got a good question, you know, thousand flowers blooming all the time. Is there a new way you guys are looking at it? I know there's been some talk about restructure or, or new focus. What's the focus. >>Yeah. It's definitely not an easy task by any means. Um, but you know, I recently took over this role and we're really trying to establish focus areas, right. So obviously a lot of the ISVs that we look after are infrastructure ISVs. That's what we do. Uh, and so we have very specific pods that look after different type of partners. So we've got a security pod, we've got a DevOps pod, we've got core infrastructure, et cetera. And really, we're trying to find these ISVs that can solve, uh, really interesting AWS customer. >>You guys have a deliberate, uh, focus on these pillars. So what infrastructure, >>Security, DevOps, and data and analytics, and then line of business >>Line, business line business, like web >>Marketing, business apps, >>Owner type thing. Exactly. >>Yeah, exactly. >>So solutions there. Yeah. More solutions and the other ones are like hardcore. So infrastructure as well, like storage back up ransomware kind of stuff, or, >>Uh, storage, networking. >>Okay. Yeah. The classic >>Database, et cetera. Right. >>And so there's teams on each pillar. >>Yep. So I think what's, what's fascinating for the startups that we cover is that they've got, they truly have support from a build market sell perspective, right. So you've got someone who's technical to really help them get the technology, figured out someone to help them get the marketing message dialed and spread, and then someone to actually do the co-sell, uh, day to day activities to help them get in front of customers. >>Probably the number one request that we always ask for Amazon is can wish that sock report, oh, download it on the console, which we use all the time. <laugh> exactly. But security's a big deal. I mean, you know, ask the res are evolving, that role of DevOps is taking on dev SecOps. Um, I, I can see a lot of customers having that need for a relationship to move things faster. Do you guys provide like escalation or is that a part of a service or that not part of, uh, uh, >>Yeah, >>So the partner development manager can be an escalation for absolutely. Think of that. 'em as an extension of your business inside of AWS. >>Great. And you guys, how is that partner managers, uh, measure >>On those three pillars? Right. Got it. Are we billing, building valuable use cases? So product development go to market, so go to market activities, think blog, posts, webinars, case studies, so on and so forth. And then co-sell not only are we helping these partners win their current opportunities that they are sourcing, but can we also help them source net new deals? Yeah. Right. That's very, >>I mean, top asked from the partners is get me in front of customers. Right. Um, not an easy task, but that's a huge goal of ours to help them grow their top line. >>Right. Yeah. In fact, we had some interviews here on the cube earlier talking about that dynamic of how enterprise customers are buying. And it's interesting, a lot more POCs. I have one partner here that you guys work with, um, on observability, they got a huge POC with capital one mm-hmm <affirmative> and the enterprises are engaging the star ups and bringing them in. So the combination of open source software enterprises are leaning into that hard and bringing young growing startups in mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yep. So I could see that as a huge service that you guys can bring people in. >>Right. And they're bringing massively differentiated technology to the table. The challenge is they just might not have the brand recognition. The, at the big guys have mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so that's, our job is how do you get that great tech in front of the right situations? >>Okay. So my next question is about the show here, and then we'll talk globally. So here in San Francisco sure. You know, Silicon valley bay area, San Francisco bay area, a lot of startups, a lot of VCs, a lot of action. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so probably a big market for you guys. Yeah. So what's exciting here in SF. And then outside of SF, you guys have a global pro, have you see any trends that are geography based or is it sure areas more mature? There's certain regions that are better. I mean, I just interviewed a company here. That's doing, uh, a AWS edge really well in these cases. It's interesting that these, the partners are filling a lot of holes and gaps in the opportunities with a AWS. So what's exciting here. And then what's the global perspective. >>Yeah, totally. So obviously see a ton of partners from the bay area that we support. Um, but we're seeing a lot of really interesting technology come out of AMEA specifically. Yeah. Uh, and making a lot of noise here in the United States, which is great. Um, and so, you know, we definitely have that global presence and, and starting to see super differentiated technology come out of those regions. >>Yeah. Especially Tel Aviv. Yeah. >>Amy and real quick before you get into surge. It's interesting. The VC market in, in Europe is hot. They've got a lot of unicorns coming in. We've seen a lot of companies coming in. They're kind of rattling their own, you know, cage right now. Hey, look at us. Let's see if they crash, you know, but we don't see that happening. I mean, people have been predicting a crash now in, in the startup ecosystem for least a year. It's not crashing. In fact, funding's up. >>Yeah. The pandemic was hard on a lot of startups for sure. Yeah. Um, but what we've seen is many of these startups, they, as quickly as they can grow, they can also pivot as, as, as well. Um, and so I've actually seen many of our startups grow through the demo because their use cases are helping customers either save money, become more operationally efficient and provide value to leadership teams that need more visibility into their infrastructure during a pandemic. >>It's an interesting point. I talked to Andy jazzy and Adam Celski both say the same thing during the pandemic. Necessity's the mother of all invention. Yep. And startups can move fast. So with that, you guys are there to assist if I'm a startup and I gotta pivot cuz remember iterate and pivot, iterate and pivot. So you get your economics, that's the playbook of the ventures and the models. >>Exactly. How >>Do you guys help me do that? Give me an example of what me through. Pretend me, I'm a start up. Hey, I'm on the cloud. Oh my God. Pandemic. They need video conferencing. Hey cube. Yeah. What do I need? Search? What, what do >>I do? That's a good question. First thing is just listen. Yeah. I think what we have to do is a really good job of listening to the partner. Um, what are their needs? What is their problem statement? Where do they want to go at the end of the day? Um, and oftentimes because we've worked with, so how many successful startups that have come out of our program, we have, um, either through intuition or a playbook determined what is gonna be the best path forward and how do we get these partners to stop focusing on things that will eventually, um, just be a waste of time. Yeah. And, or not provide, or, you know, bring any fruit to the table, which, you know, essentially revenue. >>Well, we love startups here in the cube because one, um, they have good stories, they're oil and cutting edge, always pushing the envelope and they're kind of disrupting someone else. Yeah. And so they, they have an opinion. They don't mind sharing on camera. So love talking to startups. We love working with you guys on our startups. Showcases startups.com. Check out AWS startups.com and she got the showcase. So is, uh, final word. I'll give you guys the last word. What's the bottom line bumper sticker for AP globe. The global APN program summarize the opportunity for startups, what you guys bring to the table and we'll close it out. Totally. We'll start >>With you. Yeah. I think the AWS global startup programs here to help companies truly accelerate their business full stop. Right. And that's what we're here for. Love it. >>It's a good way to, it's a good way to put it. Dato yeah. >>All right. Thanks for coming out. Thanks John. Great to see you love working with you guys. Hey, startups need help. And the growing and huge market opportunities, the shift cloud scale data engineering, security infrastructure, all the markets are exploding in growth because of the digital transformation of realities here, open source and cloud. I'll making it happen here in the cube in San Francisco, California. I'm John furrier, your host. Thanks for >>Watching Cisco, John. >>Hello and welcome back to the Cube's live coverage here in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for host of the cube. Uh, two days of coverage, AWS summit, 2022 in New York city coming up this summer will be there as well. Events are back. The cube is back of course, with the cube virtual cube hybrid, the cube.net. Check it out a lot of content this year more than ever a lot more cloud data cloud native, modern applic is all happening. Got a great guest here. Jeremy Burton, Cub alumni, uh, CEO of observe Inc in the middle of all the cloud scale, big data observability, Jeremy. Great to see you. Thanks. >>Coming on. Always great to come and talk to you on the queue, man. It's been been a few years, so, >>Um, well you, you got your hands. You're in the trenches with great startup, uh, good funding, great board, great people involved in the observability Smith hot area, but also you've been a senior executive president of Dell EMC. Um, 11 years ago you had a vision and you actually had an event called cloud meets big data. Um, yeah. And it's here, you predicted it 11 years ago. Um, look around it's cloud meets big data. >>Yeah. I mean the, the cloud thing I think, you know, was, was probably already a thing, but the big data thing I do claim credit for, for sort of catching that bus early, um, you know, we, we were on the, the, the bus early and, and I think it was only inevitable. Like, you know, if you could bring the economics and the compute of cloud to big data, you, you could find out things you could never possibly imagine. >>So you're close to a lot of companies that we've been covering deeply snowflake, obviously you involved, uh, at the board level, the other found, you know, the people there, uh, cloud, you know, Amazon, you know, what's going on here? Yeah. You're doing a startup as the CEO at the helm, uh, chief of observ, Inc, which is an observability, which is to me in the center of this confluence of data engineering, large scale integrations, um, data as code integrating into applications. I mean, it's a whole nother world developing, like you see with snowflake, it means snowflakes is super cloud as we call it. So a whole nother wave is here. What's your, what's this wave we're on what's how would you describe the wave? >>Well, a couple of things, I mean, people are, I think right in more software than, than ever before are why? Because they've realized that if, if you don't take your business online and offer a service, then you become largely irrelevant. And so you you've got a whole set of new applications. I think, I think more applications now than any point. Um, not, not just ever, but the mid nineties, I always looked at as the golden age of application development. Now, back then people were building for windows. Well, well now they're building for things like AWS is now the platform. Um, so you've got all of that going on. And then at the same time, the, the side effect of these applications is they generate data and lots of data. And the, you know, there's sort of the transactions, you know, what you bought today are something like that. But then there's what we do, which is all the telemetry, all the exhaust fumes. And I think people really are realizing that their differentiation is not so much their application. It's their understanding of the data. Can, can I understand who my best customers are, what I sell today. If people came to my website and didn't buy, then why not? Where did they drop off all of that? They wanna analyze. And, and the answers are all in the data. The question is, can you understand it >>In our last startup showcase, we featured data as code one of the insights that we got out of that, and I wanna get your opinion on our reaction to is, is that data used to be put into a data lake and turns into a data swamp or throw into the data warehouse. And then we'll do some queries, maybe a report once in a while. And so data, once it was done, unless it was real time, even real time was not good anymore after real time. That was the old way. Now you're seeing more and more, uh, effort to say, let's go look at the data, cuz now machine learning is getting better. Not just train once mm-hmm <affirmative> they're iterating. Yeah. This notion of iterating and then pivoting, iterating and pivoting. Yeah, that's a Silicon valley story. That's like how startups work, but now you're seeing data being treated the same way. So now you have another, this data concept that's now yeah. Part of a new way to create more value for the apps. So this whole, this whole new cycle of >>Yeah. >>Data being reused and repurposed and figured out and yeah, >>Yeah. I'm a big fan of, um, years ago. Uh, uh, just an amazing guy, Andy McAfee at the MIT C cell labs I spent time with and he, he had this line, which still sticks to me this day, which is look I'm I'm. He said I'm part of a body, which believes that everything is a matter of data. Like if you have enough data, you can answer any question. And, and this is going back 10 years when he was saying these kind of things and, and certainly, you know, research is on the forefront. But I think, you know, starting to see that mindset of the, the sort of MIT research be mainstream, you know, in enterprises, they they're realizing that. Yeah, it is about the data. You know, if I can better understand my data better than my competitor, then I've got an advantage. And so the question is is, is how, what, what technologies and what skills do I need in my organization to, to allow me to do that. >>So let's talk about observing you the CEO of, okay. Given you've seen the ways before you're in the front lines of observability, which again is in the center of all this action what's going on with the company. Give a quick minute to explain, observe for the folks who don't know what you guys do. What's the company doing? What's the funding status, what's the product status and what's the customer status. Yeah. >>So, um, we realized, you know, a handful of years ago, let's say five years ago that, um, look, the way people are building applications is different. They they're way more functional. They change every day. Uh, but in some respects they're a lot more complicated. They're distributed. They, you know, microservices architectures and when something goes wrong, um, the old way of troubleshooting and solving problems was not gonna fly because you had SA so much change going into production on a daily basis. It was hard to tell like where the problem was. And so we thought, okay, it's about time. Somebody looks at the exhaust fumes from this application and all the telemetry data and helps people troubleshoot and make sense of the problems that they're seeing. So, I mean, that's observability, it's actually a term that goes back to the 1960s. It was a guy called, uh, Rudolph like, like everything in tech, you know, it's, it's a reinvention of something from years gone by. >>Um, there's a guy called, um, Rudy Coleman in 1960s coiner term and, and, and the term was being able to determine the state of a system by looking at its external outputs. And so we've been going on this for, uh, the best part of four years now. Um, it took us three years just to build the product. I think, I think what people don't appreciate these days often is the barrier to entry in a lot of these markets is quite high. You, you need a lot of functionality to have something that's credible with a customer. Um, so yeah, this last year we, we, we did our first year selling, uh, we've got about 40 customers now. Um, we just we've got great investors for the hill ventures. Uh, I mean, Mike SP who was, you know, the, the guy who was the, really, the first guy in it snowflake and the, the initial investor were fortunate enough to, to have Mike and our board. And, um, you know, part of the observed story is closely knit with snowflake all of that time with your data, you know, we, we store in there. >>So I want to get, uh, yeah. Pivot to that. Mike SP snowflake, Jeremy Burton, the cube kind of, kind of same thinking this idea of a super cloud or what snowflake became. Yeah. Snowflake is massively successful on top of AWS. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and now you're seeing startups and companies build on top of snowflake. Yeah. So that's become an entrepreneurial story that we think that to go big in the cloud, you can have a cloud on a cloud, uh, like as Jerry, Jerry Chan and Greylock calls it, castles in the cloud where there are moats in the cloud. So you're close to it. I know you, you're doing some stuff with snowflake. So as a startup, what's your view on building on top of say a snowflake or an AWS, because again, you gotta go where the data is. You need all the data. >>Yeah. So >>What's your take on that? I mean, >>Having enough gray hair now, um, you know, again, in tech, I think if you wanna predict the future, look at the past. And, uh, you know, 20 years ago, 25 years ago, I was at a, a smaller company called Oracle and an Oracle was the database company. And, uh, their, their ambition was to manage all of the world's transactional data. And they built on a platform or a couple of platforms, one, one windows, and the other main one was Solaris. And so at that time, the operating system was the platform. And, and then that was the, you know, ecosystem that you would compete on top of. And then there were companies like SAP that built applications on top of Oracle. So then wind the clock forward 25 years gray hairs. <laugh> the platform, isn't the operating system anymore. The platform is AWS, you know, Google cloud. I gotta probably look around if I say that in. Yeah, >>It's okay. Columbia, but hyperscale. Yeah. CapX built out >>That is the new platform. And then snowflake comes along. Well, their aspiration is to manage all of the, not just human generated data, but machine generated data in the world of cloud. And I think they they've done an amazing job are doing for the, I'd say, say the, the big data world, what Oracle did for the relational data world, you know, way back 25 years ago. And then there are folks like us come along and, and of course my ambition would be, look, if, if we can be as successful as an SAP building on top of snowflake, uh, as, as they were on top of Oracle, then, then we'd probably be quite happy, >>Happy. So you're building on top of snowflake, >>We're building on top of snowflake a hundred percent. And, um, you know, I've had folks say to me, well, aren't you worried about that? Isn't that a risk? It's like, well, that that's a risk. You're >>Still on the board. >>Yeah. I'm still on the board. Yeah. That's a risk I'm prepared to take. I am more on snowing. >>It sounds well, you're in a good spot. Stay on the board, then you'll know what's going on. Okay. No, yeah. Serious one. But the, this is a real dynamic. It is. It's not a one off its >>Well, and I do believe as well that the platform that you see now with AWS, if you look at the revenues of AWS is in order of magnitude, more than Microsoft was 25 years ago with windows mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so I've believe the opportunity for folks like snowflake and, and folks like observe it. It's an order of magnitude more than it was for the Oracle and the SAPs of the old world. >>Yeah. And I think this is really, I think this is something that this next generation of entrepreneurship is the go big scenario is you gotta be on a platform. Yeah. >>It's quite easy >>Or be the platform, but it's hard. There's only like how seats were at that table left >>Well value migrates up over time. So, you know, when the cloud thing got going, there were probably 10, 20, 30, you know, rack space and there's 1,000,001 infrastructure, a service platform as a service. My, my old, uh, um, employee EMC, we had pivotal, you know, pivotal was a platform as a service. Don't hear so much about it these days, but initially there's a lot of players and then it consolidates. And then to, to like extract, uh, a real business, you gotta move up, you gotta add value, you gotta build databases, then you gotta build applications. So >>It's interesting. Moving from the data center of the cloud was a dream for starters within if the provision, the CapEx. Yeah. Now the CapEx is in the cloud. Then you build on, on top of that, you got snowflake. Now you got on top of that. >>The assumption is almost that compute and storage is free. I know it's not quite free. Yeah. It's almost free, but you can, you know, as an application vendor, you think, well, what can I do if I assume compute and storage is free, that's the mindset you've gotta get >>Into. And I think the platform enablement to value. So if I'm an entrepreneur, I'm gonna get a series us multiple of value in what I'm paying. Yeah. Most people don't even blanket their Avis pills unless they're like massively huge. Yeah. Then it's a repatriation question or whatever discount question, but for most startups or any growing company, the Amazon bill should be a small factor. >>Yeah. I mean, a lot of people, um, ask me, uh, like, look you build in on snowflake. Um, you, you know, you, you, you're gonna be, you're gonna be paying their money. How, how, how, how does that work with your business model? If you're paying their money, you know, do, do you have a viable business? And it's like, well, okay. I, we could build a database as well and observe, but then I've got half the development team working on something that will never be as good as snowflake. And so we made the call early on that. No, no, we, we want a eight above the database. Yeah. Right. Snowflake are doing a great job of innovating on the database and, and the same is true of something like Amazon, like, like snowflake could have built their own cloud and their own platform, but they didn't. >>Yeah. And what's interesting is that Dave <inaudible> and I have been pointing this out and he's obviously a more on snowflake. I've been looking at data bricks, um, and the same dynamics happening, the proof is the ecosystem. Yeah. I mean, if you look at Snowflake's ecosystem right now and data bricks it's exploding. Right. I mean, the shows are selling out the floor. Space's book. That's the old days at VMware. Yeah. The old days at AWS. >>Well, and for snowflake and, and any platform from VI, it's a beautiful thing because, you know, we build on snowflake and we pay them money. They don't have to sell to us. Right. And we do a lot of the support. And so the, the economics work out really, really well. If you're a platform provider and you've got a lot of >>Ecosystems. Yeah. And then also you get, you get a, um, a trajectory of, uh, economies of scale with the institutional knowledge of snowflake integrations, right. New product, you're scaling a step function with them. >>Yeah. I mean, we manage 10 petabytes of data right now. Right. When I, when I, when I arrived at EMC in 2010, we had, we had one petabyte customer. And, and so at observe, we've been only selling the product for a year. We have 10 petabytes of data under management. And so been able to rely on a platform that can manage that is inve >>You know, well, Jeremy great conversation. Thanks for sharing your insights on the industry. Uh, we got a couple minutes left, um, put a plug in for observe. What do you guys know? You got some good funding, great partners. I don't know if you can talk about your, your, your POC customers, but you got a lot of high ends folks that are working with you. You getting in traction. >>Yeah. Yeah. Scales >>Around the corner. Sounds like, are you, is that where you are scale? >>We've got a big that that's when coming up in two or three weeks, we've got, we've got new funding, um, which is always great. Um, the product is, uh, really, really close. I think, as a startup, you always strive for market fit, you know, which is at which point can you just start hiring salespeople? And the revenue keeps going. We're getting pretty close to that right now. Um, we've got about 40 SaaS companies that run on the platform. They're almost all AWS Kubernetes, uh, which is our sweet spot to begin with, but we're starting to get some really interesting, um, enterprise type customers. We're, we're, you know, F five networks we're POC in right now with capital one, we got some interest in news around capital one coming up. I, I can't share too much, but it's gonna be exciting. And, and like I said, so hill continue to, to, >>I think capital one's a big snowflake customer as well. Right. >>They were early in one of the things that attracted me to capital one was they were very, very good with snowflake early on. And, and they put snowflake in a position in the bank where they thought that snowflake could be successful. And, and today that, that is one of Snowflake's biggest accounts, >>Capital, one, very innovative cloud, obviously Atos customer, and very innovative, certainly in the CISO and CIO, um, on another point on where you're at. So you're, Prescale meaning you're about to scale, >>Right? >>So you got POCs, what's that trajectory look like? Can you see around the corner? What's, what's going on? What's on, around the corner. That you're, that you're gonna hit this straight and narrow and, and gas it fast. >>Yeah. I mean, the, the, the, the key thing for us is we gotta get the product. Right. Um, the nice thing about having a guy like Mike Pfizer on the board is he doesn't obsess about revenue at this stage. His questions that the board are always about, like is the product, right? Is the product right? Is the product right? Have you got the product right? And cuz we know when the product's right, we can then scale the sales team and, and the revenue will take care of itself. Yeah. So right now all the attention is on the product. Um, the, this year, the exciting thing is we we're, we're adding all the tracing visualizations. So people will be able to the kind of things that by in the day you could do with the new relics and AppDynamics, the last generation of, of APM tools, you're gonna be able to do that within observe. And we've already got the logs and the metrics capability in there. So for us this year is a big one, cuz we sort of complete the trifecta, you know, the, the >>Logs, what's the secret sauce observe. What if you had the, put it into a, a, a sentence what's the secret sauce? >>I, I, I think, you know, an amazing founding engineering team, uh, number one, I mean, at the end of the day, you have to build an amazing product and you have to solve a problem in a different way. And we've got great long term investors and, and the biggest thing our investors give is it actually, it's not just money. It gives us time to get the product, right. Because if we get the product right, then we can get the growth. >>Got it. Final question. While I got you here, you've been on the enterprise business for a long time. What's the buyer landscape out there. You got people doing POCs on capital one scale. So we know that goes on. What's the appetite at the buyer side for startups and what are their requirements that you're seeing? Uh, obviously we're seeing people go in and dip into the startup pool because new ways to refactor their, this restructure. So, so a lot of happening in cloud, what's the criteria. How are enterprises engaging in with startups? >>Yeah. I mean, enterprises, they know they've gotta spend money transforming the business. I mean, this was, I almost feel like my old Dell or EMC self there, but, um, what, what we were saying five years ago is happening. Um, everybody needs to figure out a way to take their business to this digital world. Everybody has to do it. So the nice thing from a startup standpoint is they know at times they need to risk or, or take a bet on new technology in order to, to help them do that. So I think you've got buyers that a have money, uh, B it prepared to take risks and it's, it's a race against time to you'll get their, their offerings in this, a new digital footprint. >>Final, final question. What's the state of AWS. Where do you see them going next? Obviously they're continuing to be successful. How does cloud 3.0, or they always say it's day one, but it's more like day 10, but what's next for Aw. Where do they go from here? Obviously they're doing well. They're getting bigger and bigger. Yeah, >>Better. It's an amazing story. I mean, you know, we're, we're on AWS as well. And so I, I think if they keep nurturing the builders and the ecosystem, then that is their superpower. They, they have an early leads. And if you look at where, you know, maybe the likes of Microsoft lost the plot in the, in the late nineties, it was, they stopped, uh, really caring about developers in the folks who were building on top of their ecosystem. In fact, they started buying up their ecosystem and competing with people in their ecosystem. And I see with AWS, they, they have an amazing headstart and if they did more, you know, if they do more than that, that's, what's gonna keep this juggernaut rolling for many years to come. >>Yeah. They got the Silicon and got the stack. They're developing Jeremy Burton inside the cube, great resource for commentary, but also founding with the CEO of a company called observing in the middle of all the action on the board of snowflake as well. Um, great startup. Thanks for coming on the cube. Always a pleasure. Okay. Live from San Francisco. It's to cube. I'm John for your host. Stay with us more coverage from San Francisco, California after the short break. >>Hello. Welcome back to the cubes coverage here live in San Francisco, California. I'm John furrier, host of the cubes cube coverage of AWS summit 2022 here in San Francisco. We're all the developers are the bay air at Silicon valley. And of course, AWS summit in New York city is coming up in the summer. We'll be there as well. SF and NYC cube coverage. Look for us. Of course, reinforcing Boston and re Mars with the whole robotics, AI. They all coming together. Lots of coverage stay with us today. We've got a great guest from Bel VC. John founding partner, entrepreneurial venture is a venture firm. Your next act, welcome to the cube. Good to see you. >>Good to see you, man. I feel like it's been forever since we've been able to do something in person. Well, >>I'm glad you're here because we run into each other all the time. We've known each other for over decade. Um, >>It's been at least 10 years, >>At least 10 years more. And we don't wanna actually go back as bring back the old school web 1.0 days. But anyway, we're in web three now. So we'll get to that in a second. We, >>We are, it's a little bit of a throwback to the path though, in my opinion, >>It's all the same. It's all distributed computing and software. We ran each other in cube con. You're investing in a lot of tech startup founders. Okay. This next level, next gen entrepreneurs have a new makeup and it's software. It's hardcore tech in some cases, not hardcore tech, but using software to take an old something old and make it better new, faster. So tell us about Bel what's the firm. I know you're the founder, uh, which is cool. What's going on. Explain >>What you, I mean, you remember I'm a recovering entrepreneur, right? So of course I, I, >>No, you're never recovering. You're always entrepreneur >>Always, but we are also always recovering. So I, um, started my first company when I was 24. If you remember, before there was Facebook and friends, there was instant messaging. People were using that product at work every day, they were creating a security vulnerability between their network and the outside world. So I plugged that hole and built an instant messaging firewall. It was my first company. The company was called IM logic and we were required by Symantec. Uh, then spent 12 years investing in the next generation of software companies, uh, early investor in open source companies and cloud companies and spent a really wonderful years, uh, at a firm called NEA. So I, I feel like my whole life I've been either starting enterprise software companies or helping founders start enterprise software companies. And I'll tell you, there's never been a better time than right now to start an enterprise software company. >>So, uh, the passion for starting a new firm was really a recognition that founders today that are starting an enterprise software company, they, they tend to be, as you said, a more technical founder, right? Usually it's a software engineer or a builder mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, they are building that are serving a slightly different market than what we've traditionally seen in enterprise software. Right? I think traditionally we've seen it buyers or CIOs that have agendas and strategies, which, you know, purchase software that is traditionally bought and sold tops down. But you know, today I think the most successful enterprise software companies are the ones that are built more bottoms up and have more technical early adopters. And generally speaking, they're free to use. They're free to try. They're very commonly community source or open source companies where you have a large technical community that's supporting them. So there's a, there's kind of a new normal now I think in great enterprise software. And it starts with great technical founders with great products and great bottoms of motions. And I think there's no better place to, uh, service those people than in the cloud and uh, in, in your community. >>Well, first of all, congratulations, and by the way, you got a great pedigree and great background. You're super smart admire of your work and your, and, and your founding, but let's face it. Enterprise is hot because digital transformation is, is all companies there's no, I mean, consumer is enterprise now. Everything is what was once a niche, not, I won't say niche category, but you know, not for the faint of heart, you know, investors, >>You know, it's so funny that you say that enterprise is hot because you, and I feel that way now. But remember, like right now, there's also a giant tech in VC conference in Miami <laugh> and it's covering cryptocurrencies and FCS and web three. So I think beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder <laugh> but no, I, I will tell you, well, >>MFTs is one big enterprise, cuz you gotta have imutability you got performance issues. You have, I IOPS issues. >>Well, and, and I think all of us here that are of may, maybe students of his stream have been involved in open source in the cloud would say that we're, you know, much of what we're doing is, uh, the predecessors of the web web three movement. And many of us I think are contributors to the web three >>Movement. The hype is definitely web >>Three. Yeah. But, >>But you know, >>For sure. Yeah, no, but now you're taking us further east to Miami. So, uh, you know, look, I think, I, I think, um, what is unquestioned with the case and maybe it's, it's more obvious the more time you spend in this world is this is the fastest growing part of enterprise software. And if you include cloud infrastructure and cloud infrastructure spend, you know, it is by many measures over, uh, $500 billion in growing, you know, 20 to 30 a year. So it it's a, it's a just incredibly fast >>Let's getting, let's get into some of the cultural and the, the shifts that are happening, cuz again, you, you have the luxury of being in enterprise when it was hard, it's getting easier and more cooler. I get it and more relevant <laugh> but there's also the hype of like the web three, for instance, but you know, for, uh, um, um, the CEO snowflake, okay. Has wrote a book and Dave Valenti and I were talking about it and uh, Frank Lutman has says, there's no playbooks. We always ask the CEOs, what's your playbook. And he's like, there's no playbook, situational awareness, always Trump's playbooks. So in the enterprise playbook, oh, hire a direct sales force and sass kind of crushed that now SAS is being redefined, right. So what is SAS? Is snowflake a SAS or is that a platform? So again, new unit economics are emerging, whole new situation, you got web three. So to me there's a cultural shift, the young entrepreneurs, the, uh, user experience, they look at Facebook and say, ah, you know, and they own all my data. And you know, we know that that cliche, um, they, you know, the product. So as this next gen, the gen Z and the millennials come in and our customers and the founders, they're looking at things a little bit differently and the tech better. >>Yeah. I mean, I mean, I think we can, we can see a lot of commonalities across all six of startups and the overall adoption of technology. Uh, and, and I would tell you, this is all one big giant revolution. I call it the user driven revolution. Right. It's the rise of the user. Yeah. And you might say product like growth is currently the hottest trend in enterprise software. It's actually user like growth, right. They're one in the same. So sometimes people think the product, uh, is what is driving. >>You just pull the product >>Through. Exactly, exactly. And so that's that I, that I think is really this revolution that you see, and, and it does extend into things like cryptocurrencies and web three and, you know, sort of like the control that is taken back by the user. Um, but you know, many would say that, that the origins of this movement may be started with open source where users were contributors, you know, contributors were users and looking back decades and seeing how it, how it fast forward to today. I think that's really the trend that we're all writing and it's enabling these end users. And these end users in our world are developers, data engineers, cybersecurity practitioners, right. They're really the users. And they're really the, the offic and the most, you know, kind of valued people in >>This. I wanna come back to the data engineers in a second, but I wanna make a comment and get your reaction to, I have a, I'm a gen Xer technically. So for not a boomer, but I have some boomer friends who are a little bit older than me who have, you know, experienced the sixties. And I've, I've been saying on the cube for probably about eight years now that we are gonna hit a digital hippie Revolut, meaning a rebellion against in the sixties was rebellion against the fifties and the man and, you know, summer of love. That was a cultural differentiation from the other one of group, the predecessors. So we're kind of having that digital moment now where it's like, Hey boomers, Hey people, we're not gonna do that anymore. We hate how you organize shit. >>Right. But isn't this just technology. I mean, isn't it, isn't it like there used to be the old adage, like, you know, you would never get fired for buying IBM, but now it's like, you obviously probably would get fired if you bought IBM. And I mean, it's just like the, the, I think, I think >>During the mainframe days, those renegades were breaking into Stanford, starting the home brew club. So what I'm trying to get at is that, do you see the young cultural revolution also, culturally, just, this is my identity NFTs to me speak volumes about my, I wanna associate with NFTs, not single sign on like, well, >>Absolutely. And, and I think like, I think you're hitting on something, which is like this convergence of, of, you know, societal trends with technology trends and how that manifests in our world is yes. I think like there is unquestionably almost a religion around the way in which a product is built. Right. And we can use open source. One example of that religion. Some people say, look, I'll just never try a product in the cloud if it's not open source. Yeah. I think cloud, native's another example of that, right? It's either it's, you know, it either is cloud native or it's not. And I think a lot of people will look at a product and say, look, you know, you were not designed in the cloud era. Therefore I just won't try you. And sometimes, um, like it or not, it's a religious decision, right? It's, it's something that people just believe to be true almost without, uh, necessarily. I mean, >>The data drives all decision making. Let me ask you this next question. As a VC. Now you look at pitch, well, you've been a VC for many years, but you also have the founder entrepreneurial mindset, but you can empathize with the founders. You know, hustle is a big part of the, that first founder check, right? You gotta convince someone to part with their ch their money and the first money in which you do a lot of is about believing in the first. So faking it till you make it is hard. Now you, the data's there, you either have it cloud native, you either have the adaption or traction. So honesty is a big part of that pitch. You can't fake it. Oh, >>AB absolutely. You know, there used to be this concept of like the persona of an entrepreneur, right. And the persona of the entrepreneur would be, you know, somebody who was a great salesperson or somebody who tell a great story. And I still think that that's important, right. It still is a human need for people to believe in narratives and stories. Yeah. But having said that you're right. The proof is in the pudding, right. At some point you click download and you try the product and it does what it says it's gonna, it's gonna do, or it doesn't, or it either stands up to the load test or it doesn't. And so I, I feel like in this new economy, that're, we live in really, it's a shift from maybe the storytellers and the creators to, to the builders, right. The people that know how to build great product. And in some ways the people that can build great product yeah. Stand out from the crowd. And they're the ones that can build communities around their products. And, you know, in some ways can, um, you know, kind of own more of the narrative because their product begin for exactly >>The volume you back to the user led growth. >>Exactly. And it's the religion of, I just love your product. Right. And I, I, I, um, Doug song is the founder of du security used to say, Hey, like, you know, the, the really like in today's world of like consumption based software, like the user is only gonna give you 90 seconds to figure out whether or not you're a company that's easy to do business with for right. And so you can say, and do all the things that you want about how easy you are to work with. But if the product isn't easy to install, if it's not easy to try, if it's not, if, if the it's gotta speak to the, >>Exactly. Speak to the user. But let me ask a question now that for the people watching, who are maybe entrepreneurial entre entrepreneurs, um, masterclass here is in session. So I have to ask you, do you prefer, um, an entrepreneur to come in and say, look at John. Here's where I'm at. Okay. First of all, storytelling's fine. Whether you're an extrovert or introvert, have your style, sell the story in a way that's authentic, but do you, what do you prefer to say? Here's where I'm at? Look, I have an idea. Here's my traction. I think here's my MVP prototype. I need help. Or do you wanna just see more stats? What's the, what's the preferred way that you like to see entrepreneurs come in and engage? >>There's tons of different styles, man. I think the single most important thing that every founder should know is that we, we don't invest in what things are today. We invest in what we think will become, right. And I think that's why we all get up in the morning and try to build something different, right? It's that we see the world a different way. We want it to be a different way, and we wanna work every single moment of the day to try to make that vision a reality. So I think the more that you can show people where you want to be, the more likely somebody is gonna to align with your vision and, and want to invest in you and wanna be along for the ride. So I, I wholeheartedly believe in showing off what you got today, because eventually we all get down to like, where are we and what are we gonna do together? But, um, no, I, you gotta show the path. I think the single most important thing for any founder and VC relationship is that they have the same vision. Uh, if you have the same vision, you can, you can get through bumps in the road, you can get through short term spills. You can all sorts of things in the middle of the journey can happen. Yeah. But it doesn't matter as much if you share the same long term vision, >>Don't flake out and, and be fashionable with the, the latest trends because it's over before you even get there. >>Exactly. I think many people that, that do what we do for a living will say, you know, ultimately the future is relatively easy to predict, but it's the timing that's impossible to predict. So you, you know, you sort of have to balance the, you know, we, we know that the world is going this way and therefore we're gonna invest a lot of money to try to make this a reality. Uh, but sometimes it happens ins six months. Sometimes it takes six years. Sometimes it takes 16 years. Uh, >>What's the hottest thing in enterprise that you see the biggest wave that people should pay attention to that you're looking at right now with Tebel partners, Tebel dot your site. What's the big wave. What's your big >>Wave. There there's three big trends that we invest in. And then the, the only things we do day in day out one is the explosion at open source software. So I think many people think that all software is unquestionably moving to an open source model in some form or another yeah. Tons of reasons to debate whether or not that is gonna happen an alwa timeline happening forever, but it is, it is accelerating faster than we've ever seen. So I, I think it's its one big mass of wave that we continue to ride. Um, second is the rise of data engineering. Uh, I think data engineering is in and of itself now a category of software. It's not just that we store data. It's now we move data and we develop applications on data. And, uh, I think data is in and of itself as big of a market as any of the other markets that we invest in. Uh, and finally it's the gift that keeps on giving. I've spent my entire career in it. We still feel that security is a market that is underinvested. It is, it continues to be the place where people need to continue to invest and spend more money. Yeah. Uh, and those are the three major trends that we run >>And security, you think we all need a do over, right? I mean, do we need a do over in security or is what's the core problem? I, >>I, I keep using this word underinvested because I think it's the right way to think about the problem. I think if you, I think people generally speaking, look at cyber security as an add-on. Yeah. But if you think about it, the whole like economy is moving online. And so in, in some ways like security is core to protecting the digital economy. And so it's, it shouldn't be an afterthought, right? It should be core to what everyone is doing. And that's why I think relative to the trillions of dollars that are at stake, uh, I believe the market size for cybersecurity is around 150 billion and it still is a fraction of what >>We're, what we're and even boom is booming now. So you get the convergence of national security, geopolitics, internet digital >>That's right. You mean arguably, right. Arguably again, it's the area of the world that people should be spending more time and more money given what to stake. >>I love your thesis. I gotta, I gotta say you gotta love your firm. Love who you're doing. We're big supporters of your mission. Congrat is on your entrepreneurial venture. And uh, we'll be, we'll be talking and maybe see a Cuban. Uh, >>Absolutely >>Not. Certainly EU maybe even north America's in Detroit this year. >>Huge fan of what you guys are doing here. Thank you so much for helping me on the show. >>Des bell VC Johnson here on the cube. Check him out. Founder for founders here on the cube, more coverage from San Francisco, California, after the short break, stay with us. Hey everyone. Welcome to the cue here. Live in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022 we're live we're back with events. Also we're virtual. We got hybrid all kinds of events. This year, of course, 80% summit in New York city is happening this summer. We'll be there with the cube as well. I'm John. Again, John host of the cube. Got a great guest here. Justin Colby, owner and CEO of innovative solutions they booth is right behind us. Justin, welcome to the cube. >>Thank you. Thank you for having me. >>So we're just chatting, uh, off camera about some of the work you're doing. You're the owner of and CEO. Yeah. Of innovative. Yeah. So tell us the story. What do you guys do? What's the elevator pitch. Yeah. >><laugh> so the elevator pitch is we are, uh, a hundred percent focused on small to midsize businesses that are moving to the cloud or have already moved to the cloud and really trying to understand how to best control, cost, security, compliance, all the good stuff, uh, that comes along with it. Um, exclusively focused on AWS and, um, you know, about 110 people, uh, based in Rochester, New York, that's where our headquarters is. But now we have offices down in Austin, Texas up in Toronto, uh, Canada, as well as Chicago. Um, and obviously in New York, uh, you know, the, the business was never like this, uh, five years ago, um, founded in 1989, made the decision in 2018 to pivot and go all in on the cloud. And, uh, I've been a part of the company for about 18 years, bought the company about five years ago. And it's been a great ride. >>It's interesting. The manages services are interesting with cloud cause a lot of the heavy liftings done by AWS. So we had Matt on your team on earlier talking about some of the edge stuff. Yeah. But you guys are a managed cloud service. You got cloud advisory, you know, the classic service that's needed, but the demands coming from cloud migrations and application modernization and obviously data is a huge part of it. Huge. How is this factoring into what you guys do and your growth cuz you guys are the number one partner on the SMB side for edge. Yeah. For AWS, you got results coming in. Where's the, where's the forcing function. What's the pressure point. What's the demand like? Yeah. >>It's a great question. Every CEO I talk to, that's a small to mid-size business. I'll try and understand how to leverage technology better to help either drive a revenue target for their own business, uh, help with customer service as so much has gone remote now. And we're all having problems or troubles or issues trying to hire talent. And um, you know, tech is really at the, at the forefront and the center of that. So most customers are coming to us and they're like, listen, we gotta move to the out or we move some things to the cloud and we want to do that better. And um, there's this big misnomer that when you move to the cloud, you gotta automatically modernize. Yeah. And what we try to help as many customers understand as possible is lifting and shifting, moving the stuff that you maybe currently have OnPrem and a data center to the cloud first is a first step. And then, uh, progressively working through a modernization strategy is always the better approach. And so we spend a lot of time with small to midsize businesses who don't have the technology talent on staff to be able to do >>That. Yeah. They want to get set up. But the, the dynamic of like latency is huge. We're seeing that edge product is a big part of it. This is not a one-off happening around everywhere. It is. And it's not, it's manufacturing, it's the physical plant or location >>Literally. >>And so, and you're seeing more IOT devices. What's that like right now from a challenge and problem statement standpoint, are the customers, not staff, is the it staff kind of old school? Is it new skills? What's the core problem you guys solve >>The SMB space. The core issue nine outta 10 times is people get enamored with the latest and greatest. And the reality is not everything that's cloud based. Not all cloud services are the latest and greatest. Some things have been around for quite some time and are hardened solutions. And so, um, what we try to do with technology staff that has additional on-prem, uh, let's just say skill sets and they're trying to move to a cloud-based workload is we try to help those customers through education and through some practical, let's just call it use case. Um, whether that's a proof of concept that we're doing or whether that's, we're gonna migrate a small workload over, we try to give them the confidence to be able to not, not necessarily go it alone, but to, to, to have the, uh, the Gusto and to really have the, um, the, the opportunity to, to do that in a wise way. Um, and what I find is that most CEOs that I talk to, yeah, they're like, listen, the end of the day, I'm gonna be spending money in one place or another, whether that's OnPrem or in the cloud. I just want to know that I'm doing that in a way that helps me grow as quickly as possible status quo. I think every, every business owner knows that COVID taught us anything that status quo is, uh, is, is no. No. Good. >>How about factoring in the, the agility and speed equation? Does that come up a lot? It >>Does. I think, um, I think there's also this idea that if, uh, if we do a deep dive analysis and we really take a surgical approach to things, um, we're gonna be better off. And the reality is the faster you move with anything cloud based, the better you are. And so there's this assumption that we gotta get it right the first time. Yeah. In the cloud, if you start the, on your journey in one way, and you realize midway that it's not the right, let's just say the right place to go. It's not like buying a piece of iron that you put in the closet and now you own it in the cloud. You can turn those services on and off. It's a, gives you a much higher density for making decisions and failing >>Forward. Well actually shutting down the abandoning, the projects that early and not worrying about it, you got it. I mean, most people don't abandon stuff cuz they're like, oh, I own it. >>Exactly. >>And they get, they get used to it. Like, and then they wait too long. >>That's exactly. Yeah. >>Frog and boiling water as we used to say so, oh, it's a great analogy. So I mean this, this is a dynamic that's interesting. I wanna get more thoughts on it because like I'm a, if I'm a CEO of a company, like, okay, I gotta make my number. Yeah. I gotta keep my people motivated. Yeah. And I gotta move faster. So this is where you guys come in. I get the whole thing. And by the way, great service, um, professional services in the cloud right now are so hot because so hot, you can build it and then have option optionality. You got path decisions, you got new services to take advantage of. It's almost too much for customers. It is. I mean, everyone I talk to at reinvent, that's a customer. Well, how many announcements did Andy jazzy announcer Adam, you know, five, a thousand announcement or whatever they did with huge amounts. Right. Keeping track of it all. Oh, is huge. So what's the, what's the, um, the mission of, of your company. How does, how do you talk to that alignment? Yeah. Not just product. I can get that like values as companies, cuz they're betting on you and your people. >>They are, they are >>The values. >>Our mission is, is very simple. We want to help every small to mid-size business, leverage the power of the cloud. Here's the reality. We believe wholeheartedly. This is our vision that every company is going to become a technology company. So we go to market with this idea that every customer's trying to leverage the power of the cloud in some way, shape or form, whether they know it or don't know it. And number two, they're gonna become a tech company in the pro of that because everything is so tech-centric. And so when you talk about speed and agility, when you talk about the, the endless options and the endless permutations of solutions that a customer can buy in the cloud, how are you gonna ask a team of one or two people in your it department to make all those decisions going it alone or trying to learn it as you go, it only gets you so far working with a partner. >>I'll just give you some perspective. We work with about a thousand small to midsize business customers. More than 50% of those customers are on our managed services. Meaning know that we have their back and we're the safety net. So when a customer is saying, all right, I'm gonna spend a couple thousand dollars a month in the cloud. They know that that bill, isn't gonna jump to $10,000 a month going on loan. Who's there to help protect that. Number two, if you have a security posture and let's just say you're high profile and you're gonna potentially be more vulnerable to security attack. If you have a partner that's offering you some managed services. Now you, again, you've got that backstop and you've got those services and tooling. We, we offer, um, seven different products that are part of our managed services that give the customer the tooling, that for them to go out and buy on their own for a customer to go out today and go buy a new Relic solution on their own, it would cost 'em a fortune. If >>It's training alone would be insane. A risk factor not mean the cost. Yes, absolutely. Opportunity cost is huge, >>Huge, absolutely enormous training and development. Something. I think that is often, you know, it's often overlooked technologists. Typically they want to get their skills up. Yeah. They, they love to get the, the stickers and the badges and the pins, um, at innovative in 2018, when, uh, when we made the decision to go all on the club, I said to the organization, you know, we have this idea that we're gonna pivot and be aligned with AWS in such a way that it's gonna really require us all to get certified. My executive assistant at the time looks at me. She said, even me, I said, yeah, even you, why can't you get certified? Yeah. And so we made, uh, a conscious decision. It wasn't requirement isn't today to make sure everybody in the company has the opportunity to become certified. Even the people that are answering the phones at the front desk >>And she could be running the Kubernetes clusters. I >>Love it. It's amazing. So I'll tell you what, when that customer calls and they have a real Kubernetes issue, she'll be able to assist and get the right >>People involved. And that's a cultural factor that you guys have. So, so again, this is back to my whole point about SMBs and BIS is in general, small and large. It staffs are turning over the gen Z and millennials are in the workforce. They were provisioning top of rack switches. Right. First of all. And so if you're a business, there's also the, I call the build out, um, uh, return factor, ROI piece. At what point in time as an owner or SMB, do I get the why? Yeah. I gotta hire a person to manage it. That person's gonna have five zillion job offers. Yep. Uh, maybe who knows? Right. I got cyber security issues. Where am I gonna find a cyber person? Yeah. A data compliance. I need a data scientist and a compliance person. Right. Maybe one in the same. Right. Good luck. Trying to find a data scientist. Who's also a compliance person. Yep. And the list goes on. I can just continue. Absolutely. I need an SRE to manage the, the, uh, the sock report and we can pen test. Right. >>Right. >>These are, these are >>Like critical issues. This >>Is just like, these are the table stakes. >>Yeah. And, and every, every business owner's thinking about this, that's, >>That's what, at least a million in bloating, if not three or more Just to get that going. Yeah. Then it's like, where's the app. Yeah. So there's no cloud migration. There's no modernization on the app side now. Yeah. No. And nevermind AI and ML. That's >>Right. That's right. So to try to go it alone, to me, it's hard. It's incredibly difficult. And the other thing is, is there's not a lot of partners, so the partner, >>No one's raising their hand boss. I'll do all that exactly. In the it department. >>Exactly. >>Like, can we just call up, uh, you know, our old vendor that's >>Right. <laugh> right. Our old vendor. I like >>It, >>But that's so true. I mean, when I think about how, if I were a business owner starting a business today and I had to build my team, um, and the amount of investment that it would take to get those people skilled up and then the risk factor of those people now having the skills and being so much more in demand and being recruited away, that's a real, that's a real issue. And so how you build your culture around that is, is very important. And it's something that we tell, talk about every, with every one of our small to mid-size >>Businesses. So just, I wanna get, I want to get your story as CEO. Okay. Take us through your journey. You said you bought the company and your progression to, to being the owner and CEO of innovative yeah. Award winning guys doing great. Uh, great bet on a good call. Yeah. Things are good. Tell your story. What's your journey? >>It's real simple. I was, uh, I was a sophomore at the Rochester Institute of technology in 2003. And, uh, I knew that I, I was going to school for it and I, I knew I wanted to be in tech. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn't wanna code or configure routers and switches. So I had this great opportunity with the local it company that was doing managed services. We didn't call it at that time innovative solutions to come in and, uh, jump on the phone and dial for dollars. I was gonna cold call and introduce other, uh, small to midsize businesses locally in Rochester, New York go to Western New York, um, who innovative was now. We were 19 people at the time. And I came in, I did an internship for six months and I loved it. I learned more in those six months that I probably did in my first couple of years at, uh, at RT long story short. >>Um, for about seven years, I worked, uh, to really help develop, uh, sales process and methodology for the business so that we could grow and scale. And we grew to about 30 people. And, um, I went to the owners at the time in 2010 and I was like, Hey, on the value of this business and who knows where you guys are gonna be another five years, what do you think about making me an owner? And they were like, listen, you got long ways before you're gonna be an owner, but if you stick it out in your patient, we'll, um, we'll work through a succession plan with you. And I said, okay, there were four other individuals at the time that were gonna also buy into the business with me. >>And they were the owners, no outside capital, none >>Zero, well, 2014 comes around. And, uh, the other folks that were gonna buy into the business with me that were also working at innovative for different reasons, they all decided that it wasn't for them. One started a family. The other didn't wanna put capital in. Didn't wanna write a check. Um, the other had a real big problem with having to write a check. If we couldn't make payroll, I'm like, well, that's kind of like if we're owners, we're gonna have to like cover that stuff. <laugh> so >>It's called the pucker factor. >>Exactly. So, uh, I sat down with the CEO in early 2015, and, uh, we made the decision that I was gonna buy the three partners out, um, go through an early now process, uh, coupled with, uh, an interesting financial strategy that wouldn't strap the business, cuz they cared very much. The company still had the opportunity to keep going. So in 2016 I bought the business, um, became the sole owner. And, and at that point we, um, we really focused hard on what do we want this company to be? We had built this company to this point. Yeah. And, uh, and by 2018 we knew that pivoting going all in on the cloud was important for us and we haven't looked back. >>And at that time the proof points were coming clearer and clearer 2012 through 15 was the early adopters, the builders, the startups and early enterprises. Yes. The capital ones of the world. Exactly. And those kinds of big enterprises, the GA I don't wanna say gamblers, but ones that were very savvy. The innovators, the FinTech folks. Yep. The hardcore glass eating enterprises >>Agreed, agreed to find a small to mid-size business, to migrate completely to the cloud as, as infrastructure was considered. That just didn't happen as often. Um, what we were seeing where a lot of our small to mid-size as customers, they wanted to leverage cloud-based backup or they wanted to leverage a cloud for disaster recovery because it lent itself. Well, early days, our most common cloud customer though, was the customer that wanted to move messaging and collaboration, the Microsoft suite to the cloud. And a lot of 'em dipped their toe in the water. But by 2017 we knew infrastructure was around the corner. Yeah. And so, uh, we only had two customers on AWS at the time. Um, and we, uh, we, we made the decision to go all in >>Justin. Great to have you on the cube. Thank you. Let's wrap up. Uh, tell me the hottest product that you have. Is it migrations? Is it the app modernization? Is it data? What's the hot product and then put a plug in for the company. Awesome. >>So, uh, there's no question. Every customer is looking to migrate workloads and try to figure out how to modernize for the future. We have very interesting, sophisticated yet elegant funding solutions to help customers with the cash flow, uh, constraints that come along with those migrations. So any SMB that's thinking about migrating to the cloud, they should be talking innovative solutions. We know how to do it in a way that allows those customers not to be cash strap and gives them an opportunity to move forward in a controlled, contained way so that they can modernize. >>So like insurance, basically for them not insurance class in the classic sense, but you help them out on the, on the cash exposure. >>Absolutely. We are known for that and we're known for being creative with those customers and being empathetic to where they are in their journey. >>And that's the cloud upside is all about doubling down on the variable wind. That's right. Seeing the value and Ling down on it. Absolutely not praying for it. Yeah. <laugh> all right, Justin. Thanks for coming on. You really appreciate it. >>Thank you very much for having me. >>Okay. This is the cube coverage here live in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching. We're back with more great coverage for two days after this short break, >>Live on the floor and see San Francisco for a AWS summit. I'm John ferry, host of the cube here for the next two days, getting all the action we're back in person. We're at a AWS reinvent a few months ago. Now we're back. Events are coming back and we're happy to be here with the cube. Bring all the action. Also virtual. We have a hybrid cube. Check out the cube.net, Silicon angle.com for all the coverage. After the event. We've got a great guest ticking off here. Matthew Park, director of solutions, architecture with innovation solutions. The booth is right here. Matthew, welcome to the cube. >>Thank you very much. I'm glad to be >>Here. So we're back in person. You're from Tennessee. We were chatting before you came on camera. Um, it's great to have to be back through events. >>It's amazing. This is the first, uh, summit I've been to and what two, three years. >>It's awesome. We'll be at the UHS summit in New York as well. A lot of developers and a big story this year is as developers look at cloud going distributed computing, you got on premises, you got public cloud, you got the edge. Essentially the cloud operations is running everything dev sec ops, everyone kind of sees that you got containers, you got Kubernetes, you got cloud native. So the game is pretty much laid out mm-hmm <affirmative> and the edge is with the actions you guys are number one, premier partner at SMB for edge. >>That's right. >>Tell us about what you guys doing at innovative and, uh, what you do. >>That's right. Uh, so I'm the director of solutions architecture. Uh, me and my team are responsible for building out the solutions that are around, especially the edge public cloud for us edge is anything outside of an AWS availability zone. Uh, we are deploying that in countries that don't have AWS infrastructure in region. They don't have it. Uh, give an example, uh, example would be Panama. We have a customer there that, uh, needs to deploy some financial tech and compute is legally required to be in Panama, but they love AWS and they want to deploy AWS services in region. Uh, so they've taken E EKS anywhere. We've put storage gateway and, uh, snowball, uh, in region inside the country and they're running their FinTech on top of AWS services inside Panama. >>You know, it's interesting, Matthew is that we've been covering a, since 2013 with the cube about their events. And we watched the progression and jazzy was, uh, was in charge and became the CEO. Now Adam's in charge, but the edge has always been that thing they've been trying to avoid. I don't wanna say trying to avoid, of course, Amazon would listen to the customers. They work backwards from the customer. We all know that. Uh, but the real issue was they were they're bread and butters EC two and S three. And then now they got tons of services and the cloud is obviously successful and seeing that, but the edge brings up a whole nother level. >>It does computing. It >>Does. That's not centralized in the public cloud now they got regions. So what is the issue at the edge what's driving the behavior. Outpost came out as a reaction to competitive threats and also customer momentum around OT, uh, operational technologies. And it merging. We see that the data at the edge, you got 5g having. So it's pretty obvious, but there's a slow transition. What was the driver for the edge? What's the driver now for edge action for AWS >>Data is the driver for the edge. Data has gravity, right? And it's pulling compute back to where the customer's generating that data and that's happening over and over again. You said it best outpost was a reaction to a competitive situation where today we have over 15 AWS edge services and those are all reactions to things that customers need inside their data centers on location or in the field like with media companies. >>Outpost is interesting. We always used to riff on the cube cause it's basically Amazon and a box pushed in the data center, running native, all the stuff, but now cloud native operations are kind of becoming standard. You're starting to see some standard Deepak syncs. Group's doing some amazing work with open source Rauls team on the AI side, obviously, uh, you got SW, he was giving the keynote tomorrow. You got the big AI machine learning big part of that edge. Now you can say, okay, outpost, is it relevant today? In other words, did outpost do its job? Cause EKS anywhere seems to be getting a lot of momentum. You see local zones, the regions are kicking ass for Amazon. This edge piece is evolving. What's your take on EKS anywhere versus say outpost? >>Yeah, I think outpost did its job. It made customers that were looking at outpost really consider, do I wanna invest in this hardware? Do I, do I wanna have, um, this outpost in my data center, do I want to manage this over the long term? A lot of those customers just transitioned to the public cloud. They went into AWS proper. Some of those customers stayed on prem because they did have use cases that were, uh, not a good fit for outposts. They weren't a good fit. Uh, in the customer's mind for the public AWS cloud inside an availability zone. Now what's happening is as AWS is pushing these services out and saying, we're gonna meet you where you are with 5g. We're gonna meet you where you are with wavelength. We're gonna meet you where you are with EKS anywhere. Uh, I think it has really reduced the amount of times that we have conversations about outposts and it's really increased. We can deploy fast. We don't have to spin up outpost hardware. We can go deploy EKS anywhere or in your VMware environment. And it's increasing the speed of adoption >>For sure. Right? So you guys are making a lot of good business decisions around managed cloud service. That's right. Innovative as that you get the cloud advisory, the classic professional services for the specific edge piece and, and doing that outside of the availability zones and regions for AWS, um, customers in, in these new areas that you're helping out are, they want cloud, like they want to have modernization a modern applications. Obviously they got data machine learning and AI, all part of that. What's the main product or, or, or gap that you're filling for AWS, uh, outside of their availability zones or their regions that you guys are delivering. What's the key is it. They don't have a footprint. Is it that it's not big enough for them? What's the real gap. What's why, why are you so successful? >>So what customers want when they look towards the cloud is they want to focus on, what's making them money as a business. They want on their applications. They want to focus on their customers. So they look towards AWS cloud and say, AWS, you take the infrastructure. You take, uh, some of the higher layers and we'll focus on our revenue generating business, but there's a gap there between infrastructure and revenue generating business that innovative slides into, uh, we help manage the AWS environment. Uh, we help build out these things in local data centers for 32 plus year old company. We have traditional on-premises people that know about deploying hardware that know about deploying VMware to host EKS anywhere. But we also have most of our company totally focused on the AWS cloud. So we're filling that gap in helping of these AWS services, manage them over the long term. So our customers can go to just primarily and totally focusing on their revenue generating business. So >>Basically you guys are basically building AWS edges, >>Correct? >>For correct companies, correct? Mainly because the, the needs are there, you got data, you got certain products, whether it's, you know, low latency type requirements, right. And then they still work with the regions, right. It's all tied together, right. Is that how it works? Right. >>And, and our customers, even the ones in the edge, they also want us to build out the AWS environment inside the availability zone, because we're always gonna have a failback scenario. If we're gonna deploy FinTech in the Caribbean, we talk about hurricanes and we're gonna talk about failing back into the AWS availability zones. So innovative is filling that gap across the board, whether it be inside the AWS cloud or on the AWS edge. >>All right. So I gotta ask you on the, since you're at the edge in these areas, I won't say underserved, but developing areas where you now have data and you have applications that are tapping into that, that required. It makes total sense. We're seeing that across the board. So it's not like it's, it's an outlier it's actually growing. Yeah. There's also the crypto angle. You got the blockchain. Are you seeing any traction at the edge with blockchain? Because a lot of people are looking at the web three in these areas like Panama, you mentioned FinTech. And in, in the islands there a lot of, lot of, lot of web three happening. What's your, what's your view on the web three world right now, relative >>To we, we have some customers actually deploying crypto, especially, um, especially in the Caribbean. I keep bringing the Caribbean up, but it's, it's top of my mind right now we have customers that are deploying crypto. A lot of, uh, countries are choosing crypto to underlie parts of their central banks. Yeah. Um, so it's, it's up and coming a, uh, I, I have some, you know, personal views that, that crypto is still searching for a use case. Yeah. And, uh, I think it's searching a lot and, and we're there to help customers search for that use case. Uh, but, but crypto, as a, as a, uh, technology, um, lives really well on the AWS edge. Yeah. Uh, and, and we're having more and more people talk to us about that. Yeah. And ask for assistance in the infrastructure, because they're developing new cryptocurrencies every day. Yeah. It's not like they're deploying Ethereum or anything specific. They're actually developing new currencies and, and putting them out there on it's >>Interesting. I mean, first of all, we've been doing crypto for many, many years. We have our own little, um, you know, projects going on. But if you look talk to all the crypto people that say, look, we do a smart concept. We use the blockchain. It's kind of over a lot of overhead and it's not really their technical already, but it's a cultural shift, but there's underserved use cases around use of money, but they're all using the blockchain, just for this like smart contracts for instance, or certain transactions. And they go into Amazon for the database. Yeah. <laugh> they all don't tell anyone we're using a centralized service, but what happened to decentralized. >>Yeah. And that's, and that's the conversation performance issue. Yeah. And, and it's a cost issue. Yeah. And it's a development issue. Um, so I think more and more as, as some of these, uh, currencies maybe come up, some of the smart contracts get into, uh, they find their use cases. I think we'll start talking about how does that really live on, on AWS and, and what does it look like to build decentralized applications, but with AWS hardware and services. >>Right. So take me through, uh, a use case of a customer, um, Matthew around the edge. Okay. So I'm a customer, pretend I'm a customer, Hey, you know, I'm, we're in an underserved area. I want to modernize my business. And I got my developers that are totally peaked up on cloud. Um, but we've identified that it's just a lot of overhead latency issues. I need to have a local edge and serve my ad. And I also want all the benefit of the cloud. So I want the modernization and I wanna migrate to the cloud for all those cloud benefits and the goodness of the cloud. What's the answer. Yeah. >>Uh, big thing is, uh, industrial manufacturing, right? That's, that's one of the best use cases, uh, inside industrial manufacturing, we can pull in many of the AWS edge services we can bring in, uh, private 5g, uh, so that all the, uh, equipment inside that, that manufacturing plant can be hooked up. They don't have to pay huge overheads to deploy 5g it's, uh, better than wifi for the industrial space. Um, when we take computing down to that industrial area, uh, because we wanna do pre-procesing on the data. Yeah. We want to gather some analytics. We deploy that with, uh, regular commercial available hardware running VMware, and we deploy EKS anywhere on that. Uh, inside of that manufacturing plant, uh, we can do pre-procesing on things coming out of the, uh, the robotics that depending on what we're manufacturing, right. Uh, and then we can take those refined analytics and for very low cost with maybe a little bit longer latency transmit those back, um, to the AWS availability zone, the, the standard for >>Data, data lake, or whatever, to >>The data lake. Yeah. Data lake house, whatever it might be. Um, and we can do additional data science on that once it gets to the AWS cloud. Uh, but a lot of that, uh, just in time business decisions, just in time, manufacturing decisions can all take place on an AWS service or services inside that manufacturing plant. And that's, that's one of the best use cases that we're >>Seeing. And I think, I mean, we've been seeing this on the queue for many, many years, moving data around is very expensive. Yeah. But also compute going to the data that saves that cost yep. On the data transfer also on the benefits of the latency. So I have to ask you, by the way, that's standard best practice now for the folks watching don't move the data, unless you have to, um, those new things are developing. So I wanna ask you what new patterns are you seeing emerging once this new architecture's in place? Love that idea, localize everything right at the edge, manufacturing, industrial, whatever, the use case, retail, whatever it is. Right. But now what does that change in the, in the core cloud? This is a, there's a system element here. Yeah. What's the new pattern. There's >>Actually an organizational element as well, because once you have to start making the decision, do I put this compute at the point of use or do I put this compute in the cloud out? Uh, now you start thinking about where business decisions should be taking place. Uh, so not only are you changing your architecture, you're actually changing your organization because you're thinking, you're thinking about a dichotomy you didn't have before. Uh, so now you say, okay, this can take place here. Uh, and maybe maybe decision can wait. Right? Yeah. Uh, and then how do I visualize that? By >>The way, it could be a bot too, doing the work for management. Yeah. <laugh> exactly. You got observability going, right. But you gotta change the database architecture on the back. So there's new things developing. You've got more benefit. There >>Are, there are. And, and we have more and more people that, that want to talk less about databases and want to talk more about data lakes because of this. They want to talk more about customers are starting to talk about throwing away data, uh, you know, for the past maybe decade. Yeah. It's been store everything. And one day we will have a data science team that we hire in our organization to do analytics on this decade of data. And >>Well, I mean, that's, that's a great point. We don't have time to drill into, maybe we do another session on this, but the one pattern was income of the past year is that throwing away data's bad. Even data lakes that so-called turn into data swamps, actually, it's not the case. You look at data, brick, snowflake, and other successes out there. And even time series data, which may seem irrelevant efforts over actually matters when people start retrain their machine learning algorithms. Yep. So as data becomes code, as we call it our lab showcase, we did a whole, whole, that event on this. The data's good in real time and in the lake. Yeah. Because the iteration of the data feeds the machine learning training. Things are getting better with the old data. So it's not throw away. It's not just business benefits. Yeah. There's all kinds of new scale. There >>Are. And, and we have, uh, many customers that are run petabyte level. Um, they're, they're essentially data factories on, on, uh, on premises, right? They're, they're creating so much data and they're starting to say, okay, we could analyze this, uh, in the cloud, we could transition it. We could move petabytes of data to the AWS cloud, or we can run, uh, computational workloads on premises. We can really do some analytics on this data transition, uh, those high level and sort of raw analytics back to AWS run 'em through machine learning. Um, and we don't have to transition 10, 12 petabytes of data into AWS. >>So I gotta end the segment on a, on a kind of a, um, fun note. I was told to ask you about your personal background on premise architect, a cloud and skydiving instructor. <laugh> how does that all work together? What tell, what does this mean? Yeah. >>Uh, you >>Jumped out a plane and got a job. You, you got a customer to jump out >>Kind of. So I was jump, I was teaching Scott eing, uh, before I, before I started in the cloud space, this was 13, 14 years ago. I was a, I still am a Scott I instructor. Yeah. Uh, I was teaching Scott eing and I heard out of the corner of my ear, uh, a guy that owned an MSP that was lamenting about, um, you know, storing data and, and how his cus customers are working. And he can't find enough people to operate all these workloads. So I walked over and said, Hey, this is, this is what I went to school for. Like, I'd love to, you know, uh, I was living in a tent in the woods teaching scout. I think I was like, I'd love to not live in a tent in the woods. So, uh, uh, I started in the first day there, uh, we had a, a discussion, uh, EC two, just come out <laugh> um, and, uh, like, >>This is amazing. >>Yeah. And so we had this discussion, we should start moving customers here. And, uh, and that totally revolutionized that business, um, that, that led to, uh, that that guy actually still owns a skydiving airport. But, um, but through all of that and through being an on premises migrated me and myself, my career into the cloud, and now it feels like, uh, almost, almost looking back and saying, now let's take what we learned in the cloud and, and apply those lessons and those services to >>It's. So it's such a great story, you know, I was gonna, you know, you know, the, the, the, the whole, you know, growth mindset pack your own parachute, you know, uh, exactly. You know, the cloud in the early day was pretty much will the shoot open. Yeah. It was pretty much, you had to roll your own cloud at that time. And so, you know, you, you jump on a plane, you gotta make sure that parachute is gonna open. >>And so was Kubernetes by the way, 2015 or so when, um, when that was coming out, it was, I mean, it was, it was still, and I, maybe it does still feel like that to some people. Right. But, uh, it was, it was the same kind of feeling that we had in the early days, AWS, the same feeling we have when we >>It's pretty much now with you guys, it's more like a tandem jump. Yeah. You know, but, but it's a lot of, lot of this cutting edge stuff, like jumping out of an airplane. Yeah. You guys, the right equipment, you gotta do the right things. Exactly. >>Right. >>Matthew, thanks for coming on the cube. Really appreciate it. Absolutely great conversation. Thanks for having me. Okay. The cubes here live and San Francisco for summit. I'm John Forry host of the cube. Uh, we'll be at a summit in New York coming up in the summer as well. Look up for that. look@thiscalendarforallthecubeactionatthecube.net. We'll be right back with our next segment after this break. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone to San Francisco live coverage here, we're at the cube a be summit 2022. We're back in person. I'm John fury host to the cube. We'll be at the eight of his summit in New York city. This summer, check us out then. But right now, two days in San Francisco, getting all the coverage what's going on in the cloud, we got a cube alumni and friend of the cube, my dudes, car CEO, investor, a Sierra, and also an investor and a bunch of startups, angel investor. Gonna do great to see you. Thanks for coming on the cube. Good to see you. Good to see you, sir. Chris. Cool. How are, are you >>Good? How are you? >>So congratulations on all your investments. Uh, you've made a lot of great successes, uh, over the past couple years, uh, and your company raising, uh, some good cash as Sarah. So give us the update. How much cash have you guys raised? What's the status of the company product what's going on? First >>Of all, thank you for having me back to be business with you. Never great to see you. Um, so is a company started around four years back. I invested with a few of the investors and now I'm the CEO there. Um, we have raised close to a hundred million there. Uh, the investors are people like Norwes Menlo, Tru ventures, coast, lo ventures, Ram Sheam and all those people, all well known guys. The Andy Beckel chime, Paul Mo uh, main web. So a whole bunch of operating people and, uh, Silicon valley VCs are involved >>And has it come? >>It's going well. We are doing really well. We are going almost 300% year over year. Uh, for last three years, the space ISR is going after is what I call the applying AI for customer service. It operations, it help desk, uh, the same place I used to work at ServiceNow. We are partners with ServiceNow to take, how can we argument for employees and customers, Salesforce, and ServiceNow to take it to the next stage? >>Well, I love having you on the cube, Dave and I, Dave Valenti as well loves having you on too, because you not only bring the entrepreneurial CEO experience, you're an investor. You're like a GE, you're like a guest analyst. <laugh> >>You know who you >>Get to call this fun to talk. You though, >>You got the commentary, you, your, your finger on the pulse. Um, so I gotta ask you obviously, AI and machine learning, machine learning AI, or you want to phrase it. Isn't every application. Now, AI first, uh, you're seeing a lot of that going on. You're starting to see companies build the modern applications at the top of the stack. So the cloud scale has hit. We're seeing cloud scale. You predicted that we talked about on cube many times. Now you have that past layer with a lot more services and cloud native becoming a standard layer. Containerizations growing DACA just raised a hundred million on a 2 billion valuation back from the dead after they pivoted from an enterprise services. So open source developers are booming. Um, where's the action. I mean, is there data control, plane emerging, AI needs data. There's a lot of challenges around this. There's a lot of discussions and a lot of companies being funded, observability there's 10 million observability companies. Data is the key. What's your angle on this? What's your take. Yeah, >>No, look, I think I'll give you the view that I see right from my side. Obviously data is very clear. So the things that remember system of recorded you and me talked about the next layer is called system of intelligence. That's where the AI will play. Like we talk cloud NA it'll be called AI, NA AI native is a new buzzword and using the AI customer service it operations. You talk about observability. I call it, AIOps applying AOPs for good old it operation management, cloud management. So you'll see the AOPs applied for whole list of, uh, application from observability doing the CMDB, predicting the events insurance. So I see a lot of work clicking for AIOps and service desk. What needs to be helped us with ServiceNow BMC G you see a new ELA emerging as a system of intelligence. Uh, the next would be is applying AI with workflow automation. So that's where you'll see a lot of things called customer workflow, employee workflows. So think of what UI path automation, anywhere ServiceNow are doing, that area will be driven with a AI workflows. So you'll see AI going >>Off is RPA a company is AI, is RPA a feature of something bigger? Or can someone have a company on RPA UI pass? One will be at their event this summer? Um, is it a product company? I mean, I mean, RPA is almost, should be embedded in everything. It's >>A feature. It is very good point. Very, very good thinking. So one is, it's a category for sure. Like, as we thought, it's a category, it's an area where RPA may change the name. I call it much more about automation, workflow automation, but RPA and automation is a category. Um, it's a company, or, but that automation should be embedded in every area. Yeah. Like we call cloud NA and AI NATO it'll become automation. NA yeah. And that's your thinking. >>It's almost interesting me. I think about the, what you're talking about what's coming to mind is I'm kinda having flashbacks to the old software model of middleware. Remember at middleware, it was very easy to understand it. It was middleware. It sat between two things and then the middle, and it was software abstraction. Now you have all, all kinds of workflows, abstractions everywhere. So multiple databases, it's not a monolithic thing. Right? Right. So as you break that down, is this the new modern middleware? Because what you're talking about is data workflows, but they might be siloed or they integrated. I mean, these are the challenges. This is crazy. What's the, >>So don't about the databases become called poly databases. Yeah. I call this one polyglot automation. So you need automation as a layer, as a category, but you also need to put automation in every area like you were talking about. It should be part of service. Now it should be part of ISRA, like every company, every Salesforce. So that's why you see MuleSoft and Salesforce buying RPA companies. So you'll see all the SaaS companies, cloud companies having an automation as a core. So it's like how you have a database and compute and sales and networking. You'll also have an automation as a layer <inaudible> inside every stack. >>All right. So I wanna shift gears a little bit and get your perspective on what's going on behind us. You can see, uh, behind us, you've got the expo hall. We got, um, we're back to vents, but you got, you know, AMD, Clum, Ove, uh, Dynatrace data, dog, innovative, all the companies out here that we know, we interview them all. They're trying to be suppliers to this growing enterprise market. Right. Okay. But now you also got the entrepreneurial equation. Okay. We're gonna have John Sado on from Bel later today. He's a former NEA guy and we always talk to Jerry, Jen. We know all the, the VCs. What does the startups look like? What does the state of the, in your mind, cause you, I know you invest the entrepreneurial founder situation, clouds bigger. Mm-hmm <affirmative> global, right? Data's part of it. You mentioned data's code. Yes. Basically data is everything. What's it like for a first an entrepreneur right now who's starting a company. What's the white space. What's the attack plan. How do they get in the market? How do they engineer everything? >>Very good. So I'll give it to, uh, two things that I'm seeing out there. Remember leaders of Amazon created the startups 15 years back. Everybody built on Amazon now, Azure and GCP. The next layer would be is people don't just build on Amazon. They're going to build it on top of snowflake. Companies are snowflake becomes a data platform, right? People will build on snowflake. Right? So I see my old boss flagman try to build companies on snowflake. So you don't build it just on Amazon. You build it on Amazon and snowflake. Snowflake will become your data store. Snowflake will become your data layer. Right? So I think that's in the of, <inaudible> trying to do that. So if I'm doing observability AI ops, if I'm doing next level of Splunk SIM, I'm gonna build it on snowflake, on Salesforce, on Amazon, on Azure, et cetera. >>It's interesting. You know, Jerry Chan has it put out a thesis a couple months ago called castles in the cloud where your moat is, what you do in the cloud. Not necessarily in the, in the IP. Um, Dave LAN and I had last reinvent, coined the term super cloud, right? He's got a lot of traction and a lot of people throwing, throwing mud at us, but we were, our thesis was, is that what Snowflake's doing? What Goldman S Sachs is doing. You starting to see these clouds on top of clouds. So Amazon's got this huge CapEx advantage. And guys like Charles Fitzgeral out there, who we like was kind of shit on us saying, Hey, you guys terrible, they didn't get it. Like, yeah. I don't think he gets it, but that's a whole, can't wait to debate him publicly on this. <laugh> if he's cool. Um, but snowflake is on Amazon. Yes. Now they say they're on Azure now. Cause they've got a bigger market and they're public, but ultimately without a AWS snowflake doesn't exist. And, and they're reimagining the data warehouse with the cloud, right? That's the billion dollar opportunity. >>It is. It is. They both are very tight. So imagine what Frank has done at snowflake and Amazon. So if I'm a startup today, I want to build everything on Amazon where possible whatever is, I cannot build. I'll make the pass layer. Remember the middle layer pass will be snowflake. So can build it on snowflake. I can use them for data layer. If I really need to size, I'll build it on four.com Salesforce. So I think that's where you'll see. So >>Basically if you're an entrepreneur, the north star in terms of the outcome is be a super cloud. >>It is, >>That's the application on another big CapEx ride, the CapEx of AWS or cloud, >>And that reduce your product development, your go to market and you get use the snowflake marketplace to drive your engagement. >>Yeah. Yeah. How are, how is Amazon and the clouds dealing with these big whales? The snowflakes of the world? I mean, I know they got a great relationship, uh, but snowflake now has to run a company they're public. Yeah. So, I mean, I'll say, I think got Redshift. Amazon has got red, um, but Snowflake's a big customer. They're probably paying AWS think big bills too. >>So John, very good. Cause it's like how Netflix is and Amazon prime, right. Netflix runs on Amazon, but Amazon has Amazon prime that co-option will be there. So Amazon will have Redshift, but Amazon is also partnering with, uh, snowflake to have native snowflake data warehouse as a data layer. So I think depending on the application use case, you have to use each of the above. I think snowflake is here for a long term. Yeah. Yeah. So if I'm building an application, I want to use snowflake then writing from stats. >>Well, I think that comes back down to entrepreneurial hustle. Do you have a better product? Right. Product value will ultimately determine it as long as the cloud doesn't, You know, foreclose your value that's right. But some sort of internal hack, but I think, I think the general question that I have is that I think it's okay to have a super cloud like that because the rising tide is still happening at some point. When does the rising tide stop >>And >>Do the people shopping up their knives, it gets more competitive or is it just an infinite growth cycle? I >>Think it's growth. You call it cloud scale. You invented the word cloud scale. So I think look, cloud will continually agree, increase. I think there's, as long as there are more movement from on, uh, OnPrem to the classical data center, I think there's no reason at this point, the rumor, the old lift and shift that's happening in like my business. I see people lift and shifting from the it operations. It helpless, even the customer service service now and, uh, ticket data from BMCs CAS like Microfocus, all those workloads are shifted to the cloud, right? So cloud ticketing system is happening. Cloud system of record is happening. So I think this train has still a long way to go made. >>I wanna get your thoughts for the folks watching that are, uh, enterprise buyers or practitioners, not suppliers to the market, feel free to, to XME or DMing. Next question's really about the buying side, which is if I'm a customer, what's the current, um, appetite for startup products. Cause you know, the big enterprises now and, you know, small, medium, large, and large enterprise are all buying new companies cuz a startup can go from zero to relevant very quickly. So that means now enterprises are engaging heavily with startups. What's it like what's is there a change in order of magnitude of the relationship between the startup selling to, or a growing startup selling to an enterprise? Um, have you seen changes there? I mean I'm seeing some stuff, but why don't we get your thoughts on that? What, no, it is. >>If I remember going back to our 2007 or eight, it, when I used to talk to you back then when Amazon started very small, right? We are an Amazon summit here. So I think enterprises on the average used to spend nothing with startups. It's almost like 0% or 1% today. Most companies are already spending 20, 30% with startups. Like if I look at a CIO line business, it's gone. Yeah. Can it go more? I think it can double in the next four, five years. Yeah. Spending on the startups. >>Yeah. And check out, uh, AWS startups.com. That's a site that we built for the startup community for buyers and startups. And I want to get your reaction because I reference the URL cause it's like, there's like a bunch of companies we've been promoting because the solutions that startups have actually are new stuff. Yes. It's bending, it's shifting left for security or using data differently or um, building tools and platforms for data engineering. Right. Which is a new persona that's emerging. So you know, a lot of good resources there, um, and gives back now to the data question. Now, getting back to your, what you're working on now is what's your thoughts around this new, um, data engineering persona, you mentioned AIOps, we've been seeing AIOps IOPS booming and that's creating a new developer paradigm that's right. Which we call coin data as code data as code is like infrastructure as code, but it's for data, right? It's developing with data, right? Retraining machine learnings, going back to the data lake, getting data to make, to do analysis, to make the machine learning better post event or post action. So this, this data engineers like an SRE for data, it's a new, scalable role we're seeing. Do you see the same thing? Do you agree? Um, do you disagree or can you share >>Yourself? No, I have a lot of thoughts that plus I see AIOP solutions in the future should be not looking back. I need to be like we are in San Francisco bay. That means earthquake prediction. Right? I want AOPs to predict when the outages are gonna happen. When there's a performance issue. I don't think most AOPs vendors have not gone there yet. Like I spend a lot of time with data dog, Cisco app Dyna, right? Dynatrace, all this solution will go future towards to proactive solution with AOPs. But what you bring up a very good point on the data side. I think like we have a Amazon marketplace and Amazon for startup, there should be data exchange where you want to create for AOPs and AI service that customers are give the data, share the data because we thought the data algorithms are useless. I can come the best algorithm, but I gotta train them, modify them, tweak them, make them better, make them better. Yeah. And I think their whole data exchange is the industry has not thought through something you and me talk many times. Yeah. Yeah. I think the whole, that area is very important. >>You've always been on, um, on the Vanguard of data because, uh, it's been really fun. Yeah. >>Going back to our big data days back in 2009, you know, >>Look at, look how much data bricks has grown. >>It is uh, double, the key >>Cloud kinda went private, so good stuff. What are you working on right now? Give a, give a, um, plug for what you're working on. You'll still investing. >>I do still invest, but look, I'm a hundred percent on ISRA right now. I'm the CEO there. Yeah. Okay. So right. ISRA is my number one baby right now. So I'm looking at that growing customers and my customers are some of them, you like it's zoom auto desk, Mac of fee, uh, grandchildren, all the top customers. Um, mainly for it help desk customer service. AIOps those are three product lines and going after enterprise and commercial deals. >>And when should someone buy your product? What's what's their need? What category is it? >>I think they look whenever somebody needs to buy the product is if you need AOP solution to predict, keep your lights on predict S one area. If you want to improve employee experience, you are using a slack teams and you want to automate all your workflows. That's another value problem. Third is customer service. You don't want to hire more people to do it. Some of the areas where you want to scale your company, grow your company, eliminate the cost customer service, >>Great stuff, man. Doing great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Congratulations on the success of your company and your investments. Thanks for coming on the cube. Okay. I'm John fur here at the cube live in San Francisco for day one of two days of coverage of 80 summit, 2022. And we're gonna be at 80 summit in San, uh, in New York and the summer. So look for that on this calendar, of course go to eight of us, startups.com. I mentioned that it's a site for all the hot startups and of course the cube.net and Silicon angle.com. Thanks for watching. We'll be back more coverage after this short break. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone. This to cubes coverage here in San Francisco, California, a Davis summit, 2022, the beginning of the event season, as it comes back a little bit smaller footprint, a lot of hybrid events going on, but this is actually a physical event, a summit new York's coming in the summer. We'll be there too with the cube on the set. We're getting back in the groove, psyched to be back. We were at reinvent, uh, as well, and we'll see more and more cube, but you're gonna see a lot of virtual cube, a lot of hybrid cube. We wanna get all those conversations, try to get more interviews, more flow going. But right now I'm excited to have Corey Quinn here on the back on the cube chief cloud economists with duck, bill groove, he founder, uh, and chief content person always got great angles, fun comedy, authoritative Corey. Great to see you. Thank you. >>Thanks. Coming on. Sure is a lot of words to describe as shit posting, which is how I describe what I tend to do. Most days, >>Shit posting is an art form now. And if you look at Mark's been doing a lot of shit posting lately, all a billionaires are shit posting, but they don't know how to do it. Like they're not >>Doing it right. Something opportunity there. It's like, here's how to be even more obnoxious and incisive. It's honestly the most terrifying scenario for anyone is if I have that kind of budget to throw at my endeavors, it's like, I get excited with a nonsense I can do with a $20 gift card for an AWS credit compared to, oh well, if I could buy a mid-size island to begin doing this from, oh, then we're having fun. This >>Shit posting trend. Interesting. I was watching a thread go on about, saw someone didn't get a job because of their shit posting and the employer didn't get it. And then someone on the other side, I'll hire the guy cuz I get that's highly intelligent shit posting. So for the audience that doesn't know what shit posting is, what is shit posting? >>It's more or less talking about the world of enterprise tech, which even that sentence is hard to finish without falling asleep and toppling out of my chair in front of everyone on the livestream. But it's doing it in such a way that brings it to life that says the quiet part. A lot of the audience is thinking, but generally doesn't say either because they're polite or not a jackass or more prosaically are worried about getting fired for better or worse. I don't have that particular constraint, >>Which is why people love you. So let's talk about what you, what you think is, uh, worthy and not worthy in the industry right now, obviously, uh, coupons coming up in Spain, which they're having a physical event, you can see the growth of cloud native Amazons, all, all the Adams let see new CEO, Andy move on to be the chief of all. Amazon just saw him. The cover of was it time magazine. Um, he's under a lot of stress. Amazon's changed. Invoice has changed. What's working. What's not, what's rising, what's falling. What's hot. What's not, >>It's easy to sit here and criticize almost anything these folks do. They they're effectively in a fishbowl, but I have trouble imagining the logistics. It takes to wind up handling the catering for a relatively downscale event like this one this year, let alone running a 1.7 million employee company having to balance all the competing challenges and pressures and the rest. I, I just can't fathom what it would be like to look at all of AWS. It's, it's sprawling, immense that dominates our entire industry and say, okay, this is a good start, but I, I wanna focus on something with a broader remit. What is that? How do you even get into that position? And you can't win once you're there. All you can do is hold onto the tiger and hope you don't get mold. Well, >>There's a lot of force for good conversations, seeing a lot of that going on, Amazon's trying to port and he was trying to portray themselves as you know, the Pathfinder, you know, you're the pioneer, um, force for good. And I get that and I think that's a good angle as cloud goes mainstream. There's still the question of, we had a guy on just earlier, who was a skydiving instructor and we were joking about the early days of cloud. Like that was like skydiving, build a parachute open, you know, and now it same kind of thing. As you move to edge, things are like reliable in some areas, but still new, new fringe, new areas. That's crazy. Well, >>Since the last time we've spoken, uh, Steve Schmidt is now the CISO for all of Amazon and his backfill replacement. The AWS CISO is CJ. Moses who as a hobby races, a as a semi-pro race car driver to my understanding, which either, I don't know what direction to take that in either. This is what he does to relax or ultimately, or ultimately it's. Huh? That, that certainly says something about risk assessment. I'm not entirely sure what, but okay. Either way, sounds like more exciting >>Replacement ready <laugh> in case something goes wrong. I, the track highly >>Available >>CSOs. I gotta say one of the things I do like in the recent trend is that the tech companies are getting into the formula one, which I was never a fan of until I watched that Netflix series. But when you look at the formula one, it's pretty cool. Cause it's got some tech angles, I get the whole data instrumentation thing, but the most coolest thing about formula one is they have these new rigs out. Yeah. Where you can actually race in e-sports with other, in pure simulation of the race car. You gotta get the latest and video graphics card, but it's basically a tricked out PC with amazing monitors and you have all the equipment of F1 and you're basically simulating racing. >>Oh, it's great too. And I can see the appeal of these tech companies getting into it because these things are basically rocket shifts. When those cars go, like they're sitting there, we can instrument every last part of what is going on inside that vehicle. And then AWS crops up. And we can bill on every one of those dimensions too. And it's like slow down their hasty pudding one step at a time. But I do see the appeal. >>So I gotta ask you about, uh, what's going in your world. I know you have a lot of great success. We've been following you in the queue for many, many years. Got a great newsletter. Check out Corey Quinn's newsletter, uh, screaming in the cloud program. Uh, you're on the cutting edge and you've got a great balance between really being snarky and, and, and really being delivering content. That's exciting, uh, for people, uh, with a little bit of an edge, um, how's that going? Uh, what's back any blow back late there been uptick. What was, what are some of the things you're hearing from your audience, more Corey, more Corey. And then of course the, the PR team's calling you >>The weird thing about having an audience beyond a certain size is far and away as a landslide. The most common response I get is silence where it's high. I'm emailing an awful lot of people at last week in AWS every week and okay. They must not have heard me it. That is not actually true. People just generally don't respond to email because who responds to email newsletters. That sounds like something, a lunatic might do same story with response to live streams and podcasts. It's like, I'm gonna call into that am radio show and give them a piece of my mind. People generally don't do that. >>We should do that. Actually. I think sure would call in. Oh, I, >>I think >>Chief, we had that right now. People would call in and say, Corey, what do you think about X? >>Yeah. It not, everyone understands the full context of what I do. And in fact, increasingly few people do and that's fine. I, I keep forgetting that sometimes people do not see what I'm doing in the same light that I do. And that's fine. Blowback has been largely minimal. Honestly, I am surprised anything by how little I have gotten over the last five years of doing this, but it would be easier to dismiss me if I weren't generally. Right. When, okay, so you launch this new service and it seems pretty crappy to me cuz when I try and build something, it falls over and begs for help. And people might not like hearing that, but it's what customers are finding too. Yeah. I really am the voice of the customer. >>You know, I always joke with Dave ante about how John Fort's always at, uh, reinvent getting the interview with jazzy now, Andy we're there, you're there. And so we have these rituals at the events. It's all cool. Um, one of the rituals I like about your, um, your content is you like to get on the naming product names. Um, and, and, and, and, and kind of goof on that. Now why I like is because I used to work at ETT Packard where they used to name things as like engineers, HP 1 0 5, or we can't, >>We have a new monitor. How are we gonna name it? Throw the wireless keyboard down the stairs again. And there you go. Yeah. >>It's and the old joke at HP was if they, if they invented sushi, they'd say, yeah, we can't call sushi. It's cold, dead fish. That's what it is. And so the joke was cold. Dead fish is a better name than sushi. So you know is fun. So what's the, what are the, how's the Amazon doing in there? Have they changed their naming, uh, strategy, uh, on some of their, their >>Producting, they're going in different directions. When they named Amazon Aurora, they decided to explore a new theme of Disney princesses as they go down those paths. And some things are more descriptive. Some people are clearly getting bonused on a number of words. They can shove into it. Like the better a service is the longer it's name. Like AWS systems manager, session manager is a great one. I love the service, ridiculous name. They have systems manager, parameter store, which is great. They have secrets manager, which does the same thing. It's two words less, but that one costs money in a way that systems manage your parameter store does not. It's >>Fun. What's your, what's your favorite combination of acronyms >>Combination of you >>Got Ks. You got EMR, you got EC two. You got S three SQS. Well, Redshift the on an acronym, you >>Gots is one of my personal favorites because it's either elastic block store or elastic bean stock, depending entirely on the context of the conversation. >>They still up bean stalk. Or is that still around? Oh, >>They never turn anything off. They're like the anti Google, Google turns things off while they're still building it. Whereas Amazon is like, wow, we built this thing in 2005 and everyone hates it. But while we certainly can't change it, now it has three customers on it. John three <laugh>. >>Okay. >>Simple BV still haunts our dreams. >>I, I actually got an email. I saw one of my, uh, servers, all these C two S were being deprecated and I got an email I'm like, I couldn't figure out. Why can you just like roll it over? Why, why are you telling me just like, give me something else. Right. Okay. So let me talk about, uh, the other things I want to ask you is that like, okay. So as Amazon gets better in some areas, where do they need more work in your opinion? Because obviously they're all interested in new stuff and they tend to like put it out there for their end to end customers. But then they've got ecosystem partners who actually have the same product. Yes. And, and this has been well documented. So it's, it's not controversial. It's just that Amazon's got a database, Snowflake's got a database service. So Redshift, snowflake database is, so you got this co-op petition. Yes. How's that going? And what are you hearing about the reaction to any of that stuff? >>Depends on who you ask. They love to basically trot out a bunch of their partners who will say nice things about them. And it very much has heirs of, let's be honest, a hostage video, but okay. Cuz these companies do partner with Amazon and they cannot afford to rock the boat too far. I'm not partnered with anyone. I can say what I want and they're basically restricted to taking away my birthday at worse so I can live with that. >>All right. So I gotta ask about multi-cloud cause obviously the other cloud shows are coming up. Amazon hated that word. Multi-cloud um, a lot of people are saying, you know, it's not a real good marketing word, like multi sounds like, you know, root canal. Mm-hmm <affirmative> right. So is there a better description for multi-cloud >>Multiple single points? >>Dave loves that term. Yeah. >>Yeah. You're building in multiple single points of failure. Do it for the right reasons or don't do it as a default. I believe not doing it is probably the right answer. However, and if I were, if I were Amazon, I wouldn't want to talk about multi-cloud either as the industry leader, talk about other clouds, bad direction to go in from a market cap perspective, it doesn't end well for you, but regardless of what they want to talk about, or don't want to talk about what they say, what they don't say, I tune all of it out. And I look at what customers are doing and multi-cloud exists in a variety of forms. Some brilliant, some brain dead. It depends a lot on context. But my general response is when someone gets on stage from a company and tells me to do a thing that directly benefits their company. I am skeptical at best. Yeah. When customers get on stage and say, this is what we're doing, because it solves problems. That's when I shut up and listen. Yeah. >>Cool. Awesome. Corey, I gotta ask you a question, cause I know you, we you've been, you know, fellow journeymen and the, and the cloud journey going to all the events and then the pandemic hit where now in the third year, who knows what it's gonna gonna end. Certainly events are gonna look different. They're gonna be either changing footprint with the virtual piece, new group formations. Community's gonna emerge. You got a pretty big community growing and it's throwing like crazy. What's the weirdest or coolest thing, or just big chain angels. You've seen with the pandemic, uh, from your perspective, cuz you've been in the you're in the middle of the whitewater rafting. You've seen the events you circle offline. You saw the online piece, come in, you're commentating. You're calling balls and strikes in the industry. You got a great team developing over there. Duck bill group. What's the big aha moment that you saw with the pandemic. Weird, fun, serious, real in the industry and with customers what's >>Accessibility. Reinvent is a great example. When in the before times it's open to anyone who wants to attend, who can pony up two grand and a week in Las Vegas and get to Las Vegas from wherever they happen to be by moving virtually suddenly it, it embraces the reality that talent is even distributed. Opportunity is not. And that means that suddenly these things are accessible to a wide swath of audience and potential customer base and the rest that hadn't been invited to the table previously, it's imperative that we not lose that. It's nice to go out and talk to people and have people come up and try and smell my hair from time to time, I smell delightful. Let make assure you, but it was, but it's also nice to be. >>I have a product for you if you want, you know. >>Oh, excellent. I look forward to it. What is it putting? Why not? <laugh> >>What else have you seen? So when accessibility for talent, which by the way is totally home run. What weird things have happened that you've seen? Um, that's >>Uh, it's, it's weird, but it's good that an awful lot of people giving presentations have learned to tighten their message and get to the damn point because most people are not gonna get up from a front row seat in a conference hall, midway through your Aing talk and go somewhere else. But they will change a browser tab and you won't get them back. You've gotta be on point. You've gotta be compelling if it's going to be a virtual discussion. >>Yeah. And also turn off your IMEs too. >>Oh yes. It's always fun in the, in the meetings when you're talking to someone and their co is messaging them about, should we tell 'em about this? And I'm sitting there reading it and it's >>This guy is really weird. Like, >>Yes I am and I bring it into the conversation and then everyone's uncomfortable. It goes, wow. >>Why not? I love when my wife yells at me over I message. When I'm on a business call, like, do you wanna take that about no, I'm good. >>No, no. It's better off. I don't. No, the only encourager it's fine. >>My kids. Excellent. Yeah. That's fun again. That's another weird thing. And, and then group behavior is weird. Now people are looking at, um, communities differently. Yes. Very much so, because if you're fatigued on content, people are looking for the personal aspect. You're starting to see much more of like yeah. Another virtual event. They gotta get better. One and two who's there. >>Yeah. >>The person >>That's a big part of it too is the human stories are what are being more and more interesting. Don't get up here and tell me about your product and how brilliant you are and how you built it. That's great. If I'm you, or if I wanna work with you or I want to compete with you, or I wanna put on my engineering hat and build it myself. Cause why would I buy anything? That's more than $8. But instead, tell me about the problem. Tell me about the painful spot that you specialize in. Tell me a story there. >>I, I >>Think that gets a glimpse in a hook and >>Makes more, more, I think you nailed it. Scaling storytelling. Yes. And access to better people because they don't have to be there in person. I just did it thing. I never, we never would've done the queue. We did. Uh, Amazon stepped up in sponsors. Thank you, Amazon for sponsoring international women's day, we did 30 interviews, APAC. We did five regions and I interviewed this, these women in Asia, Pacific eight, PJ, they called for in this world. And they're amazing. I never would've done those interviews cuz I never, would've seen 'em at an event. I never would've been in Japan or Singapore to access them. And now they're in the index. They're in the network. They're collaborating on LinkedIn. So a threads are developing around connections that I've never seen before. Yes. Around the content, >>Absolutely >>Content value plus >>The networking. And that is the next big revelation of this industry is going to realize you have different companies. And in Amazon's case, different service teams, all, all competing with each other, but you have the container group and you have the database group and you have the message cuing group. But customers don't really want to build things from spare parts. They want a solution to a problem. I want to build an app that does Twitter for pets or whatever it is I'm trying to do. I don't wanna basically have to pick and choose and fill my shopping cart with all these different things. I want something that's gonna give me what I'm trying to get as close to turnkey as possible. Moving up the stack. That is the future. And just how it gets here is gonna be >>Well we're here with Corey Quinn, the master of the master of content here in the a ecosystem. Of course we we've been following up in the beginnings. Great guy. Check out his blog, his site, his newsletter screaming podcast. Cory, final question for you. Uh, what do you hear doing what's on your agenda this week in San Francisco and give a plug for the duck build group. What are you guys doing? I know you're hiring some people what's on the table for the company. What's your focus this week and put a plug in for the group. >>I'm here as a customer and basically getting outta my cage cuz I do live here. It's nice to actually get out and talk to folks who are doing interesting things at the duck build group. We solve one problem. We fixed the horrifying AWS bill, both from engineering and architecture, advising as well as negotiating AWS contracts because it turns out those things are big and complicated. And of course my side media projects last week in aws.com, we are, it it's more or less a content operation where I indulge my continual and ongoing law of affair with the sound of my own voice. >><laugh> and you good. It's good content. It's on, on point fun, Starky and relevant. So thanks for coming to the cube and sharing with us. Appreciate it. No, thank you. Fun. You. Okay. This the cube covers here in San Francisco, California, the cube is back at to events. These are the summits, Amazon web services summits. They happen all over the world. We'll be in New York and obviously we're here in San Francisco this week. I'm John furry. Keep, keep it right here. We'll be back with more coverage after this short break. Okay. Welcome back everyone. This's the cubes covers here in San Francisco, California, we're live on the show floor of AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for host of the cube and remember AWS summit in New York city coming up this summer, we'll be there as well. And of course reinvent the end of the year for all the cube coverage on cloud computing and AWS. The two great guests here from the APN global APN se Jenko and Jeff Grimes partner leader, Jeff and se is doing partnerships global APN >>AWS global startup program. Yeah. >>Okay. Say that again. >>AWS global startup program. >>That's the official name. >>I love >>It too long, too long for me. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, of course. Appreciate it. Tell us about what's going on with you guys. What's the, how was you guys organized? You guys we're obviously were in San Francisco bay area, Silicon valley, zillions of startups here, New York. It's got another one we're gonna be at tons of startups. Lot of 'em getting funded, big growth and cloud big growth and data security, hot and sectors. >>Absolutely. >>So maybe, maybe we could just start with the global startup program. Um, it's essentially a white glove service that we provide to startups that are built on AWS. And the intention there is to help identify use cases that are being built on top of AWS. And for these startups, we want to provide white glove support in co building products together. Right. Um, co-marketing and co-selling essentially, um, you know, the use cases that our customers need solved, um, that either they don't want to build themselves or are perhaps more innovative. Um, so the, a AWS global startup program provides white glove support, dedicated headcount for each one of those pillars. Um, and within our program, we've also provided incentives, programs go to market activities like the AWS startup showcase that we've built for these startups. >>Yeah. By the way, start AWS startups.com is the URL, check it out. Okay. So partnerships are key. Jeff, what's your role? >>Yeah. So I'm responsible for leading the overall F for, for the AWS global startup program. Um, so I've got a team of partner managers that are located throughout the us, uh, managing a few hundred startup ISVs right now. <laugh> >>Yeah, I got >>A lot. We've got a lot. >>There's a lot. I gotta, I gotta ask the tough question. Okay. I'm I'm a startup founder. I got a team. I just got my series a we're grown. I'm trying to hire people. I'm super busy. What's in it for me. Yeah. What do you guys bring to the table? I love the white glove service, but translate that what's in it. What do I get out of it? What's >>A good story. Good question. I focus, I think. Yeah, because we get, we get to see a lot of partners building their businesses on AWS. So, you know, from our perspective, helping these partners focus on what, what do we truly need to build by working backwards from customer feedback, right? How do we effectively go to market? Because we've seen startups do various things, um, through trial and error, um, and also just messaging, right? Because oftentimes partners or rather startups, um, try to boil the ocean with many different use cases. So we really help them, um, sort of laser focus on what are you really good at and how can we bring that to the customer as quickly as possible? >>Yeah. I mean, it's truly about helping that founder accelerate the growth of their company. Yeah. Right. And there's a lot that you can do with AWS, but focus is truly the key word there because they're gonna be able to find their little piece of real estate and absolutely deliver incredible outcomes for our customers. And then they can start their growth curve there. >>What are some of the coolest things you've seen with the APN that you can share publicly? I know you got a lot going on there, a lot of confidentiality. Um, but you know, we're here lot of great partners on the floor here. I'm glad we're back at events. Uh, a lot of stuff going on digitally with virtual stuff and, and hybrid. What are some of the cool things you guys have seen in the APN that you can point to? >>Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can point to few, you can take them. Sure. So, um, I think what's been fun over the years for me personally, I came from a startup, ran sales at an early stage startup and, and I went through the whole thing. So I have a deep appreciation for what these guys are going through. And what's been interesting to see for me is taking some of these early stage guys, watching them progress, go public, get acquired, and see that big day mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, and being able to point to very specific items that we help them to get to that point. Uh, and it's just a really fun journey to watch. >>Yeah. I, and part of the reason why I really, um, love working at the AWS, uh, global startup program is working with passionate founders. Um, I just met with a founder today that it's gonna, he's gonna build a very big business one day, um, and watching them grow through these stages and supporting that growth. Um, I like to think of our program as a catalyst for enterprise sort of scale. Yeah. Um, and through that we provide visibility, credibility and growth opportunities. >>Yeah. A lot, a lot of partners too. What I found talking to staff founders is when they have that milestone, they work so hard for it. Whether it's a B round C round Republic or get bought. Yeah. Um, then they take a deep breath and they look back at wow, what a journey it's been. So it's kind of emotional for sure. Yeah. Still it's a grind. Right? You gotta, I mean, when you get funding, it's still day one. You don't stop. It's no celebrate, you got a big round or valuation. You still gotta execute >>And look it's hypercompetitive and it's brutally difficult. And our job is to try to make that a little less difficult and navigate those waters right. Where everyone's going after similar things. >>Yeah. I think as a group element too, I observe that startups that I, I meet through the APN has been interesting because they feel part of AWS. Yeah, totally. As a group of community, as a vibe there. Um, I know they're hustling, they're trying to make things happen. But at the same time, Amazon throws a huge halo effect. I mean, that's a huge factor. I mean, yeah. You guys are the number one cloud in the business, the growth in every sector is booming. Yeah. And if you're a startup, you don't have that luxury yet. And look at companies like snowflake, they're built on top of AWS. Yeah. I mean, people are winning by building on AWS. >>Yeah. And our, our, our program really validates their technology first. So we have, what's called a foundation's technical review that we put all of our startups through before we go to market. So that when enterprise customers are looking at startup technology, they know that it's already been vetted. And, um, to take that a step further and help these partners differentiate, we use programs like the competency programs, the DevOps compet, the, the security competency, which continues to help, um, provide sort of a platform for these startups, help them differentiate. And also there's go to market benefits that are associated with that. >>Okay. So let me ask the, the question that's probably on everyone's mind, who's watching. Certainly I asked this a lot. There's a lot of companies startups out there who makes the, is there a criteria? Oh God, it's not like his sports team or anything, but like sure. Like there's activate program, which is like, there's hundreds of thousands of startups out there. Not everyone is at the APN. Right? Correct. So ISVs again, that's a whole nother, that's a more mature partner that might have, you know, huge market cap or growth. How do you guys focus? How do you guys focus? I mean, you got a good question, you know, a thousand flowers blooming all the time. Is there a new way you guys are looking at it? I know there's been some talk about restructure or, or new focus. What's the focus. >>Yeah. It's definitely not an easy task by any means. Um, but you know, I recently took over this role and we're really trying to establish focus areas, right. So obviously a lot of the fees that we look after our infrastructure ISVs, that's what we do. Uh, and so we have very specific pods that look after different type of partners. So we've got a security pod, we've got a DevOps pod, we've got core infrastructure, et cetera. And really we're trying to find these ISVs that can solve, uh, really interesting AWS customer challenges. >>So you guys have a deliberate, uh, focus on these pillars. So what infrastructure, >>Security, DevOps, and data and analytics, and then line of business >>Line of business line, like web marketing >>Solutions, business apps, >>Business, this owner type thing. Exactly. >>Yeah, exactly. >>So solutions there. Yeah. More solutions and the other ones are like hardcore. So infrastructure as well, like storage, backup, ransomware of stuff, or, >>Uh, storage, networking. >>Okay. Yeah. The classic >>Database, et cetera. Right. >>And so there's teams on each pillar. >>Yep. So I think what's, what's fascinating for the startup that we cover is that they've got, they truly have support from a build market sell perspective. Right. So you've got someone who's technical to really help them get the technology, figured out someone to help them get the marketing message dialed and spread, and then someone to actually do the co-sell, uh, day to day activities to help them get in front of customers. >>Probably the number one request that we always ask for Amazon is can we waste that sock report? Oh, download it, the console, which we use all the time. Exactly. But security's a big deal. I mean, you know, SREs are evolving, that role of DevOps is taking on dev SecOps. Um, I, I could see a lot of customers having that need for a relationship to move things faster. Do you guys provide like escalation or is that a part of a service or not, not part of a, uh, >>Yeah, >>So the partner development manager can be an escalation point. Absolutely. Think of them as an extension of your business inside of AWS. >>Great. And you guys how's that partner managers, uh, measure >>On those three pillars. Right. Got it. Are we billing, building valuable use cases? So product development go to market, so go to market activities, think blog, posts, webinars, case studies, so on and so forth. And then co-sell not only are we helping these partners win their current opportunities that they are sourcing, but can we also help them source net new deals? Yeah. Right. That's >>Very important. I mean, top asked from the partners is get me in front of customers. Right. Um, not an easy task, but that's a huge goal of ours to help them grow their top >>Line. Right. Yeah. In fact, we had some interviews here on the cube earlier talking about that dynamic of how enterprise customers are buying. And it's interesting, a lot more POCs. I have one partner here that you guys work with, um, on observability, they got a huge POC with capital one mm-hmm <affirmative> and the enterprises are engaging the startups and bringing them in. So the combination of open source software enterprises are leaning into that hard and bringing young growing startups in mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yep. So I could see that as a huge service that you guys can bring people in. >>Right. And they're bringing massively differentiated technology to the table. Mm-hmm <affirmative> the challenge is they just might not have the brand recognition that the big guys have. And so that it's our job is how do you get that great tech in front of the right situations? >>Okay. So my next question is about the show here, and then we'll talk globally. So here in San Francisco sure. You know, Silicon valley bay area, San Francisco bay area, a lot of startups, a lot of VCs, a lot of action. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so probably a big market for you guys. Yeah. So what's exciting here in SF and then outside SF, you guys have a global program, you see any trends that are geography based or is it sure areas more mature? There's certain regions that are better. I mean, I just interviewed a company here that's doing, uh, AWS edge really well in these cases. It's interesting that these, the partners are filling a lot of holes and gaps in the opportunities with AWS. So what's exciting here. And then what's the global perspective. >>Yeah, totally. So obviously a ton of partners, I, from the bay area that we support. Um, but we're seeing a lot of really interesting technology coming out of AMEA specifically. Yeah. Uh, and making a lot of noise here in the United States, which is great. Um, and so, you know, we definitely have that global presence and, and starting to see super differentiated technology come out of those regions. >>Yeah. Especially Tel Aviv. Yeah. >>Amy real quick, before you get in the surge. It's interesting. The VC market in, in Europe is hot. Yeah. They've got a lot of unicorns coming in. We've seen a lot of companies coming in. They're kind of rattling their own, you know, cage right now. Hey, look at us. We'll see if they crash, you know, but we don't see that happening. I mean, people have been projecting a crash now in, in the startup ecosystem for at least a year. It's not crashing. In fact, funding's up. >>Yeah. The pandemic was hard on a lot of startups for sure. Yeah. Um, but what we've seen is many of these startups, they, as quickly as they can grow, they can also pivot as, as, as well. Um, and so I've actually seen many of our startups grow through the pandemic because their use cases are helping customers either save money, become more operationally efficient and provide value to leadership teams that need more visibility into their infrastructure during a pandemic. >>It's an interesting point. I talked to Andy jazzy and Adam Leski both say the same thing during the pandemic necessity, the mother of all invention. Yep. And startups can move fast. So with that, you guys are there to assist if I'm a startup and I gotta pivot cuz remember iterate and pivot, iterate and pivot. So you get your economics, that's the playbook of the ventures and the models. >>Exactly. How >>Do you guys help me do that? Give me an example of walk me through, pretend me I'm a startup. Hey, I am on the cloud. Oh my God. Pandemic. They need video conferencing. Hey cube. Yeah. What do I need? Surge? What, what do I do? >>That's a good question. First thing is just listen. Yeah. I think what we have to do is a really good job of listening to the partner. Um, what are their needs? What is their problem statement and where do they want to go at the end of the day? Um, and oftentimes because we've worked with so many successful startups, they have come out of our program. We have, um, either through intuition or a playbook, determined what is gonna be the best path forward and how do we get these partners to stop focusing on things that will eventually, um, just be a waste of time yeah. And, or not provide, or, you know, bring any fruit to the table, which, you know, essentially revenue. >>Well, we love star rights here in the cube because one, um, they have good stories. They're oil and cutting edge, always pushing the envelope and they're kind of disrupting someone else. Yeah. And so they have an opinion. They don't mind sharing on camera. So love talking to startups. We love working with you guys on our startup showcases startups.com. Check out AWS startups.com and you got the showcases, uh, final. We I'll give you guys the last word. What's the bottom line bumper sticker for AP the global APN program. Summarize the opportunity for startups, what you guys bring to the table and we'll close it out. Totally start >>With you. Yeah. I think the AWS global startup program's here to help companies truly accelerate their business full stop. Right. And that's what we're here for. I love it. >>It's a good way to, it's a good way to put it Dito. >>Yeah. All right, sir. Thanks for coming on. Thanks John. Great to see you love working with you guys. Hey, startups need help. And the growing and huge market opportunities, the shift cloud scale data engineering, security infrastructure, all the markets are exploding in growth because of the digital transformation of the realities here. Open source and cloud all making it happen here in the cube in San Francisco, California. I'm John furrier, your host. Thanks for watching >>John. >>Hello and welcome back to the cubes live coverage here in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for host of the cube. Uh, two days of coverage, AWS summit, 2022 in New York city. Coming up this summer, we'll be there as well at events are back. The cube is back of course, with the cube virtual cube hybrid, the cube.net, check it out a lot of content this year, more than ever, a lot more cloud data cloud native, modern applic is all happening. Got a great guest here. Jeremy Burton, Cub alumni, uh, CEO of observe Inc in the middle of all the cloud scale, big data observability Jeremy. Great to see you. Thanks >>Always great to come and talk to you on the queue, man. It's been been a few years, so, >>Um, well you, you got your hands. You're in the trenches with great startup, uh, good funding, great board, great people involved in the observability hot area, but also you've been a senior executive president of Dell, uh, EMC, uh, 11 years ago you had a, a vision and you actually had an event called cloud meets big data. Um, yeah. And it's here. You predicted it 11 years ago. Um, look around it's cloud meets big data. >>Yeah. I mean the, the cloud thing I think, you know, was, was probably already a thing, but the big data thing I do claim credit for, for, for sort of catching that bus out, um, you know, we, we were on the, the, the bus early and, and I think it was only inevitable. Like, you know, if you could bring the economics and the compute of cloud to big data, you, you could find out things you could never possibly imagine. >>So you're close to a lot of companies that we've been covering deeply. Snowflake obviously are involved, uh, the board level, you know, the founders, you know, the people there cloud, you know, Amazon, you know, what's going on here? Yeah. You're doing a startup as the CEO at the helm, uh, chief of observ, Inc, which is an observability, which is to me in the center of this confluence of data engineering, large scale integrations, um, data as code integrating into applic. I mean, it's a whole nother world developing, like you see with snowflake, it means snowflake is super cloud as we call it. So a whole nother wave is here. What's your, what's this wave we're on what's how would you describe the wave? >>Well, a couple of things, I mean, people are, I think riding more software than, than ever fall. Why? Because they've realized that if, if you don't take your business online and offer a service, then you become largely irrelevant. And so you you've got a whole set of new applications. I think, I think more applications now than any point. Um, not, not just ever, but the mid nineties, I always looked at as the golden age of application development. Now back then people were building for windows. Well, well now they're building for things like AWS is now the platform. Um, so you've got all of that going on. And then at the same time, the, the side effect of these applications is they generate data and lots of data and the, you know, the sort of the transactions, you know, what you bought today or something like that. But then there's what we do, which is all the telemetry data, all the exhaust fumes. And I think people really are realizing that their differentiation is not so much their application. It's their understanding of the data. Can, can I understand who my best customers are, what I sell today. If people came to my website and didn't buy, then I not, where did they drop off all of that they wanna analyze. And, and the answers are all in the data. The question is, can you understand it >>In our last startup showcase, we featured data as code. One of the insights that we got out of that I wanna get your opinion on our reaction to is, is that data used to be put into a data lake and turns into a data swamp or throw into the data warehouse. And then we'll do some query, maybe a report once in a while. And so data, once it was done, unless it was real time, even real time was not good anymore after real time. That was the old way. Now you're seeing more and more, uh, effort to say, let's go look at the data cuz now machine learning is getting better. Not just train once mm-hmm <affirmative> they're iterating. Yeah. This notion of iterating and then pivoting, iterating and pivoting. Yeah, that's a Silicon valley story. That's like how startups work, but now you're seeing data being treated the same way. So now you have another, this data concept that's now yeah. Part of a new way to create more value for the apps. So this whole, this whole new cycle of >>Yeah. >>Data being reused and repurposed and figured out and >>Yeah, yeah. I'm a big fan of, um, years ago. Uh, uh, just an amazing guy, Andy McAfee at the MIT C cell labs I spent time with and he, he had this line, which still sticks to me this day, which is look I'm I'm. He said I'm part of a body, which believes that everything is a matter of data. Like if you, of enough data, you can answer any question. And, and this is going back 10 years when he was saying these kind of things and, and certainly, you know, research is on the forefront. But I, I think, you know, starting to see that mindset of the, the sort of MIT research be mainstream, you know, in enterprises, they they're realizing that yeah, it is about the data. You know, if I can better understand my data better than my competitor than I've got an advantage. And so the question is is, is how, what, what technologies and what skills do I need in my organization to, to allow me to do that. So >>Let's talk about observing you the CEO of, okay. Given you've seen the wave before you're in the front lines of observability, which again is in the center of all this action what's going on with the company. Give a quick minute to explain, observe for the folks who don't know what you guys do. What's the company doing? What's the funding status, what's the product status and what's the customer status. Yeah. >>So, um, we realized, you know, a handful of years ago, let's say five years ago that, um, look, the way people are building applications is different. They they're way more functional. They change every day. Uh, but in some respects they're a lot more complicated. They're distributed. They, you know, microservices architectures and when something goes wrong, um, the old way of troubleshooting and solving problems was not gonna fly because you had SA so much change going into production on a daily basis. It was hard to tell like where the problem was. And so we thought, okay, it's about time. Somebody looks at the exhaust fumes from this application and all the telemetry data and helps people troubleshoot and make sense of the problems that they're seeing. So, I mean, that's observability, it's actually a term that goes back to the 1960s. It was a guy called, uh, Rudolph like, like everything in tech, you know, it's, it's a reinvention of, of something from years gone by. >>But, um, there's a guy called, um, Rudy Coleman in 1960s, kinder term. And, and, and the term was been able to determine the state of a system by looking at its external outputs. And so we've been going on this for, uh, the best part of the all years now. Um, it took us three years just to build the product. I think, I think what people don't appreciate these days often is the barrier to entry in a lot of these markets is quite high. You, you need a lot of functionality to have something that's credible with a customer. Um, so yeah, this last year we, we, we did our first year selling, uh, we've got about 40 customers now. <affirmative> um, we just we've got great investors for the hill ventures. Uh, I mean, Mike SP who was, you know, the, the guy who was the, really, the first guy in it snowflake and the, the initial investor were fortunate enough to, to have Mike on our board. And, um, you know, part of the observed story yeah. Is closely knit with snowflake because all of that time data know we, we still are in there. >>So I want to get, uh, >>Yeah. >>Pivot to that. Mike Pfizer, snowflake, Jeremy Burton, the cube kind of, kind of same thinking this idea of a super cloud or what snowflake became snowflake is massively successful on top of AWS. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and now you're seeing startups and companies build on top of snowflake. Yeah. So that's become an entrepreneurial story that we think that to go big in the cloud, you can have a cloud on a cloud, uh, like as Jerry, Jerry Chan and Greylock calls it castles in the cloud where there are moats in the cloud. So you're close to it. I know you're doing some stuff with snowflake. So a startup, what's your view on building on top of say a snowflake or an AWS, because again, you gotta go where the data is. You need all the data. >>Yeah. So >>What's your take on that? >>I mean, having enough gray hair now, um, you know, again, in tech, I think if you wanna predict the future, look at the past. And, uh, you know, to many years ago, 25 years ago, I was at a, a smaller company called Oracle and an Oracle was the database company. And, uh, their, their ambition was to manage all of the world's transactional data. And they built on a platform or a couple of platforms, one, one windows, and the other main one was Solaris. And so at that time, the operator and system was the platform. And, and then that was the, you know, ecosystem that you would compete on top of. And then there were companies like SAP that built applications on top of Oracle. So then wind the clock forward 25 years gray hairs. <laugh> the platform, isn't the operating system anymore. The platform is AWS, you know, Google cloud. I gotta probably look around if I say that in. Yeah. It's >>Okay. But hyperscale, yeah. CapX built out >>That is the new platform. And then snowflake comes along. Well, their aspiration is to manage all of the, not just human generator data, but machine generated data in the world of cloud. And I think they they've done an amazing job doing for the, I'd say, say the, the big data world, what Oracle did for the relational data world, you know, way back 25 years ago. And then there are folks like us come along and, and of course my ambition would be, look, if, if we can be as successful as an SAP building on top of snow snowflake, uh, as, as they were on top of Oracle, then, then we'd probably be quite happy. >>So you're building on top of snowflake. >>We're building on top of snowflake a hundred percent. And, um, you know, I've had folks say to me, well, aren't you worried about that? Isn't that a risk? It's like, well, that that's a risk. You >>Still on the board. >>Yeah. I'm still on the board. Yeah. That that's a risk I'm prepared to take <laugh> I am long on snowflake you, >>Well, you're in a good spot. Stay on the board, then you'll know what's going on. Okay. No know just doing, but the, this is a real dynamic. It is. It's not a one off it's. >>Well, and I do believe as well that the platform that you see now with AWS, if you look at the revenues of AWS is an order of magnitude more than Microsoft was 25 years ago with windows mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so I believe the opportunity for folks like snowflake and folks like observe it's an order of magnitude more than it was for the Oracle and the SAPs of the old >>World. Yeah. And I think this is really, I think this is something that this next generation of entrepreneurship is the go big scenario is you gotta be on a platform. Yeah. >>It's quite >>Easy or be the platform, but it's hard. There's only like how many seats are at that table left. >>Well, value migrates up over time. So, you know, when the cloud thing got going, there were probably 10, 20, 30, you know, Rackspace and there's 1,000,001 infrastructure, a service platform as a service, my, my old, uh, um, employee EMC, we had pivotal, you know, pivotal was a platform as a service. You don't hear so much about it, these, but initially there's a lot of players and then it consolidates. And then to, to like extract, uh, a real business, you gotta move up, you gotta add value, you gotta build databases, then you gotta build applications. So >>It's interesting. Moving from the data center of the cloud was a dream for starters. Cause then if the provision, the CapEx, now the CapEx is in the cloud. Then you build on top of that, you got snowflake you on top of that, the >>Assumption is almost that compute and storage is free. I know it's not quite free. Yeah. It's >>Almost free, >>But, but you can, you know, as an application vendor, you think, well, what can I do if I assume compute and storage is free, that's the mindset you've gotta get into. >>And I think the platform enablement to value. So if I'm an entrepreneur, I'm gonna get a serious, multiple of value in what I'm paying. Yeah. Most people don't even blanket their Avis pills unless they're like massively huge. Yeah. Then it's a repatriation question or whatever discount question, but for most startups or any growing company, the Amazon bill should be a small factor. >>Yeah. I mean, a lot of people, um, ask me like, look, you're building on snowflake. Um, you, you know, you are, you are, you're gonna be, you're gonna be paying their money. How, how, how, how does that work with your business model? If you're paying them money, you know, do, do you have a viable business? And it's like, well, okay. I, we could build a database as well in observe, but then I've got half the development team working on in that will never be as good as snowflake. And so we made the call early on that. No, no, we, we wanna innovate above the database. Yeah. Right. Snowflake are doing a great job of innovating on the database and, and the same is true of something like Amazon, like, like snowflake could have built their own cloud and their own platform, but they didn't. >>Yeah. And what's interesting is that Dave <inaudible> and I have been pointing this out and he's actually more on snowflake. I I've been looking at data bricks, um, and the same dynamics happening, the proof is the ecosystem. Yeah. I mean, if you look at Snowflake's ecosystem right now and data bricks it's exploding. Right. I mean, the shows are selling out the floor. Space's book. That's the old days at VMware. Yeah. The old days at AWS >>One and for snowflake and, and any platform provider, it's a beautiful thing. You know, we build on snowflake and we pay them money. They don't have to sell to us. Right. And we do a lot of the support. And so the, the economics work out really, really well. If you're a platform provider and you've got a lot of ecosystems. >>Yeah. And then also you get, you get a, um, a trajectory of, uh, economies of scale with the institutional knowledge of snowflake integrations, right. New products. You're scaling that function with the, >>Yeah. I mean, we manage 10 petabytes of data right now. Right. When I, when I, when I arrived at EMC in 2010, we had, we had one petabyte customer. And, and so at observe, we've been only selling the product for a year. We have 10 petabytes of data under management. And so been able to rely on a platform that can manage that is invaluable, >>You know, but Jeremy Greek conversation, thanks for sharing your insights on the industry. Uh, we got a couple minutes left. Um, put a plug in for observe. What do you guys, I know you got some good funding, great partners. I don't know if you can talk about your, your, your POC customers, but you got a lot of high ends folks that are working with you. You getting traction. Yeah. >>Yeah. >>Scales around the corner. Sounds like, are you, is that where you are scale? >>Got, we've got a big announcement coming up in two or weeks. We've got, we've got new funding, um, which is always great. Um, the product is, uh, really, really close. I think, as a startup, you always strive for market fit, you know, which is at which point can you just start hiring salespeople? And the revenue keeps going. We're getting pretty close to that right now. Um, we've got about 40 SaaS companies run on the platform. They're almost all AWS Kubernetes, uh, which is our sweet spot to begin with, but we're starting to get some really interesting, um, enterprise type customers. We're, we're, you know, F five networks we're POC in right now with capital one, we got some interest in news around capital one coming up. I, I can't share too much, uh, but it's gonna be exciting. And, and like I saids hill continued to, to, to stick, >>I think capital one's a big snowflake customer as well. Right. They, >>They were early in one of the things that attracted me to capital one was they were very, very good with snowflake early on. And, and they put snowflake in a position in the bank where they thought that snowflake could be successful. Yeah. And, and today that, that is one of Snowflake's biggest accounts. >>So capital one, very innovative cloud, obviously AIOS customer and very innovative, certainly in the CISO and CIO, um, on another point on where you're at. So you're, Prescale meaning you're about to scale, right? So you got POCs, what's that trick GE look like, can you see around the corner? What's, what's going on? What's on, around the corner. That you're, that you're gonna hit the straight and narrow and, and gas it >>Fast. Yeah. I mean, the, the, the, the key thing for us is we gotta get the product. Right. Um, the nice thing about having a guy like Mike Pfizer on the board is he doesn't obsess about revenue at this stage is questions that the board are always about, like, is the product, right? Is the product right? Is the product right? If you got the product right. And cuz we know when the product's right, we can then scale the sales team and, and the revenue will take care of itself. Yeah. So right now all the attention is on the product. Um, the, this year, the exciting thing is we were, we're adding all the tracing visualizations. So people will be able to the kind of things that back in the day you could do with the new lakes and, and AppDynamics, the last generation of, of APM tools, you're gonna be able to do that within observe. And we've already got the logs and the metrics capability in there. So for us, this year's a big one, cuz we sort of complete the trifecta, you know, the, the logs, >>What's the secret sauce observe. What if you had the, put it into a, a sentence what's the secret sauce? I, >>I, I think, you know, an amazing founding engineering team, uh, number one, I mean, at the end of the day, you have to build an amazing product and you have to solve a problem in a different way. And we've got great long term investors. And, and the biggest thing our investors give is actually it's not just money. It gives us time to get the product, right. Because if we get the product right, then we can get the growth. >>Got it. Final question. Why I got you here? You've been on the enterprise business for a long time. What's the buyer landscape out there. You got people doing POCs on capital one scale. So we know that goes on. What's the appetite at the buyer side for startups and what are their requirements that you're seeing? Uh, obviously we're seeing people go in and dip into the startup pool because new ways to refactor their business restructure. So a lot happening in cloud. What's the criteria. How are enterprises engaging in with startups? >>Yeah. I mean, enterprises, they know they've gotta spend money transforming the business. I mean, this was, I almost feel like my old Dell or EMC self there, but, um, what, what we were saying five years ago is happening. Um, everybody needs to figure out out a way to take their, this to this digital world. Everybody has to do it. So the nice thing from a startup standpoint is they know at times they need to risk or, or take a bet on new technology in order to, to help them do that. So I think you've got buyers that a have money, uh, B prepared to take risks and it's, it's a race against time to, you know, get their, their offerings in this. So a new digital footprint, >>Final, final question. What's the state of AWS. Where do you see them going next? Obviously they're continuing to be successful. How does cloud 3.0, or they always say it's day one, but it's more like day 10. Uh, but what's next for Aw. Where do they go from here? Obviously they're doing well. They're getting bigger and bigger. >>Yeah. They're, they're, it's an amazing story. I mean, you know, we we're, we're on AWS as well. And so I, I think if they keep nurturing the builders in the ecosystem, then that is their superpower. They, they have an early leads. And if you look at where, you know, maybe the likes of Microsoft lost the plot in the, in the late it was, they stopped, uh, really caring about developers and the folks who were building on top of their ecosystem. In fact, they started buying up their ecosystem and competing with people in their ecosystem. And I see with AWS, they, they have an amazing head start and if they did more, you know, if they do more than that, that's, what's gonna keep the jut rolling for many years to come. Yeah, >>They got the silicone and they got the staff act, developing Jeremy Burton inside the cube, great resource for commentary, but also founding with the CEO of a company called observing in the middle of all the action on the board of snowflake as well. Um, great start. Thanks for coming on the cube. >>Always a pleasure. >>Okay. Live from San Francisco to cube. I'm John for your host. Stay with us more coverage from San Francisco, California after the short break. >>Hello. Welcome back to the cubes coverage here live in San Francisco, California. I'm John furrier, host of the cubes cube coverage of AWS summit 2022 here in San Francisco. We're all the developers of the bay area at Silicon valley. And of course, AWS summit in New York city is coming up in the summer. We'll be there as well. SF and NYC cube coverage. Look for us. Of course, reinforcing Boston and re Mars with the whole robotics AI thing, all coming together. Lots of coverage stay with us today. We've got a great guest from Deibel VC. John Skoda, founding partner, entrepreneurial venture is a venture firm. Your next act, welcome to the cube. Good to see you. >>Good to see you, Matt. I feel like it's been forever since we've been able to do something in person. Well, >>I'm glad you're here because we run into each other all the time. We've known each other for over a decade. Um, >><affirmative>, it's been at least 10 years now, >>At least 10 years more. And we don't wanna actually go back as frees back, uh, the old school web 1.0 days. But anyway, we're in web three now. So we'll get to that in >>Second. We, we are, it's a little bit of a throwback to the path though, in my opinion, >><laugh>, it's all the same. It's all distributed computing and software. We ran each other in cube con you're investing in a lot of tech startup founders. Okay. This next level, next gen entrepreneurs have a new makeup and it's software. It's hardcore tech in some cases, not hardcore tech, but using software is take old something old and make it better, new, faster. <laugh>. So tell us about Deibel what's the firm. I know you're the founder, uh, which is cool. What's going on. Explain >>What you're doing. I mean, you remember I'm a recovering entrepreneur, right? So of course I, I, I, >>No, you're never recovering. You're always entrepreneur >>Always, but we are also always recovering. So I, um, started my first company when I was 24. If you remember, before there was Facebook and friends, there was instant messaging. People were using that product at work every day, they were creating a security vulnerability between their network and the outside world. So I plugged that hole and built an instant messaging firewall. It was my first company. The company was called, I am logic and we were required by Symantec. Uh, then spent 12 years investing in the next generation of our companies, uh, early investor in open source companies and cloud companies and spent a really wonderful 12 years, uh, at a firm called NEA. So I, I feel like my whole life I've been either starting enterprise software companies or helping founders start enterprise software companies. And I'll tell you, there's never been a better time than right now to start enter price software company. >>So, uh, the passion for starting a new firm was really a recognition that founders today that are starting in an enterprise software company, they, they tend to be, as you said, a more technical founder, right? Usually it's a software engineer or a builder mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, they are building products that are serving a slightly different market than what we've traditionally seen in enterprise software. Right? I think traditionally we've seen it buyers or CIOs that have agendas and strategies, which, you know, purchased software that has traditionally bought and sold tops down. But, you know, today I think the most successful enterprise software companies are the ones that are built more bottoms up and have more technical early opts. And generally speaking, they're free to use. They're free to try. They're very commonly community source or open source companies where you have a large technical community that's supporting them. So there's a, there's kind of a new normal now I think in great enterprise software. And it starts with great technical founders with great products and great and emotions. And I think there's no better place to, uh, service those people than in the cloud and uh, in, in your community. >>Well, first of all, congratulations, and by the way, you got a great pedigree and great background, super smart admire of your work and your, and, and your founding, but let's face it. Enterprise is hot because digital transformation is all companies. The is no, I mean, consumer is enterprise. Now everything is what was once a niche. No, I won't say niche category, but you know, not for the faint of heart, you know, investors, >>You know, it's so funny that you say that enterprise is hot because you, and I feel that way now. But remember, like right now, there's also a giant tech in VC conference in Miami <laugh> it's covering cryptocurrencies and FCS and web three. So I think beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder <laugh> but no, I, I will tell you, >>Ts is one big enterprise, cuz you gotta have imutability you got performance issues. You have, I IOPS issues. Well, and, >>And I think all of us here that are, uh, maybe students of history and have been involved in, open in the cloud would say that we're, you know, much of what we're doing is, uh, the predecessors of the web web three movement. And many of us I think are contributors to the web three movement. >>The hype is definitely that three. >>Yeah. But, but >>You know, for >>Sure. Yeah, no, but now you're taking us further east to Miami. So, uh, you know, look, I think, I, I think, um, what is unquestioned with the case now? And maybe it's, it's more obvious the more time you spend in this world is this is the fastest growing part of enterprise software. And if you include cloud infrastructure and cloud infrastructure spend, you know, it is by many men over, uh, 500 billion in growing, you know, 20 to 30% a year. So it it's a, it's a just incredibly fast, >>Let's getting, let's get into some of the cultural and the, the shifts that are happening, cuz again, you, you have the luxury of being in enterprise when it was hard, it's getting easier and more cooler. I get it and more relevant, but it's also the hype of like the web three, for instance. But you know, uh, um, um, the CEO snowflake, okay. Has wrote a book and Dave Valenti and I were talking about it and uh, Frank Luman has says, there's no playbooks. We always ask the CEOs, what's your playbook. And he's like, there's no playbook, situational awareness, always Trump's playbooks. So in the enterprise playbook, oh, higher direct sales force and SAS kind of crushed the, at now SAS is being redefined, right. So what is SAS? Is snowflake a SAS or is that a platform? So again, new unit economics are emerging, whole new situation, you got web three. So to me there's a cultural shift, the young entrepreneurs, the, uh, user experience, they look at Facebook and say, ah, you know, they own all my data. You know, we know that that cliche, um, they, you know, the product. So as this next gen, the gen Z and the millennials come in and our customers and the founders, they're looking at things a little bit differently and the tech better. >>Yeah. I mean, I mean, I think we can, we can see a lot of commonalities across all successful startups and the overall adoption of technology. Uh, and, and I would tell you, this is all one big giant revolution. I call it the user driven revolution. Right. It's the rise of the user. Yeah. And you might say product like growth is currently the hottest trend in enterprise software. It's actually user like growth, right. They're one in the same. So sometimes people think the product, uh, is what is driving. You >>Just pull the >>Product through. Exactly, exactly. And so that's that I, that I think is really this revolution that you see, and, and it does extend into things like cryptocurrencies and web three and, you know, sort of like the control that is taken back by the user. Um, but you know, many would say that, that the origins of this movement maybe started with open source where users were, are contributors, you know, contributors, we're users and looking back decades and seeing how it, how it fast forward to today. I think that's really the trend that we're all writing and it's enabling these end users. And these end users in our world are developers, data engineers, cybersecurity practitioners, right. They're really the users. And they're really the, the beneficiaries and the most, you know, kind of valued people in >>This. I wanna come back to the data engineers in a second, but I wanna make a comment and get your reaction to, I have a, I'm a GenXer technically, so for not a boomer, but I have some boomer friends who are a little bit older than me who have, you know, experienced the sixties. And I've, I've been staying on the cube for probably about eight years now that we are gonna hit a digital hippie revolution, meaning a rebellion against in the sixties was rebellion against the fifties and the man and, you know, summer of love. That was a cultural differentiation from the other one other group, the predecessors. So we're kind of having that digital moment now where it's like, Hey boomers, Hey people, we're not gonna do that anymore. We hate how you organize shit. >>Right. But isn't this just technology. I mean, isn't it, isn't it like there used to be the old adage, like, you know, you would never get fired for buying IBM, but now it's like, you obviously probably would get fired if you bought IBM. And I mean, it's just like the, the, I think, I think >>It's the main for days, those renegades were breaking into Stanford, starting the home brew club. So what I'm trying to get at is that, do you see the young cultural revolution also, culturally, just, this is my identity NFTs to me speak volumes about my, I wanna associate with NFTs, not single sign on. Well, >>Absolutely. And, and I think like, I think you're hitting on something, which is like this convergence of, of, you know, societal trends with technology trends and how that manifests in our world is yes. I think like there is unquestionably almost a religion around the way in which a product is built. Right. And we can use open source, one example of that religion. Some people will say, look, I'll just never try a product in the cloud if it's not open source. Yeah. I think cloud, native's another example of that, right? It's either it's, you know, it either is cloud native or it's not. And I think a lot of people will look at a product and say, look, you know, you were not designed in the cloud era. Therefore I just won't try you. And sometimes, um, like it or not, it's a religious decision, right? It's, it's something that people just believe to be true almost without, uh, necessarily. I mean >>The decision making, let me ask you this next question. As a VC. Now you look at pitch, well, you've made a VC for many years, but you also have the founder, uh, entrepreneurial mindset, but you can get empathize with the founders. You know, hustle is a big part of the, that first founder check, right? You gotta convince someone to part with their ch their money and the first money in which you do a lot of is about believing in the person. So fing, so you make, it is hard. Now you, the data's there, you either have it cloud native, you either have the adaption or traction. So honesty is a big part of that pitch. You can't fake it. Oh, >>AB absolutely. You know, there used to be this concept of like the persona of an entrepreneur, right. And the persona of the entrepreneur would be, you know, somebody who was a great salesperson or somebody who tell a great story. You, I still think that that's important, right? It still is a human need for people to believe in narratives and stories. But having said that you're right, the proof is in the pudding, right? At some point you click download and you try the product and it does what it says it it's gonna do, or it doesn't, or it either stands up to the load test or it doesn't. And so I, I feel like in this new economy that we live in, it's a shift from maybe the storytellers and the creators to, to the builders, right. The people that know how to build great product. And in some ways the people that can build great product yeah. Stand out from the crowd. And they're the ones that can build communities around their products. And, you know, in some ways can, um, you know, kind of own more of the narrative because their products exactly >>The volume back to the user led growth. >>Exactly. And it's the religion of, I just love your product. Right. And I, I, I, um, Doug song was the founder of du security used to say, Hey, like, you know, the, the really like in today's world of like consumption based software, the user is only gonna give you 90 seconds to figure out whether or not you're a company that's easy to do business with. Right. And so you can say, and do all the things that you want about how easy you are to work with. But if the product isn't easy to install, if it's not easy to try, if it's not, if, if the, you know, it's gotta speak to >>The, speak to the user, but let me ask a question now that the people watching who are maybe entrepreneurial entrepreneur, um, masterclass here is in session. So I have to ask you, do you prefer, um, an entrepreneur to come in and say, look at John. Here's where I'm at. Okay. First of all, storytelling's fine. Whether you're an extrovert or introvert, have your style, sell the story in a way that's authentic, but do you, what do you prefer to say? Here's where I'm at? Look, I have an idea. Here's my traction. I think here's my MVP prototype. I need help. Or do you wanna just see more stats? What's the, what's the preferred way that you like to see entrepreneurs come in and engage, engage? >>There's tons of different styles, man. I think the single most important thing that every founder should know is that we, we don't invest in what things are today. We invest in what we think something will become. Right. And I think that's why we all get up in the morning and try to build something different, right? It's that we see the world a different way. We want it to be a different way, and we wanna work every single moment of the day to try to make that vision a reality. So I think the more that you can show people where you want to be, the more likely somebody is gonna align with your vision and, and want to invest in you and wanna be along for the ride. So I, I wholeheartedly believe in showing off what you got today, because eventually we all get down to like, where are we and what are we gonna do together? But, um, no, I >>Show >>The path. I think the single most important thing for any founder and VC relationship is that they have the same vision, uh, have the same vision. You can, you can get through bumps in the road, you can get through short term spills. You can all sorts of things in the middle of the journey can happen. Yeah. But it doesn't matter as much if you share the same long term vision, >>Don't flake out and, and be fashionable with the latest trends because it's over before you can get there. >>Exactly. I think many people that, that do what we do for a living will say, you know, ultimately the future is relatively easy to predict, but it's the timing that's impossible to predict. So you, you know, you sort of have to balance the, you know, we, we know that the world is going this way and therefore we're gonna invest a lot of money to try to make this a reality. Uh, but sometimes it happens in six months. Sometimes it takes six years is sometimes like 16 years. >>Uh, what's the hottest thing in enterprise that you see the biggest wave that people should pay attention to that you're looking at right now with Desel partners, Tebel dot your site. What's the big wave. What's your big >>Wave. There, there's three big trends that we invest in. And they're the, they're the only things we do day in, day out. One is the explosion and open source software. So I think many people think that all software is unquestionably moving to an open source model in some form or another yeah. Tons of reasons to debate whether or not that is gonna happen and on what timeline happening >>Forever. >>But it is, it is accelerating faster than we've ever seen. So I, I think it's, it's one big, massive wave that we continue to ride. Um, second is the rise of data engineering. Uh, I think data engineering is in and of itself now, a category of software. It's not just that we store data. It's now we move data and we develop applications on data. And, uh, I think data is in and of itself as big of a, a market as any of the other markets that we invest in. Uh, and finally, it's the gift that keeps on giving. I've spent my entire career in it. We still feel that security is a market that is under invested. It is, it continues to be the place where people need to continue to invest and spend more money. Yeah. Uh, and those are the three major trends that we run >>And security, you think we all need a dessert do over, right? I mean, do we need a do over in security or is what's the core problem? I, >>I, I keep using this word underinvested because I think it's the right way to think about the problem. I think if you, I think people generally speaking, look at cyber security as an add-on. Yeah. But if you think about it, the whole economy is moving online. And so in, in some ways like security is core to protecting the digital economy. And so it's, it shouldn't be an afterthought, right? It should be core to what everyone is doing. And that's why I think relative to the trillions of dollars that are at stake, uh, I believe the market size for cybersecurity is around 150 billion. And it still is a fraction of what we're, what >>We're and security even boom is booming now. So you get the convergence of national security, geopolitics, internet digital >>That's right. You mean arguably, right? I mean, arguably again, it's the area of the world that people should be spending more time and more money given what to stake. >>I love your thesis. I gotta, I gotta say, you gotta love your firm. Love. You're doing we're big supporters of your mission. Congratulations on your entrepreneurial venture. And, uh, we'll be, we'll be talking and maybe see a Cub gone. Uh, >>Absolutely. >>Certainly EU maybe even north America's in Detroit this year. >>Huge fan of what you guys are doing here. Thank you so much for having me on >>The show. Guess bell VC Johnson here on the cube. Check him out. Founder for founders here on the cube, more coverage from San Francisco, California. After the short break, stay with us. Everyone. Welcome to the queue here. Live in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022 we're live we're back with the events. Also we're virtual. We got hybrid all kinds of events. This year, of course, 80% summit in New York city is happening this summer. We'll be there with the cube as well. I'm John. Again, John host of the cube got a great guest here. Justin Coby owner and CEO of innovative solutions. Their booth is right behind us. Justin, welcome to the cube. >>Thank you. Thank you for having me. >>So we're just chatting, uh, uh, off camera about some of the work you're doing. You're the owner of and CEO. Yeah. Of innovative. Yeah. So tell us a story. What do you guys do? What's the elevator pitch. >>Yeah. <laugh> so the elevator pitch is we are, uh, a hundred percent focused on small to midsize businesses that are moving into the cloud or have already moved to the cloud and really trying to understand how to best control, cost, security, compliance, all the good stuff, uh, that comes along with it. Um, exclusively focused on AWS and, um, you know, about 110 people, uh, based in Rochester, New York, that's where our headquarters is, but now we have offices down in Austin, Texas up in Toronto, uh, key Canada, as well as Chicago. Um, and obviously in New York, uh, you know, the, the business was never like this, uh, five years ago, um, founded in 1989, made the decision in 2018 to pivot and go all in on the cloud. And, uh, I've been a part of the company for about 18 years, bought the company about five years ago and it's been a great ride. It >>It's interesting. The manages services are interesting with cloud cause a lot of the heavy liftings done by AWS. So we had Matt on your team on earlier talking about some of the edge stuff. Yeah. But you guys are a managed cloud service. You got cloud advisory, you know, the classic service that's needed, but the demands coming from cloud migrations and application modernization and obviously data is a huge part of it. Huge. How is this factoring into what you guys do and your growth cuz you guys are the number one partner on the SMB side for edge. Yeah. For AWS, you got results coming in. Where's the, where's the forcing function. What's the pressure point. What's the demand like? >>Yeah. It's a great question. Every CEO I talk to, that's a small to midsize business. They're trying to understand how to leverage technology. It better to help either drive a revenue target for their own business, uh, help with customer service as so much has gone remote now. And we're all having problems or troubles or issues trying to hire talent. And um, you know, tech ISNT really at the, at the forefront and the center of that. So most customers are coming to us and they're like, listen, we gotta move to the cloud or we move some things to cloud and we want to do that better. And um, there's this big misnomer that when you move to the cloud, you gotta automatically modernize. Yeah. And what we try to help as many customers understand as possible is lifting and shifting, moving the stuff that you maybe currently have OnPrem and a data center to the cloud first is a first step. And then, uh, progressively working through a modernization strateg, always the better approach. And so we spend a lot of time with small to midsize businesses who don't have the technology talent on staff to be able to do >>That. Yeah. They want get set up. But then the dynamic of like latency is huge. We're seeing that edge product is a big part of it. This is not a one-off happening around everywhere. It is. And it's not, it's manufacturing, it's the physical plant or location >>Literally. >>And so, and you're seeing more IOT devices. What's that like right now from a challenge and problem statement standpoint, are the customers, not staff, is the it staff kind of old school? Is it new skills? What's the core problem you guys solve >>In the SMB space? The core issue nine outta 10 times is people get enamored with the latest and greatest. And the reality is not everything that's cloud based. Not all cloud services are the latest and greatest. Some things have been around for quite some time and are hardened solutions. And so, um, what we try to do with technology staff that has traditional on-prem, uh, let's just say skill sets and they're trying to move to a cloud-based workload is we try to help those customers through education and through some practical, let's just call it use case. Um, whether that's a proof of concept that we're doing or whether we're gonna migrate a small workload over, we try to give them the confidence to be able to not, not necessarily go it alone, but to, to, to have the, uh, the Gusto and to really have the, um, the, the opportunity to, to do that in a wise way. Um, and what I find is that most CEOs that I talk to, yeah, they're like, listen, the end of the day, I'm gonna be spending money in one place or another, whether that's OnPrem or in the cloud. I just want to know that I'm doing that in a way that helps me grow as quickly as possible status quo. I think every, every business owner knows that COVID taught us anything that status quo is, uh, is, is no. No. >>Good. How about factoring in the, the agility and speed equation? Does that come up a lot? It >>Does. I think, um, I, there's also this idea that if, uh, if we do a deep dive analysis and we really take a surgical approach to things, um, we're gonna be better off. And the reality is the faster you move with anything cloud based, the better you are. And so there's this assumption that we gotta get it right the first time. Yeah. In the cloud, if you start down your journey in one way and you realize midway that it's not the right, let's just say the right place to go. It's not like buying a piece of iron that you put in the closet and now you own it in the cloud. You can turn those services on and off. It's gives you a much higher density for making decisions and failing >>Forward. Well actually shutting down the abandoning the projects that early and not worrying about it, you got it. I mean, most people don't abandon cause like, oh, I own it. >>Exactly. And >>They get, they get used to it. Like, and then they wait too long. >>That's exactly. Yeah. >>Frog and boiling water as we used to say. So, oh, it's a great analogy. So I mean, this is a dynamic that's interesting. I wanna get more thoughts on it because like I'm a, if I'm a CEO of a company, like, okay, I gotta make my number. Yeah. I gotta keep my people motivated. Yeah. And I gotta move faster. So this is where you, I get the whole thing. And by the way, great service, um, professional services in the cloud right now are so hot because so hot, you can build it and then have option optionality. You got path decisions, you got new services to take advantage of. It's almost too much for customers. It is. I mean, everyone I talked to at reinvent, that's a customer. Well, how many announcements did am jazzy announce or Adam, you know, the 5,000 announcement or whatever. They do huge amounts. Right. Keeping track of it all. Oh, is huge. So what's the, what's the, um, the mission of, of your company. How does, how do you talk to that alignment? Yeah. Not just processes. I can get that like values as companies, cuz they're betting on you and your people. >>They are, they are, >>What's the values. >>Our mission is, is very simple. We want to help every small to midsize business leverage the power of the cloud. Here's the reality. We believe wholeheartedly. This is our vision that every company is going to become a technology company. So we go to market with this idea that every customer's trying to leverage the power of the cloud in some way, shape or form, whether they know it or don't know it. And number two, they're gonna become a tech company in the process of that because everything is so tech-centric. And so when you talk about speed and agility, when you talk about the, the endless options and the endless permutations of solutions that a customer can buy in the cloud, how are you gonna ask a team of one or two people in your, or it department to make all those decisions going it alone or trying to learn it as you go, it only gets you so far working with a partner. >>I'll just give you some perspective. We work with about a thousand small to midsize business customers. More than 50% of those customers are on our managed services. Meaning they know that we have their back Andre or the safety net. So when a customer is saying, all right, I'm gonna spend a couple thousand dollars a month in the cloud. They know that that bill, isn't gonna jump to $10,000 a month going in alone. Who's there to help protect that. Number two, if you have a security posture and let's just say you're high profile and you're gonna potentially be more vulnerable to security attack. If you have a partner, that's all offering you some managed services. Now you, again, you've got that backstop and you've got those services and tooling. We, we offer, um, seven different products, uh, that are part of our managed services that give the customer the tooling, that for them to go out and buy on their own for a customer to go out today and go buy a new Relic solution on their own. It, it would cost 'em a fortune. If >>Training alone would be insane, a factor and the cost. Yes, absolutely. Opportunity cost is huge, >>Huge, absolutely enormous training and development. Something. I think that is often, you know, it's often overlooked technologists. Typically they want to get their skills up. Yeah. They, they love to get the, the stickers and the badges and the pins, um, at innovative in 2018, when, uh, when we made the decision to go all in on the club, I said to the organization, you know, we have this idea that we're gonna pivot and be aligned with AWS in such a way that it's gonna really require us all to get certified. My executive assistant at the time looks at me. She said, even me, I said, yeah, even you, why can't you get certified? Yeah. And so we made, uh, a conscious decision. It wasn't requirement and still isn't today to make sure everybody in the company has the opportunity to become certified. Even the people that are answering the phones at the front desk >>And she could be running the Kubernetes clusters. I love it. It's amazing. >>But I'll tell you what, when that customer calls and they have a real Kubernetes issue, she'll be able to assist and get >>The right people involved. And that's a cultural factor that you guys have. So, so again, this is back to my whole point about SMBs and businesses in general, small en large, it staffs are turning over the gen Z and millennials are in the workforce. They were provisioning top of rack switches. Right. First of all. And so if you're a business, there's also the, I call the build out, um, uh, return factor, ROI piece. At what point in time as an owner or SMB, do I get the ROI? Yeah. I gotta hire a person to manage it. That person's gonna have five zillion job offers. Yep. Uh, maybe who knows? Right. I got cybersecurity issues. Where am I gonna find a cyber person? Yeah. A data compliance. I need a data scientist and a compliance person. Right. Maybe one and the same. Right. Good luck. Trying to find a data scientist. Who's also a compliance person. Yep. And the list goes on. I can just continue. Absolutely. I need an SRE to manage the, the, uh, the sock report and we can pen test. Right. >>Right. >>These are, these are >>Critical issues. This >>Is just like, these are the table stakes. >>Yeah. And, and every, every business owner's thinking about. So that's, >>That's what, at least a million in bloating, if not three or more Just to get that going. Yeah. Then it's like, where's the app. Yeah. So there's no cloud migration. There's no modernization on the app side though. Yeah. No. And nevermind AI and ML. That's >>Right. That's right. So to try to go it alone, to me, it's hard. It it's incredibly difficult. And, and the other thing is, is there's not a lot of partners, so the partner, >>No one's raising their hand boss. I'll >>Do all that >>Exactly. In it department. >>Exactly. >>Like, can we just call up, uh, you know, <laugh> our old vendor. That's >>Right. <laugh> right. Our old vendor. I like it, but that's so true. I mean, when I think about how, if I was a business owner, starting a business to today and I had to build my team, um, and the amount of investment that it would take to get those people skilled up and then the risk factor of those people now having the skills and being so much more in demand and being recruited away, that's a real, that's a real issue. And so how you build your culture around that is, is very important. And it's something that we talk about every, with every one of our small to midsize business. >>So just, I want to get, I want to get your story as CEO. Okay. Take us through your journey. You said you bought the company and your progression to, to being the owner and CEO of innovative award winning guys doing great. Uh, great bet on a good call. Yeah. Things are good. Tell your story. What's your journey? >>It's real simple. I was, uh, was a sophomore at the Rochester Institute of technology in 2003. And, uh, I knew that I, I was going to school for it and I, I knew I wanted to be in tech. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn't wanna code or configure routers and switches. So I had this great opportunity with the local it company that was doing managed services. We didn't call it at that time innovative solutions to come in and, uh, jump on the phone and dial for dollars. I was gonna cold call and introduce other, uh, small to midsize businesses locally in Rochester, New York go to Western New York, um, who innovative was now. We were 19 people at the time. And I came in, I did an internship for six months and I loved it. I learned more in those six months that I probably did in my first couple of years at, uh, at R I T long story short. >>Um, for about seven years, I worked, uh, to really help develop, uh, sales process and methodology for the business so that we could grow and scale. And we grew to about 30 people. And, um, I went to the owners at the time in 2010 and I was like, Hey, I'm growing the value of this business. And who knows where you guys are gonna be another five years? What do you think about making me an owner? And they were like, listen, you got long ways before you're gonna be an owner, but if you stick it out in your patient, we'll, um, we'll work through a succession plan with you. And I said, okay, there were four other individuals at the time that we're gonna also buy the business with >>Me. And they were the owners, no outside capital, >>None zero, well, 2014 comes around. And, uh, the other folks that were gonna buy into the business with me that were also working at innovative for different reasons. They all decided that it wasn't for them. One started a family. The other didn't wanna put capital in. Didn't wanna write a check. Um, the other had a real big problem with having to write a check. If we couldn't make payroll, I'm like, well, that's kind of like if we're owners, we're gonna have to like cover that stuff. <laugh> so >>It's called the pucker factor. >>Exactly. So, uh, I sat down with the CEO in early 2015, and, uh, we made the decision that I was gonna buy the three partners out, um, go through an earn out process, uh, coupled with, uh, an interesting financial strategy that wouldn't strap the business, cuz they care very much. The company still had the opportunity to keep going. So in 2016 I bought the business, um, became the sole owner. And, and at that point we, um, we really focused hard on what do we want this company to be? We had built this company to this point. Yeah. And, uh, and by 2018 we knew that pivoting all going all in on the cloud was important for us and we haven't looked back. >>And at that time, the proof points were coming clearer and clearer 2012 through 15 was the early adopters, the builders, the startups and early enterprises. Yes. The capital ones of the world. Exactly the, uh, and those kinds of big enterprises. The game don't, won't say gamblers, but ones that were very savvy. The innovators, the FinTech folks. Yep. The hardcore glass eating enterprises >>Agreed, agreed to find a small to midsize business, to migrate completely to the cloud as, as infrastructure was considered. That just didn't happen as often. Um, what we were seeing were a lot of our small to midsize business customers, they wanted to leverage cloud based backup, or they wanted to leverage a cloud for disaster recovery because it lent itself. Well, early days, our most common cloud customer though, was the customer that wanted to move messaging and collaboration. The, the Microsoft suite to the cloud and a lot of 'em dipped their toe in the water. But by 2017 we knew infrastructure was around the corner. Yeah. And so, uh, we only had two customers on eight at the time. Um, and we, uh, we, we made the decision to go all in >>Justin. Great to have you on the cube. Thank you. Let's wrap up. Uh, tell me the hottest product that you have. Is it migrations? Is the app modernization? Is it data? What's the hot product and then put a plug in for the company. Awesome. >>So, uh, there's no question. Every customer is looking to migrate workloads and try to figure out how to modernize for the future. We have very interesting, sophisticated yet elegant funding solutions to help customers with the cash flow, uh, constraints that come along with those migrations. So any SMB that's thinking about migrating to the cloud, they should be talking innovative solutions. We know how to do it in a way that allows those customers not to be cash strapped and gives them an opportunity to move forward in a controlled, contained way so that they can modernize. >>So like insurance, basically for them not insurance class in the classic sense, but you help them out on the, on the cash exposure. >>Absolutely. We are known for that and we're known for being creative with those customers, empathetic to where they are in their journey. And >>That's the cloud upside is all about doubling down on the variable wind. That's right. Seeing the value and doubling down on it. Absolutely not praying for it. Yeah. <laugh> all right, Justin. Thanks for coming on. You really appreciate it. Thank >>You very much for having >>Me. Okay. This is the cube coverage here live in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching with back with more great coverage for two days after this short break >>Live on the floor in San Francisco for 80 west summit, I'm John ferry, host of the cube here for the next two days, getting all the action we're back in person. We're at AWS reinvent a few months ago. Now we're back events are coming back and we're happy to be here with the cube, bringing all the action. Also virtual, we have a hybrid cube, check out the cube.net, Silicon angle.com for all the coverage. After the event. We've got a great guest ticketing off here. Matthew Park, director of solutions, architecture with innovation solutions. The booth is right here. Matthew, welcome to the cube. >>Thank you very much. I'm glad >>To be here. So we're back in person. You're from Tennessee. We were chatting before you came on camera. Um, it's great to have to be back through events. >>It's amazing. This is the first, uh, summit I've been to and what two, three years. >>It's awesome. We'll be at the, uh, New York as well. A lot of developers and a big story this year is as developers look at cloud going distributed computing, you got on premises, you got public cloud, you got the edge. Essentially the cloud operations is running everything dev sec ops, everyone kind of sees that you got containers, you got Kubernetes, you got cloud native. So the, the game is pretty much laid out. Mm. And the edge is with the actions you guys are number one, premier partner at SMB for edge. >>That's right. >>Tell us about what you guys doing at innovative and, uh, what you do. >>That's right. Uh, so I'm the director of solutions architecture. Uh, me and my team are responsible for building out the solutions that are around, especially the edge public cloud out for us edge is anything outside of an AWS availability zone. Uh, we are deploying that in countries that don't have AWS infrastructure in region. They don't have it. Uh, give >>An example, >>Uh, example would be Panama. We have a customer there that, uh, needs to deploy some financial tech data and compute is legally required to be in Panama, but they love AWS and they want to deploy AWS services in region. Uh, so they've taken E EKS anywhere. We've put storage gateway and, uh, snowball, uh, in region inside the country and they're running their FinTech on top of AWS services inside Panama. >>You know, what's interesting, Matthew is that we've been covering Aw since 2013 with the cube about their events. And we watched the progression and jazzy was, uh, was in charge and then became the CEO. Now Adam Slosky is in charge, but the edge has always been that thing they've been trying to, I don't wanna say, trying to avoid, of course, Amazon would listen to customers. They work backwards from the customers. We all know that. Uh, but the real issue was they were they're bread and butters EC two and S three. And then now they got tons of services and the cloud is obviously successful and seeing that, but the edge brings up a whole nother level. >>It does >>Computing. It >>Does. >>That's not central lies in the public cloud. Now they got regions. So what is the issue with the edge what's driving? The behavior. Outpost came out as a reaction to competitive threats and also customer momentum around OT, uh, operational technologies. And it merging. We see with the data at the edge, you got five GM having. So it's pretty obvious, but there was a slow transition. What was the driver for the <affirmative> what's the driver now for edge action for AWS >>Data is the driver for the edge. Data has gravity, right? And it's pulling compute back to where the customer's generating that data and that's happening over and over again. You said it best outpost was a reaction to a competitive situation. Whereas today we have over fit 15 AWS edge services, and those are all reactions to things that customers need inside their data centers on location or in the field like with media companies. >>Outpost is interesting. We always used to riff on the cube, uh, cuz it's basically Amazon in a box, pushed in the data center, uh, running native, all the stuff, but now cloud native operations are kind of become standard. You're starting to see some standard Deepak sings group is doing some amazing work with open source Rauls team on the AI side, obviously, uh, you got SW who's giving the keynote tomorrow. You got the big AI machine learning big part of that edge. Now you can say, okay, outpost, is it relevant today? In other words, did outpost do its job? Cause EKS anywhere seems to be getting a lot of momentum. You see low the zones, the regions are kicking ass for Amazon. This edge piece is evolving. What's your take on EKS anywhere versus say outpost? >>Yeah, I think outpost did its job. It made customers that were looking at outpost really consider, do I wanna invest in this hardware? Do I, do I wanna have, um, this outpost in my data center, do I wanna manage this over the long term? A lot of those customers just transitioned to the public cloud. They went into AWS proper. Some of those customers stayed on prem because they did have use cases that were, uh, not a good fit for outpost. They weren't a good fit. Uh, in the customer's mind for the public AWS cloud inside an availability zone. Now what's happening is as AWS is pushing these services out and saying, we're gonna meet you where you are with 5g. We're gonna meet you where you are with wavelength. We're gonna meet you where you are with EKS anywhere. Uh, I think it has really reduced the amount of times that we have conversations about outposts and it's really increased. We can deploy fast. We don't have to spin up outpost hardware. We can go deploy EKS anywhere in your VMware environment and it's increasing the speed of adoption >>For sure. So you guys are making a lot of good business decisions around managed cloud service. Innovative does that. You have the cloud advisory, the classic professional services for the specific edge piece and, and doing that outside of the availability zones and regions for AWS, um, customers in, in these new areas that you're helping out are they want cloud, like they want to have modernization a modern applications. Obviously they got data machine learning and AI, all part of that. What's the main product or, or, or gap that you're filling for AWS, uh, outside of their available ability zones or their regions that you guys are delivering. What's the key is it. They don't have a footprint. Is it that it's not big enough for them? What's the real gap. What's why, why are you so successful? >>So what customers want when they look towards the cloud is they want to focus on, what's making them money as a business. They wanna focus on their applications. They want focus on their customers. So they look towards AWS cloud and say, AWS, you take the infrastructure. You take, uh, some of the higher layers and we'll focus on our revenue generating business, but there's a gap there between infrastructure and revenue generating business that innovative slides into, uh, we help manage the AWS environment. We help build out these things in local data centers for 32 plus year old company, we have traditional on-premises people that know about deploying hardware that know about deploying VMware to host EKS anywhere. But we also have most of our company totally focused on the AWS cloud. So we're filling that gap in helping deploy these AWS services, manage them over the long term. So our customers can go to just primarily and totally focusing on their revenue generating business. >>So basically you guys are basically building AWS edges, >>Correct? >>For correct companies, correct? Mainly because the, the needs are there, you got data, you got certain products, whether it's, you know, low latency type requirements, right. And then they still work with the regions, right. It's all tied together, right. Is that how it works? Right. >>And, and our customers, even the ones in the edge, they also want us to build out the AWS environment inside the availability zone, because we're always gonna have a failback scenario. If we're gonna deploy FinTech in the Caribbean, we're gonna talk about hurricanes and gonna talk about failing back into the AWS availability zones. So innovative is filling that gap across the board, whether it be inside the AWS cloud or on the AWS edge. >>All right. So I gotta ask you on the, since you're at the edge in these areas, I won't say underserved, but developing areas where now have data, you have applications that are tapping into that, that requirement. It makes total sense. We're seeing across the board. So it's not like it's, it's an outlier it's actually growing. Yeah. There's also the crypto angle. You got the blockchain. Are you seeing any traction at the edge with blockchain? Because a lot of people are looking at the web three in these areas like Panama, you mentioned FinTech in, in the islands. There are a lot of, lot of, lot of web three happening. What's your, what's your view on the web three world right now, relative >>To we, we have some customers actually deploying crypto, especially, um, especially in the Caribbean. I keep bringing the Caribbean up, but it's, it's top of my mind right now we have customers that are deploying crypto. A lot of, uh, countries are choosing crypto underly parts of their central banks. Yeah. Um, so it's, it's up and coming. Uh, I, I have some, you know, personal views that, that crypto is still searching for a use case. Yeah. And, uh, I think it's searching a lot and, and we're there to help customers search for that use case. Uh, but, but crypto, as a, as a tech technology, um, lives really well on the AWS edge. Yeah. Uh, and, and we're having more and more people talk to us about that. Yeah. And ask for assistance in the infrastructure because they're developing new cryptocurrencies every day. Yeah. It's not like they're deploying Ethereum or anything specific. They're actually developing new currencies and, and putting them out there on it's >>Interesting. And I mean, first of all, we've been doing crypto for many, many years. We have our own little, um, you know, projects going on. But if you look talk to all the crypto people that say, look, we do a smart contract, we use the blockchain. It's kind of over a lot of overhead. It's not really their technical already, but it's a cultural shift, but there's underserved use cases around use of money, but they're all using the blockchain, just for this like smart contracts for instance, or certain transactions. And they go into Amazon for the database. Yeah. <laugh> they all don't tell anyone we're using a centralized service, but what happened to decent centralized. >>Yeah. And that's, and that's the conversation performance. >>Yeah. >>And, and it's a cost issue. Yeah. And it's a development issue. Um, so I think more and more as, as some of these, uh, currencies maybe come up, some of the smart contracts get into, uh, they find their use cases. I think we'll start talking about how does that really live on, on AWS and, and what does it look like to build decentralized applications, but with AWS hardware and services. >>Right. So take me through a, a use case of a customer, um, Matthew around the edge. Okay. So I'm a customer, pretend I'm a customer, Hey, you know, I'm, we're in an underserved area. I want to modernize my business. And I got my developers that are totally peaked up on cloud. Um, but we've identified that it's just a lot of overhead latency issues. I need to have a local edge and serve my a and I also want all the benefits of the cloud. So I want the modernization and I wanna migrate to the cloud for all those cloud benefits and the good this of the cloud. What's the answer. Yeah. >>Uh, big thing is, uh, industrial manufacturing, right? That's, that's one of the best use cases, uh, inside industrial manufacturing, we can pull in many of the AWS edge services we can bring in, uh, private 5g, uh, so that all the, uh, equipment inside that, that manufacturing plant can be hooked up. They don't have to pay huge overheads to deploy 5g it's, uh, better than wifi for the industrial space. Um, when we take computing down to that industrial area, uh, because we wanna do pre-procesing on the data. Yeah. We want to gather some analytics. We deploy that with, uh, regular commercially available hardware running VMware, and we deploy EKS anywhere on that. Uh, inside of that manufacturing plant, uh, we can do pre-processing on things coming out of the, uh, the robotics that depending on what we're manufacturing, right. Uh, and then we can take the, those refined analytics and for very low cost with maybe a little bit longer latency transmit those back, um, to the AWS availability zone, the, the standard >>For data lake or whatever, >>To the data lake. Yeah. Data Lakehouse, whatever it might be. Um, and we can do additional data science on that once it gets to the AWS cloud. Uh, but I'll lot of that, uh, just in time business decisions, just in time, manufacturing decisions can all take place on an AWS service or services inside that manufacturing plant. And that's, that's one of the best use cases that we're >>Seeing. And I think, I mean, we've been seeing this on the queue for many, many years, moving data around is very expensive. Yeah. But also compute going of the data that saves that cost yep. On the data transfer also on the benefits of the latency. So I have to ask you, by the way, that's standard best practice now for the folks watching don't move the data unless you have to. Um, but those new things are developing. So I wanna ask you, what new patterns are you seeing emerging once this new architecture's in place? Love that idea, localize everything right at the edge, manufacture, industrial, whatever the use case, retail, whatever it is. Right. But now what does that change in the, in the core cloud? There's a, there's a system element here. Yeah. What's the new pattern. There's >>Actually an organizational element as well, because once you have to start making the decision, do I put this compute at the point of use or do I put this compute in the cloud? Uh, now you start thinking about where business decisions should be taking place. Uh, so not only are you changing your architecture, you're actually changing your organization because you're thinking, you're thinking about a dichotomy you didn't have before. Uh, so now you say, okay, this can take place here. Uh, and maybe, maybe this decision can wait. Yeah. Uh, and then how do I visualize that? By >>The way, it could be a bot tube doing the work for management. Yeah. <laugh> exactly. You got observability going, right. But you gotta change the database architecture in the back. So there's new things developing. You've got more benefit. There >>Are, there are. And, and we have more and more people that, that want to talk less about databases and want to talk more about data lakes because of this. They want to talk more about out. Customers are starting to talk about throwing away data, uh, you know, for the past maybe decade. Yeah. It's been store everything. And one day we will have a data science team that we hire in our organization to do analytics on this decade of data. And well, >>I mean, that's, that's a great point. We don't have time to drill into, maybe we do another session on this, but the one pattern we're seeing of the past year is that throwing away data's bad, even data lakes that so-called turn into data swamps, actually, it's not the case. You look at data, brick, snowflake, and other successes out there. And even time series data, which may seem irrelevant efforts over actually matters when people start retraining their machine learning algorithms. Yep. So as data becomes code, as we call it in our last showcase, we did a whole whole event on this. The data's good in real time and in the lake. Yeah. Because the iteration of the data feeds the machine learning training. Things are getting better with the old data. So it's not throw it away. It's not just business better. Yeah. There's all kinds of new scale. >>There are. And, and we have, uh, many customers that are running pay Toby level. Um, they're, they're essentially data factories on, on, uh, on premises, right? They're, they're creating so much data and they're starting to say, okay, we could analyze this, uh, in the cloud, we could transition it. We could move Aytes of data to the AWS cloud, or we can run, uh, computational workloads on premises. We can really do some analytics on this data transition, uh, those high level and sort of raw analytics back to AWS run 'em through machine learning. Um, and we don't have to transition 10, 12 petabytes of data into AWS. >>So I gotta end the segment on a, on a kind of a, um, fun note. I was told to ask you about your personal background, OnPrem architect, Aus cloud, and skydiving instructor. <laugh> how does that all work together? What tell, what does this mean? Yeah. >>Uh, you >>Jumped out a plane and got a job. You got a customer to jump out >>Kind of. So I was, you jumped out. I was teaching having, uh, before I, before I started in the cloud space, this was 13, 14 years ago. I was a, I still am a sky. I instructor, uh, I was teaching skydiving and I heard out of the corner of my ear, uh, a guy that owned an MSP that was lamenting about, um, you know, storing data and, and how his customers are working. And he can't find an enough people to operate all these workloads. So I walked over and said, Hey, this is, this is what I went to school for. Like, I'd love to, you know, uh, I was living in a tent in the woods, teaching skydiving. I was like, I'd love to not live in a tent in the woods. So, uh, uh, I started and the first day there, uh, we had a, a discussion, uh, EC two had just come out <laugh> and, uh, like, >>This is amazing. >>Yeah. And so we had this discussion, we should start moving customers here. And, uh, and that totally revolutionized that business, um, that, that led to, uh, that that guy actually still owns a skydiving airport. But, um, but through all of that, and through being in on premises, migrated me and myself, my career into the cloud, and now it feels like, uh, almost, almost looking back and saying, now let's take what we learned in the cloud and, and apply those lessons and those services tore >>It's. So it's such a great story, you know, was gonna, you know, you know, the whole, you know, growth mindset pack your own parachute, you know, uh, exactly. You know, the cloud in the early days was pretty much will the shoot open. Yeah. It was pretty much, you had to roll your own cloud at that time. And so, you know, you, you jump on a plane, you gotta make sure that parachute is gonna open. >>And so was Kubernetes by the way, 2015 or so when, uh, when that was coming out, it was, I mean, it was, it was still, and maybe it does still feel like that to some people. Right. But, uh, it was, it was the same kind of feeling that we had in the early days of AWS, the same feeling we have when we >>It's now with you guys, it's more like a tandem jump. Yeah. You know, but, but it's a lot of, lot of this cutting edge stuff, like jumping out of an airplane. Yeah. You got the right equipment. You gotta do the right things. Exactly. >>Right. >>Yeah. Thanks for coming. You really appreciate it. Absolutely great conversation. Thanks for having me. Okay. The cubes here live in San Francisco for eight of us summit. I'm John for host of the cube. Uh, we'll be at a summit in New York coming up in the summer as well. Look up for that. Look up this calendar for all the cube, actually@thecube.net. We'll right back with our next segment after this break. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone to San Francisco live coverage here, we're at the cube a be summit 2022. We're back in person. I'm John fury host of the cube. We'll be at the eighties summit in New York city this summer, check us out then. But right now, two days in San Francisco, getting all the coverage what's going on in the cloud, we got a cube alumni and friend of the cube, my dos car CEO, investor, a Sierra, and also an investor in a bunch of startups, angel investor. Gonna do great to see you. Thanks for coming on the cube. Good to see you. Good to see you. Cool. How are you? Good. >>How hello you. >>So congratulations on all your investments. Uh, you've made a lot of great successes, uh, over the past couple years, uh, and your company raising, uh, some good cash as Sarah. So give us the update. How much cash have you guys raised? What's the status of the company product what's going on? >>First of all, thank you for having me. We're back to be business with you, never after to see you. Uh, so is a company started around four years back. I invested with a few of the investors and now I'm the CEO there. We have raised close to a hundred million there. The investors are people like Norwes Menlo ventures, coastal ventures, Ram Shera, and all those people, all well known guys. And Beckel chime Paul me Mayard web. So whole bunch of operating people and, uh, Silicon valley VCs are involved >>And has it gone? >>It's going well. We are doing really well. We are going almost 300% year over year. Uh, for last three years, the space ISRA is going after is what I call the applying AI for customer service. It operations, it help desk, uh, the same place I used to work at ServiceNow. We are partners with ServiceNow to take, how can we argument for employees and customers, Salesforce, and service now to take you to the next stage? Well, >>I love having you on the cube, Dave and I, Dave LAN as well loves having you on too, because you not only bring the entrepreneurial CEO experience, you're an investor. You're like a, you're like a guest analyst. <laugh> >>You know, who does >>You, >>You >>Get the call fund to talk to you though. You >>Get the commentary, your, your finger in the pulse. Um, so I gotta ask you obviously, AI and machine learning, machine learning AI, or you want to phrase it. Isn't every application. Now, AI first, uh, you're seeing a lot of that going on. You're starting to see companies build the modern applications at the top of the stack. So the cloud scale has hit. We're seeing cloud scale. You predicted that we talked about in the cube many times. Now you have that past layer with a lot more services and cloud native becoming a standard layer. Containerizations growing Docker just raised a hundred million on a $2 billion valuation back from the dead after they pivoted from enterprise services. So open source developers are booming. Um, where's the action. I mean, is there data control plan? Emerging AI needs data. There's a lot of challenges around this. There's a lot of discussions and a lot of companies being funded, observability there's 10 billion observability companies. Data is the key. This is what's your end on this. What's your take. >>Yeah, look, I think I'll give you the few that I see right from my side. Obviously data is very clear. So the things that rumor system of recorded you and me talked about the next layer is called system of intelligence. That's where the AI will play. Like we talk cloud native, it'll be called AI. NA AI enable is a new buzzword and using the AI for customer service. It, you talk about observability. I call it, AIOps applying AOPs for good old it operation management, cloud management. So you'll see the AOPs applied for whole list of, uh, application from observability doing the CMDB, predicting the events insurance. So I see a lot of work clicking for AIOps and AI services. What used to be desk with ServiceNow BMC GLA you see a new ALA emerging as a system of intelligence. Uh, the next would be is applying AI with workflow automation. So that's where you'll see a lot of things called customer workflows, employee workflows. So think of what UI path automation, anywhere ServiceNow are doing, that area will be driven with AI workflows. So you, you see AI going >>Off is RPA. A company is AI, is RPA a feature of something bigger? Or can someone have a company on RPA UI S one will be at their event this summer? Um, is it a product company? I mean, or I mean, RPA is, should be embedded in everything. It's a >>Feature. It is very good point. Very, very good thinking. So one is, it's a category for sure. Like, as we thought, it's a category, it's an area where RPA may change the name. I call it much more about automation, workflow automation, but RPA and automation is a category. Um, it's a company also, but that automation should be embedded in every area. Yeah. Like we call cloud NATO and AI. They it'll become automation data. Yeah. And that's your, thinking's >>Interesting me. I think about the, what you're talking about what's coming to mind is I'm kinda having flashbacks to the old software model of middleware. Remember at middleware, it was very easy to understand it was middleware. It sat between two things and then the middle, and it was software abstraction. Now you have all kinds of workflows, abstractions everywhere. So multiple databases, it's not a monolithic thing. Right? Right. So as you break that down, is this the new modern middleware? Because what you're talking about is data workflows, but they might be siloed. Are they integrated? I mean, these are the challenges. This is crazy. What's the, >>So remember the databases became called polyglot databases. Yeah. I call this one polyglot automation. So you need automation as a layer, as a category, but you also need to put automation in every area like you, you were talking about, it should be part of service. Now it should be part of ISRA. Like every company, every Salesforce. So that's why you see it MuleSoft and sales buying RPA companies. So you'll see all the SaaS companies, cloud companies having an automation as a core. So it's like how you have a database and compute and sales and networking. You'll also have an automation as a layer embedded inside every stack. >>All right. So I wanna shift gears a little bit and get your perspective on what's going on behind us. You can see, uh, behind, as you got the XPO hall got, um, we're back to vis, but you got, you know, AMD, Clum, Dynatrace data, dog, innovative, all the companies out here that we know, we interview them all. They're trying to be suppliers to this growing enterprise market. Right? Okay. But now you also got the entrepreneurial equation. Okay. We're gonna have John Sado on from Deibel later. He's a former NEA guy and we always talk to Jerry, Jen, we know all the, the VCs, what does the startups look like? What does the state of the, in your mind, cause you, I know you invest the entrepreneurial founder situation. Cloud's bigger. Mm-hmm <affirmative> global, right? Data's part of it. You mentioned data's code. Yes. Basically. Data's everything. What's it like for a first an entrepreneur right now who's starting a company. What's the white space. What's the attack plan. How do they get in the market? How do they engineer everything? >>Very good. So I'll give it to, uh, two things that I'm seeing out there. Remember leaders of Amazon created the startups 15 years back. Everybody built on Amazon now, Azure and GCP. The next layer would be people don't just build on Amazon. They're going to build it on top of snow. Flake companies are snowflake becomes a data platform, right? People will build on snowflake, right? So I see my old boss playing ment, try to build companies on snowflake. So you don't build it just on Amazon. You build it on Amazon and snowflake. Snowflake will become your data store. Snowflake will become your data layer, right? So I think that's the next level of companies trying to do that. So if I'm doing observability AI ops, if I'm doing next level of Splunk SIM, I'm gonna build it on snowflake, on Salesforce, on Amazon, on Azure, et cetera. >>It's interesting. You know, Jerry Chan has it put out a thesis a couple months ago called castles in the cloud where your moat is, what you do in the cloud. Not necessarily in the, in the IP. Um, Dave LAN and I had last re invent, coined the term super cloud, right? It's got a lot of traction and a lot of people throwing, throwing mud at us, but we were, our thesis was, is that what Snowflake's doing? What Goldman S Sachs is doing. You're starting to see these clouds on top of clouds. So Amazon's got this huge CapEx advantage. And guys like Charles Fitzgeral out there, who we like was kind of hitting on us saying, Hey, you guys terrible, they didn't get him. Like, yeah, I don't think he gets it, but that's a whole, can't wait to debate him publicly on this. <laugh> cause he's cool. Um, but snowflake is on Amazon. Yes. Now they say they're on Azure now. Cause they've got a bigger market and they're public, but ultimately without a AWS snowflake doesn't exist and, and they're reimagining the data warehouse with the cloud, right? That's the billion dollar opportunity. >>It is. It is. They both are very tight. So imagine what Frank has done at snowflake and Amazon. So if I'm a startup today, I want to build everything on Amazon where possible whatever is, I cannot build. I'll make the pass layer room. The middle layer pass will be snowflake. So I cannot build it on snowflake. I can use them for data layer if I really need to size, I'll build it on force.com Salesforce. Yeah. Right. So I think that's where you'll >>See. So basically the, the, if you're an entrepreneur, the, the north star in terms of the, the outcome is be a super cloud. It >>Is, >>That's the application on another big CapEx ride, the CapEx of AWS or cloud, >>And that reduce your product development, your go to market and you get use the snowflake marketplace to drive your engagement. Yeah. >>Yeah. How are, how is Amazon and the clouds dealing with these big whales, the snowflakes of the world? I mean, I know they got a great relationship, uh, but snowflake now has to run a company they're public. Yeah. So, I mean, I'll say, I think got Redshift. Amazon has got Redshift. Um, but snowflake big customer. The they're probably paying AWS big, >>I >>Think big bills too. >>So John, very good. Cause it's like how Netflix is and Amazon prime, right. Netflix runs on Amazon, but Amazon has Amazon prime that co-option will be there. So Amazon will have Redshift, but Amazon is also partnering with the snowflake to have native snowflake data warehouse as a data layer. So I think depending on the use case you have to use each of the above, I think snowflake is here for a long term. Yeah. Yeah. So if I'm building an application, I want to use snowflake then writing from stats. >>Well, I think that comes back down to entrepreneurial hustle. Do you have a better product? Right. Product value will ultimately determine it as long as the cloud doesn't, you know, foreclose your value. That's right. With some sort of internal hack, but I've think, I think the general question that I have is that I think it's okay to have a super cloud like that because the rising tide is still happening at some point, when does the rising tide stop and the people shopping up their knives, it gets more competitive or is it just an infinite growth cycle? I >>Think it's growth. You call it closed skill you the word cloud scale. So I think look, cloud will continually agree, increase. I think there's as long as there more movement from on, uh, on-prem to the classical data center, I think there's no reason at this point, the rumor, the old lift and shift that's happening in like my business. I see people lift and shifting from the it operations, it helpless. Even the customer service service. Now the ticket data from BMCs CAS like Microfocus, all those workloads are shifted to the cloud, right? So cloud ticketing system is happening. Cloud system of record is happening. So I think this train has still a long way to go made. >>I wanna get your thoughts for the folks watching that are, uh, enterprise buyers are practitioners, not suppliers to the market. Feel free to text me or DMing. Next question is really about the buying side, which is if I'm a customer, what's the current, um, appetite for startup products. Cause you know, the big enterprises now and you know, small, medium, large, and large enterprise, they're all buying new companies cuz a startup can go from zero to relevant very quickly. So that means now enterprises are engaging heavily with startups. What's it like what's is there a change in order of magnitude of the relationship between the startup selling to, or growing startup selling to an enterprise? Um, have you seen changes there? I mean seeing some stuff, but why don't we get your thoughts on that? What it >>Is you, if I remember going back to our 2007 or eight, when I used to talk to you back then when Amazon started very small, right? We are an Amazon summit here. So I think enterprises on the average used to spend nothing with startups. It's almost like 0% or one person today. Most companies are already spending 20, 30% with startups. Like if I look at a C I will line our business, it's gone. Yeah. Can it go more? I think it can double in the next four, five years. Yeah. Spending on the startups. Yeah. >>And check out, uh, AWS startups.com. That's a site that we built for the startup community for buyers and startups. And I want to get your reaction because I, I reference the URL causes like there's like a bunch of companies we've been promoting because the solution that startups have actually are new stuff. Yes. It's bending, it's shifting left for security or using data differently or um, building tools and platforms for data engineering. Right. Which is a new persona that's emerging. So you know, a lot of good resources there. Um, and goes back now to the data question. Now, getting back to your, what you're working on now is what's your thoughts around this new, um, data engineering persona, you mentioned AIOps, we've been seeing AIOps IOPS booming and that's creating a new developer paradigm that's right. Which we call coin data as code data as code is like infrastructure as code, but it's for data, right? It's developing with data, right? Retraining machine learnings, going back to the data lake, getting data to make, to do analysis, to make the machine learning better post event or post action. So this, this data engineers like an SRE for data, it's a new, scalable role we're seeing. Do you see the same thing? Do you agree? Um, do you disagree or can you share? >>I, a lot of thoughts that Fu I see the AI op solutions in the futures should be not looking back. I need to be like we are in San Francisco bay. That means earthquake prediction. Right? I want AOPs to predict when the outages are gonna happen. When there's a performance issue. I don't think most AOPs vendors have not gone there yet. Like I spend a lot of time with data dog, Cisco app dynamic, right? Dynatrace, all this solution will go future towards predict to pro so solution with AOPs. But what you bring up a very good point on the data side. I think like we have a Amazon marketplace and Amazon for startup, there should be data exchange where you want to create for AOPs and AI service that customers give the data, share the data because we thought the data algorithms are useless. I can give the best algorithm, but I gotta train them, modify them, make them better, make them better. Yeah. And I think their whole data exchange is the industry has not thought through something you and me talk many times. Yeah. Yeah. I think the whole, that area is very important. >>You've always been on, um, on the Vanguard of data because, uh, it's been really fun. Yeah. >>Going back to big data days back in 2009, you know that >>Look at, look how much data bricks has grown. >>It is doubled. The key cloud >>Air kinda went private, so good stuff. What are you working on right now? Give a, give a, um, plug for what you're working on. You'll still investing. >>I do still invest, but look, I'm a hundred percent on ISRA right now. I'm the CEO there. Yeah. Okay. So right. ISRA is my number one baby right now. So I'm looking year that growing customers and my customers, or some of them, you like it's zoom auto desk, McAfee, uh, grand <inaudible>. So all the top customers, um, mainly for it help desk customer service. AIOps those are three product lines and going after enterprise and commercial deals. >>And when should someone buy your product? What's what's their need? What category is it? >>I think they look whenever somebody needs to buy the product is if you need AOP solution to predict, keep your lights on, predict ours. One area. If you want to improve employee experience, you are using a slack teams and you want to automate all your workflows. That's another value problem. Third is customer service. You don't want to hire more people to do it. Some of the areas where you want to scale your company, grow your company, eliminate the cost customer service, >>Great stuff, man. Doing great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Congratulations on the success of your company and your investments. Thanks for coming on the cube. Okay. I'm John fur here at the cube live in San Francisco for day one of two days of coverage of a us summit 2022. And we're gonna be at Aus summit in San, uh, in New York in the summer. So look for that on the calendar, of course, go to a us startups.com. That's a site for all the hot startups and of course the cube.net and Silicon angle.com. Thanks for watching. We'll be back more coverage after this short break. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone. This the cubes coverage here in San Francisco, California, a Davis summit, 2022, the beginning of the event season, as it comes back, little bit smaller footprint, a lot of hybrid events going on, but this is actually a physical event, a summit in new York's coming in the summer. We'll be two with the cube on the set. We're getting back in the Groove's psych to be back. We were at reinvent, uh, as well, and we'll see more and more cube, but you're gonna see a lot of virtual cube outta hybrid cube. We wanna get all those conversations, try to get more interviews, more flow going. But right now I'm excited to have Corey Quinn here on the back on the cube chief cloud economist with duck bill groove, he's the founder, uh, and chief content person always got great angles, fun comedy, authoritative Corey. Great to see you. Thank you. >>Thanks. Coming on. Sure is a lot of words to describe is shit posting, which is how I describe what I tend to do. Most days, >>Shit posting is an art form now. And if you look at mark, Andrew's been doing a lot of shit posting lately. All a billionaires are shit posting, but they don't know how to do it. They're >>Doing it right. There's something opportunity there. It's like, here's how to be even more obnoxious and incisive. It's honestly the most terrifying scenario for anyone is if I have that kind of budget to throw at my endeavors, it's like, I get excited with a nonsense I can do with a $20 gift card for an AWS credit compared to, oh well, if I could buy a mid-size island to begin doing this from, oh, then we're having fun. >>This shit posting trend. Interesting. I was watching a thread go on about, saw someone didn't get a job because of their shit posting and the employer didn't get it. And then someone on this side I'll hire the guy cuz I get that's highly intelligent shit posting. So for the audience that doesn't know what shit posting is, what, what is shitposting >>It's more or less talking about the world of enterprise technology, which even that sentence is hard to finish without falling asleep and toppling out of my chair in front of everyone on the livestream, but it's doing it in such a way that brings it to life that says the quiet part. A lot of the audience is thinking, but generally doesn't say either because they're polite or not a Jack ass or more prosaically are worried about getting fired for better or worse. I don't have that particular constraint, >>Which is why people love you. So let's talk about what you, what you think is, uh, worthy and not worthy in the industry right now, obviously, uh, Cuban coming up in Spain, which they're having a physical event, you see the growth of cloud native Amazon's evolving Atos, especially new CEO. Andy move on to be the chief of all. Amazon just saw him the cover of was it time magazine. Um, he's under a lot of stress. Amazon's changed. Invoice has changed. What's working. What's not, what's rising, what's falling. What's hot. What's not, >>It's easy to sit here and criticize almost anything. These folks do. They're they're effectively in a fishbowl, but I have trouble. Imagine the logistics, it takes to wind up handling the catering for a relatively downscale event like this one this year, let alone running a 1.7 million employee company having to balance all the competing challenges and pressures and the rest. I, I just can't fathom what it would be like to look at all of AWS. And it's, it's sprawling immense, the nominates our entire industry and say, okay, this is a good start, but I, I wanna focus on something with a broader remit. What is that? How do you even get into that position? And you can't win once you're there. All you can do is hold onto the tiger and hope you don't get mold. >>Well, there's a lot of force for good conversations. Seeing a lot of that going on, Amazon's trying to a, is trying to portray themselves, you know, the Pathfinder, you know, you're the pioneer, um, force for good. And I get that and I think that's a good angle as cloud goes mainstream. There's still the question of, we had a guy on just earlier, who was a skydiving instructor and we were joking about the early days of cloud. Like that was like skydiving, build a parachute open, you know, and now it's same kind of thing. As you move to edge, things are like reliable in some areas, but still new, new fringe, new areas. That's crazy. Well, >>Since the last time we've spoken, uh, Steve Schmidt is now the CISO for all of Amazon and his backfill replacement. The AWS CISO is CJ. Moses who as a hobby races, a as a semi-pro race car, our driver to my understanding, which either, I don't know what direction to take that in either. This is what he does to relax or ultimately, or ultimately it's. Huh? That, that certainly says something about risk assessment. I'm not entirely sure what, but okay. Either way, it sounds like more exciting. Like they >>Better have a replacement ready in case something goes wrong on the track, highly >>Available >>CSOs. I gotta say one of the things I do like in the recent trend is that the tech companies are getting into the formula one, which I was never a fan of until I watched that Netflix series. But when you look at the formula one, it's pretty cool. Cause it's got some tech angles, I get the whole data instrumentation thing, but the most coolest thing about formula, the one is they have these new rigs out. Yeah. Where you can actually race in e-sports with other people in pure simulation of the race car. You gotta get the latest and video graphics card, but it's basically a tricked out PC with amazing monitors and you have all the equipment of F1 and you're basically simulating racing. Oh, >>It's great too. And I can see the appeal of these tech companies getting it into it because these things are basically rocket shifts. When those cars go, like they're sitting there, we can instrument every last part of what is going on inside that vehicle. And then AWS crops up. And we can bill on every one of those dimensions too. And it's like slow down their hasty pudding one step at a time. But I do see the appeal. >>So I gotta ask you about, uh, what's going on in your world. I know you have a lot of great SA we've been following you in the queue for many, many years. Got a great newsletter. Check out Corey Quinn's newsletter, uh, screaming in the cloud program. Uh, you're on the cutting edge and you've got a great balance between really being snarky and, and, and really being delivering content. That's exciting, uh, for people, uh, with a little bit of an edge, um, how's that going? Uh, what's the blowback, any blowback late leads there been tick? What was, what are some of the things you're hearing from your audience, more Corey, more Corey. And then of course the, the PR team's calling you >>The weird thing about having an audience beyond a certain size is far and away as a landslide. The most common response I get is silence where it's hi, I'm emailing an awful lot of people at last week in AWS every week and okay. They not have heard me. It. That is not actually true. People just generally don't respond to email because who responds to email newsletters. That sounds like something, a lunatic might do same story with response to live streams and podcasts. It's like, I'm gonna call into that am radio show and give them a piece of my mind. People generally don't do that. >>We should do that. Actually. I think sure would call in. Oh, I, I >>Think >>I guarantee if we had that right now, people would call in and Corey, what do you think about X? >>Yeah. It not, everyone understands the full context of what I do. And in fact, increasingly few people do and that's fine. I, I keep forgetting that sometimes people do not see what I'm doing in the same light that I do. And that's fine. Blowback has been largely minimal. Honestly, I am surprised anything by how little I have gotten over the last five years of doing this, but it would be easier to dismiss me if I weren't generally. Right. When, okay, so you launch this new service and it seems pretty crappy to me cuz when I try and build something, it falls over and begs for help. And people might not like hearing that, but it's what customers are finding too. Yeah. I really am the voice of the customer. >>You know, I always joke with Dave Avante about how John Fort's always at, uh, um, reinvent getting the interview with jazzy now, Andy we're there, you're there. And so we have these rituals at the events. It's all cool. Um, one of the rituals I like about your, um, your content is you like to get on the naming product names. Um, and, and, and, and, and kind of goof on that. Now why I like is because I used to work at ETT Packard where they used to name things as like engineers, HP 1 0, 0 5, or we can't, we >>Have a new monitor. How are we gonna name it? Throw the wireless keyboard down the stairs again. And then there you go. Yeah. >>It's and the old joke at HP was if they, if they invented sushi, they'd say, yeah, we can't call sushi. It's cold, dead fish, but that's what it is. And so the joke was cold. Dead fish is a better name than sushi. So you know is fun. So what's the, what are the, how's the Amazon doing in there? Have they changed their naming, uh, strategy, uh, on some of their, their product >>They're going in different directions. When they named Aurora, they decided to explore a new theme of Disney princesses as they go down those paths. And some things are more descriptive. Some people are clearly getting bonus on number of words, they can shove into it. Like the better a service is the longer it's name. Like AWS systems manager, a session manager is a great one. I love the service ridiculous name. They have a systems manager, parameter store with is great. They have secrets manager, which does the same thing. It's two words less, but that one costs money in a way that systems manage through parameter store does not. It's fun. >>What's your, what's your favorite combination of acronyms >>Combination of you >>Got Ks. You got EMR, you got EC two. You got S three SQS. Well, RedShift's not an acronym. You got >>Gas is one of my personal favorites because it's either elastic block store or elastic bean stock, depending entirely on the context of the conversation, >>They still got bean stock or is that still >>Around? Oh, they never turn anything off. They're like the anti Google, Google turns things off while they're still building it. Whereas Amazon is like, wow, we built this thing in 2005 and everyone hates it. But while we certainly can't change it, now it has three customers on it, John. >>Okay. >>Simple BV still haunts our >>Dreams. I, I actually got an email on, I saw one of my, uh, servers, all these C twos were being deprecated and I got an email I'm like, I couldn't figure out. Why can you just like roll it over? Why, why are you telling me just like, gimme something else. Right. Okay. So let me talk about, uh, the other things I want to ask you is that like, okay, so as Amazon gets better in some areas where do they need more work? And you, your opinion, because obviously they're all interested in new stuff and they tend to like put it out there for their end to end customers. But then they've got ecosystem partners who actually have the same product. Yes. And, and this has been well documented. So it's, it's not controversial. It's just that Amazon's got a database Snowflake's got out database service. So, you know, Redshift, snowflake database is out there. So you've got this optician. Yes. How's that going? And what are you hearing about the reaction to any of that stuff? >>Depends on who you ask. They love to basically trot out a bunch of their partners who will say nice things about them. And it very much has heirs of, let's be honest, a hostage video, but okay. Cuz these companies do partner with Amazon and they cannot afford to rock the boat too far. I'm not partnered with anyone. I can say what I want. And they're basically restricted to taking away my birthday at worse so I can live with that. >>All right. So I gotta ask about multi-cloud cause obviously the other cloud shows are coming up. Amazon hated that word. Multi-cloud um, a lot of people are saying, you know, it's not a real good marketing word. Like multicloud sounds like, you know, root canal. Mm-hmm <affirmative> right. So is there a better description for multicloud? >>Multiple single >>Loves that term. Yeah. >>You're building in multiple single points of failure. Do it for the right reasons or don't do it as a default. I believe not doing it is probably the, the right answer. However, and if I were, if I were Amazon, I wouldn't want to talk about multi-cloud either as the industry leader, let's talk about other clouds, bad direction to go in from a market cap perspective. It doesn't end well for you, but regardless of what they want to talk about, or don't want to talk about what they say, what they don't say, I tune all of it out. And I look at what customers are doing and multi-cloud exists in a variety of some brilliant, some brain dead. It depends a lot on context. But my general response is when someone gets on stage from a company and tells me to do a thing that directly benefits their company. I am skeptical at best. Yeah. When customers get on stage and say, this is what we're doing because it solves problems. That's when I shut up and listen. >>Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Corey, I gotta ask you a question cause I know you we've been, you know, fellow journey mean in the, in the cloud journey, going to all the events and then the pandemic hit where now in the third year, who knows what it's gonna end, certainly events are gonna look different. They're gonna be either changing footprint with the virtual piece, new group formations community's gonna emerge. You've got a pretty big community growing and it's growing like crazy. What's the weirdest or coolest thing, or just big changes you've seen with the pan endemic, uh, from your perspective, cuz you've been in the you're in the middle of the whitewater rafting. You've seen the events you circle offline. You saw the online piece come in, you're commentating, you're calling balls and strikes in the industry. You got a great team developing over there. Duck bill group. What's the big aha moment that you saw with the pandemic. Weird, funny, serious, real in the industry and with customers what's >>Accessibility. Reinvent is a great example. When in the before times it's open to anyone who wants to attend, who >>Can pony. >>Hello and welcome back to the live cube coverage here in San Francisco, California, the cube live coverage. Two days, day two of a summit, 2022 Aish summit, New York city coming up in summer. We'll be there as well. Events are back. I'm the host, John fur, the Cub got great guest here. Johnny Dallas with Ze. Um, here is on the queue. We're gonna talk about his background. Uh, little trivia here. He was the youngest engineer ever worked at Amazon at the age. 17 had to get escorted into reinvent in Vegas cause he was underage <laugh> with security, all good stories. Now the CEO of company called Z know DevOps kind of focus, managed service, a lot of cool stuff, Johnny, welcome to the cube. >>Thanks John. Great. >>So tell a story. You were the youngest engineer at AWS. >>I was, yes. So I used to work at a company called Bebo. I got started very young. I started working when I was about 14, um, kind of as a software engineer. And when I, uh, it was about 16. I graduated out of high school early, um, working at this company Bebo, still running all of the DevOps at that company. Um, I went to reinvent in about 2018 to give a talk about some of the DevOps software I wrote at that company. Um, but you know, as many of those things were probably familiar with reinvent happens in a casino and I was 16. So was not able to actually go into the, a casino on my own. Um, so I'd have <inaudible> security as well as casino security escort me in to give my talk. >>Did Andy jazzy, was he aware of >>This? Um, you know, that's a great question. I don't know. <laugh> >>I'll ask him great story. So obviously you started a young age. I mean, it's so cool to see you jump right in. I mean, I mean you never grew up with the old school that I used to grew up in and loading package software, loading it onto the server, deploying it, plugging the cables in, I mean you just rocking and rolling with DevOps as you look back now what's the big generational shift because now you got the Z generation coming in, millennials on the workforce. It's changing like no one's putting and software on servers. Yeah, >>No. I mean the tools keep getting better, right? We, we keep creating more abstractions that make it easier and easier. When I, when I started doing DevOps, I could go straight into E two APIs. I had APIs from the get go and you know, my background was, I was a software engineer. I never went through like the CIS admin stack. I, I never had to, like you said, rack servers, myself. I was immediately able to scale. I was managing, I think 2,500 concurrent servers across every Ables region through software. It was a fundamental shift. >>Did you know what an SRE was at that time? >>Uh, >>You were kind of an SRE on >>Yeah, I was basically our first SRE, um, was familiar with the, with the phrasing, but really thought of myself as a software engineer who knows cloud APIs, not a SRE. All >>Right. So let's talk about what's what's going on now as you look at the landscape today, what's the coolest thing that's going on in your mind in cloud? >>Yeah, I think the, I think the coolest thing is, you know, we're seeing the next layer of those abstraction tools exist and that's what we're doing with Z is we've basically gone and we've, we're building an app platform that deploys onto your cloud. So if you're familiar with something like Carku, um, where you just click a GitHub repo, uh, we actually make it that easy. You click a GI hub repo and it will deploy on ALS using a AWS tools. So, >>Right. So this is Z. This is the company. Yes. How old's the company about >>A year and a half old now. >>All right. So explain what it does. >>Yeah. So we make it really easy for any software engineer to deploy on a AWS. It's not SREs. These are the actual application engineers doing the business logic. They don't really want to think about Yamo. They don't really want to configure everything super deeply. They want to say, run this API on S in the best way possible. We've encoded all the best practices into software and we set it up for you. Yeah. >>So I think the problem you're solving is that there's a lot of want be DevOps engineers. And then they realize, oh shit, I don't wanna do this. Yeah. And some people want to do it. They loved under the hood. Right. People love to have infrastructure, but the average developer needs to actually be as agile on scale. So that seems to be the problem you solve. Right? >>Yeah. We, we, we give way more productivity to each individual engineer, you know? >>All right. So let me ask you a question. So let me just say, I'm a developer. Cool. I build this new app. It's a streaming app or whatever. I'm making it up cube here, but let's just say I deploy it. I need your service. But what happens about when my customers say, Hey, what's your SLA? The CDN went down from this it's flaky. Does Amazon have, so how do you handle all that SLA reporting that Amazon provides? Cuz they do a good job with sock reports all through the console. But as you start getting into DevOps <affirmative> and sell your app, mm-hmm <affirmative> you have customer issues. How do you, how do you view that? Yeah, >>Well, I, I think you make a great point of AWS has all this stuff already. AWS has SLAs. AWS has contract. Aw has a lot of the tools that are expected. Um, so we don't have to reinvent the wheel here. What we do is we help people get to those SLAs more easily. So Hey, this is AWS SLA as a default. Um, Hey, we'll fix you your services. This is what you can expect here. Um, but we can really leverage S's reliability of you. Don't have to trust us. You have to trust ALS and trust that the setup is good there. >>Do you handle all the recovery or mitigation between, uh, identification say downtime for instance? Oh, the server's not 99% downtime. Uh, went down for an hour, say something's going on? And is there a service dashboard? How does it get what's the remedy? Do you have a, how does all that work? >>Yeah, so we have some built in remediation. You know, we, we basically say we're gonna do as much as we can to keep your endpoint up 24 7 mm-hmm <affirmative>. If it's something in our control, we'll do it. If it's a disc failure, that's on us. If you push bad code, we won't put out that new version until it's working. Um, so we do a lot to make sure that your endpoint stay is up, um, and then alert you if there's a problem that we can't fix. So cool. Hey S has some downtime, this thing's going on. You need to do this action. Um, we'll let you know. >>All right. So what do you do for fun? >>Yeah, so, uh, for, for fun, um, a lot of side projects. <laugh> uh, >>What's your side hustle right now. You got going on >>The, uh, it's >>A lot of tools playing tools, serverless. >>Yeah, painless. A lot of serverless stuff. Um, I think there's a lot of really cool WAM stuff as well. Going on right now. Um, I love tools is, is the truest answer is I love building something that I can give to somebody else. And they're suddenly twice as productive because of it. Um, >>It's a good feeling, isn't it? >>Oh yeah. There's >>Nothing like tools were platforms. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, the expression, too many tools in the tool. She becomes, you know, tools for all. And then ultimately tools become platforms. What's your view on that? Because if a good tool works and starts to get traction, you need to either add more tools or start building a platform platform versus tool. What's your, what's your view on a reaction to that kind of concept debate? >>Yeah, it's a good question. Uh, we we've basically started as like a, a platform. First of we've really focused on these, uh, developers who don't wanna get deep into the DevOps. And so we've done all of the pieces of the stacks. We do C I C D management. Uh, we do container orchestration, we do monitoring. Um, and now we're, spliting those up into individual tools so they can be used. Awesome in conjunction more. >>All right. So what are some of the use cases that you see for your service? It's DevOps basically nano service DevOps. So people who want a DevOps team, do clients have a DevOps person and then one person, two people what's the requirements to run >>Z. Yeah. So we we've got teams, um, from no DevOps is kind of when they start and then we've had teams grow up to about, uh, five, 10 men DevOps teams. Um, so, you know, as is more infrastructure people come in because we're in your cloud, you're able to go in and configure it on top you're we can't block you. Uh, you wanna use some new AWS service. You're welcome to use that alongside the stack that we deploy >>For you. How many customers do you have now? >>So we've got about 40 companies that are using us for all of their infrastructure, um, kind of across the board, um, as well as >>What's the pricing model. >>Uh, so our pricing model is we, we charge basically similar to an engineering salary. So we charge a monthly rate. We have plans at 300 bucks a month, a thousand bucks a month, and then enterprise plan for >>The requirement scale. Yeah. So back into the people cost, you must have her discounts, not a fully loaded thing, is it? >>Yeah, there's a discounts kind of asking >>Then you pass the Amazon bill. >>Yeah. So our customers actually pay for the Amazon bill themselves. So >>Have their own >>Account. There's no margin on top. You're linking your, a analyst account in, um, got it. Which is huge because we can, we are now able to help our customers get better deals with Amazon. Um, got it. We're incentivized on their team to drive your costs down. >>And what's your unit main unit of economics software scale. >>Yeah. Um, yeah, so we, we think of things as projects. How many services do you have to deploy as that scales up? Um, awesome. >>All right. You're 20 years old now you not even can't even drink legally. <laugh> what are you gonna do when you're 30? We're gonna be there. >>Well, we're, uh, we're making it better, better, >>Better the old guy on the queue here. <laugh> >>I think, uh, I think we're seeing a big shift of, um, you know, we've got these major clouds. ALS is obviously the biggest cloud and it's constantly coming out with new services, but we're starting to see other clouds have built many of the common services. So Kubernetes is a great example. It exists across all the clouds and we're starting to see new platforms come up on top that allow you to leverage tools for multiple times. At the same time. Many of our customers actually have AWS as their primary cloud and they'll have secondary clouds or they'll pull features from other clouds into AWS, um, through our software. I think that's, I'm very excited by that. And I, uh, expect to be working on that when I'm 30. <laugh> awesome. >>Well, you gonna have a good future. I gotta ask you this question cuz uh, you know, I always, I was a computer science undergrad in the, in the, and um, computer science back then was hardcore, mostly systems OS stuff, uh, database compiler. Um, now there's so much compi, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> how do you look at the high school college curriculum experience slash folks who are nerding out on computer science? It's not one or two things. You've got a lot of, lot of things. I mean, look at Python, data engineering and emerging as a huge skill. What's it, what's it like for college kids now and high school kids? What, what do you think they should be doing if you had to give advice to your 16 year old self back a few years ago now in college? Um, I mean Python's not a great language, but it's super effective for coding and the datas were really relevant, but it's, you've got other language opportunities you've got tools to build. So you got a whole culture of young builders out there. What should, what should people gravitate to in your opinion and stay away from or >>Stay away from? That's a good question. I, I think that first of all, you're very right of the, the amount of developers is increasing so quickly. Um, and so we see more specialization. That's why we also see, you know, these SREs that are different than typical application engineering. You know, you get more specialization in job roles. Um, I think if, what I'd say to my 16 year old self is do projects, um, the, I learned most of my, what I've learned just on the job or online trying things, playing with different technologies, actually getting stuff out into the world, um, way more useful than what you'll learn in kind of a college classroom. I think classroom's great to, uh, get a basis, but you need to go out and experiment actually try things. >>You know? I think that's great advice. In fact, I would just say from my experience of doing all the hard stuff and cloud is so great for just saying, okay, I'm done, I'm banning the project. Move on. Yeah. Cause you know, it's not gonna work in the old days. You have to build this data center. I bought all this, you know, people hang on to the old, you know, project and try to force it out there. Now you >>Can launch a project now, >>Instant gratification, it ain't working <laugh> or this is shut it down and then move on to something new. >>Yeah, exactly. Instantly you should be able to do that much more quickly. Right. So >>You're saying get those projects and don't be afraid to shut it down. Mm-hmm <affirmative> that? Do you agree with that? >>Yeah. I think it's ex experiment. Uh, you're probably not gonna hit it rich on the first one. It's probably not gonna be that idea is the genius idea. So don't be afraid to get rid of things and just try over and over again. It's it's number of reps >>That'll win. I was commenting online. Elon Musk was gonna buy Twitter, that whole Twitter thing. And someone said, Hey, you know, what's the, I go look at the product group at Twitter's been so messed up because they actually did get it right on the first time. And we can just a great product. They could never change it because people would freak out and the utility of Twitter. I mean, they gotta add some things, the added button and we all know what they need to add, but the product, it was just like this internal dysfunction, the product team, what are we gonna work on? Don't change the product so that you kind of have there's opportunities out there where you might get the lucky strike right outta the gate. Yeah. Right. You don't know. >>It's almost a curse too. It's you're not gonna hit curse Twitter. You're not gonna hit a rich the second time too. So yeah. >><laugh> Johnny Dallas. Thanks for coming on the cube. Really appreciate it. Give a plug for your company. Um, take a minute to explain what you're working on. What you're look looking for. You hiring funding. Customers. Just give a plug, uh, last minute and kind the last word. >>Yeah. So, um, John Dallas from Ze, if you, uh, need any help with your DevOps, if you're a early startup, you don't have DevOps team, um, or you're trying to deploy across clouds, check us out z.com. Um, we are actively hiring. So if you are a software engineer excited about tools and cloud, or you're interested in helping getting this message out there, hit me up. Um, find us on z.co. >>Yeah. LinkedIn Twitter handle GitHub handle. >>Yeah. I'm the only Johnny on a LinkedIn and GitHub and underscore Johnny Dallas underscore on Twitter. All right. Um, >>Johnny Dallas, the youngest engineer working at Amazon, um, now 20 we're on great new project here in the cube. Builders are all young. They're growing into the business. They got cloud at their, at their back it's tailwind. I wish I was 20. Again, this is a I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching. Thanks. >>Welcome >>Back to the cubes. Live coverage of a AWS summit in San Francisco, California events are back, uh, ADAS summit in New York cities. This summer, the cube will be there as well. Check us out there lot. I'm glad we have events back. It's great to have everyone here. I'm John furry host of the cube. Dr. Matt wood is with me cube alumni now VP of business analytics division of AWS. Matt. Great to see you. Thank >>You, John. Great to be here. >>Appreciate it. I always call you Dr. Matt wood, because Andy jazzy always says Dr. Matt, we >>Would introduce you on the he's the one and only the one and >>Only Dr. Matt wood >>In joke. I love it. >>Andy style. And I think you had walkup music too on, you know, >>Too. Yes. We all have our own personalized walk. >>So talk about your new role. I not new role, but you're running up, um, analytics, business or AWS. What does that consist of right now? >>Sure. So I work, I've got what I consider to be the one of the best jobs in the world. Uh, I get to work with our customers and, uh, the teams at AWS, uh, to build the analytics services that millions of our customers use to, um, uh, slice dice, pivot, uh, better understand their day data, um, look at how they can use that data for, um, reporting, looking backwards and also look at how they can use that data looking forward. So predictive analytics and machine learning. So whether it is, you know, slicing and dicing in the lower level of, uh Hado and the big data engines, or whether you're doing ETR with glue or whether you're visualizing the data in quick side or building models in SageMaker. I got my, uh, fingers in a lot of pies. >>You know, one of the benefits of, uh, having cube coverage with AWS since 2013 is watching the progression. You were on the cube that first year we were at reinvent 2013 and look at how machine learning just exploded onto the scene. You were involved in that from day one is still day one, as you guys say mm-hmm <affirmative>, what's the big thing now. I mean, look at, look at just what happened. Machine learning comes in and then a slew of services come in and got SageMaker became a hot seller, right outta the gate. Mm-hmm <affirmative> the database stuff was kicking butt. So all this is now booming. Mm-hmm <affirmative> that was the real generational changeover for <inaudible> what's the perspective. What's your perspective on, yeah, >>I think how that's evolved. No, I think it's a really good point. I, I totally agree. I think for machine machine learning, um, there was sort of a Renaissance in machine learning and the application of machine learning machine learning as a technology has been around for 50 years, let's say, but, uh, to do machine learning, right? You need like a lot of data, the data needs to be high quality. You need a lot of compute to be able to train those models and you have to be able to evaluate what those mean as you apply them to real world problems. And so the cloud really removed a lot of the constraints. Finally, customers had all of the data that they needed. We gave them services to be able to label that data in a high quality way. There's all the compute. You need to be able to train the models <laugh> and so where you go. >>And so the cloud really enabled this Renaissance with machine learning, and we're seeing honestly, a similar Renaissance with, uh, with data, uh, and analytics. You know, if you look back, you know, five, 10 years, um, analytics was something you did in batch, like your data warehouse ran a analysis to do, uh, reconciliation at the end of the month. And then was it? Yeah. And so that's when you needed it, but today, if your Redshift cluster isn't available, uh, Uber drivers don't turn up door dash deliveries, don't get made. It's analytics is now central to virtually every business and it is central to every virtually every business is digital transformation. Yeah. And be able to take that data from a variety of sources here, or to query it with high performance mm-hmm <affirmative> to be able to actually then start to augment that data with real information, which usually comes from technical experts and domain experts to form, you know, wisdom and information from raw data. That's kind of, uh, what most organizations are trying to do when they kind of go through this analytics journey. It's >>Interesting, you know, Dave LAN and I always talk on the cube, but out, you know, the future and, and you look back, the things we were talking about six years ago are actually happening now. Yeah. And it's not a, a, a, you know, hyped up statement to say digital transformation. It actually's happening now. And there's also times where we bang our fist on the table, say, I really think this is so important. And Dave says, John, you're gonna die on that hill <laugh>. >>And >>So I I'm excited that this year, for the first time I didn't die on that hill. I've been saying data you're right. Data as code is the next infrastructure as code mm-hmm <affirmative>. And Dave's like, what do you mean by that? We're talking about like how data gets and it's happening. So we just had an event on our 80 bus startups.com site mm-hmm <affirmative>, um, a showcase with startups and the theme was data as code and interesting new trends emerging really clearly the role of a data engineer, right? Like an SRE, what an SRE did for cloud. You have a new data engineering role because of the developer on, uh, onboarding is massively increasing exponentially, new developers, data science, scientists are growing mm-hmm <affirmative> and the, but the pipelining and managing and engineering as a system. Yeah. Almost like an operating system >>And as a discipline. >>So what's your reaction to that about this data engineer data as code, because if you have horizontally scalable data, you've gotta be open that's hard. <laugh> mm-hmm <affirmative> and you gotta silo the data that needs to be siloed for compliance and reasons. So that's got a very policy around that. So what's your reaction to data as code and data engineering and >>Phenomenon? Yeah, I think it's, it's a really good point. I think, you know, like with any, with any technology, uh, project inside an organization, you know, success with analytics or machine learning is it's kind of 50% technology and then 50% cultural. And, uh, you have often domain experts. Those are, could be physicians or drug experts, or they could be financial experts or whoever they might be got deep domain expertise. And then you've got technical implementation teams and it's kind of a natural often repulsive force. I don't mean that rudely, but they, they just, they don't talk the same language. And so the more complex the domain and the more complex the technology, the stronger that repulsive force, and it can become very difficult for, um, domain experts to work closely with the technical experts, to be able to actually get business decisions made. And so what data engineering does and data engineering is in some cases team, or it can be a role that you play. >>Uh, it's really allowing those two disciplines to speak the same language it provides. You can think of it as plumbing, but I think of it as like a bridge, it's a bridge between like the technical implementation and the domain experts. And that requires like a very disparate range of skills. You've gotta understand about statistics. You've gotta understand about the implementation. You've gotta understand about the, it, you've gotta understand and understand about the domain. And if you could pull all of that together, that data engineering discipline can be incredibly transformative for an organization, cuz it builds the bridge between those two >>Groups. You know, I was advising some, uh, young computer science students at the sophomore junior level, uh, just a couple weeks ago. And I told 'em, I would ask someone at Amazon, this questions I'll ask you since you're, you've been in the middle of of it for years, they were asking me and I was trying to mentor them on. What, how do you become a data engineer from a practical standpoint, uh, courseware projects to work on how to think, um, not just coding Python cause everyone's coding in Python mm-hmm <affirmative> but what else can they do? So I was trying to help them and I didn't really know the answer myself. I was just trying to like kind of help figure it out with them. So what is the answer in your opinion or the thoughts around advice to young students who want to be data engineers? Cuz data scientists is pretty clear in what that is. Yeah. You use tools, you make visualizations, you manage data, you get answers and insights and apply that to the business. That's an application mm-hmm <affirmative>, that's not the, you know, sta standing up a stack or managing the infrastructure. What, so what does that coding look like? What would your advice be to >>Yeah, I think >>Folks getting into a data engineering role. >>Yeah. I think if you, if you believe this, what I said earlier about like 50% technology, 50% culture, like the, the number one technology to learn as a data engineer is the tools in the cloud, which allow you to aggregate data from virtually any source into something which is incrementally more valuable for the organization. That's really what data engineering is all about. It's about taking from multiple sources. Some people call them silos, but silos indicates that the, the storage is kind of fungible or UND differentiated. That that's really not the case. Success requires you to really purpose built well crafted high performance, low cost engines for all of your data. So understanding those tools and understanding how to use 'em, that's probably the most important technical piece. Um, and yeah, Python and programming and statistics goes along with that, I think. And then the most important cultural part, I think is it's just curiosity. >>Like you want to be able to, as a data engineer, you want to have a natural curiosity that drives you to seek the truth inside an organization, seek the truth of a particular problem and to be able to engage, cuz you're probably, you're gonna have some choice as you go through your career about which domain you end up in, like maybe you're really passionate about healthcare. Maybe you're really just passionate about your transportation or media, whatever it might be. And you can allow that to drive a certain amount of curiosity, but within those roles, like the domains are so broad, you kind of gotta allow your curiosity to develop and lead, to ask the right questions and engage in the right way with your teams. So because you can have all the technical skills in the world, but if you're not able to help the team's truths seek through that curiosity, you simply won't be successful. >>We just had a guest on 20 year old, um, engineer, founder, Johnny Dallas, who was 16 when he worked at Amazon youngest engineer at >>Johnny Dallas is a great name by the that's fantastic. It's his real name? >>It sounds like a football player. Rockstar. I should call Johnny. I have Johnny Johnny cube. Uh it's me. Um, so, but he's young and, and he, he was saying, you know, his advice was just do projects. >>Yeah. That's get hands on. >>Yeah. And I was saying, Hey, I came from the old days though, you get to stand stuff up and you hugged onto the assets. Cause you didn't wanna kill the cause you spent all this money and, and he's like, yeah, with cloud, you can shut it down. If you do a project that's not working and you get bad data, no one's adopting it or you don't want like it anymore. You shut it down. Just something >>Else. Totally >>Instantly abandoned it. Move onto something new. >>Yeah. With progression. Totally. And it, the, the blast radius of, um, decisions is just way reduced, gone. Like we talk a lot about like trying to, you know, in the old world trying to find the resources and get the funding. And it's like, right. I wanna try out this kind of random idea that could be a big deal for the organization. I need 50 million in a new data center. Like you're not gonna get anywhere. You, >>You do a proposal working backwards, document >>Kinds, all that, that sort of stuff got hoops. So, so all of that is gone, but we sometimes forget that a big part of that is just the, the prototyping and the experimentation and the limited blast radius in terms of cost. And honestly, the most important thing is time just being able to jump in there, get fingers on keyboards, just try this stuff out. And that's why at AWS, we have part of the reason we have so many services because we want, when you get into AWS, we want the whole toolbox to be available to every developer. And so, as your ideas developed, you may want to jump from, you know, data that you have, that's already in a database to doing realtime data. Yeah. And then you can just, you have the tools there. And when you want to get into real time data, you don't just have kineses, but you have real time analytics and you can run SQL again, that data is like the, the capabilities and the breadth, like really matter when it comes to prototyping and, and >>That's culture too. That's the culture piece, because what was once a dysfunctional behavior, I'm gonna go off the reservation and try something behind my boss's back or cause now as a side hustle or fun project. Yeah. So for fun, you can just code something. Yeah, >>Totally. I remember my first Haddo project, I found almost literally a decommissioned set of servers in the data center that no one was using. They were super old. They're about to be literally turned off. And I managed to convince the team to leave them on for me for like another month. And I installed her DUP on them and like, got them going. It's like, that just seems crazy to me now that I, I had to go and convince anybody not to turn these service off, but what >>It was like for that, when you came up with elastic map produce, because you said this is too hard, we gotta make it >>Easier. Basically. Yes. <laugh> I was installing Haddo version, you know, beta nor 0.9 or whatever it was. It's like, this is really hard. This is really hard. >>We simpler. All right. Good stuff. I love the, the walk down memory lane and also your advice. Great stuff. I think culture's huge. I think. And that's why I like Adam's keynote to reinvent Adam. Lesky talk about path minds and trail blazers because that's a blast radius impact. Mm-hmm <affirmative> when you can actually have innovation organically just come from anywhere. Yeah, that's totally cool. Totally. Let's get into the products. Serverless has been hot mm-hmm <affirmative> uh, we hear a lot about EKS is hot. Uh, containers are booming. Kubernetes is getting adopted. There's still a lot of work to do there. Lambda cloud native developers are booming, serverless Lambda. How does that impact the analytics piece? Can you share the hot, um, products around how that translates? Sure, absolutely. Yeah, the SageMaker >>Yeah, I think it's a, if you look at kind of the evolution and what customers are asking for, they're not, you know, they don't just want low cost. They don't just want this broad set of services. They don't just want, you know, those services to have deep capabilities. They want those services to have as lower operating cost over time as possible. So we kind of really got it down. We got built a lot of muscle, lot of services about getting up and running and experimenting and prototyping and turning things off and turn turning them on and turning them off. And like, that's all great. But actually the, you really only most projects start something once and then stop something once. And maybe there's an hour in between, or maybe there's a year, but the real expense in terms of time and, and complexity is sometimes in that running cost. Yeah. And so, um, we've heard very loudly and clearly from customers that they want, that, that running cost is just undifferentiated to them and they wanna spend more time on their work and in analytics that is, you know, slicing the data, pivoting the data, combining the data, labeling the data, training their models, uh, you know, running inference against their models, uh, and less time doing the operational pieces. >>So is that why the servers focus is there? >>Yeah, absolutely. It, it dramatically reduces the skill required to run these, uh, workloads of any scale. And it dramatically reduces the UND differentiated, heavy lifting, cuz you get to focus more of the time that you would've spent on the operation on the actual work that you wanna get done. And so if you look at something just like Redshift serverless that we launched a reinvent, you know, there's a kind of a, we have a lot of customers that want to run like a, uh, the cluster and they want to get into the, the weeds where there is benefit. We have a lot of customers that say, you know, I there's no benefit for me though. I just wanna do the analytics. So you run the operational piece, you're the experts we've run. You know, we run 60 million instant startups every single day. Like we do this a lot. Exactly. We understand the operation. I >>Want the answers come on. So >>Just give the answers or just let, give me the notebook or just give the inference prediction. So today for example, we announced, um, you know, serverless inference. So now once you've trained your machine learning model, just, uh, run a few, uh, lines of code or you just click a few buttons and then yeah, you got an inference endpoint that you do not have to manage. And whether you're doing one query against that endpoint, you know, per hour or you're doing, you know, 10 million, but we'll just scale it on the back end. You >>Know, I know we got not a lot of time left, but I want, wanna get your reaction to this. One of the things about the data lakes, not being data swamps has been from what I've been reporting and hearing from customers is that they want to retrain their machine learning algorithm. They want, they need that data. They need the, the, the realtime data and they need the time series data, even though the time has passed, they gotta store in the data lake mm-hmm <affirmative>. So now the data lakes main function is being reusing the data to actually retrain. Yeah, >>That's >>Right. It worked properly. So a lot of, lot of postmortems turn into actually business improvements to make the machine learning smarter, faster. You see that same way. Do you see it the same way? Yeah, >>I think it's, I think it's really interesting. No, I think it's really interesting because you know, we talk it's, it's convenient to kind of think of analytics as a very clear progression from like point a point B, but really it's, you are navigating terrain for which you do not have a map and you need a lot of help to navigate that terrain. Yeah. And so, you know, being, having these services in place, not having to run the operations of those services, being able to have those services be secure and well governed, and we added PII detection today, you know, something you can do automatically, uh, to be able to use their, uh, any unstructured data run queries against that unstructured data. So today we added, you know, um, text extract queries. So you can just say, well, uh, you can scan a badge for example, and say, well, what's the name on this badge? And you don't have to identify where it is. We'll do all of that work for you. So there's a often a, it's more like a branch than it is just a, a normal, uh, a to B path, a linear path. Uh, and that includes loops backwards. And sometimes you gotta get the results and use those to make improvements further upstream. And sometimes you've gotta use those. And when you're downstream, you'll be like, ah, I remember that. And you come back and bring it all together. So awesome. It's um, it's, uh, uh, it's a wonderful >>Work for sure. Dr. Matt wood here in the queue. Got just take the last word and give the update. Why you're here. What's the big news happening that you're announcing here at summit in San Francisco, California, and update on the, the business analytics >>Group? Yeah, I think, you know, one of the, we did a lot of announcements in the keynote, uh, encouraged everyone to take a look at that. Uh, this morning was Swami. Uh, one of the ones I'm most excited about, uh, is the opportunity to be able to take, uh, dashboards, visualizations. We're all used to using these things. We see them in our business intelligence tools, uh, all over the place. However, what we've heard from customers is like, yes, I want those analytics. I want their visualization. I want it to be up to date, but you know, I don't actually want to have to go my tools where I'm actually doing my work to another separate tool to be able to look at that information. And so today we announced, uh, one click public embedding for quick side dashboards. So today you can literally, as easily as embedding a YouTube video, you can take a dashboard that you've built inside, quick site cut and paste the HTML, paste it into your application and that's it. That's all you have to do. It takes seconds and >>It gets updated in real time. >>Updated in real time, it's interactive. You can do everything that you would normally do. You can brand it like this is there's no power by quick site button or anything like that. You can change the colors, make it fit in perfectly with your, with your applications. So that's sitting incredibly powerful way of being able to take a, uh, an analytics capability that today sits inside its own little fiefdom and put it just everywhere. It's, uh, very transformative. >>Awesome. And the, the business is going well. You got the serverless and your tailwind for you there. Good stuff, Dr. Matt with thank you. Coming on the cube >>Anytime. Thank >>You. Okay. This is the cubes cover of eight summit, 2022 in San Francisco, California. I'm John host cube. Stay with us with more coverage of day two after this short break.

>>from the Cube Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a cube conversation. Hi, >>I'm stupid, man. And welcome to another cube conversation. I'm here in our Boston area studio. And of course, the intersection of networking and security has always been a hot topic. Even Mawr, if you look at it in 2020 everybody working from home their stresses and strains and a lot more changes than usual for what corporate I t has to deal with. Happy to welcome to the program. Tom Bonkowski. Hey, is the director of product marketing with Net Scout. We're gonna get into some of those topics. Um or Tom, thanks so much for joining us. Welcome. Alright. Eso you came to Donetsk out by way of the Arbor Networks acquisition. Ah, few years ago when I want to give our audience just a little bit about your background, what your team works on and we're gonna be talking about the the edge defense. A solution Said >>Sure. Yes, I I've been with Arbor Networks for over 10 years. I've been the director of product marketing for the DDOS line of products during that time and when we came over to Netsch e still have kind of continue that role. So I'm basically responsible for anything that you know to do with the Arbor Adidas Solutions. We have solutions for the service Friars of the world, large enterprises in the world. >>Yeah, maybe it would help if you just refresh our audience so, you know, generally out in the marketplace. You know d das? It's, you know, attacks on the internet. If I if I was, you know, a big provider technology. It's like, Hey, why can't I get to that website? Oh, they had a DDOS attack that hit them. But you know when when it comes to the enterprise you talked about about service brighter also, you know, when is this hitting them? You know, who are the ones causing this kind of thing? It just kind of give our audience a little bit of level. Said if you would in 2020. >>Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, Adidas attacks have been around for over 20 years. This isn't anything new, as you know, um, but the reality is is as that these attacks have been getting bigger. We're getting more frequent. They're getting more complex. Um, and like I said before, I've been here for over 10 years, and I feel like I say that every single year, but it is absolutely true. Um, and you know, the service Fridays of the world Bear the brunt of this. This problem, they're the ones taking on these large attacks. They're the ones trying to stop it not only to protect their own infrastructure, but also potentially the target, which could or could not be one of their customers. There's a lot of collateral damage associated with the details attacks, especially from a service buyer's perspective, because it impacts everything running on their backbone or in their whatever facility that this attack is flowing through. And then, obviously, you have potentially the target of these attacks, which could be any enterprise, any large government, whatever its very indiscriminate, uh, anyone could be a potential target on br. All >>right. And for for the enterprises themselves, you know, how are they making sure that they are protecting their perimeter? Where does Netsch out? You know, fit in tow, helping protect them against the sort of malicious >>attack. Yeah. So when When it comes to protecting your perimeter in particular. Let's let's talk about where we are today in this whole cove in 19 Pandemic. Um, a zoo. We all know this. This caused a massive work slash. Uh, you know, learn from home scenarios never seen before. And you know the quote. New perimeter is everyone who was once inside the organization now home coming back in, right. And, you know, the the Internet inbound Internet circuit, the firewall, the VPN, gateway, the load master all now coming from the opposite direction that maybe they were utilized in the past. Um, it is really the new perimeter, and it is has become very crucial to maintain business continuity, especially in this time. But as we'll talk about it also has become very vulnerable to to DDOs attacks in particular. And, you know, one of the areas that we'll talk about it is how one particular piece of that infrastructure, the VPN gateway, is actually become not only one of the most critical pieces in that chain of communication, but also one of the most vulnerable pieces to simply because it was never anticipated that this many users would would utilize that VPN gateway, and it was never designed for that on. Therefore, it's running at, you know, high or near capacity or at capacity, and it and it could be toppled over pretty easily with fairly small DDOS attacks. We'll get into that a little bit later. Yeah, >>absolutely, Tom. So I've had so many conversations over the last few months about, you know, the ripple effects of what? Work from home. Or, you know, if we think about however things play out in the next few months, it really will be almost work from anywhere. Um, is what will happen on Dwell. Everyone is working at home. That doesn't mean that some of those bad actors out there have gone away. In fact, you know, every company I talked to that's involved with security has seen way need to raise our capabilities and often are getting mawr attacks out there. What have you been seeing out there in the marketplace? You know, how have things been so far in 2020 when it when it comes, toe your space? >>Yeah, I know the same thing. So I'm gonna put up a chart here. And this is a chart which shows, uh DDOs attacks during the first, um, of six months of 2000 and 20 and this data comes from what we call our cyber threat horizon. This is This is a free online portal that anyone could access and see this information if they wish, But it's fueled by the deployment of our products all over the world. So our our DDOS protection products are utilized by a majority of the world's Internet service fighters. And from that deployment, they send this information about DDOS attack activity like, you know, the size of attack. Who is being tacked? Who was being attacked? Where is it coming from? The protocols or vector is being used, etcetera. So we we gather this information on a daily basis presented in this portal. So what this represents is the first six months of 2000 and 20 and as you can see, there's been over 4.8 million attacks thus far in 2000 and 20. That's about 15% higher than last year at the same exact time period. But if you look at the chart a little bit closer, we snapped the line at February, sort of the start of the global pandemic and the lock down periods, if you will and what you can see February, March, April May as it is an uptick in the number of DDOS attacks almost up to 36% in in May. Eso all this is happening during the time of this lock down, right? All this is happening where organizations are struggling to maintain a new a new normal. If you are this. But this is continuity, right? Eso what you represented before you said before that organizations are still struggling with cyber attacks. In fact, probably more is exactly what's happened to in the DDOS realm. And then finally like if you look at June, you see this little drop off there and you know, here everyone talking about the new normal, the new normal is not the new normal. Possibly. It's still too soon to tell. I think we'll wait for another couple of months here. But the bottom line is that during the midst of all this, as organizations trying to maintain some level of this canoe, they're also being faced with cyber threats like Adidas attacks to like they've never seen before. So amazing challenge that that folks have faced out there. >>Yeah, Tom, there's a few spaces in the marketplace that were already very important, you know, really top of mind from the business. I think about automation security being to the ones that come up most often. And when I talked to the participant in the space they like, I thought I was busy in 2019 and had ah lot playing for 2020 and oh, my gosh. I had no idea what 2020 was really going to bring. So that that data that you showed, you know, you're talking about millions of attacks, and you know that that increase, they're putting a focus on it. Even mawr here. So ah, lot of work for people to be done. So but bring us inside a little bit. Uh, you know how Net Scout, How are you helping customers? What invite you have for them, You know, how do we make sure that we can curb, You know, the the the impact of these attacks? Which is that in the millions? >>Sure. So let's go back to that. That inbound infrastructure now, right? Where everyone working from home, coming into the in down router hitting a firewall and but more likely, hitting a VPN gateway of some sort. That's what's allowing them to get access into these internal resource. Is that VPN? Gateway? As I mentioned before, uh, has been crucial during this time, but it also has been very susceptible to denounce attacks that VPN gateways a zwelling that firewall these air. You know what was referred to a state ful devices? They have to track TCP state in order to work properly? Well, there are three types of DDOS attacks, if you will, to make things simple. One is the volumetric attack, which people normally think of as a DDOS attack. It is designed to saturate that that inbound circuit that that Internet facing router interface, right? Um, and then their application layer taxis. They're very small, stealthy attacks. They're going after specific application servers. They're trying to bleed off. Resource is there. And then there's an attack called state exhaustion attacks these air, specifically designed to go after stay full devices like firewalls or, in today's world, the VPN gateway, and it doesn't take much. It takes a small 100 megabit per second attack lasting for 5 10 minutes to potentially fill the state tables in some of these VPN gateways, especially in light of the fact that they weren't prepared or designed to take on all the legitimate users right there coming in as a result of the pandemic. So the key to stopping these sorts of attacks the state full attacks and protecting at VPN Gateway is to put something on premise that iss stateless, meaning it has the ability to inspect packets using stateless packet processing technology. And we have such products are our product, which we call the Arbor edge defense eyes designed to stop all types of attacks. But in this in this particular environment, uh, it is our excels at stopping state exhaustion attacks, and you deploy it just inside the Internet router and in front of the VPN gateway or that firewall there, it could pick off short lived state exhaustion attacks and protect the availability of the VPN, gateway and firewall. Now, if you're relying upon which rating organizations do relying upon a cloud based data protection service, which we have to we have something called Arbor Cloud. Uh, it may not be able to stop those attacks in time, So you're running a little risk by relying on more traditional cloud based protection services. That's why you need this product Arbor Edge defense on premise, because it will react instantaneously and protect that VPN gateway from going on and maintain that business continuity for you. >>You know, Tom, when I think about that that footprint that you have in a customer's environment, you know, in addition to the D DOS services, it would seem like that Ah, prime opportunity that that there's other services and applications that could be run there. Is that the case with with your your solution to >>Well, if I understand what you mean by the services, well, we have the ability Thio conducted fully managed services that Are you going with that? >>Yeah, I e think Think that Yeah, that z one of right. Understand how how that service works. Yes. >>So? So the our bridge defense, um, is a system that once you have it configured, you design it for protecting sort of the interior services like the protective VPN gateway firewalls. Any other application running internal in the event of a large attack that we've been talking that will fill that Internet pipe, It has a feature called Cloud Signaling, where it will intelligently call for help upstream to either in Arbor Cloud service. This is a fully managed details protection service. We have global scrubbing centers, uh, and or call your I S P, who may you may be getting your data protection service from already. So it has the ability to link the on premise with the with the cloud based protection. And this hybrid approach to protection is absolutely industry best practice. This is this is how you protect yourself from the multiple vector DDOs attacks, as we mentioned previously. Now, if you're an organization that maybe doesn't have enough experience, uh doesn't want to deal with the on Prem our bridge defense. You know, we have you covered there, too. We have the ability to manage that that scenario or that device for you. We have to manage the ability to manage not only the arbor edge of the fence, but they also integration in the arbor cloud. So that whole hybrid scenario that we're talking about could be fully managed by, um, you know, by our folks who do this every single day 24 7. >>Yeah, it's any breakdown. Is thio your customers as toe. You know, when they choose that that that fully managed solution versus on Prem recommendation we've had for a long time is you wanna have your i t focused on things that have differentiation in your environment and seems like a natural thing that, you know, your team has the expertise. Eso What is that decision point as to whether they do it themselves or go with the manage solution? >>I think it really just has to do with the culture and the experience of the company. Really, What we're seeing is some of the smaller organizations that, you know, you have smaller teams, right? That wear multiple hats. They just cannot stay abreast of the latest threats. Indeed, us A. Z I mentioned before these things were getting more and more complex. So I think they're they're coming to the conclusion that all right, this is something that I can't do my by myself anyway for the large attacks. I need a cloud based service, part of some sort. I need someone to help me there anyway. So why don't they just handled the whole thing? Why don't they just handle the on premise component and in the cloud based component of this and make sure that it's running is officially as possible. But you know, even that said, it's not just the smaller org's. We're seeing larger organs do it, too, just to push things off their plates. Let's let's leave Dido's to the experts again because I can't do about myself. Anyway. >>Tom, I I saw a video. I think it was you that did actually talking about how our bridge defense is the first and last defense. When, when, when it comes to DDOS may explain that a little bit or audience. >>Yeah, So our tagline for the product is first and last line of defense. The first lines which we've been talking about all along here, is the ability to stop the inbound DDOS attacks. Now it also acts as the last line of defense, too. So, as we were alluding to before, you know, all you here during this time of the pandemic is watch out for you know, Kobe 19 related ransomware and things like that, right? Um, because the Arbit edge defense, it's just inside the rotter and outside that for a while, it is literally the last component in that cybersecurity change before the let's look from the outbound perspective packets, leaving the enterprising going out to the Internet. It is the last piece of product in that security chain, right, for it leaves the Internet. The arbor edge of the fence has the ability to consume threat intelligence not only from our own atlas system, which we spoke about earlier about third parties to via sticks and taxi. It has the ability to consume threat intelligence. And they're sitting on that. That last piece of you know, the security pipe, if you will or chain it has the ability to intercept. Uh, indicators of compromise have come from internal compromise devices that have made it through the entire security chain. Outgoing. Reach outside the farewell. Now it's one last one last line of defense, if you will, that has ability to recognize and stop that internal indicator compromise. And this is going to help stop the proliferation of malware that, and ultimately avoid that data breach that everyone is fearful. So it has a dual role. It could protect you from inbound DDOS attacks and Uncle also gonna as his last line defense stopping the proliferation this now where we're talking about? Yeah. Great, >>Tom. That actually refers I was curious about you know what other things your your your device did. And you know, there's the intelligence baked into their toe have kind of a multipurpose when you're in that environment. All right, Tom, I want to give you the last word here. You know, cos today they often need to react very fast to be able to deal with, you know, the changing dynamics of their business. You know, spinning up resource is everybody, you know, working from home. And like so, you know, what final advice do you have for them And, you know, give us the final >>word? Yeah. You know, during this time, president times, You know, we all unfortunately thought to me remain very vigilant when it comes to protecting our organization from cyberattacks. One of the one of the areas that seems to get overlooked as eyes DDOs protection. Right? Everyone is focused on malware and things like that, but don't overlook DDOs attacks. These things were happening on a daily basis, as I showed you over almost five million so far this year. Uh, it is an absolute part. Maintain the availability of your organization. It's part of the security Triad, as we know. And, you know, it's it's really their thio, you know? Do you disrupt your business continuity if you are getting hit, So don't overlook your and don't under underestimate your videos protection. All >>right, Well, Tom Bonkowski, thank you so much for the update and, uh, appreciate everything you shared. >>Welcome. All >>right. Be sure to check out the cube dot net for lots more coverage from the Cube. I'm still madman. Thanks for watching.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of next level network experience event brought to >>you by info blocks. Okay, welcome back, everyone. This is the Cube's coverage of the next level networking experience. Virtual event within four blocks. I'm John Furrow, your host of the Cube. We're here in our Palo Alto, Calif. Studios as part of our remote access during Covic, getting the interviews and the stories and sharing that with you. We got a great guest here, then savages the network operations manager at Morgan School District in Utah. A customer of info blocks to share a story. Then thanks for coming on. >>Thanks for having >>me. First of all, the Red Sox had a plus interview. I would say right now is gonna go great. Go Sox. Which baseball was in season. Great to have you on. Um, >>we'll get there. We'll >>get there. Um, my Yankee fans say when I say that. But anyway, Miss baseball, um, you know. But that brings up covert 19 baseball season sports. Life has been impacted. Your district. Like many school districts around the world, we're told to shut down, send workers home. That meant sending kids home, too. So we got the educators, get the administration, and you've got the kids all going home. >>Yeah. >>What did you do to keep things going? Because then stop. They had to do the remote learning and new things were emerging. New patterns, new traffic, new kinds of experiences. What did you learn? What's going on? >>Well, first we tried to lock the doors and pretend we weren't there, but they found us. Um, really? I mean, real quickly in our school district, we're not a 1 to 1 operation, so the, uh that caused a big change for us. Um, we had to quickly adapt. And we chose to use chromebooks because that's what we have for the students to use in their classes. So getting that, uh, squared away and send out into the family's was was a big challenge. But then on top of that being the school district, we then had to decide. Okay, how do we protect and filter provide the filtering that the students are gonna need even though they're at home? So there's some relative safety there when they're online and and accessing your email and things like that. So those were. Our two are probably our two. Biggest hurdles was, you know, ramping up the devices and then and then providing, making sure, you know, the network access from a filtering and consistency standpoint was going to work. >>You know, I got to ask you because I see this kind of disruption you don't You don't read about this in the i t. Manual around disaster recovery and, you know, disruption to operations. But essentially, the whole thing changes, but you still got to connect to the network, DNS. You gotta get the access to the content. You got content, you get systems. You got security all to be managed while in flight of dealing with connection points that remote. So you've got the disruption and the craziness of that, and then you've got this big I o t experiment basically edge of the network, you know, in all over the place. You know, on one hand, you kind of geek out and say, Wow, this is really kind of a challenge is an opportunity to solve the problem at the same time, you know, What do you do? So take us through that because that's a is a challenge of locking down the security in a borderless environment. People are everywhere. The students business has to get done. You got to resolve to. The resource is >>so thankfully, we had migrated If it blocks several years ago. Um and just this last, I would say in October, I finally got us on. Ah, cloud the blocks. One threat defense Cloud portion of it too. So from a security standpoint, we already had a really good, um foundation in place from both the DNs aspect and the DNS security aspect. Um so that was to be honest, most users. It was seamless transition. In many regards, both users didn't even realize they were being, You know, pushed through the info blocks is cloud DNs server, you know, which was providing security and filtering. So that was a big plus for us because it it was less man hours. We had to spend troubleshooting people's DNS resolutions. Why sites Wouldn't you know? Maybe they weren't being filtered correctly. All that was was to be honest, perfect. Where other platforms we had previously were just a nightmare to manage, >>like, for example, of the old way versus the new way here and marital, is it? What files configuration will take us through? What? You >>know, it was like a separate. It was a separate product content filter that works in conjunction with the firewall. Um, and I'm not going to name the company's name. I don't want, you know, even though many company but it seemed with that product we were spending, on average about 3 to 4 hours a day fixing false positives just from a filtering aspect because it would interfere with the DNS. And it does. It didn't really do it. I mean, how it filters is not based on DNS. Totally right. So by migrating temple blocks are DNS and the filtering the security is all handling at the DNs level. And it was just much more, um, to be I mean, frankly, honestly, is much more invisible to the end user. So >>more efficient. You decouple filtering from DNs resolution. Got it. All right, this is the big topic. I've been talking with info blocks people on this program in this event is on how this new d d I layer DNs d XP and I p address management kind of altogether super important. It's critical infrastructure Yeah. No spoilers, Enterprise. You're borderless institution. Same thing you go to school as a customer. How does the d I lay out this foundational security play for delivering this next level experience? What's your take on that? >>Well, for our like, for a school platform, we we use it in a number of ways. Besides, I mean, the filtering is huge, but just for the ability, like, for example, one of the components is is response policy zones or DNS firewalls what they call it, and that allows you one to manage, um, traditional, like DNS names, right? P addresses you can. You can manage those by creating essentially a zone that is like a white list of blacklist rewrite. So you've got a lot of control, and again it's filtering at the DNs level, so it's looking based on DNS responses inquiry. The other aspect of that is, is the feeds that you receive from info blocks. So by subscribing to those, we, um we have access to a lot of information that info Blocks and their partners have created identifying, you know, bad actors, malware attack vectors based on again DNs, uh, traffic, if you will, and so that takes a load office. Not having to worry. I'm trying to do all that on our own. I mean, we've seen a lot of attacks minimized because of the feeds themselves. So that again frees us up. We're a very small school district. In some regards, there's a I am the only network person in the district, and there's like, a total of four of us that manage, you know, kind of the support aspect. And so, being able to not have to spend time researching or tracking down, you know, breaches and attacks as much because of the DNS. Security frees me up to do other things, you know, like in the more standard networking realm, from a design and implementation. >>Great. Thanks for sharing that. I want to ask about security as a very competitive space security here and everyone promising it different things at different security things. You know, by I gotta ask you, why did you guys decide to use info blocks and what's the reason behind it? >>Well, to be frankly honest, I'm actually in info blocks trainer and I've been training for 15 years, so I kind of had an agenda when I first took this job to help out the school district. In my experience, I've been doing working in networking for over 20 years. And in my experience, I ever boxes one of the most easy and in best managed DNS solutions that I've come across. So, um, you know, I might be a little biased, but I'm okay with that. And so I I pushed us to be honest, to get there and then from the security aspect has all that has evolved. It just makes to me it makes sense. Why not wrap the more things you can maybe wrapped together. And so you know, when you're talking about attacks, over 90% of attacks use DNS. So if I have a solution that is already providing my DNS and then wraps the security into it, it just makes the most sense for me. >>Yeah. I mean, go back. The info box is DNA. You got cricket. Liu Stuart Bailey, the founder, was this is zero. This didn't just wake up one day and decided to start up these air practitioners early days of the Internet. They know DNS cold and DNS is we've been evolved. I mean, and when it needs that when you get into the DNS. Hacks and then you realize Okay, let's build an abstraction layer. You've seen Internet navigation discovery, all the stuff that's been proven. It is a critical infrastructure. >>Well, and to be honest, it's It's one of those services that you can't can't filter the firewall right. You have to have it. You have to. It's that foundation layer. And so it makes sense that Attackers air leveraging it because the fire will has to let it through in and out. And so it's a natural, almost a natural path for them to break in. So having something that speaks native DNS as part of your security platform makes more sense because it it can understand and see those attacks, the more sophisticated they become as well. >>So I gotta ask you, since you're very familiar info blocks and you're actually deploying its great solution. But I got this new DD I Layer, which is an abstraction, is always a great evolution. Take away complexity and more functionality. Cloud certainly cloud natives everywhere. That's but if it's for what is the update, if if I'm watching this month, you know I've been running DNS and I know it's out there. It's been running everything. And I got a update, my foundation of my business. I got to make my DNS rock solid. What's the new update? What's info blocks doing now? I know they got DNS chops seeing that on it. What's new about info blocks? What do you say? >>Well, it's, you know, they have a couple things that they've been trying to modify over the last several years. In my opinion, making more DNS like a you know, like software as a service, you know, service on demand, type of approach. That's a yes. So you have the cloud components to where you can take a lot of the heavy lifting, maybe off of your network team's shoulders. Because it is, it is. Um, I think people will be surprised how many customers out there. I have, ah, teams that are managing the DNS and even the D HCP aspect that that's not really what their experiences and then they don't They don't have, ah, true, maybe background Indians, and so having something that can help make that easier. It's almost, you know, hey, maybe used this term it almost sounds like it's too simple, but it's almost like a plug and play approached for some. For some environments, you know you're able to pop that in, and a lot of probably the problems they've been dealing with and not realizing what the root cause was will be fixed. So that's always a huge component with with info blocks. But their security is really what's come about in the last several years, Um, and and back as a school district, you know, our besides securing traffic, which every customer has to do, um, we have our you know, we're We have a lot of laws and regulations around filtering with with students and teachers. So anyone that's using a campus own device And so for us this I don't think people realized that the maturity that the filtering aspect of the blocks one defence now it's it's really evolved over the last couple of years. It's become a really, really good product and, like I said earlier, just work seamlessly with the data security. So it is going to be using >>an SD Wan unpacked everything. You go regular root level DNs is it? So I gotta ask you. How is the info blocks helping you keep network services running in system secure? >>Well, I think I think we're more on just the DNs d It does R d eight DNS and DCP. So from that standpoint, you know, in the five years almost we've been running that aspect. We have had very little if if maybe one or two incidents of problems with, you know from a DNS TCP so so are our users are able to connect, you know, when they turn on their computer To them, the Internet's up. You know, there's no there's no bumps in the road stopping them from from being able to connect. So that's a huge thing. You know, you don't have to deal with those Those constant issues again is a small team that just takes time away from the big projects. You're trying to, um, and then to the being able to now combine things. Security filtering solution. Uh, that alone has probably saved us. Oh, we'll probably you know, upwards of 500 man hours in the last eight months. So where normally we would be spending those hours again, troubleshooting issues that false positives, things like that. And there's a small team that just sucks the life out of you when you have to. You always spend time on that. >>I mean, you always chasing your tails. Almost. You want to be productive. Automation plays >>a >>key role in that, >>right? Yeah. >>So I got to ask you, you know, just a general question. I'm curious. You know, one of the things I see is sprawling of devices. WiFi was a great example that put an access point up a rogue access point, you know, as you get more connections. De HCP was amazing about this is awesome. But also, you had also de HCP problem. You got the the key Management is not just around slinging more d HDP around. So you got the trend? Is more connections on the eyepiece? Not how does info blocks make that easier? Because for people who may not know, the DNS ends announcing TCP and IP address management. They're all kind of tied together. Right? So this >>is the >>magic of DD I in my head. I want to get your thoughts on how you see that. Evolving. >>Yeah, I think that's another kind of back twice. It's kind of almost like a plug and play for a lot of customer environments. They're getting, you know, you're getting the DSP, DNs and eye Pam all wrapped in once you have this product that speaks, well, those languages, if you will and that And, um along with some of the reporting services and things of that nature. Um, when I look for, like, a Mac address in my influx database, I'm not just going to get ah, Mac address and what the i p addresses. I'm not just going to get the DNs like the host name. Maybe you know, the beauty and fully qualified domain name. Either I have the ability to bring in all this information that one. The client is communicating with the DCP DNS server on top of things like metadata that you can configure in the database to help really color in the picture of your network. So when you're looking at what device is using this I p when we talk about rogue devices or things like that, uh, I can get so much more information out of info blocks that almost almost to the point where you're almost being able to nail down the location of where the devices that even if it's a wireless client because it works in conjunction with some of our wireless appointments, too. So within, you know, a matter of minutes we have almost all the information we would need to take whatever action is appropriate for something like that, that getting used to take us hours and hours to troubleshoot. >>Appreciate a lot of the other interviews I've done with the info blocks, folks. One of the things that came out of them is the trailing. You can see the trail they're getting. They got to get in somewhere. DNS is the footprints of there you got? That's the traffic, and that's been helping on a potential attacks in D DOS is, for example, no one knows what that is, but DNS is what he said. A lot of the surface areas, DNS. With the hackers are makes it easier to find things. >>Well, you know, by integrating with the cloud I've I've got, you know, that the cloud based with the blocks one, it added a advanced DNS security, which helps protect skins Adidas as well as any cast to help provide more availability because I'm pushing on my DNs traffic through those cloud servers. It's like I've I'm almost equivalent of a very large organization that would normally spend millions of millions of dollars trying to do this on their own. So I'm getting the benefits and kind of the equivalent from that cloud hybrid approach that normally we would never have have. The resource is, >>Well, then I really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy day to remote into the Cube studios. Talk about next level networking experience, so I want to just ask you, just put your experience hat on. You've been You've seen some waves. You've seen the technology evolve when you hear next level networking and when you hear next level networking experience almost two separate meetings. But next level networking means next level. Next level networking experience means is some experience behind it. One of those two phrases mean to you next level networking and next level networking experience. >>Well, to me, I always look at it as the evolution of being able to have a user experience that's consistent no matter where you're located, with your home in your office and special with in today's environment. We have to be able to provide that consistent experience. But what I think what a lot of people may not think about or my overlook if you're just, you know, more of an end user is along with that experience, it has to be a consistent excess security approach. So if I'm an end user, um, I should be able to have the access the, um and the security, which, you know, you know, filtering all that fun stuff to not just allow me the connectivity, but to bring me, you know, that to keep the secure wherever I met. And ah, um, I think schools, you know, obviously with code and in the one the one that everyone was forced to do. But I think businesses And generally I think that's, you know, years ago, Cisco when I worked with Cisco, we talked about, you know, the remote user of the mobile user and how Cisco is kind of leading, uh, the way on that. And I think, you know, with the nature of things like this pandemic, I think being able to have your your users again have that consistent experience, no matter where they're at is going to be key. And so that's how I see when I think of the network evolution, I think that's how it it has to go. >>Well, we appreciate your your time sharing your insights Has a lot of a lot of people are learning that you've got to pour the concrete to build the building. DNS becoming kind of critical infrastructure. But final question for you. I got you here, you know? How you doing? Actually, schools looks like they're gonna have some either fully virtual for the next semester or some sort of time or set schedule. There's all kinds of different approaches. This is the end of the day. It's still is this big i o t experiment from a traffic standpoint. So new expectations create new solutions. What do you see on the horizon? What challenges do you see as you ride this way? Because you've got a hold down the fort, their school district for 3000 students. And you got the administration and the faculty. So you know What are you expecting? And what do you hope to see Evolve Or what do you want to stay away from? What's your opinion? >>I think? I think my my biggest concern is, you know, making sure our like, our students and staff don't, uh, you know, run into trouble on by say that more from, you know, you know, by being, you know, being exposed to attacks, you know, their data with Delta becomes, you know, comes back to our data as a district. But, you know, the student data, I think I think, you know, with anything kids are very vulnerable. Ah, very role, vulnerable targets for many reasons. You know, they're quick to use technology that quick to use, like social media, things like that. But they're they're probably the first ones to do security Does not, you know, across their mind. So I think my big my big concern is as we're moving this, you know, hybrid, hybrid approach where kids can be in school where they're going to be at home. Maybe they'll change from the days of the week. It'll fluctuate, uh, keeping them secure, you know, protecting them from themselves. Maybe in a way, if I have to be the guy is kind of the grumpy old dad it looked at. I'm okay with wearing that hat. I think that's my biggest. Our concern is providing that type of, uh, stability and security. So parents at the end of that could be, you know, I have more peace of mind that their kids you know, our online even more. It's great >>that you can bring that experience because, you know, new new environments, like whether it zooming or using, try and get the different software tools that are out there that were built for on premise premises. You have now potentially a click here. Click there. They could be a target. So, you know, being safe and getting the job done to make sure they have up time. So the remote access it again. If you've got a new edge now, right? So the edge of the network is the home. Exactly. Yeah. Your service area just got bigger. >>Yeah. Yeah, we're in. You know, I'm everybody's guest, whether they like it or not. >>I appreciate that. Appreciate your time and good luck. And let's stay in touch. Thanks for your time. >>Hey, thanks for having me. You guys have a good rest of your weekend? Day two. State State. >>Thank you very much. It's the Cube's coverage with info blocks for a special next level networking experience. Pop up event. I'm John for the Cube. Your host. Thanks for watching. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> From theCube studios in Paloalto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a Cube conversation. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman, and welcome to this special Cube conversation. I'm coming to you from our Boston area studio, and theCube is really mostly about people, about network, and so we're going to have a focus in, we're going to talk about some technology, we're also going to talk a little bit about careers. I want to welcome to the program, I've got two first-time guests on the program. First, Mark Zbikowski. Probably butchered that badly, Mark, sorry, technical advisor, and Blue Gaston. Uh, Gaston. Boy, I'm doing horrible with names here. Software engineer, you're both with Polyverse. But, you know, my last name's Miniman, it has been butchered a million times. But Mark, and Blue, thank you so much for joining us. >> You're welcome. Our pleasure. >> Yes. >> All right. So one of you I've read a lot about online and the other one is Mark, go to the Wikipedia page, stuff like that. So we'll get to that too. So, Blue, maybe start with you, give us a little bit about your background. >> Yeah, so I work at Polyverse now, a cybersecurity startup. But actually I got my undergraduate degree in Philosophy, and from there, kind of just like, what am I going to do with a philosophy degree? And it just weirdly was like a natural transition. I was like, oh, computer science. And kind of the logical, like the technical version of philosophy. So got my master's in philosophy and now, or not philosophy, in computer science, and now have been working at Polyverse. I started as an intern and they hired me on, I think after a month, they were like, no, we want you full-time. So that was cool and I've loved it. So I'm starting off my story, that's kind of where my kick-off point is. >> Awesome. So, and Mark, first of all, you have to give us the connection between yourself and Blue, and a little bit surprising that she waited so long to go into the computer business. >> Uh, okay, I'm her stepfather. It's not surprising that she, you know, wanted to go into computer science. She's got lots of aptitude for it. She was just on a career path and an education path that was primarily logic, analysis, which is basically what we do in computer science. >> All right. So Mark, if you could just give our audience a little bit of a thumbnail sketch as to your background in the tech industry, and it's a storied one. >> Uh, okay. I was, I think, employee number 55 at Microsoft, when I started back in 1981. The first task that they gave me was to work on something that ended up becoming MS-DOS. I worked on MS-DOS for a long time, about five and a half years, worked on a number of other operating systems at Microsoft, ending up with being one of the initial development managers and architects for Windows. I was responsible for all file storage. And I was there for about 26 years. >> Yeah, you know, interesting, you know, when you look on the Wikipedia page, you were the third employee that reached the 25-year milestone. Some guy, Bill Gates, and Steve Balmer, were the first two to reach that milestone. So, you know, quite impressive. I think back, back when I learned computers, it was programming, and you know, today it's coding, and things are quite different there. But, Mark, you were also, you're noted as one of the early hackers there, so what does that mean to you, how have you seen that's been changing? Polyverse is in the cybersecurity realm, so would love your kind of viewpoint on just hacking in general. >> Oh, the early days, well my hacking started pretty much when I was in eighth or ninth grade back in Detroit. We had access to an academic operating system called MTS by way of Wayne State University. I grew up in, just in the suburbs of Detroit. And we had access to it, and for me Excuse me. Hacking at the time was all about trying to understand and learn stuff that was arcane and hidden and mysterious. Figuring out how, for example, password encryption algorithms worked, figuring out how operating systems worked, because at the time, there were very few organized textbooks about how to construct operating systems. Even though operating systems had been around for 20 years. So my early, earliest stuff was in basically, finding holes in security at MTS, and that's how I started, in what they would say "hacking", but it was very innocent, it was very, let's see what we can do! As opposed to, let's extract information, let's go and ransom people's data for bitcoin, which is, you know, I think, a wrong direction to go. >> Yeah. I'm curious your thoughts as the decades have progressed, you know, hacking today, what's your take on, you know, there's the white hats and the black hats, and everything in between. >> Uh, it's kind of an arms race. (laughs) Everything that the white hats will throw up, the black hats will eventually attack to some degree. Social engineering is sort of the ultimate way that people have been getting around, you know, software protections. I think it's unfortunate that there is such a financial reward to the black hat side of things, as counter to one's ethics. I think there's a lot of slippery slopes involved, in terms of, you know, boy, these companies shouldn't be making money, so I deserve my bit. I think that it's much better that, you know, people should come at this from an intellectual, you know, exploration standpoint, rather than an exploitative. But that's the nature of the world. >> Yeah, well, Blue, maybe we can help connect the dots towards what you both do at Polyverse. You mentioned you started as an intern, and I loved the article that talked about this. Well, you know, you're going to be an intern. Can you fix the internet for us? And you did some things to help, you know, help stop some of that malicious hacking. >> Yeah, I, that was crazy. I was very intimidated when I heard that, you're going to be fixing the internet. What I've been working at the company, which is different from our flagship product, but kind of in the same vein, is to stop malicious php javascript code execution. So that's what they came in, that's how they prefaced that problem to me. It was, you're going to go fix the internet. Um, and it was crazy. It was really cool and surprisingly, a lot of philosophy that goes into the way we look at our problem-solving at Polyverse, and how we tackle problems, but of course, I have my Jedi master Mark over here, and I was constantly, "What do you think about this? Isn't this crazy? "Like, look at how Polyverse is attacking this." And I think finally I broke him down, and I was like, come join. Come jump in, and you be the foresight, and you tell us what we're going to do in a year or two. And I convinced him, and now, he's, he's with us too. >> Excellent. So, Mark, tell us a little bit about, you know, more about Polyverse, your role there. In the industry there's a lot of talk about, you know, lots of money obviously gets spent on cybersecurity, but it's still a major challenge in the industry. So what's your role there and how's Polyverse helping to attack that? >> Well, my title is Technology Advisor, and I'm one of a small collection of people who have pretty wide-ranging expertise across operating systems, networks, compilers, languages, development tools, all of that. And our goal is, you know, my role, as well the other Jedi masters, is to take a look at what Polyverse is doing at present, try to figure out where we need to go, try to figure out what the next set of challenges are, use our broad experience and knowledge of the computing milieu, and try to figure out what are the tough issues we need to face? We make some progress on those tough issues, and then turn everything over for the mainline Polyverse development staff to bring it to reality. We're not like researchers, we're much more into the product planning side of things, but product planning in, I hate to use this word, but in a visionary sense. (Blue laughs) >> Yeah, no, it's-- >> We look for the vision. We're not visionaries. We look for the vision. >> You're a visionary, Mark. Admit it. >> Excellent. Well, I do love the, you know, Jedi analogy there. When you look at, I'm curious to your thoughts, both of you, you know, some of the real challenges and opportunities facing the cybersecurity industry. It's a large financial industry company, they'll spend a billion dollars and, you know, does that make them secure? Well, at least they've done what they can and they're pushing enough pieces. But, you know, fundamentally, we understand that this is such a huge issue. >> I think-- >> Blue? >> Well, (laughs) I can try to answer. I think Polyverse recognizes that as well. So we're trying to create new solutions, that instead of just being compliant and checking the boxes, we're actually trying to create systems and products that will stop attacks from actually working. Rather than being reactive and being responsive, we're trying to build these systems out where the attacks just don't work as they're currently designed. And I think we, you know, and to do so in an easy-to-deploy, time-saving kind of way is definitely our goal. Rather than the status quo and, you know, we're fighting inertia, we're trying to, to change that narrative in a really meaningful way. >> Thanks, Blue. Mark, do you have some comments you can add to that? >> Once we started taking individual computers and hooking them up to the internet, where they can communicate fairly freely with each other, and by intent communicate fairly freely with each other, by design, by intent, all of a sudden that opened us to just a wide range of malicious behavior, from being DoS'd, to leaking passwords, et cetera. There are, there's layers and layers that one can do to mitigate these problems. From IT operational manuals to buzz-testing your API, to best practices, it's a, there's a long list. And every bit, every piece of it is important. You need to secure your passwords before you can do anything else. You need to make sure that there's a firewall in your system be fore you go and start, before you even start thinking about doing things like, like what's goin on with what we're doing at Polyverse. It's a, like I said, there's a wide range of tools that people need, that people use, that people spend money on today. Polyverse has got a very unique perspective on how to go and extend this. We, it's a, it's very pragmatic, you know, the realization is that these attackers are going to keep attacking, and they're going to exploit certain features that, despite everyone's best intentions, aren't covered, and we have found a rather unique and novel way to prevent people from doing it. Is it going to solve everything? No. There's still, there's all these other early layers that need to be taken care of first, before the more sophisticated tools that, for example, that Polyverse has or that other companies have. >> Great. Well, Blue, you talked a little bit about it, but, you know, love your, what you've found, you know, working together as a family dynamic here. You know, specifically. >> Um, (laughs) I think it's really cool. What's the best, I'll say this, is when, I always like asking Mark his opinion, because why wouldn't I? The brain that guy has, and just the experience, he can add so much. Every once in a while, I'll go, and I'll say, you know, oh, this is what I'm working on, and here's what I'm kind of thinking, and he'll say, oh, yeah, well what about this? And I'll actually get to explain something to him. And I got to tell you, that feels really good. Is when I get to say, oh, well, actually it looks like this, and this was my plan, and he's like, oh yeah, definitely. And I get that validation, which is really cool. And I can, you know, drive to his house and bug him whenever I want to. I know where he lives, so if I'm really stuck, or just want to bounce ideas off of him, it's really cool. It's really cool, and I, you know, strong-armed, not strong-armed, I enticed him to come and join Polyverse just by the cool things that we're doing, and I think that's cool too. To now be able to work on something together. >> Yeah, and Mark, sounds like you're learning some things from Blue. Give us your side of that relationship. >> Well, it's a great relationship. Blue, um, Blue never hesitates to challenge. (Blue laughs) >> Blue: Okay. And that, I'm saying that in a very positive sense. Um, you know, she'll come up, every so often I'll get a text from her that says, "Help!" >> Oh my god! (laughing) >> Yes. Sorry. At least I'm not showing it. (laughs) But it's great. And we get together and we talk about stuff, and she says, you know, here's the problem I'm facing, and I'll ask her about it and she gets to go and teach me about what her problem is. I'm a big fan of teaching. I think one of the frustrations that Blue has is I almost never give her the answer when she asks a question. (laughs) >> Not even when I was in school, >> Yeah, not even when you were in school. I was always asking the questions and leading her to the answer rather than just giving it to her. >> Or saying, well why don't we sit down and I'll teach you how to implement knowledge. Just like, oh my god. What are you doing? >> Yeah. So, yeah, I'm a big fan of teaching and learning by way of teaching. One of the things I do is I'm an affiliate with the University of Washington, and I teach every year one quarter of their Operating Systems class. And I love teaching, I love seeing the light go on. But every year, when I'm teaching a class that I know pretty well, I learn something new. By a question the student asks, or by reading a paper that I'm asking the students to read, I learn something new just about every year. And so having Blue teach me is a way that I get to learn, but I think in the process Blue also gets to learn as well. You know, in the process of teaching me. >> Yeah, well, that's such a great point. All right, want to give you both the final word on what's exciting you, what draws you to working in the cybersecurity industry. >> Um, I'll start. (laughs) So when I started at Polyverse, I actually got to, as an intern, own my own product. And in, I think, less than a month now, we're actually officially releasing that product, polyscripting. Officially, like Marketing is coming up with materials for it, and that was right out of school is when I started on this project, so it's kind of like a big deal for me. You know, I've owned the project, I'd say like 90% of it, over the last year or two, and now I get to see it come into fruition. So that's really exciting to me. Um, you know, that's exciting. So I'm excited about that, I'm excited about what Polyverse is doing in general. So, yeah. >> And Mark? >> Yeah. It's great working in a startup, it's great working with a bunch of very, very bright, energetic people. For me, contributing to that environment is extremely valuable. Helping Polyverse out, they're, you know, cybersecurity is problem. Trying to come up with good, effective solutions that are really pragmatic in terms of, you know, we're not going to solve every problem, but here's a great little space that we're going to solve all the problems in. That's, there's a huge appeal to that for me. >> Well, Mark and Blue, thank you so much for joining. Appreciate you sharing some of the personal as well as the professional journeys that you've both been on. Thanks so much. >> Yeah, thank you >> Yeah, you're welcome. >> All right. Thank you for watching theCube. I'm Stu Miniman. Thanks for watching. (soothing music)

>>buy from San Francisco. It's the queue covering our essay conference 2020. San Francisco Brought to you by Silicon Angle Media >>Hey, welcome back here. Ready? Jeff Frick here with the Cube. We're in downtown San Francisco. It is absolutely spectacular. Day outside. I'm not sure why were incited. Mosconi. That's where we are. It's the RCC conference, I think 50,000 people the biggest security conference in the world here in Mosconi this week. We've been here, wall to wall coverage. We'll be here all the way till Thursday. So thanks for joining us. We're excited to have our next guest. He's got a lot of great data to share, so let's jump into it. It's hard mode. He's a VP engineering threat and mitigation products for nets. Cowhearted. Great to meet you. >>Thank you. Good to be here, >>too. So for people who aren't familiar with Net Scout, give em kind of the basic overview. What do you guys all about? Yes, and that's what we consider >>ourselves their guardians of the connected world. And so our job is to protect, like, you know, companies, enterprises, service providers, anybody who has on the Internet and help keep their services running your applications and things returned deliver to your customers would make sure that it's up there performing to, like, you know the way you want them to, but also kind of give you visibility and protect you against DDOS attacks on other kind of security threats. That's basically in a nutshell. What we do as a company and, yeah, wear the garden of connected world. >>So So I just from a vendor point of the I always I feel so sorry for >>buyers in this environment because you walk around. I don't know how many vendors are in here. A lot of >>big boost, little boost. So how do you kind of help separate? >>You know, Netsch out from the noise? How what's your guys? Secret sauce? What's your kind of special things? >>Really, it's like 30 years >>off investment in like, network based visibility, and >>we truly >>believe in the network. Our CEO, he says, like you know the network like, you know, actually, when you monitor the network, it's like taking a blood test. It tells you the truth, right? And it's really like how you find out, like, you know, some things right or wrong. I mean, I actually, for my background to like network monitoring. There's a lot of our what we think of as like the endpoint is actually contested territory. That's where the adversary is. When you're on the network and your monitoring all activity, it really gives you a vantage point. You know, that's >>really special. So we really focus on the network. Our heritage and the network is is one of our key strengths and then, you know, as part of >>us as a company like Arbor Arbor. Networks with coming in that's got acquired some years ago were very much part of Net Scout with our brand of products. Part of that, you know, the Arbor legacy includes huge visibility into what's happening across the Internet and visibility like nobody else like in terms of the number of service providers and large enterprises who work with us, help us understand what's happening across the landscape. That's like nobody else out here. And that is what we consider a key differentiator. >>Okay, great. So one of the things you guys do >>a couple times years, I understand his publisher reporting solution, gift people. Some information as to what's going on. So we've got the We've >>got the version over four here. Right Net scout threat, intelligence report. So you said this comes out twice a year, twice a year. So what is the latest giving some scoop >>here, Hot off the presses we published last week. Okay, so it's really just a few days old and, you know, our focus here is what happened in the last six months of last year. So that and then what we do is we compare it against data that we've collected a year prior. >>So really a few things >>that we want you to remember if you're on the right, you know, the first number is 8.4 million. That's the number of D DOS attacks that >>we saw. This doesn't mean that >>we've seen every attack, you know, in the world, but that's like, you know just how many DDOS attacks we saw through the eyes of our customers. That's >>in this in six months. 8.4 number is >>actually for the entire year here in an entire year of 2019. There's a little bit of seasonality to it. So if you think of it like a 4.4, maybe something that that was the second half of the year. But that's where I want to start. That's just how many DDOS attacks we observed. And so, in the >>course of the report, what we can do a >>slice and dice that number talk about, like, different sizes, like, what are we seeing? Between zero and 100 gigabits per 2nd 102 104 100 above and >>kind of give you a sense of just what kind of this separation there is who is being targeted >>like we had a very broad level, like in some of the verticals and geographies. We kind of lay out this number and give you like, a lot of contact. So if you're if you're in finance and you're in the UK, you want to know like, Hey, what happened? What happened in Europe, for example, In the past 66 months, we have that data right, and we've got to give you that awareness of what's happening now. The second number I want you to remember is seven seven or the number of new attack vectors reflection application attack vectors that we observed being used widely in in in the second half. >>Seven new 17 new ones. So that now kind of brings our tally >>up to 31 like that. We have those listed out in here. We talk about >>just how much? Uh huh. Really? Just how many of these vectors, how they're used. Also, these each of these vectors >>leverage vulnerabilities in devices that are deployed across the Internet. So we kind of laid out like, you know, just how many of them are out there. But that's like, You know that to us seven is reflecting how the adversary is innovating. They're looking for new ways to attack us. They've found 71 last year. They're going to war, right? Right. And that's that's kind of what we focus on. >>Let's go back to the 8.4. So of those 8.4 million, how many would you declare >>successful from the attacker point of view? >>Yeah, You know something that this is always >>like, you know, you know, it's difficult to go estimate precisely or kind of get within some level of >>precision. I think that you know, the the adversaries, always trying to >>of course, they love to deliver a knockout blow and like all your services down but even like every attack inflicts a cost right and the cost is whether it's, you know, it's made its way all the way through to the end target. And now you know, they're using more network and computing resource is just to kind of keep their services going while they're under attack. The attack is low, You're still kind of you. You're still paying that cost or, you know, the cost of paid upstream by maybe the service provider. Somebody was defending your network for you. So that way, like, you know, there's like there's a cost to every one of these, right? In >>terms of like outages. I should also point out that the attacks that you might think >>that this attack is like, you know, hey, you know, there was a specific victim and that victim suffered as a result of but >>in many cases, the adversaries going after people who are providing services to others. So I mean, if a Turkish bank >>goes down right, like, you know, our cannot like services, customers for a month are maybe even a few hours, right, And you know, the number of victims in this case is fairly broad. Might be one attacks that might be one target, however, like the impact is fairly, >>is very large. What's interesting is, have begs a question. Kind of. How do you >>define success or failure from both the attacker's point of view as well as the defender? >>Yeah, I mean, I mean and again, like there's a lot of conversation in the industry about for every attack, right? Any kind of attack. What? When do I say that? You know what? I was ready for it. And, you know, I was I was fine. I mean, I don't care about, you know, ultimately, there's a cost to each of these things. I'd say that everybody kind of comes at it with their You know, if you're a bank, that you might go. Okay. You know what? If my if I'm paying a little bit extra to keep the service up and running while the Attackers coming at me, No problem. If I if my customers air aren't able to log in, some subset of my customers aren't able to log in. Maybe I can live through that. A large number of my customers can't log in. That's actually a really big problem. And if it's sustained, then you make your way into the media or you're forced to report to the government by like, outages are like, You know, maybe, you know, you have to go to your board and go like a sorry, right? Something just happened. >>But are the escalation procedures >>in the definition of consistency? Right? Getting banged all the time right? And there's something like you said, there's some disruption at some level before it fires off triggers and remediation. So so is there some level of okay, that's kind of a cost of doing business versus, you know, we caught it at this. They're kind of like escalation points that define kind of very short of a full line. >>I think when we talk to our service provider customers, we talked to the very large kind of critical enterprises. They tend to be more methodical about how they think of like, Okay, you know, degradation of the service right now, relative to the attack. I think I think for a lot of people, it's like in the eyes of the beholder. Here's Here's something. Here's an S L. A. That I missed the result of the attack at that point. Like you know, I have, I certainly have a failure, but, you know, it's it's up until there is kind of like, Okay, you're right >>in the eyes the attacker to delay service >>at the at the Turkish bank because now their teams operate twice, twice the duration per transaction. Is it? Just holding for ransom is what benefit it raises. A range >>of motivations is basically the full range of human nature. There's They're certainly like we still see attacks that are straight journalism. I just I just cause I could just I wanted I wanted to write. I wanted to show my friend like, you know, that I could do this. There's there's definitely a lot of attacks that have that are like, you know, Hey, I'm a gamer and I'm like, you know, there's I know that person I'm competing with is coming from this I p address. Let me let me bombard them with >>an attack. And you know, there's a huge kind of it could be >>a lot of collateral damage along the way because, you know, you think you're going after this one person in their house. But actually, if you're taking out the network upstream and there's a lot of other people that are on that network, like you know, there's certain competitive element to it. They're definitely from time to time. There are extortion campaigns pay up or we'll do this again right in some parts of the world, like in the way we think of it. It's like cost of doing business. You are almost like a business dispute resolution. You better be. You know, you better settle my invoice or like I'm about, Maybe maybe I'll try and uses take you out crazy. Yeah, >>it, Jeff. I mean things >>like, you know the way talked about this in previous reports, and it's still true. There's especially with d dos. There's what we think of it, like a democratization off the off the attack tools where you don't have to be technical right. You don't have to have a lot of knowledge, you know, their services available. You know, like here's who I'm going to the market by the booth, so I'd like to go after and, you know, here's my $50 or like a big point equivalent. All right, >>let's jump to >>the seven. We talked about 8.4 and the seven new attack vectors and you outline, You know, I think, uh, the top level themes I took from the summary, right? Weaponizing new attack vectors, leveraging mobile hot spots targeting compromised in point >>about the end points. I o t is >>like all the rage people have mess and five G's just rolling out, which is going to see this huge i o t expansion, especially in industrial and all these connected devices and factories in from that power people. How are people protecting those differently now, as we're getting to this kind of exponential curve of the deployment of all these devices, >>I mean, there are a lot of serious people thinking about how to protect individual devices, but infrastructure and large. So I'm not gonna go like, Hey, it's all bad, right? Is plenty back on it all to be the next number, like 17 and 17 as the number of architectures for which Amir, I mean, I was really popular, like in a bar right from a few years ago. That still exists. But over time, what's happened is people have reported Mirai to different architectures so that, you know, think of it like, you know, if you have your your refrigerator connected to the Internet, it comes. It's coming with a little board, has CPU on it like >>running a little OS >>runs and runs in the West on it. Well, there's a Mirai variant ready for that. Essentially, as new devices are getting deployed like, you know, there's, you know, that's kind of our observation that there's even as new CPUs are introduced, a new chips or even the West they're introduced. There's somebody out there. We're ready to port it to that very now, Like, you know, the next level challenges that these devices, you know, they don't often get upgraded. There's no real. In many cases, they're not like, you know, there's very little thought given to really kind of security around it. Right? There are back doors and, like default passwords used on a lot of them. And so you take this combination. I have a whole you know, we talk about, you know, large deployments of devices every year. So you have these large deployments and now, you know, bought is just waiting for ready for it Now again, I will say that it's not. It's not all bad, but there are serious people who were thinking about this and their devices that are deployed on private networks. From the get go, there was a VPN tunnel back to a particular control point that the the commercial vendor operates. I mean, there are things like that, like, hardening that people have done right, So not every device is gonna find its way into a botnet. However, like, you know, you feel like you're getting a toy like Christmas and against $20 you know, and it can connect to the Internet. The odds are nobody's >>thinking not well. The thing we've heard, too, about kind of down the i t and kind of bringing of operations technology and I t is. A lot of those devices weren't developed for upgrades and patches, and Lord knows what Os is running underneath the covers was a single kind of use device. It wasn't really ever going to be connected to the outside world. But now you're connecting with the I t. Suddenly exposing a whole host of issues that were never kind of part of the plan when whoever designed that thing in the first place for sure for sure is crazy. Alright, so that's that. Carpet bombing tactics, increased sector attack, availability. What is there's carpet bomb and carpet bombing generally? What's going on in this space? >>Well, so carpet bombing is a term that we applied a few years ago to a kind of a variation of attack which, like >>traditionally, you know, we see an attack >>against a specific I P address or a specific domain, right? That's that's where that's what I'm targeting. Carpet bombing is taking a range of API's and go like, you know, hey, almost like cycling through every single one of them. So you're so if your filters, if your defense is based on Hey, if my one server sees a spike, let me let me block traffic while now you're actually not seeing enough of a spike on an individual I p. But across a range there's a huge you know, there's a lot of traffic that you're gonna be. >>So this is kind of like trips people >>up from time to time, like are we certainly have defensive built for it. But >>now what? We're you know, it's it's really like what we're seeing is the use >>off Muehr, our other known vectors. We're not like, Okay, C l dap is a protocol feel that we see we see attacks, sealed up attacks all the time. Now what we're >>seeing is like C l >>dap with carpet bombing. Now we're seeing, like, even other other reflection application protocols, which the attack isn't like an individual system, but instead the range. And so that's that's what has changed. Way saw a lot of like, you know, TCP kind of reflection attacks, TCP reflection attacks last year. And then and then the novelty was that Now, like okay, alongside that is the technique, right? Carpet bombing technique. That's that's a pipe >>amounts never stops right? Right hard. We're out of time. I give you the final word. One. Where can people go get the information in this report? And more importantly, for people that aren't part of our is a matter that you know kind of observers or they want to be more spark. How should they be thinking about security when this thing is such a rapidly evolving space? >>So let me give you two resource is really quickly. There's this this >>report available Dub dub dub dub dot com slash threat report. That's that's that's what That's where this report is available on Google Next Threat report and you'll find your way there. We've also, you know, we made another platform available that gives you more continuous visibility into the landscape. So if you read this and like Okay, what's happening now? Then you would go to what we call Met Scout Cyber Threat Horizon. So that's >>kind of tell you >>what's happening over the horizon. It's not just like, you know, Hey, what's what am I seeing? What are people like me seeing maybe other people other elsewhere in the world scene. So that's like the next dot com slash horizon. Okay, to find >>that. And I think like between those two, resource is you get >>access to all of our visibility and then, you know, really, in terms of like, our focus is not just to drive awareness, but all of this knowledge is being built into our products. So the Net's got like arbor line of products. We're continually innovating and evolving and driving like more intelligence into them, right? That's that's really? How We help protect our customers. Right >>hearted. Thanks for taking a few minutes >>and sharing the story. Thank you. 18 Scary. But I'm glad you said it's not all bad. So that's good. >>Alright, he started. I'm Jeff. You're watching the Cube. We're at the RSA conference 2020 >>Mosconi. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. >>Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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

>> Announcer: From Miami Beach, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering Acronis Global Cyber Summit 2019. Brought to you by Acronis. >> Hello everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage here in Miami Beach, Florida at the Fontainebleau Hotel for the Acronis Global Cyber Summit 2019, where cyber protection is becoming an emerging trend. And we see these once in a while, when you have these big waves, you know, some unique trends. Observability and cloud computing, automation and cloud computing came out of nowhere from these white spaces. Now you're seeing the confluence of data protection and cyber security coming together to the platform. That's what they're talking about here. And my next guest, to break it all down, is an analyst from Forrester Research, Naveen Chhabra. Thanks for joining us today. >> Thank you for having me here. >> So Miami Beach, not a bad venue is it? >> Oh yeah, absolutely. (laughing) >> Get a dip in the ocean there, the water's warm. I got to ask you this, break down this market. Acronis is on here earlier. They've got a story to tell, and their story is not something that's obvious. It's kind of a new category, I guess, emerging, not really a traditional category from a research standpoint. But cyber protection by combining traditional thinking about data protection and cyber security software, bringing them together into one thinking, wholistic data model, with a platform that can enable services. I mean, this is a classic platform. This is what these guys have. What's your take on the industry? Is the industry ready for this? Is this a real trend? >> The industry certainly needs the technology, and I'll give you some examples as to why. So if you think upon the ransomware attacks that have happened in the past, the ransomware attacks would cripple any organization, right? And the best defense that an organization has to recover from, backups. Now, what that means is, okay, I can certainly recover from a backup which was taken last hour, last yesterday or a few days back, a few weeks back. But the most important question is how do I find out that the last copy or the last snapshot is a clean, uninfected copy? Because that's important, right? So if you recover from an infected copy, you're going to be hit again. And you don't want that, right? So, the million dollar question there is how do I get back to the copy which is clean and uninfected? Right? And you cannot do that traditionally the way organizations have been structured. You have infrastructure and operations guys, those who are responsible for operations, you know, keeping copies in their place, wherever required, and then you have the second group, which is security and risk, which is responsible for identifying all things security, right? But, ransomware is one thing in the industry which is pulling these two teams together. But the organizations are not ready yet. In one of the surveys that I did, I asked the respondents, "Do you have these two teams working together "to solve this problem?" And the answer was abysmally low. You know, no they don't work with each other. >> You point at a great point. I think one of the things you highlight there that I think is really critical is backup and recovery was because of some operational disruption. >> Naveen: Yes. >> Outage, flood, so rollback. The disruption wasn't a hack, so to that point, all those mechanisms around, generations of backup and recovery didn't actually take into account security. >> Exactly. >> Meaning the malware or the infection, the disruption is coming from a secure breach, not some electrical outage or some sort of other disruption. And they used to call that non-disruptive operations. I remember all the stories when we just talked about that. >> Right. >> Now it's not that anymore. The disruption is coming from security, so how do you bake security in from day one? That's the million dollar question that I always hear. What's your answer to that? What's the industry doing to get security baked in? What are some of the mechanisms you've seen successful for a large enterprise to adopt a plan that way? >> So I, specifically from a technology standpoint, I see very little efforts. The technology vendors are doing their own efforts, but you know, my guidance to clients is to be proactive in terms of your using the right storage for that matter. Let's say, if you have a WORM storage which can not be encrypted. Written once, cannot be changed, right? Use that model which will ensure that whatever you backed up yesterday, one, the backup is not infected, right? Or even from your core business application standpoint, you know, you want to schedule the data to be kept at a particular point in time to that WORM storage, for example, right? I don't see much of an effort from the organizations because, again, inner security is a domain which is handled by security, backup has not looked at using WORM as a potential storage target. >> WORM being "Write Once Read Many" for the folks-- >> Yes. >> at home tracking this. >> Right, and not that they do not know the technology. They know the technology. It's also about thinking out of the box and applying what's available to another-- >> To a known problem, right? >> Yes. >> And ransomware is so bad, it's such a hard problem to solve. I've heard (mumbles) has been in solution, WORM's a good one. That's the first time I heard that. That's awesome. It makes sense. >> Absolutely. >> But how do you deploy that to scale throughout the enterprise where you had these traditional work stream workflows that-- >> That becomes a problem. >> A people problem. You've been doin' a lot of work around the people equation. People process technology, everyone says it's digital transformation. But the people equation is a hard nut to crack. What's your take on the people situation? >> It certainly is a hard nut to crack because security would not trust more infrastructure in place that our guys would be doing. They've been told to operate in that model and now comes a situation, ransomware situation, where they're asked to trust each other and work with each other. Boy, that's not happening, is it? (chuckles) >> Yeah, they hate each other before, now they have to like each other. I mean, that's been a 20 year, 10 year, 5 year you've seen it evolve over time. Dev Ops is certainly with the cloud enforced a lot of that. That's kind of what brought people together under the Dev Ops infrastructure's code. But we're talkin' about application development that's growing like crazy. (mumbles) C.s want to build in-house stacks and communicate via A.P.I.s and, or some data-sharing with vendors. So this idea of a lot of this there's a restructuring that's going on at least from a architectural, technically, and staffing. What's some of the best practices that you've seen? What is some of the customer environments out there that you can talk to to show and point at a success story? >> I think some of the examples I've seen organizationally addressing this problem, wholistically, is to start from the top. I came out with this report a couple of years back titled Ransomware is a Business Continuity Issue. So don't approach it with a technology solution. Eventually, you will end up in adopting that same technology but I didn't define why do you need to use that technology so that it ties up your business requirements. So start from identifying that as a business risk which I see very little organizations do that today. Cyber risks are not identified as vulnerable as important a risk as they should be. So start off from that and trickle down into the next sub-steps that you must be taking, going eventually to the same technology. >> You know, one of the things I want to get your thoughts on is that obviously the digital threats are the industrialization of automating attacks. You're seeing Zero-day, you're seeing all this malware out there. You got surface errors with I.O.T.s increasing. So, the threats are coming. They're not going away. In fact, they're going to be increasing over time. Maybe get, you might not see it like D-DOS kind of been distracted away. But now the complexity is a huge issue because the costs will kick off of the complexity, this is something that Acronis is talking about and this is what I want to get your thoughts on. Complexity is one of those things that if you don't solve it and you look the other way, it gets more expensive to solve over time. So as complexity piles up, it's like climate change or cleaning up the Boston harbor. The longer you wait the more expensive it's going to be. >> Exactly. >> So that's startin' be be realized in some people's minds. They call it re-platforming, digital transmission, there's just buzz words for that. But I think this is a reality that people like, "Oh, I got to get... "I got to take care of business." I got I.O.T., I got complete industrial I.O.T., N.I.O.C. I got all those data centers movin' to the cloud. I got to clean up the complexity problem. What's the answer? How do you, What's the research tell you? >> Unfortunately, there's no easy answer because all the tools, technologies the organizations are using, they're using it for a purpose. So silos is a challenge, increasing silos is a challenge. So, I would highly recommend organizations start to think about reducing the silos, not be reducing the tools, but by potentially looking at cross-liberating by integrating, right? And one of the examples here is very important around recovery from ransomware attacks. So, going back to the point that, "Okay, how do you identify where is the right, "clean copy of the backup?" So these two teams would have to work together. Now the teams would work right out of their heads. They got to depend on technology, right? So that's where the requirement of the tools, themselves, working with each other, security to identifying, "Okay, when to do the forensics tracing "you know where the ransomware part "would identify when did the ransomware get in? "When did the malware get in? "Which systems did it infect?" And then, the backup tools correspondingly acting on those backup instances which have been identified as clean and uninfected. Easier said than done, but that's a part forward. >> And the other thing to make that more complex is that you said business continuity before, that's a people issue, as well. Not just technical process. >> Absolutely. >> Okay, so the two has to have a plan. Like, "What's the plan?" Do they actually huddle and do dry runs? Do they have fire drills? I mean, these are the things that most cyber groups do. They tend to have, you know, very structured approaches to either incidents, response,... So as these worlds come together, what does your research tell you around (chuckles) the questions of working together, proactively, show you? >> Interestingly, enough. I, a couple of years back, I did a survey asking those organizations who have been hit by ransomware attack and have lost data. I asked them, "How many of you have these two teams "working together?" Apparently, you know, some thirty-odd percent responded and said, "Yes, we have these two teams working together." But among, you know, asking final questions, qualifying questions about, "Yes, these two teams "work together," but do they effectively and eventually get to where they should be. Like, have a common plan, right? I think three, four, five percent of the respondents would say, "Yes, we do have a common operating, "understood plan "between the two teams." But largely, all I can say almost all organizations do not have that plan, unfortunately. >> You're, I think, one of the first ransomware experts I've had on theCUBE that's done a lot of research in the area, directly. So I got to ask you on ransomware, first of all it's really bad news and it comes from multiple actors. People lookin' for cash and also state-sponsored, which I believe is goin' on a lot, but no one's reporting on it, but, you know, still that's not proofed yet, but I still get a feeling it's done. On ransomware, do you have any data or insights around if the people clean up their act and get fixed, because I see a lot of ransomware coming back to the same places where they hit once, solve it, pay some bit-coin or whatever their extortion currency is, and then they get hit again. And hit again. Because (clap) there's cash there. Do you see that as a trend? What's the data? Is there any anecdotal insight or are people gettin' hit twice? Three times? >> There are incidents, and I was speaking on, you know, on a panel like half an hour back, and I gave this example. There was a hotel chain in central Europe which was attacked. And the key management system, like if you're one of the guests of that you would not be able to get in, into our rooms. And while they paid a ransom for to release that key management application, they didn't secure that infrastructure and applications further, which was required. And three months later, they were attacked once again. So such incidents are happening. And that's where, you know, guidance from Forrester where we have published a paper about when to consider to pay ransom. Because, you would not be sure that you get the keys. You get the keys for all the data? You don't get any traces of malware left behind or a new malware coming in. You never know, right? >> Of course, yes. >> While this is an untrusted world, but you got to trust if you're paying. (chuckles) >> Yeah, well I think I would bet that the criminals would come back for, you know, new shoes, new coat, new car... They need new things. They need cash (clap), they're going to come back to the bank. >> Absolutely! And they're coming back to basic prey. >> Naveen, thanks for comin' on. I want to get your thoughts on the industry as we wrap up this segment on the trends around cyber protection, data protection, platform. You know, really we're living in a cyber data-driven world. And data is a key part of it. What's the most important trend or story that you think needs to be told or is being told today, in terms of customers to pay attention to? What's, is it ransomware? What's, in your mind, are the top three things that are the most important stories that must be covered or need to be covered, or aren't covered? >> So I think it's not just my story, it's about the state of affairs at an industrial level, globally. I was referring to the World Economic Forum where all the global risks that economies face. It could be famine. It could be a country going bankrupt, right? It could be any other risk that the industry faces. We have seen that, to that starting the World Economic Forum did, in the last 10 years, cyber risk has started to appear on the list of top four, top five risks for the last three years. >> In the world? >> Globally. >> Global issues? >> Global issues, yes. And one of our research also tells us that the number of ransomware incidents have grown 500% in the preceding last 12 months. And the impact, intensity, and frequency of a ransomware attack is simply great. Many organizations are actually shutting down operations. Medical practice in mid-west, called upon the practice and said, "Oh, they are closing operations?" And in fact, it's in public domain. "We're closing operations, you can come back to us "for whatever data we currently have on you." But, I mean I think that from a regulation standpoint, people (mumbles) so that you have to keep control of the data and also be able to provide. But guess what? In this case, the medical practice doesn't have data. If you were their client, if you were a patient they don't have any data on you. Guess what? If it was there for years, you've lost years of your medical data. >> So global issues, ransomware's real and cyber attacks are happening at high frequency. >> Absolutely. >> Naveen, thanks for comin' on. Naveen Chhabra, senior analyst at Forrester Research here inside theCUBE. We are at the Acronis Global Cyber Summit 2019. I'm John Furrier. Back with more coverage for two days here, in Miami Beach, after this short break. Stay with us. (techno music)

>> Announcer: Live from Boston, Massachusetts. It's theCUBE, covering IFS World Conference 2019. Brought to you by IFS. >> We're back at IFS World 2019 from the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. I'm Dave Volonte, with my co-host, Paul Gillen. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise, get the best guest, Christian Peterson is here. He's the chief product officer at IFS. Christian, great to see you. >> All right, thank you very much. Happy to be here. >> Your first IFS World Conference, so ... >> It is mine ... >> Mine too, so ... >> Yeah, I'm happy to be here. It's just like getting an injection of customer input and feedback in a very short amount of time So, that's uh, that's awesome. I really love it. >> Yeah, these events are great to connect with customers its one to many conversations. But, give us a sense of your background and why you were attracted to IFS. Why did you join? >> Well from a background perspective, I've always been in the effects of business and technology and uh, you know my passion has always been what we can actually do with technology for businesses to innovate, to differentiate, to do new things to automate things. Really, really a strong believer in the promise of software. Because that's what software is all about. Um, so, um, I have a past with Starbucks, I've started ELP companies, I've been with Microsoft. Uh, for fifteen, sixteen years. Um, have been with SAP for a number of years. So I joined, I joined IFS last year, um, really because of the transformation and the uh, the journey I just was on and the passion that IFS has always had for the customers. And the outcomes we've created for customers. It's just a perfect environment to, to uh to realize the dream of providing value to customers, outcomes for customers, and leveraging technology in the process. >> Yeah, so see you're a challenger, hashtag for the challenger. A hashtag is started. >> Really, really I mean you were at the giant uh, SAP and going to a smaller, not much smaller, but a smaller company, What were they doing that you thought that excited you so much? >> Well the exciting thing again is the focus on the customer and the close proximity to customers in everything I.. >> Wouldn't SAP, sorry to interrupt, wouldn't SAP be the same thing though? >> Let me just, let me put it this way, I went to IFS because I (intelligible) really, really brilliantly. So, is that a, is that a nice way of saying it. (laughter) >> (laughing) Okay. >> So were here for your keynote today you sort of laid out a roadmap, a little vision uh, talked a little bit about digital transformation. But, I wanted to talk about, the, you made a big big emphasis on your API platform. Open API's, embracing that, uh its been somewhat a criticism of you guys in the past. And so, maybe it's a response to that or a response to customers, but why the platform, why, to explain it, its importance and how it fits into your roadmap going forward. >> Well the API enablement is important for many different perspectives. First of all, we use API's ourselves. To create user experiences and drive a lot of the innovation where they are merging technology and so forth. That's one aspect of it. So just for our own, our own level of innovation and the pace at which we can innovate with, going forward on the API platform, is, is, is is dramatic. The second area is really again back to the digital transformation that customers are really driving out there um, a lot of that involves, um, really most companies becoming software companies themselves. So now we have a lot of our customers that actually have developers, they're writing software they're driving new offerings to their customers. And to get value out of these offerings for their customers They really need to get access to a a lot of the capabilites that lives inside of the IFS models. They need to get access to data, to get access to processes because, on of the keys in digital transformation regardless in what shape or form it comes is, you need data, you need massive amounts of data. And you need data from within your firewall you need data from third party, and you need structure data all structure data. And participating in that world is absolutely essential that you have that open API philosophy where you expose yourself and your own data and API's. But, also so we can turn the other way and we can consume data and API's from others so we can create similar scenarios. So it's really about being apart of the ecosystem of, uh, of technologies and solutions that customers rely on. And that's why we joined also, the open API foundation. >> You also demonstrated this morning, uh Orena, your new customer experience platform. Talk about what that is and why it's important. >> Well, so it's, it's important of course again because we, um, um, we have this generational shift in people that are coming into the workforce that expect and want to work differently. And, um, if you think about how people actually work, to do and get things done today, or think about ourselves. Now, we're no spring chickens anymore, right, we've been around... >> Speak for yourself. >> We've seen DOS, we've seen DOS systems. >> Yeah my hand went up in the 3.1 question. >> When the three point, did you put the mouse on the screen as well? (laughing) I've literally seen that. So we've been through that, but the people we are getting into the workforce now they have a different mentality. They are not thinking about what they do. Like, we are thinking about, "how does the system work?" "Where do I click? Where do I go next?" The intuition that people now apply to the system when they start working with them, the systems just have to reflect that intuition. It has to be intuitive, it has to be immersive as well. And the immersive part is really based on what the users see, what they do. The contextual information, the contextual intelligence they get in the context of what they do should want them to do more. Because they can, so they get dragged in and the new type of users, they just have that natural intuition, because that's how you browse the web. You go to one place on the web, go to the next thing, You get inspired by this, you go there. And there's no reason why the systems that you get your work done, why they shouldn't be the exact same thing. Orena is a huge step in that direction, together with our mobile enablement on multiple form factors and devices. >> So you, you mentioned you know saw everybody's becoming a software company, every company is becoming, you've been in the software business for awhile you work for a software company now. You're talking about Orena, you're talking about API integration, I showed you our software. My point is, software is hard. (laughs) There's a talent war for employees, we talked about that off camera. Um, so, as you see these companies digitally transforming, becoming software companies, Mark Endrese's, "software is eating the world", Mark Beneoff, "Everybody is becoming a software company", How are they doing? And what role can you play, IFS, in terms of helping them become a software company. Because it's, it's so damn difficult. >> Yeah, I think that the role of being a software company I think the absolute differentiation they want to create through software and differentiate the offerings or other things that they really want to do, We can't really help them there, because they're differentiated. Like if you're differentiated, you can't find something standard and use for that. But we can enable it and um, as we're looking at it, a lot of the emerging technologies that we can enable them with to achieve it, that's a number of things we can do. And, we are introducing a notion of an application, of application services here, where we really, enable these emerging technologies in the context of what we do. So, while you hear about technologies or augmented realities, mixed realities, artificial intelligence and robotics and IOT and artificial intelligence, all the stuff that you have, we take that and put into context of the focus industries that we focus on and the solution categories that we focus on. So EAP, enterprise asset management, service management. And in that way our customers can focus on what they actually need to do with it, versus focus on the, on the technologies. >> And the API platform allows those customers to, whatever the build to integrate to their ERP system if in fact... >> That's correct, that's correct. And as I mentioned, we also use API's not only on the front end of what we provide and expose all we have, but we also consume on the back end. So the way we actually consume the application services and drag them in and embed them is through API, these application services. >> I understand you're working on an entirely new architecture that you will be debuting in the spring of 2020. How is that going to change the game? >> We don't really think about it as a new architecture. We think about it as a natural evolution that includes some of these things. Uh, so for instance, the introducing, uh the introduction of the application services layer that I mentioned, is more a new layer in our architecture that we introduced. So we don't think about it as a new architecture, we're just evolving what we have. And because of that evolution, that is something that our entire product portfolio will benefit from. Um, and, I already mentioned today how we are aligning the product portfolio from an experience perspective. We are bringing the arena experience through our FSM product to our um, PSO product, to our customer engagement product and so forth. So we are aligning that front end experience on the same design patterns, so forth, because you know, a good experience is a good user experience. >> You talk about Orena bot and this, this gentleman here, who's given us this talk, just through out a gardner status. That, that by, I don't know, by whatever year 2023, uh, more money will be spent on bots than mobile integration. Which is, you know, quite a prediction. Your thoughts. >> Well, I, you know, there's, there's always all kinds of interesting predictions. I think actually, um, I actually think, um, there, amount of money may go down but I think the number of bots will go up dramatically. And, I think we will actually get to a situation where, bots will be creating bots. (laughs) Right? So, That's when you get, when we talk about intelligent and autonomous systems, I really believe it. Because there is no reason why we should not begin to see autonomy in software. >> Dave: Right. >> Um, we see it, uh, I use the example this morning, that we put our lives in the hands of technology everyday, when you go in your car and you use adaptor to cruise to control, you're trusting technology. Like, when you are driving your Tesla. I mean there was an example in San Francisco, uh, I think, uh, in December last year, where the police had been following a driver for 17 miles. And the car wouldn't stop because it was driving itself, and the driver was sleeping. So, they had to, they had to, you know, call up Tesla and say like how can we manipulate this technology so the car actually stops, so the police gradually got the car to stop. And, uh, you know, finally the guy woke up and uh, he'd probably had one too many. But he claimed he wasn't driving, so they shouldn't charge him, but, they did. (laughter) >> Of course, yes. Well bots are getting better, but I still, I still often know when I'm talking to a bot, but it's getting better, wouldn't you say? >> Christian: Yeah, it's getting reallly good. >> Paul: I know, last year I was completely fooled by a fundraising bot. But, I got a phone call from a bot that I spoke to for ninety seconds before realizing it was a bot. (laughter) So it's, its getting pretty good. As you look at, at the technology that excites you, about what you're bringing with your product, you talked a lot this morning about different kinds of technology and how you want to be a leader. What technologies excite you the most about the markets you are serving? >> I tell you what excites me the most is to work through the different levels of, of, uh, digital transformation that I talked about. I'm excited about the reflection between businesses and technology. I'm excited about the reflections between people and experiences, and I'm excited about the reflections between automation and efficiency. We have a lot of technology at our hands, That can help us achieve these different things. But, at the end of the day, it's the outcomes that matter. The technologies are exciting and you know, I can get super geeky about a lot of different technologies. But if it doesn't relate to any, any, not technical vision of product, but any business vision you have on what you actually want to do with it as a business, then I think it becomes dangerous. But, of course we have our geek sessions, where we geek out on all these different things. But, we try to separate that from when we actually, uh, you know, designing and building things directly into the product. But we need the geek sessions to get inspired. And understand what is available, so we can put it in the context of what our customers need today and also what they'll be needing in the future. >> Since you have some decent observation space and digital transformation, I want to ask a question. Uh, uh, our partner ETR, they have a data platform. And I was down in New York last week just talking to them and, one of the theories is, is so spending is starting to slow down a little bit overall on the macro. One of the theories is that digital transformation in the last two years, there's been a lot of experimentation. So a lot of try and, you know, everything. And now they're going into the production with, with what they, what they feel will delivery business value. And two things are happening is their premise. One is, they're narrowing down the focus on new technologies and make, making bets for all the disruptive technologies. The other is, a lot of the legacy stuff, they are pulling out. Saying, "okay, we're moving on." Um, are you seeing that, are you seeing this sort of... That, the bell weathers anyway going heavy now into production with digital transformation. What are you seeing? >> I think its a progression. >> Dave: Uh huh. >> I think it's scenario based. I don't see, I don't see companies making like, an all out bet from one day to another. >> Dave: Just mixed. >> It's mixed and I think you need to take a cautious approach because, you know, you don't, you... When you're in the technology world, you don't always get it right in the first go, we certainly don't get it right, the first time all the time, right? So, often times its important to get something out there. Learn from it, innovate, fail fast sometimes. Um, the worst thing you can do is not acknowledge when you have mad a mistake, And I think that is a risk that some companies also, bear with digital transformation is... If you need to adjust what you, what you thought was the right thing to do, make the adjustment as quickly as possible. >> Dave: You talked in your keynote about tailoring solutions and I want to understand your philosophy. How dogmatic are you, uh, uh, about, uh, not making customizations versus allowing your customers to make those, those tailored? And, and how do you manage that from a, you know cloud and SaaS delivery, evergreen, I think you call it stand point? >> Christian: We, we, absolutely believe that customers should have solutions that match exactly what they need and so forth. We also heard from stage today that, a good philosophy, I really subscribe to that philosophy, that if you're doing things that, you know, is not really differentiating you as a company or something just use a standard process. Why do something custom if it doesn't mean anything. Then you can adjust your processes to that. But if you have things that really differentiate you as a company, you obviously want to have the technology that supports that. And since that is differentiated, you're not likely to have a standard package file. So in that process, what we need to enable is, we need to enable these scenarios where you can extend, uh, we call it extend on the inside, extend on the outside, but you can achieve what you want but, do it in a way where, you do it in a declarative way. Not by creating or modifying code. So instead we want to make sure that our, the code that we have, that is part of the standard product, can actually interpret declarative code. And that means when we have upgrades and all that stuff, we upgrade the core but the declarative code that the customer has that is, specific to them, remains there and stays there. >> Dave: And that's why the API platform is critical. >> Paul: Right. >> You said no product will be announced or shipped without API enablement, period the end. >> That's correct, We can not because, we can not create a use of front end to anything that doesn't, that isn't API enabled. So, it's very simple. >> Paul: That's a modern architecture. I am curious about you said that one of the reasons that you're at IFS is because it's so customer focused. What is it that this company does differently from companies you've worked at in the past, that exemplifies that customer focus? >> Christian: I think it goes deep um, not only into the culture but also how we actually have people in, all the way in to the individual development teams. Um, I've been in other software companies and the development teams you have developers, you have QA's, you have, you know...testers, you have, you know... Programming just to write the specifications, so forth. We actually have industry solution specialists embedded into the development teams. So, we are, we are, probably our own, you know, worst critic um, and of course then working hand and hand with customers in their processes is essential. But again, if we don't provide the out...if we don't provide the value and the output from what we create for our customers, then it's worth nothing. And that's really the philosophy. If we do not provide value, technology means nothing. >> Dave: So the intersection of domain expertise and software development. Uh Chris, the last question is sort of, what do you hope to get out of this event? Things that you hope to, to take away, or learn or convey to your customers? >> Well I always, I always, look to get feedback. I'm a sucker for feedback and input and learning. Uh, so first of all, I can't wait to walk the expo floor here and really see what all our partners are bringing to the table of innovation. Because they're doing amazing things, so I always enjoy spending a few hours on the, on the expo floor. In the process, get to meet a lot of people, uh and then during the sessions if we can or I'll always end any presentation with an email address. Any, anybody, any customer, any partner will always be able to email me, uh directly, and I, you know... Sometimes a little hard to keep up, but I will respond to every single request. >> Dave: Feedback is a gift. Christian, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE, it was great to see ya. >> Thank you. >> Alright, thank you very much. >> Alright, thank you for watching everybody. Keep it right there, we'll be back with our next guest. We're at IFS World, Boston. You're watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)