(energetic technological music) >> Live from Atlanta, Georgia, it's theCUBE covering Citrix Synergy Atlanta 2019 brought to you by Citrix. >> Welcome back to theCUBE. Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend day two of theCUBE's coverage of Citrix Synergy 2019. We're in Atlanta, Georgia welcoming back one of our CUBE alumni, Lee Doyle, Principal Analyst at Doyle Research. Lee, it's great to have you back on theCUBE. >> Thanks, for having me. >> So we were chatting away all day yesterday with Citrix execs and analysts. We talked to one of their customers from the Miami Marlins. Excited about day two today. We talked a lot about some of the key tenets that Citrix addressed yesterday: digital workspace, the intelligent experience, analytics, security. We want to talk about networking with you. I was looking at a stat the other day that said over 80% of businesses believe the ability to migrate apps to the cloud is hindered by network infrastructure complexity. Talk to us about that and what Citrix is doing to help reduce that complexity. >> Sure. So we're now in an environment where data is everywhere, employees are everywhere, partners are everywhere, data is flowing. You're going to be using in-house applications. You're using SaaS-based applications. You're using applications on AWS or Azure or Google, and there's no good control of that information, but there also isn't a good way necessarily to deliver the appropriate quality of user experience or quality of service that those applications need. So the network, that's where the network sits. It's handling all the traffic. It sees the traffic. It can help with security. So that's why the network becomes so important here. >> So, Lee, SD-WAN has come so far. I remember back when I managed networks and trying to come up with policy-based routing to send voice traffic one way, send, you know, FTP traffic another way, and now we have a robust market. I thought the market would collapse. It's 20 plus, last time I looked, 20 plus significant SD-WAN solutions out in the market. Where is Citrix and the customer mindsets when it comes to SD-WAN? >> Right. So I'll start with SD-WAN and the broad picture which is, you know, SD-WAN is a great technology at the right place, at the right time. It's the example of SDN, broadly, that's had very good adoption. And it solves a real problem, which is that you need to link the user and the application with each other. And that application can be in a variety of places. So you're not, no longer just simply going from the branch via MPLS to the data center. Great, now you're going to Amazon. Now you're going to Salesforce. Now you're going to Microsoft. And the idea of having a hybrid WAN with internet connections, MPLS, 4G LTE, cable, like, whatever you want. So SD-WAN technology sits at that nexus and providing the intelligence and the management and the ease of use to enable the remote workforce in the remote branches. >> So, can you go on a really interesting combination? Identity, Citrix is really into identity management. SD-WAN. What's possible? Talk to us about the "what's possible" when you can tie identity to your network. >> Right. Yeah, so Citrix is a solid SD-WAN supplier. They're able to identify the traffic. They have partnerships with all the major cloud guys. And, one of the critical aspects of SD-WAN is how you tie in the security aspect. So you have network security and partnerships, maybe with a Palo Alto or Zscaler or some other folks, but then you also have the identity because there is no fixed perimeter anymore, right? >> Right. There is no more four walls. >> So, the bad, the bad guys can get access at any different point. So authentication and understanding, you know, that identity is a critical aspect. And Citrix has some excellent partnerships and programs to help that out. >> Especially, >> So, >> I'm sorry. Go ahead. >> Go ahead. >> Especially when you think of Office 365 and these services where, you know, when I think of Office 365 I think about my consumer version of Office 365. I can share data with anyone in the organization. I can access it from anywhere in the world. Right before we started recording, you know, we talked a little bit about the ability of Citrix, with the partnership with Microsoft and Office 365, to improve access to Office 365. When we think about that from a consumer perspective that kind of, you know, it doesn't, it kind of doesn't register. "Wait, I need to. When I use Office 365 it just works." >> Right. >> What are some of the challenges enterprises are facing as they adopt solutions like O 6, O365 and SaaS in general? >> Right. So, you've got the quality of experience, quality of service issue, right? Making sure that the remote user or remote office is hitting the right path on the internet to the right on-ramp, is sort of one aspect of it, right? >> Right. >> So identify that as 0365, get me to the right on-ramp, but have a nice, you know, seamless, quick experience. The other is, from a security standpoint, understanding that, you know, who the user is. What data are they accessing? What data are they sending around? Is that part of the normal behavior or is that something that looks a little strange and maybe we should flag that. I mean, clearly, people do do a lot of sensitive things on Office 365. >> When you're out in the field, Lee, talking with customers, you have to transform digitally. There's so many steps involved in that. We, you know, we talk about cultural transformation and security transformation. Network transformation. How do you advise, especially like, we'll say, legacy organizations. Maybe like a peer of Citrix's whose been around for decades. How do you advise them to start that network transformation process so that they can deliver, for example, you know, facilitate collaboration via 0365 globally, what is that process like to transform a network? >> Right. It's obviously very complex and highly dependent on where you are and where you're starting, but there's no question that these organization are not going to throw the network that they have today. They've got switches and routers, wifi, and applications over controllers and all sorts of different things. So, one of the reasons why SD-WAN has been successful is it's able to slide into the network relatively seamlessly as an overlay. So you don't have to rip and replace. And then, gradually, as you bring up new sites or small locations or temporary sites, you may find that the actual router isn't as important over time. And then you can start to evolve that to a more simplified branch network operation. Instead of having five different boxes at a given branch you can move to two or three and, you know, ultimately I think we're going to a more unified SD branch type solution, but that might be a few years out still. >> So, and as we talk, you know, kind of the few years out, one of the great benefits, productivity wise, from using the SaaS services, destroying the walls, so to speak, the perimeter, is that we can get frictionless transactions. The, Citrix is, you know, touting the employee experience. If I need to share a document with you that shouldn't there shouldn't be a ton of friction in that. But in that comes the, the scare of employees. We've been talking all week, or both days, about employees are the weak link in security. If I can't trust my employee to not have their post-it note with the password on their, on their monitor then all the security in the world can't, won't help. How is Citrix making security easier and frictionless so that, one, we're ensuring all Dr. Albright talked about, "We need to be able to trust who we're talking to." >> Right. >> So, at the beginning we need to be able to trust who we're talking to is actually who we intend to talk to. How is Citrix going about enabling that? >> Right. So, it goes back to, you know, identity and end-point management. Is that the device that we expect it to be? Is it the person that we expect it to be? Are they doing the things that they normally do, right? And then, you have the network can analyze, "Well, is that a strange traffic? Is there something being inserted? Is there malware? Is there an attack?" So you have, security can not only degrade the performance of the network, but it also can be used to take out data that you don't want to have leaving the premises as it were. So, >> Or even if the data hasn't been opened and peeked at. >> Right. >> So, you know, the SSL security keys that when it left the premises the same as the when it was received on the other end. Are those things still in tact? >> Right. Very complex, though. But, it's not a, >> Yeah. >> Now, we haven't solved the security problem yet. But, Citrix is certainly making some good headway. >> I wanted to get your opinion, speaking of Citrix and headway. As I mentioned, 30-year-old company, maybe they consider themselves 30-years-young. I noticed last year at Synergy 2018 rebranding, messaging changes, positioning. One of the first things David Henshall showed the audience yesterday in his keynote was a big, great eye chart that just showed how much they've been focused on delivering. And they've delivered new solutions faster than they ever have before. We're hearing now about, they've really elevated their technologies to not be for power users, but for the general user which is most of us. I'd love to get your, your perspective on, not just the last year of Citrix's evolution, but over the last few years and how you think their, where they are now, is a competitive advantage to their business. >> Right. So, I focus mostly on the networking side of what Citrix is doing. And they've rebranded the networking. They've made some very significant enhancements both in SD-WAN and the ADC and intelligent traffic management. And I think the next evolution for Citrix is really integrating these solutions together and, you know, moving even to, to easier to consume bundles. They, what they've done in the last, in this cycle of announcement is given a lot of different options in terms of ways to consume. You can consume it on the major cloud platforms. You can consume it as a box. You can consume it as a license or as a usage-based. Over time I'm interested to see how Citrix migrates to more network-as-a-service offerings which would make it even easier to consume. And, you know, as a workspace user you, that, those tools might be in the background. You might not even know that they exist. And in some cases that's already here today, but there's a lot more that the industry and Citrix can do there. >> Do they have the foundation to eventually get to network-as-a-service? Maybe the right ecosystem of partners to do that, in your opinion? >> Yeah. I mean, I think that's the, that's where they're headed and I think they have some good technology, and good partners, and obviously always more work to do. But, >> So as you talk to combine Citrix and your own customers, I would like to get some insights. That, we, we've heard several times over the past couple days, me and Lisa, that there's five generations of workforce in the workforce. Which also means there's five generations of leadership. So when I saw the stat in yesterday's show, when all the changes that happened in a year at Citrix, one part of me was like, "Oh, that's great. That's the consumerization of IT, enterprise IT." Then another part of me was like, "Whoa, that's a lot of change." You know, if I set up a, if I spent a year and a half, two years deploying a network, I want that network to be very stable for the next five to seven years. How have customers embraced the consumerization, or the pace of change inside of Citrix and in the industry as well? >> Sure. So, I think the network issue a little bit separate because it's not at really consumerization of the network, right? >> Right. >> And so that's still, you know, you still need network professionals and, that being said, you know, Citrix SD-WAN is very easy to install and, you know, has good operational tools and, you know, improved management. So you're network management is now back in vogue and making it, you know, making life easier for IT administrators. You know, the whole consumerization, I mean, that's just like there's so many tools and so many channels. And, you know, the the issue of being overwhelmed by the seven different ways that we might communicate with each other is a very real, you know, challenge. And I'm glad to see Citrix, you know, addressing that because each generation or types of will have their own favorite, you know, ways to go about it. >> Oh, yes. Even, you can think about it in your family. Somebody might be an email person. Somebody might be a text person. Somebody might be a WhatsApp person. It's hard enough to manage, to try to meet everybody. So somebody might be a phone person? >> I know, like, real-time >> Who talks on the phone? Voicemail? >> Real-time communication. >> Right. Creepy. But in terms of, you're saying you know that we talked about consumerization, and not consumerization of the network. But those network expert that you talked about are influenced as consumers at home. And we all as consumers have these expectations of everything on-demand. I want to be able to use the tools that I'm most familiar with to become the most productive. So, how are the network engineers and their own consent of consumerization potentially going to impact consumerization of the network? >> Right. I mean I really look at the, you know, the two things of, you know, is the network, is my application available and is it responsive, right? Obviously the first one's a deal breaker. The second one is incredibly frustrating. And then of course the third area from an IT or SecOps standpoint is, you know, is it secure? Right? And then, you know, from an IT or network professional I need to enable those things so give me more tools. So, I mean I think that the buzzwords of, you know, machine learning and artificial intelligence as applied to networking are still a little early for that. But there are, you know, Citrix is using, you know, its vast intelligence that it gathers through its traffic management system to to look at, you know, where where to best route the traffic. It's deploying new tools to make things easier to deploy and easier to troubleshoot. So anything that the industry and Citrix can do there makes the life easier for the network guy and the IT guys. >> Making life easier. I think that's what we all want, right? >> Right. >> Well, Lee, thank you so much for coming back to theCUBE and talking with Keith and me at Citrix Synergy. We appreciate your time. >> Thanks. >> Our pleasure. For Keith Townsend, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live from Atlanta, Georgia, Citrix Synergy 2019. Thanks for watching. (energetic technological music)

>> Live from Boston, Massachusetts, it's The Cube covering OpenStack Summit 2017. Brought to you by the OpenStack Foundation, Red Hat, and additional ecosystems support. >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman joined by my cohost this week, John Troyer, here at the OpenStack Summit in Boston, Massachusetts. Happy to welcome back to the program, Lee Doyle, who is Principal Analyst with Doyle Research. Lee, nice to see you. >> Nice to see you. Thanks for having me. >> Alright, so networking's your main space. >> Lee: Absolutely >> We've talked about networking for a bunch of years here at the show. Last year: telecommunication, NFV. This year, it seem like half the people on the main stage worked for, you know, some big Telco, and NFV, buzz on the edge. Before we get into some of the initial pieces, what's your take on the OpenStack community, in general, and the show? We're gettin' towards the end so what's your take been this week? >> Always great to have the show in Boston, my hometown. OpenStack and telecom have been going together hand in hand since the beginning of OpenStack, really, and a lot of contributions and use to the big service providers who are here, AT&T, Verizon, some others. So OpenStack's really becoming a good platform for their NFV and virtualization modernization efforts. >> Before we get into some of the cool, new stuff. Core networking, I mean, Neutron's one of those things we've been banging on for years. It seems like it's matured to a bit, But always the one, I mean, networking's never done, right? We're always cranking on it, doing new things. What do you hear about the stability? What the community hears? Is the networking thriving good? Any feedback you've had. >> Sure, no, it was good question and always a question that I ask folks. I think we've seen significant maturity in Neutron. It's stable, it performs, it does a lot of things we expect networks to do, but there still are third party network solutions. If you look at Big Switch or Cumulus or others, say, you don't want to use Neutron or you want to enhance it, feel free to work with us to provide even better networking. >> In a broad trend, companies you mentioned, they're software companies. >> Lee: Absolutely. >> Networking is like boxes and cabling and things like that. How is that software-eating-the-world stack up when it comes to the network space? >> I think the majority of the value in networking, as in IT, is in software, right? The majority of the revenue is in boxes, which are hardware and software integrated. So, from a technology standpoint, it's very software driven. From a market standpoint, it's still box driven. We're in between those two and that's what makes this a very interesting point in time. >> Maybe you could tease apart for us a little bit, for people on the enterprise side, they're used to hearing the letters SDN, right? >> Lee: Right. >> Here, if you're talking to telecom NFV, slightly different takes on some similar problems about service, management, and delivery. >> Lee: Right. >> In OpenStack, are the same bits, is Neutron used by the enterprise for SDN in the same way it's used at the network core by the service providers or are these really two different planes that are developing? >> Right and it's a bit of a complex question. At Doyle Research, what I've done to simplify, is talking about software based networking. So that includes SDN, that includes NFV. Those things overlap and we'll get very hung up, like, what does SDN mean? It's separation control and data plane. What does network function virtualization mean? What's an Etsy telecom standard for taking boxes in the telecom network and turning them into software? So, I try to get away from that and move towards: ok, what is it we're trying to accomplish? Well, with OpenStack, we're trying to deliver networking. It's going to be in software. There still might be, and probably is, some form of Ethernet switch or other box that's moving the bits, right? So, the way I think about it is some of the SDN products that I mentioned, like Cumulus or Big Switch, would be enhancements to something that's a core function of OpenStack, which I wouldn't traditionally call SDN, but that's my view. >> Lee, speak to us, what have you heard about Edge? It was one of those things we heard, the buzz coming in. There's a couple different definitions. The telecommunication people have a very, you know: that's the edge of our network. When I talked to enterprise people, it's IoT and sensors. So what are you hearing about Edge? How's network play across all those? >> Right, well, Edge is very much how you define it or which environment you're talking about, right? Traditionally, in the telecom world, you've got your core of your network and you've got your edge of the network and how that's defined in between because you have network capabilities all throughout the environment. SD-WAN is by far been the hottest technology, not just in terms of buzz, but in terms of actual deployment both in enterprise and service provider. In the service provider space, that sort of blurs into what the vCPE offerings are. So you hear: Verizon, Telefonica just made an announcement, went with Nuage on that. So you can go through all the major service providers. Either they're incorporating SD-WAN functionality into their VCP or they're announcing SD-WAN functionality separately. >> Is there any connection between the SD-WAN stuff and OpenStack I hadn't heard or talked about. Of course, hot technology. We covered Riverbed's announcements. Last year, Viptela, been on The Cube a number of times, just acquired by Cisco. Where do you see SDN playing out? Is this the year that it just becomes a feature? Does it still stay as a distinct market segment? >> On the OpenStack question. OpenStack's traditionally sort of a cloud-based, the bigger data center thing. There are elements you can use and leverage from OpenStack at the edge. In terms of SD-WAN, we're at the hockey-stick phase. The market's going straight up, starting to see wide-scale deployments across a large number of verticals. Usually, the verticals that have lots of branches. So you look at financial services, you look at retail, but you can extend to government, and healthcare, and anywhere where you're trying to do a lot of connectivity between distributed environments. And the real change is that, previously, you do a hub-and-spoke network. You get MPLS, you take the information from the branch and you move it to your corporate data center or data centers. Well now, cloud, SaaS. The information doesn't need to go to the data center. In fact, if it goes to the data center, you add a lot of latency. So SD-WAN is adding the intelligence, the traffic-steering, the ability to manage multiple networks and to move away from MPLS and towards more cost-effective internet connectivity. So, there's still 25. Viptela was the biggest company taken out recently but there's still 24 other solutions and probably more being announced over the next six months. >> Stu: Wow, 24, huh? >> At least, yeah. >> I'm curious, we talk about hybrid-cloud and multi-cloud and networking's one of the things that sort of tie all of that together. How do thing like Kubernetes, and the public-to-private piece, how's that shaking out in the network space? >> Well, networks have to support multi-cloud environments. They need to support what's happening privately, publicly, VMware, Red Hat, OpenStack obviously, and soon to be containers. Each of those are little bit different. So can you have a network solution that spans all of that? One of the things that VMware is very public about talking about, at this show, is their ability to do the hybrid public-private. Red Hat talks about that and I spent a lot of time last week on that topic as well. >> As you're talking with network engineers, both in service providers and out at the enterprise. We've talked about all this change, we've hyped the cloud, we're now switching from a hardware-centric model to a more software defined, literally. Are you seeing new skillsets needed for these network engineers? Automation, you know, does the job change as we go forward? >> Absolutely, it changes. When you look at a traditional CCIE, which is Cisco certified, that's about Cisco APIs, Cisco boxes, in a world where there's a lot of other software elements and you've got to tie to different orchestration, different management, public-private cloud. There absolutely is different skillsets and there needs to be an evolution and it's on of the challenges of the networking industry because there simply aren't enough people who are familiar with building the new style, software-driven networks as there need to be. >> John: With all this exhilaration and change, how are you seeing people say at the management layer, the management layer of people, the CxO layer, how are they dealing with all this change? You know, new technologies, emerging technologies. Things are not slowing down. >> No and so AT&T has a large-scale, public training program that tries to get its people skilled up to the new technologies. I know a lot of the other Telcos, who have been less public about it, are doing the same. If you go to large network user groups like ONUG, they're talking about new skillsets and how to train there. There's also the organizations. Do you blend compute, storage, application, and networking folks all in the same team. And I know you guys have talked about that previously. How quickly do organizations do that or do they remain relatively traditional. The CIOs are thinking about that, they're reorganizing, but it's not going to be just snap your fingers and hey, everyone's ready for the new software-driven world. >> Yeah, it's a fascinating thing, of course. Networking industry tends to move a little-bit slow. Especially enterprise and we've been talking about fast and agile for a lot of things but that does not characterize that. That being said, feels like things do move faster. What's the general attitude you hear from customers? Are they still reticent to move forward? Others slow to move those processes? You kind of hear, things like security, tend to realize I need to update more, I need to move forward. What do you hear when you're talking to customers, today versus, lets say, only five years ago? >> Sure, we're five years in on NFV and Etsy and I think we're making significant progress. You hear a lot about us at the shows where the Telcos are wanting NFV, but it's still in the initial phases. We've been talking about SDN and the enterprise for about the same amount of time and, you know, mainstream enterprises. The hyper-scale guys, you know: Google, Amazon, Facebook. Yeah, they're already there and they're very innovative and people are following their example and leveraging that. But I just think we're still early in the truly software-driven networking game. >> One of the questions I always have is: What size company you are and what capability do you have? What do you do internally? Versus, do you just adopt a platform that's going to do all that stuff for you? You and I talked about this years ago about network-fabric type of topologies, all the different pieces that went out. There's certain sized organizations, you're going to just go to someone else that can do that. I hear some pieces, Kubernetes might be the same kind of things. Do you see that? People just saying it's not outsourcing anymore, but I'm going to be more strategic, focus on my business, my applications, and let somebody else handle the underlying stuff. >> If IT, or the network, or branch operations is not central to what you do, I think outsourcing makes perfect sense. And that may be outsourcing it to a reseller, or someone to manage it for you, it may still be on-prem. But more and more the workloads are going to the clouds. >> And the reason I move away from outsourcing, the old outsourcing was: my mess for less and this is a more strategic: what piece of the stack do I own or what do I run versus someone else. It's not: I told you this is the exact configuration in something you run. It's: I'm buying x-bandwidth, x-performance, things like that and it's something that's updated a little more frequently. They manage that piece and it's further down the stack than I care to look at. >> Lee: Sure, there's new, managed service providers who look at your WAN and networks, so that comes into play. The leading Telcos would certainly want to play a role here beyond just providing the pipe. They want to take care of your networking challenges for you. So there's a lot of new options for folks who don't want to build and buy and sweat there. >> Do you see a difference between what's going on inside the U.S. and then in the rest of the world in terms of the Telcos, and services they're rolling out, ambitions, and where they want to play? >> There are clearly geographic differences when you get into telecom but it's not as simple as saying: x-geography is doing. You almost have to go operator by operator, there. >> Anything that you've seen here at the show. This is your first summit. You've been following, obviously, the space for a very long time. Anything you've seen here, either sessions, or vendors, or users doing interesting things, or anything that's excited you recently in areas that you're following and are interested? >> Yeah, the passion here for OpenStack is undeniable. You've got a lot of people who are committed to the community, they're aware of the networking challenges, and the significant strides we've made with OpenStack networking, but also where we need to go in the future. So, it's exciting to be here and fun to see everyone. >> Last thing I want to ask, Lee. Is there anything that, advice you want to give the community? Things that you heard of from users or you observed where we should mature over the next iteration of the solution set? >> I think, as a technology-driven community, it's always incumbent on the community to really explain the business benefits and talk about how this technology is really solving real-world problems. And it is, but it's just making that translation, sometimes, is challenging. >> Alright, Lee Doyle, great to catch up with you and, like yourself, thrilled to be here in Boston for a technology show. Hope to have more of these here, as always. It's our second week, back-to-back, here in Boston amongst all the other shows we've been doing at SiliconANGLE Media so, stay tuned. John and I have a few more interviews left as we get to wrap up three days of programming here from the OpenStack summit. Thanks for watching The Cube. (electronic music)