(techno music) >> Welcome back, everybody, Jeff Frick with theCUBE. We're having CUBE conversations in the Palo Alto studio. We're getting to the end of the conference season, so it's nice to take a break and do some interviews from the studio instead of from the road. We're excited to have our next guest. He's David Green, he's the CEO of Zero Stack. David, welcome. >> Thank you very much. >> Absolutely, great to have you here. So for folks who aren't familiar with Zero Stack, why don't you give them kind of the quick overview. >> Great, so Zero Stack's focus on building a new generation of private cloud infrastructure where IT can simplify their operations through automation, and at the same time, retain control of the environment. We're really trying to deliver that public cloudlike experience to users while giving IT the type of control they want to have. >> But you, just so I understand, so that, right, a lot of pressure, lot of benefits to public cloud, and everybody wants it in a private cloud, right? There's a lot of issues with public cloud that, you know, there's some data that can't be there, this or that, but there's a lot of attributes of public cloud that people just love, so how are you kind of squaring that circle? >> It's interesting, right? In the last 10 years that I've been working on cloud, this has been one of the recurring themes. It's one of the things that I think is so exciting about Zero Stack, right? You talk to a customer, you talk to an IT customer, and they're like, "I love the convenience of the public cloud idea, it's going to be so simple to operate, right? "But, I need to know where my data is. "I'm accountable for security, I'm accountable for cost. "I need to have control of the environment. "Why can't I have these two things together?" And that's what we've tried to merge together. So from an IT standpoint, it's still going to look and feel like that on-premises IT-managed infrastructure they're comfortable with. From a user perspective though, it's going to have that same sort of self service, on demand that they're used to getting from a public cloud. Think of going to a web application that looks and feels like Amazon, being able to pick the resources you want, but have those resources be coming from resources running within your data center. >> Right, right. >> And then be able to add to those resources the tools that you need to be productive in the environment, really very value added for the developer, again, in that infrastructure that's living in your environment. >> And to be clear, you're not replacing that existing infrastructure that's in my environment, you're really offering, I don't know, kind of a cloud virtualization overlay or ... >> The goal is to-- >> Restructures the UI? >> Yes. You use the servers you've got, the storage ya got, the networking you've got, pull those together into a pooled resource, again, back to the idea of a private cloud, pull those resources into a single set of resources that can be accessed for a variety of use cases to support different applications in the environment. >> So what's the impact, cause obviously, if there wasn't a benefit to doing it that way, people wouldn't be doing shadow IT and whipping out the credit card with Amazon. So, when you do this in an enterprise, what are some of the benefits they see? >> I mean, I think there's a couple. One is the radical simplification of operations. From an IT standpoint, running a private cloud is hard. You know, if you hook up your build of the online environments, which is kind of the most typical frame of reference that we see, it's expensive to set up. It's expensive to operate. It's complicated, it's hard to hire the people. We're trying to get away from the burden. That's the first driver we see for people. From a user standpoint, it's really about that speed. How does IT keep up with the demands of its users and move at that same pace, right? So trying to pull together those two sets of benefits into one is really the package that seems to drive our business. >> And that's really hard, right for IT cause IT's just be keeping their lights on, keeping everything running. Now it's a core piece, if not the really strategic piece, of the business. We talked a little bit before they turned the cameras on-- >> Right, right. >> About banking, right, all banking interfaces these days are electronic. There's nobody goes in to talk to the teller and giving them a check. >> Wait a sec, so go back up here. So, remember that IT today was fundamentally built around the back office. It was fundamentally built around stability. Remember the days when a change request was a physical piece of paper with 20 signatures on it, and you ran around the office, right? >> Every now then, not very often. (laughing) >> You were supposed to right? That was the mindset, right? I think in a traditional back-office set of applications, that worked great. But the problem is today, when the business is presenting itself to customers through software and trying to move at the speed of its customers, those old IT mechanisms built around stability just can't keep up. >> Right. >> So that's the gap that we're really trying to bridge with the Zero Stack solution. Preserve that knowledge set, preserve that control, preserve that data sovereignty that IT can bring, that on-premises infrastructures can bring, but at the same time, still operate at a pace and a speed that more dev ops organization is looking for. >> Right, because the pressure on IT >> It's only getting bigger. >> It's only getting more ... >> It's only getting more. >> If you're not using software to find automation, you're falling behind. So, I would imagine there's some second order impacts that have to come out of using a tool like Zero Stack in terms of utilization and those types of things that are probably some great opportunities. >> Essentially, we really want to be the heart. While the solution looks and feels more like they've got interfaces and management, the heart of the solution, in our mind really, is our machine learning capabilities. It's ability to take a set of information from the application layer, from the operations layer, from the infrastructure and from that start to make educated judgements as to how the infrastructure can best be utilized to support the business and to support the applications. So where should work loads be placed? How are we going to plan for capacity? What needs to happen next in the environment? How should we take corrective action? These are all the sorts of things that we can start to do. And again, what we're really trying to do is we're trying to automate some of the mundane tasks that held back IT and slowed down IT operations, and instead, let them focus on the areas where they can be of more value consulting with the business, helping to move things forward, helping to address higher order questions. >> Right, because really that's another huge opportunity for cost savings or efficiency for the customer, right? Because the traditional methods were not very efficient, and you had, since they weren't efficient, you had to have a lot of overhead, and you had to, you know, pre-order stuff, and you couldn't flex, so you're now, with your automation and machine learning, helping to better utilize those resources on just the pure infrastructure spending, right? >> Exactly, exactly. And that gives you part of the cost benefit that we see with the Zero Stack solution. By getting better utilization of the infrastructure that you have, we'll able to have a more economical solution going forward. We have customers who are getting a 10X return on their investment by using the Zero Stack solution over other cloud solutions they've looked at, just by getting better intelligence and better automation and better operation clarity about what they're doing. >> So then do you partner then with HP and a lot of the infrastructure providers who talk a lot about hybrid cloud cause clearly, they're invested in keeping a big piece of the cloud inside their walls. >> So in our model, we view ourselves as a software company. So we're going to add that Zero Stack software solution on top of your infrastructure of choice. And so, that could be Dell, that could be HP, that could be Lenovo, ya know, all the kind of leading hardware vendors have been certified to work with our product. We're going to add our software on top to create their cloud infrastructure. Then we're going to add our maturing applications, our user self-service applications on top of that, and that's going to give you the top-to-bottom full stack solution. And that full stack's really important because if you want to be able to take automated actions, you want to be able to optimize infrastructure, you've got to be able to not only interface with the users and meet their demands, but also translate those demands down to actions you're taking on the infrastructure. So we're going to be able to do that full stack top to bottom. >> So just a little bit more background on the company. How big are you, how long you been around, how many people, funding? >> Well, we're a start-up here based in Silica Valley, Mountain View, California. We're a Series B company. We're proud to have our first set of customers working with us right now, actively exercising the products, fantastic big enterprise projects. I'm looking forward to coming back and telling you about it as those finish up. But really, all from the theme of people who are unsatisfied with the solutions they've had available to them in the past and trying to figure out how they're going to move forward with a better, more flexible, easier to operate cloud solution. >> All right, well, David, we look forward to watching the progress and getting an update in a few months. >> Look forward to it. >> All right, David, thanks for taking a few minutes out of your day. I'm Jeff Frick, he's David Greene. You're watching theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (techno music)

(light music) >> Welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're having a CUBE Conversations at our Palo Alto studio, getting off the road, getting ready for the holidays. A little bit of break in the conference action, and we're excited to have our next guest, David Greene. He is the CEO of ZeroStack. David, great to see you. >> Thank you. Good to be here, Jeff. >> Again, for those who aren't that familiar with the company, give us a quick and dirty on ZeroStack. >> ZeroStack is a software company based here in Mountain View. We're building a new kind of private cloud infrastructure. The idea is to use automation to simplify operations while still keeping IT in control of that infrastructure. We're really trying to deliver what a public cloud-like experience to users while keeping IT in charge and in control. >> It's funny. your website, I've been doing my background work, self-driving private clouds like the autonomous private cloud. >> That's kind of where we're trying to get to, right? The idea is that too much of the work that IT has to do is bogged down in day-to-day administrative task and manual operations and working with boxes. Instead, we can start to bring automation and machine learning and intelligence there, IT can move forward on the things that are more important and move faster more importantly and support the rest of the business. >> And Andy Jassy might argue with me, but I don't think he would necessarily, but part of the genesis of public cloud was this friction between the dev and the ops because I'm on the hook, I have to develop a new application, I don't have time to wait for the IT guy to provision me a new box, I don't exactly know what kind of box is that. Various questions, you know? >> It's a ticket you submit, and then in two weeks, we'll get back to you, >> Then the operating system Then you got to order it from Michael Bell and then it's coming in the mail. So really it's that tension that probably created that demand for a quickly provision easy to provision, swipe my credit card and it just appears on my desktop. So that's the piece of cloud you are trying to emulate. >> Exactly, I think that's a good analogy right, it's interesting when you go back to the origin of Dev Ops, the idea was that the developers would take care of operations as part of building the application, as part of the application's life cycle. >> Right. In reality, I have yet to meet an application developer who has any any interest in operations. So really, Dev Ops today is about how does the IT organization, better support the development organization and the application teams. In context, keep in mind that every organization today is becoming a software company because every customer interaction, every business process, every service delivery is somehow being instantiated in a piece of software that the organization is rolling out to them, right? So when the business is driven by software, the developers need to move at the speed of the business, now how does IT keep up? And that's where this idea of IT being able to provide the kind of that experience that you talked about, the swipe and go, becomes so critical. >> But at the same time for all the reasons that have been well documented, there's just certain stuff that's not appropriate for a public cloud, but what we are talking about has nothing to do with the appropriateness of whether it is or isn't. It's really trying to deliver the benefits of that type of a working model to whatever your infrastructure is, and in your case it's private cloud. It's my own data, >> Exactly. It's my own infrastructure. >> Exactly. >> I think it's important to acknowledge that there have been people in the industry who have said that the whole world was going to become apart of a cloud, right? And I think our view is that that's not that case, and as you said, for a variety of good reasons. There are some really important external factors in the world right now that say that's not the case. As you start to see the current political climate, the current geopolitical climate, you got more and more barriers going up around the world that says my data shall be mine, shall remain in my country, it's not going anywhere else. Every time something rash and unexpected happens I have another set of customers in some European countries saying that my data will never leave this country. So that's one external factor that says you got to keep control of your data and your work code, right? There's also a set of internal factors that says people are discovering that as is always the case, it's much more expensive over time to rent than to own. You have houses and you have hotels. You don't live in a hotel, you use a hotel when you need it, you go live in your house. As public cloud is spreading out more mature, people are realizing that there's a need to bring that home to better control the cost around that. I think there's also a human dimension to this too, which is that you have an entire ecosystem of IT professionals with deep expertise, deep knowledge that is only relevant and only applicable in a world that still has a notion of on premise's private cloud infrastructure. And you can be sure that those people are going to do their best to make sure that their livelihood, their careers, that it all stays relevant. We see all those dimensions playing out as kind of motivators for organizations to want a private cloud. The flip side's been, it's typically been hard. And I would argue that the appeal of public clouds and, the users like it, but it's easy. So by trying to bring what we do, with that self service view and add an ease of operations around it, now IT can participate fully in this ecosystem. >> Now it's interesting, obviously the incumbents aren't not just taking this lying down. All these big infrastructure providers like, Dell EMC and HP have been pitching hybrid cloud. They accept that some stuff is going to be in the public cloud, so they're also trying to put in place to make their infrastructure more cloud like. So what are you guys doing differently than say, what might be coming down the line from Dell EMC, or coming down the line from HP, in terms of your customers point of view? What I think essentially is that we're going to work with a Dell EMC or a HP or a Lenovo, whoever, as part of that infrastructure right. Every cloud at the end of the day needs a set of computer resources, a set of storage resources, a set of networking resources, and those companies you've listed make excellent products in those areas, and we are going to use those to apply our software topfit. Where we see the bigger gaps around past cloud solutions has been around on the software layer. So look at some of the generations that have existed. You have VMWare, which is kind of the point of reference. A VMWare cloud is complicated, it's multiple products that are acquired over time, different architectures, different code bases, they don't integrate together. Hard to hire people, they're expensive, they're hard to keep, those challenges. What have we tried to do to make them better? You've had an open source alternative that came with OpenStack, okay? Better software, lower cost software, but even more difficult to operate. At least that's the feedback we get from our customers. I love the idea of Openstack, it's too hard to keep it running. You got a solution, like Nutanix that says, I'm going to restrict your options, by restricting your options to just my world, I'm going to make it simple to operate. But people don't want that restrictions, people still want access, particularly developers want access to a very rich set of tools that are available out there, that are only available in kind of more of an open world. And then of course you have ease of operations that the public hot guys have done. What we've tried to do is to take that same excellent base of infrastructure that, The HP's, and the Dell's, and the Lenovo's and whoever else provide, take that great foundation, then add software on to it that says, let's try and drive for the better software stack, like you would've got with OpenStack, let's try for software to find infrastructure like you would've gotten with Nutanix, let's try for your own automated operations, like you would've got from a public cloud, let's wrap machine learning around it to make sure we are continuously monitoring the behavior of this cloud such that it can more effectively what is required of it. >> So what is an engagement look like with a customer? Because obviously they got this infrastructure, they want to get more cloud like in the deployment of that, the accessibility really. Do they carve out a piece, is it a greenfield project? Is it some percentage of allocation of the infrastructure, how do they go about it? Because clearly, stuff's up, and it's running, there's still the IT piece of keeping the lights on. How do they carve it out, kind of what is there, I don't want to say go to market, but their internal project plan to start to bring this type of capability in-house? >> It can take a variety of us. The driver of it typically is Dev Ops, right? There's typically is a pain point that where IT isn't keeping up with it's application outbursts. That's usually the catalyst. >> And what's the screaming, bloody, I need help right now >> The screaming bloody I need help right now is, if I don't get my developers working any more quickly they are all going to Amazon. >> They just go, right. And they aren't allowed to do that, and I'm out of a job. >> I'm trying to stop the flame. >> I'm trying to stop this, stop that knee jerk reaction that says Amazon is the answer. But, I can't, because my current infrastructure is too hard and I can't keep up with it. So, that's simply the catalyst on how we bridge that gap. What we'll see, kind of probably two huge cases, to the examples that you gave, now one in maybe, in the context of a new application being deployed, I'm going to apply a new application. It is a cloud based application that needs a more flexible infrastructure. I don't want to put it on the stuff I have which doesn't work. Help me set up a new environment, that's a new use case. Similar, we also see, the I have a set of applications running and ready, the infrastructure is on, it works, but it's expensive, it's cumbersome, it's complicated, let me move some of those applications that is your stack as a a better place in which to live and operate and be managed. And we are operating both those models. In some cases, new infrastructure, in some cases using what our customers have. >> You've mentioned it a few times, the machine learning piece, a really important piece, not only the easy access and the easy interface with the infrastructure, but now you got a different level of intelligence around the use of that. So I wonder, are you seeing, do you guys flag them like, you not only have the cloud attributes of vis-a-vis but now you need a cloud attribute of big explosion, you better get some PO's in, with Michael and Meg. >> David: Don't call her Meg anymore. >> Don't call her Meg. Antonio, we love Antonio. >> I think that is the answer, right? So machine learning, that's a great use case for machine learning in a cloud, that says hey, given your current usage trends, this is when your resources are going to be consumed, let us help you get more. But machine learning is also helpful in how to get the most out of your infrastructure. Here are the resources the people have said they needed, versus what they're actually using. How do we better match for people actually using, to what's available and what's on demand. And over time you start to watch the behaviors in the system, these are the patterns we see advance. The whole idea here is that there's too many tasks that IT has had to do manually. And we want to be able to automate those tasks. We are not trying to eliminate jobs with automation, we are trying to eliminate tasks with automation. And machine learning is really the key that allows us to do that intelligently. >> It's funny this whole jobs discussion because on one hand all you hear about is the machines are taking all of our jobs, then you just go to the newspaper, whatever's your favorite, LinkedIn, and there's no shortage of jobs, right, there's plenty of IT jobs so, they aren't eliminating jobs, they're shifting jobs. They're looking for truck drivers still, even though we are going to wipe out all the truck drivers in a couple years. >> That's a different discussion. >> That's a whole different level of automation. But it is interesting, and it is about getting people to do higher order work and as you said, IT is no longer about keeping the lights on. It is the business, it's not support. >> It's about how do we grow with the business, how do we flex with the business, what's the right policy to support the business? That's not about configuring network addresses. Let the machines do that, let the cloud do that. Let's figure out what our strategy should be for connecting with our users and how IT's can handle that. >> So I'm curious, so you've had some deployment, you've got some early customers, kind of unexpected results, or second order impacts that you didn't necessarily expect or weren't that obvious that customers are starting to utilize by taking this approach to their hardware? >> David: Well, there's a couple of things. One is, part of what we do is we provide this idea of a workbench, we call the Dev Ops workbench, which takes a set of leading Dev Ops tools, you know, Jenkins, Ansible, Dooptroop, make your choice, and makes those available in one click, down to the users. What we've seen is people go very far, in terms of linking together those tools to fully automate their deployment. So being able to literally, software drive, software provisions the infrastructure, configures the application, deploys the application, spins it up, gets it going, I have service fires actually allowing users to go to a web portal, use a credit card, to order an application they want to use, which then creates the DM, installs the application, runs the application, and makes it available to users. So people just running with this idea of fully automated operations this way. I think the second thing is -- >> Literally IT guys are loving that, making them heroes. >> For a very large pharmaceutical company, an IT guy sat in the room with his Dev Ops peer, and said, hey, the more he can do without me, the better. And that's what we are trying to do. The second thing that's been, there's quite a few companies, that just said they're tired. You've got people that's been struggling with these cloud infrastructure requests for years, and at this point, they're like, you know what, I don't want to deal with it. We've had quite a bit of demand, and some of our big projects right now are actually in partnership with cloud service providers, with manage service providers who have been asked as a trusted advisor by their customers to come and say, build the next cloud for me. As an enterprise, I'm going to focus on the software, I'm going to focus on the applications, I'm going to focus on kind of managing my resources, you run it. And again, I think that opens up a new set of possibilities, in terms of how IT can evolve, and where they can focus going forward. >> That's a really interesting kind of under reported subset of probably new infrastructure providers, where it is, it's kind of a private cloud managed by a service provider. So I get the benefits of it, but I'm not having to run it. It's still undifferentiated heavy lifting, in terms of how my core business. >> Yes, and to add to that, all those things, and it's with someone you trust. Most of the time we see, is this is a long trusted relationship. If you're going to go to the cloud and you're not going to run it, you want to be able to look someone in the eye, and know they're taking care of your data, and they're securing your information, and they're taking care of your workloads, and that you can count on that partnership that you have. >> Well, I definitely think it supports the, it's a multi cloud world, right. >> It's a multi cloud world, yes. >> But the cloud benefits are still there. It's about being agile, it's about being fast, and like you said, it's about freeing up the Dev's to do dev, and not to do ops. >> Exactly. Let Ops do ops, and do it better, and faster, and easier than ever before. Let the developers focus on applications. >> Alright, David thanks for taking a few minutes to tell us all about ZeroStack, appreciate it. He's David, I'm Jeff, you're watching TheCUBE. We're in our Palo Alto studios for a Cube Conversation, we will see you next time. Thanks for watching. (light music)