>> Announcer: Live from San Jose it's The Cube presenting Big Data, Silicon Valley brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media and its ecosystem partners. >> Good morning. Welcome to The Cube. We are on day two of our coverage our event Big Data SV. I'm Lisa Martin with my cohost Dave Vellante. We're down the street from the Strata Data Conference. This is The Cube's tenth big data event and we had a great day yesterday learning a lot from myriad guests on very different nuances of big data journey where things are going. We're excited to welcome back to The Cube an alumni, Octavian Tanase, the Senior Vice President of Data ONTAP fron Net App. Octavian, welcome back to The Cube. >> Glad to be here. >> So you've been at the Strata Data Conference for the last couple of days. From a big data perspective, what are some of the things that you're hearing, in terms of from a customer's perspective on what's working, what challenges, opportunities? I'm very excited to be here and learn about the innovation of our partners in the industry and share with our partners and our customers what we're doing to enable them to drive more value out of that data. The reality is that data has become the 21st Century gold or oil that powers the business and everybody's looking to apply new techniques, a lot of times machine learning, deep learning, to draw more value of the data, make better decisions and compete in the marketplace. Octavian, you've been at NetApp now eight years and I've been watching NetApp, as we were talking about offline, for decades and I've seen the ebb and flow and this company has transformed many, many times. The latest, obviously cloud came in, flash came into play and then you're also going through a major transition in the customer based to clustered ONTAP. You seemed to negotiate that. NetApp is back, thriving, stock's up. What's happening at NetApp? What's the culture like these days? Give us the update. >> I think we've been very fortunate to have a CEO like George Kurian, who has been really focused on helping us do basically fewer things better, really focus on our core business, simplify our operations and continue to innovate and this is probably the area that I'm most excited about. It's always good to make sure that you accelerate the business, make it simpler for your customers and your partners to do business with you, but what you have to do is innovate. We are a product company. We are passionate about innovation. I believe that we are innovating with more pace than many of the startups in the space so that's probably the most exciting thing that has been part of our transformation. >> So let's talk about big data. Back in the day if you had a big data problem you would buy a big Unix box, maybe buy some Oracle licenses, try to put all your data into that box and that became your data warehouse. The brilliance of Hadoop was hey we can leave the data where it is. There's too much data to put into the box so we're going to bring five megabytes to code to a petabyte of data. And the other piece of it is CFOs loved it, because we're going to reduce the cost of our expensive data warehouse and we're going to buy off the shelf components: white box, servers and off the shelf disk drives. We're going to put that together and life will be good. Well as things matured, the old client-server days, it got very expensive, you needed enterprise grade. So where does NetApp fit into that equation, because originally big storage companies like NetApp, they weren't part of the equation? Has that changed? >> Absolutely. One of the things that has enabled that transformation, that change is we made a deliberate decision to focus on software defined and making sure that the ONTAP operating system is available wherever data is being created: on the edge in an IoT device, in the traditional data center or in the cloud. So we are in the unique position to enable analytics, big data, wherever those applications reside. One of the things that we've recently done is we've partnered with IDC and what the study, what the analysis has shown is that deploying in analytics, a Hadoop or NoSQL type of solution on top of NetApp is half the cost of DAS. So when you consider the cost of servers, the licenses that you're going to have to pay for, these commercial implementations of Hadoop as well as the storage and the data infrastructure, you are much better off choosing NetApp than a white box type of solution. >> Let's unpack that a little bit, because if I infer correctly from what you said normally you would say the operational costs are going to be dramatically lower, it's easier to manage a professional system like a NetApp ONTAP, it's integrated, great software, but am I hearing you correctly, you're saying the acquisition costs are actually less than if I'm buying white box? A lot of people are going to be skeptical about that, say Octavian no way, it's cheaper to buy white box stuff. Defend that statement. >> Absolutely. If you're looking at the whole solution that includes the server and the storage, what NetApp enables you to do if you're running the solution on top of ONTAP you reduce the need for so many servers. If you reduce that number you also reduce the licensing cost. Moreover, if you actually look at the core value proposition of the storage layer there, DAS typically makes three copies of the data. We don't. We are very greedy and we're making sure that you're using shared storage and we are applying a bunch of storage efficiency techniques to further compress, compact that data for world class storage efficiency. >> So cost efficiency is obviously a great benefit for any company when they're especially evolving, from a digital perspective. What are some of the business level benefits? You mentioned speed a minute ago. What is Data ONTAP and even ONTAP in the cloud enabling your enterprise customers to achieve at the business level, maybe from faster time to market, identifying with machine learning and AI new products? Give me an example of maybe a customer that you think really articulates the value that ONTAP in the cloud can deliver. >> One of the things that's really important is to have your data management capability, whatever the data is being produced so ONTAP being consumed either as a VM or a service ... I don't know if you've seen some of the partnerships that we have with AWS and Azure. We're able to offer the same rich data management capabilities, not only the traditional data center, but in the cloud. What that really enables customers to do is to simplify and have the same operating system, the same data management platform for the both the second platform traditional applications as well as for the third platform applications. I've seen a company like Adobe be very successful in deploying their infrastructure, their services not only on prem in their traditional data center, but using ONTAP Cloud. So we have more than about 1,500 customers right now that have adopted ONTAP in the AWS cloud. >> What are you seeing in terms of the adoption of flash and I'm particularly interested in the intersection of flash adoption and the developer angle, because we've seen, in certain instances, certain organizations are able to share data off of flash much more efficiently that you would be, for instance, of a spinning disk? Have you seen a developer impact in your customer base? >> Absolutely I think most of customers initially have adopted flash, because of high throughput and low latency. I think over time customers really understood and identified with the overall value proposition in cost of ownership in flash that it enables them to consolidate multiple workloads in a smaller footprint. So that enables you to then reduce the cost to operate that infrastructure and it really gives you a range of applications that you can deploy that you were never able to do that. Everybody's looking to do in place, in line analytics that now are possible, because of this fast media. Folks are looking to accelerate old applications in which they cannot invest anymore, but they just want to run faster. Flash also tends to be more reliable than traditional storage, so customers definitely appreciate that fewer things could go wrong so overall the value proposition of flash, it's all encompassing and we believe that in the near future flash will be the defacto standard in everybody's data center, whether it's on prem or in the cloud. >> How about backup and recovery in big data? We obviously, in the enterprise, very concerned about data protection. What's similar in big data? What's different and what's NetApp's angle on that? >> I think data protection and data security will never stop being important to our customers. Security's top of mind for everybody in the industry and it's a source of resume changing events, if you would, and they're typically not promotions. So we have invested a tremendous deal in certifications for HIPAA, for FIPS, we are enabling encryption, both at rest and in flight. We've done a lot of work to make sure that the encryption can happen in software layer, to make sure that we give the customers best storage class efficiency and what we're also leveraging is the innovation that ONTAP has done over many years to protect the data, replicate its snapshots, peering the data to the cloud. These are techniques that we're commonly using to reduce the cost of ownership, also protect the data the customers deploy. >> So security's still a hot topic and, like you said, it probably always will be, but it's a shared responsibility, right? So customers leveraging NetApps safe or on prem hybrid also using Azure or AWS, who's your target audience? If you're talking to the guys and gals that are still managing storage are you also having the CSO or the security guys come in, the gals, to understand we've got this appointment in Azure or AWS so we're going to bring in ONTAP to facilitate this? There's a shared responsibility of security. Who's at the table, from your perspective, in your customers that you need to help understand how they facilitate true security? >> It's definitely been a transformative event where more and more people in IQ organizations are involved in the decisions that are required to deploy the applications. There was a time when we would talk only to the storage admin. After a while we started talking to the application admin, the virtualization admin and now you're talking to the line of business who has that vested interest to make sure that they can harness the power of the data in their environment. So you have the CSO, you have the traditional infrastructure people, you have the app administration and you have the app owner, the business owner that are all at the table that are coming and looking to choose the best of breed solution for their data management. >> What are the conversations like with your CXO, executives? Everybody talks about digital transformation. It's kind of an overused term, but there's real substance when you actually peel the onion. What are you seeing as NetApp's role in effecting digital transformations within your customer base? >> I think we have a vision of how we can help enterprises take advantage of the digital transformation and adopt it. I think we have three tenants of that vision. Number one is we're helping customers harness the power of the cloud. Number two, we're looking to enable them to future proof their investments and build the next generation data center. And number three, nobody starts with a fresh slate so we're looking to help customers modernize their current infrastructure through storage. We have a lot of expertise in storage. We've helped, over time, customers time and again adopt disruptive technologies in nondisruptive ways. We're looking to adopt these technologies and trends on behalf of our customers and then help them use them in a seamless safe way. >> And continue their evolution to identify new revenue streams, new products, new opportunities and even probably give other lines of business access to this data that they need to understand is there value here, how can we harness it faster than our competitors, right? >> Absolutely. It's all about deriving value out of the data. I think earlier I called it the gold of the 21st Century. This is a trend that will continue. I believe there will be no enterprise or center that won't focus on using machine learning, deep learning, analytics to derive more value out of the data to find more customer touch points, to optimize their business to really compete in the marketplace. >> Data plus AI plus cloud economics are the new innovation drivers of the next 10, 20 years. >> Completely agree. >> Well Octavian thanks so much for spending time with us this morning sharing what's new at NetApp, some of the visions that you guys have and also some of the impact that you're making with customers. We look forward to having you back on the program in the near future. >> Thank you. Appreciate having the time. >> And for my cohost Dave Vellante I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching The Cube live on day two of coverage of our event, Big Data SV. We're at this really cool venue, Forager Tasting Room. Come down here, join us, get to hear all these great conversations. Stick around and we'll be right back with our next guest after a short break. (electronic music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's the Cube, covering NetApp Insight 2017, brought to you by NetApp. >> Welcome back everyone, we're here live in Las Vegas from Mandalay Bay for NetApp Insight 2017. This is exclusive Cube coverage, I'm John Furrier, co-host of the Cube, co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media. My co-host is Keith Townsend, CTO Advisor. Our next two guests is James Whitemore, who's the VP of Brand and Demand for NetApp, and David Richard, VP of Solutions Engineering. Guys, welcome to the Cube. Thanks for coming on, appreciate taking the time. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for havin' us, thanks for bringin' us in. >> So we're kickin' off the day here, a long day, we're going to go up to 7 o'clock I think, of interviews with the folks. A lot of exciting things happening with NetApp. Obviously data is changing the world, we're seeing a lot of those examples in the real world. Don't want to rehash, we just talked about it on the intro. But society changes, from the board room to the dorm room, from play to work, you're seeing every dimension of life changing. We call this digital transformation in the enterprise, but it's affecting truly everyone. This is the consumerization of IT playing out in real time. People are re-imagining how life and work is happening. NetApp, a great leader, entrepreneurial company, back in the 90s, always had that DNA. How does storage become more enabling, in a way that's going to change society? >> How does storage, or how does data? >> Storage company NetApp that's turning into a data company, having the kind of solutions. What's the brand promise? What's the DNA of NetApp right now? >> Well I think, data first. We're really not a storage company anymore, we are a data company. And we will help our customers put data at the center of their business. Not think about storage, but think about data, and where it is, what it does, how they use it, how they bring data from multiple places, multiple partners, and really put it at the center of their business. >> David, I was talking with, eight years ago, with NetApp folks, you guys were kind of progressive, in Amazon, first. Real company, in Amazon, doin' this kind of storage data convergence way back when. So, eight years now, where's the solutions for customers? 'Cause customers want the cloud, they want on premise, they got to take care of business there, hybrid house sees everyone's hype. But on premise activity, whether it's private cloud or DevOps, the data piece is critical. How has that evolved? >> And first of all, like you said, NetApps's been pretty early to the space, so, six, seven years ago, we're already pretty embracive of cloud as a delivery technology, and as an ecosystem, and we were never, as a company, threatened by that. I think a lot of people in our business, especially in the storage industry, were very concerned that, ultimately, they were a competitor of ours. So I think we realized early on that it was a part of an ecosystem that we had to be part of, and we really focused on trying to demonstrate our value, regardless of where the bits and the bytes are stored. Trying to drive that consistency of customer experience whether or not they're doing an on prem, hybrid, or a full public cloud. And trying to leverage the skill sets and the technologies that they already had in a traditional NetApp environment, and use those to manage it across a very complex multi-cloud, multi-hype advisor environment. And that's really most of the stuff we've been talking about today, right? We did a lot of great announcements in the last hour, and it's all around helping enterprises put cloud technology in the center of their business, and do that with the confidence that the data's going to be protected, that there's going to be predictability of customer experience, and if they're going to be able to maintain that asset that data's becoming to the company. >> So, I'm curious, NetApp, SolidFire, rock-solid technology from a storing and retrieving bits perspective. But now we're gettin' into the conversation about data. We knew who NetApp's and SolidFire's customer was in the traditional enterprise or ISP, or service provider. Who's the customer today, who you guys talkin' to? It's no longer the storage call center anymore, who's that message that you're deliverin' it to, and how are they receivin' it? >> In my role as bein' the guy that runs the Solution Engineers, so the guys that are out there interfacin' with customers and trying to collect requirements, it's been an amazing shift. So we were very familiar with going into the infrastructure guy, and having a conversation around how they can build a performance-secure storage environment inside the four walls of a data center, maybe expanding it to, "Hey, how can I replicate that to a couple data centers?" Now, that's not the case. Now, we're really spending a lot of time finding the application owners, or, better yet, finding the people that have inside organizations that have connections to customers, who are looking to engage those customers differently through technology. So it's a lot more searching for people, it's much more of a discussion about business outcomes and customer intimacy than it ever was. >> I'd love to get some of the solutions you mentioned, I've got some announcements, but before we get there, how do you guys solve the problem for a customer? Or, better yet, what is the core problem that you solve for customers today? Obviously, it's not just a storage, as we're pointing out, it's a data problem. What is the problem that you're solving? And what are some of the new solutions you guys have coming out at the show here that you'd like to talk about? >> I'll give you my perspective on that, and I think you guys probably didn't get to see the kilo presentation this morning, I'm sure you guys were selling up here. There's really three ways that we think about it. We think that each and every one of our customers is doing one, some, or all of three things. They are trying to modernize their existing infrastructure, to bring it current, to make that infrastructure more efficient and operationally effective. They're trying to build a next-generation data center, and they're trying to look outside of what they have today, and look at what that next-generation data center should be. And they're trying to harness the power of a cloud. And we tend to group our solutions, and the way that we think, and the way that we talk to our customers in those three areas. And many of them are doing all of those three things at once, right? >> So get up to date, get up to speed, get the next-gen data center, what is the products you guys announced? Can you take a minute to talk about them? >> Sure. A whole bunch of things. Probably the most interesting and exciting one is the Microsoft NFS solution that we just announced. So this is actually a pretty cool capability, this is the ability for a user inside of Microsoft Azure to natively provision NFS. And, like I said, it's natively driven inside of the Azure infrastructure, but it's delivered through the NetApp technology. We think it's important that, as customers start moving to the cloud, that they start to be able to bring their tool sets and their expectations that they have, and so that was a key one. What you're seeing is the maturation of the relationship that we announced with those guys about six months ago. Also, a couple of other things there, about deepening the relationship around some of our backup products, and especially around helping our customers protect Office 365 applications in the cloud, so that was a big one. Most recent release of Data ONTAP 9.3, we did our first pre-announce of that today. Same thing, it's a lot about, obviously, it's leveraging the new technologies around performance. Right, so this is NVMe, this is high-speed interfaces in Flash, which, obviously, is very important today. When you're really tryin' to, when you're building applications, that latency really matters. So that's a big thing. It's also building and expanding upon our ability to provide the highest levels of data availability, as well as data compression and efficiency around that. So that was a pretty big one. We're continuing to evolve the tool set around cloud, so the things that allow our customers to be able to orchestrate, and maximize, and visualize their utilization of the cloud. And some other products around helping customers truly do multi-cloud and multi-hype advisor in an operational way. >> Alright, final question for you guys both to share. This comes up a lot, so I'd like to get your thoughts. What are customers saying? Share some anecdotal sound bites around what customers are saying about some of these challenges, 'cause they're pretty significant. You got to take care of business and modernize infrastructures, blocking and tackling. You got to do next-gen, which means either software paradigm, DevOps, or private cloud ready. And then, obviously, cloud apps, that's a hybrid and/or public, private, whatever you want to call it, that's a lot of work. Now over the top, you got data governance, you got IoT around the corner. I mean, this is really, really challenging for CxO's. What are customers saying to you guys about the relationship that they're having with NetApp? Share some either data or anecdotal sound bites. >> So we had around 50 CIO's, Chief Data Officers, and that type of person here in Executive Summit yesterday, and got some really, really, clear requests. It's, "Help us. "This is complicated. "The way that we look at our world "is very mixed between our legacy infrastructures, "the private clouds we're trying to build, "and the public clouds that we're trying to harness, "and help us do that." And the feedback they give us is, "Yes, you're doing the right things." Everything that we showed them yesterday, everything that we showed them today, of really being able to look at data holistically 'cross all of those type of platforms is exactly what they want, but they need help. >> So they're leaning on you guys more. >> They're looking for leadership. For, "How do we do this?" >> I think you were talking about NetApp DNA, right, and I think that's an important thing right now. Things are very complex, customers can be very confused. I think customers are also very fearful of lock-in. And I think they're very fearful of making decisions today that they can't unmake in the future. So they're asking us a lot of questions about, "If I make this decision today, "does that preclude me from being able to make "bigger decisions or different decisions in the future? "If I go down this road, can I go back?" And so it's more about just demonstrating to them that they have a safe ecosystem, and that we're not going to be providing all the solutions that they're going to use inside the cloud, but we're going to be open and embracive of as many of those as possible to protect their investment. >> You guys got a great customer base too, and it's growing, and the thing that we took away last week at our big Data NYC event we had in Manhattan was, in that world, big data, you've seen the hype come and go. There's no tolerance for hype, customers to your point are super busy, their plates are full, and the rubber's got to hit the road. And so they've played with some stuff, the total cost of ownership becomes a big problem, right? The fruit's not coming on the tree of some of those hyped-up technologies, so they want to have a partner. You guys hear that same thing? In general? >> Yeah, definitely. I would encourage everyone to go check out the recording of the general session this morning. Some really clear demos of how we're helping customers, how we're really helping them drive efficiency in their existing infrastructure, to work across clouds, all of the hyper-scale clouds, to bring a next-generation data center platform together, based on, you have SolidFire, HCI products. And really, really, clear things that we're doing to help them. >> You can't just buy a new digital transformation prod, you got to lean on what you got, and build from there. You can't buy hybrid cloud, there's no SKU for that. >> But there's almost this consumerization of IT where there's expectations that things should be that easy. And especially, I think, at some senior levels, there's an expectation that they're trying to drive change down into organizations, and organizations are being resistant to it, but often it's just that things are still complex. >> Well, that's a good point, we're going to get into some other segments around that. That speaks directly to the automation, that speaks to the non-differentiated labor that's shifting to more labor activities, value activities. We're seeing that certainly in the Wikibon Data on our side, but great point. They want the ease of use, "Wait, it should be magic!" (chuckles) It should be like a Tesla, right, everyone wants the self-driving storage. Thanks for coming on, appreciate it. Kicking off day one, here at NetApp Insight. Check it out, they got great demos. Again, it should be easy, but a lot of work involved. If you're an enterprise, check out NetApp. It's the Cube, more coverage after this short break.

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live from San Franciso, it's theCUBE covering the Spark Summit 2017. Brought to you by Databricks. >> You are watching theCUBE at Spark Summit 2017 I'm David Goad here with my friend George Gilbert. How you doing, George? >> Good. >> All right, but the man of the hour is over to my left. I'd like to introduce a Databricks partner, and his name is Octavian Tanase, he's the SVP for Data ONTAP Software and Systems Group at NetApp. Octavian. >> Thank you for having us. >> All right well you have kind of an interesting background. We were chatting before, you started as an engineer, developer? >> Yeah, so I'm in an executive role right now but I have an interesting trajectory. Most people in a similar role come from a product management or sales background. I'm a former engineer and you know, somebody that has a passion for technology and now for customers and building interesting technologies. >> Okay, well if you have a passion for this technology then, I'd like to get your take on the market place a little bit. Tell us about the evolution of the mainstream and what you see changing. >> I think your data is the new currency of the 21st century. You have a desire and a thirst to get more out of your data. You have developers, you have analysts looking to build the next great application to mine your data for great business outcomes. NetApp as a data management company is very much interested in working with companies like Databricks and a bunch of hyperscalers to enable that type of solutions that either enable in place analytics or data lakes or you know, solutions that really enable developers and analysts to harness that part of the data. >> Mhmm. So ... Maybe walk us through what you've seen to date in terms of the mainstream use cases for big data and then tell us where you think they're going, but what walls need to be pushed back with the confection of technologies to get there. >> Originally what I've seen a lot of people investing in data lake technologies. Data lakes in a nutshell are massive containers that are simple to manage, scalable performant where you can aggregate a bunch of data sources and then you can run a map-produced type of workload to correlate that data, to harness that part of data, to draw conclusions. That was sort of the original track. Over time, I think there's a desire, given how dynamic and diverse that the data is, to build a lot of this analytics in-line, in real time. That's where companies like Databricks comes and that's where the cloud comes to enable both the agility as well as the type of real time behavior to getting those analytics. >> Now this is your first Spark Summit? >> Absolutely, happy to be here. >> Oh I know it's just the first day, but what have you learned so far? Any great questions from other participants? >> Well I think I see a lot of people innovating very fast. I see both established players paying attention, I see new companies looking to take advantage of this revolution that is happening, you know, around data and the data services and data analytics. >> Maybe tell us a little more what we were talking about before we started about how some customers who are very sensitive to their data want to keep it in their data centers or Equinix which still counts as pretty much theirs, but the compute is often the cloud somewhere. >> As you can imagine, we work with a lot of enterprise customers and one thing that I've learned in the last couple of years is that their thought process has evolved, you know, banks, large financial institutions. Two years ago, we're not even considering the cloud. And I see that now changing and I see them wanting to operate like a cloud provider, I see them want to take advantage of the flexibility and the agility of the cloud. I see them being more comfortable with the type of security capabilities that the cloud offers today. Security has been probably the most troublesome issue that folks have looked to overcome and then the gravity of the data. The reality is that the data, it's very distributed in dynamic, diverse in nature as I mentioned earlier. There's data created at the edge, data created in the data center, and people want to be able to process that data in real time regardless where data is without necessarily having to move it in some cases. Everybody's looking for data management solutions that enable mobility, you know, governments, management of that data and this enabling analytics, wherever that data is. >> You said some really interesting things in there which is, I mean I can see where the customer's data center extended to Equinix, where they want to bring the compute to the data because the data's heavier than the compute, but what about on the edge? Does it make sense to bring, is there enough data there to keep it there and bring compute down to the edge or do you co-locate compute persistently? And then how much of the compute is done at the edge? >> The reality is that you're probably going to see customers do both. There is more data created at the edge than in the history before. You'll see a lot of the data management companies invest in software-defined solutions that require a very small footprint, both from the storage point of view as well as compute. One of the advantages of technology like ONTAP is the investment that has been made to enable data reduction because your ability to store data at the edge is not really very good, so you want to have these capabilities to reduce the footprint by compression, by deduping, by compacting that data, and then making some smart decisions at the edge. Perhaps do some in-line, in-place analytics there and moving some of the data back into a central data center where more batch analytics can take place. >> But when you talk about that compaction, deduping, there was one more, but I think everyone gets the point. Are you talking about having a NetApp ONTAP device near the edge or on the edge? >> That device, it's actually software only. >> Ahh. >> You guys probably are aware of the fact that ONTAP now ships in three flavors, or three form factors. There is an engineered appliance, and we will likely do that for many years to come. But we also have ONTAP running in a virtual environment, either on KVM or Vmware as well as ONTAP running in the cloud. We've been running in the AWS cloud since 2014. We're also running in the Azure cloud. We are talking to other vendors to improve the ubiquity of software-defined ONTAP. >> Just to be really specific, we're told now that an edge gateway, not an edge device, but gateway, it's about two gigs in memory and two cores. Is that something a software-defined ONTAP would run on? >> Absolutely. You'll see us running on a variety of devices in the field with energy companies. You'll see ONTAP running in the tactical sphere, and we have projects that I can't really tell you about, but you'll find it broadly deployed on the edge. >> George: Okay. >> Yeah, let's talk a little bit about NetApp. What are some of the business outcomes you're looking for here? Do you have good executive sponsorship of these initiatives? >> We are very excited to be here. NetApp has been in the data management realm for a very, very long time. Yeah, analytics is a natural place, a great adjacency for us. We've been very fortunate to work with NoSQL type of companies. We've been very happy to collaborate with some of the leaders in analytics such as Databricks. We are entering the IOT space and enabling solutions that are really edge focused. So overall, this is a great fit for us and we're very excited to participate at the Summit. >> What do you think will be ... We've heard from Mata that sort of the state of the art in terms of, I hate to say the word, its fantasy, but like experimentation perhaps, is structured streaming, so continuous apps which are calling on deep learning models. Where would you play in that and what do you think ... What are the barriers there? What comes next? >> I think any complete analytics solution will need a bunch of services and some infrastructure that lends itself for that type of a workload, that type of a use case so you need, in some cases, very fast storage with super low latencies. In some cases you will need tremendous throughput. In some cases you will need that small footprint of an operating system running at the edge to enable some of that in-line processing. I think the market will evolve very fast. The solutions will evolve very fast and you will need the type of industry sponsorship by companies that really understand data management and that have made it their business for a very, very long time. I see that synergy that is being created between the innovation in analytics, the innovation that happens in the cloud, and the innovation that a company like NetApp does around a data fabric and around the type of services that are required to govern, to move, to secure, to protect that data in a very cost efficient way. >> This is kind of key, because people are struggling with having some sort of commonality in their architecture between the edge, on PRAM, and the cloud, but it could be at many different levels. What's your sweet spot for offering that? I mean, you talked about deduping and ... >> Compression and compaction. >> Compression and snapshots or whatever. Having that available in different form factors, what does that enable a customer to do, perhaps using different software on top? >> I'm glad that you asked. The reality is that we want to enable customers to consolidate both second and third platform applications on the ONTAP operating system. Customers will find not only flexibility, but consistency on the data management regardless of where data is. Whether it's in the cloud, near the cloud, or on the edge. We believe that we have the most flexible solution to enable data analytics, data management, that lends itself for all these use cases that enable next generation type of applications. >> Okay but if that predicated on having not just data ONTAP, but also a common application architecture on top? >> I think we wanted to enable a variety of solutions being based there. In some cases we're building glue. What do I mean by glue? It's for example, an NFS to HDFS connector that enable that translation from the native format for most of the data in a Hadoop or Spark type of EMR system. We're investing in enabling that flexibility and enabling that innovation that would happen by many of the companies that we see here on the floor today. >> George: Okay, that makes sense. >> We have just a minute to go here before the break. If you could talk to the entire Spark community, and you are right now on theCUBE, what's on your wish list? What do you wish people would do more of? Or if you could get help with something, what would it be? >> I think that my ask is continue to innovate. Push boundaries, and continue to be clever in partnering both with small vendors that are really innovating with tremendous space, as well as with established vendors that have really made the data management their business for many years and then are looking to participate in the ecosystem. >> Let's innovate together. >> All right, very good. >> Octavian, thank you so much for taking some time here out of your busy day to share with theCUBE, and we appreciate you being here >> Very good. >> Thank you so much. >> Pleasure >> Thanks, Octavian. >> That's right, you're watching theCUBE here at Spark Summit 2017. We'll see you in a few minutes with our next guest. (upbeat electronic music)