>> Narrator: theCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies. Creating technologies that drive human progress. (bright music) >> Hey everyone! Welcome back. Good evening from Barcelona, Spain. It's theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. As you well know, Lisa Martin and Dave Nicholson. Day two of our coverage of MWC 23. Dave, we've been talking about sexy stuff all day. It's about to get, we're bringing sexy back. >> It's about to get hot. >> It's about to get hot. We've had two guests with us, two senior consultants from the product planning, networking and emerging server solutions group at Dell, Heather Raheel and James Bryan. Welcome guys. >> Thanks for having us. >> Thanks for having us. >> Really appreciate it. >> Lisa: Dude, you're bringing sexy back. >> I know. We are. We are. We wanted to bring it, yes. >> This is like XR8000 >> We've been talking about this all day. It's here... >> Yes. Yes. Talk to us about why this is so innovative. >> So, actually we wanted to bring this, getting a lot of attention here on site. Matter of fact, we even have a lot of our competition taking pictures of it. And why is it so innovative? So one of the things that we've done here is we've taken a lot of insights and feedback from our customers that are looking at 5G deployments and looking at how do they, basically, bring commercial off the shelf to a very proprietary industry. So what we've done is we've built a very flexible and scalable form factor in the XR8000. And so this is actually a product that we've purposely built for the telecommunications space. Specifically can be deployed for serving a virtual DU or DUC at a cell site for distributed ram. Or it can be put in a local data center, but outside a main data center to support centralized ram. We'll get into it, which is where the really excitement gets is it's sled-based in its design. And so because of that, it enables us to provide both functionality for telecommunications. Could be network, could be enterprise edge as well as being designed to be configured to whatever that workload is, and be cost-optimized for whatever that work. >> Ah, you're killing us! Let's see. Show, show it to us. >> Actually this is where I have to hand it off to my colleague Heather. But what I really want to show you here is the flexibility that we have and the scalability. So, right here what I'm going to show you first is a one U sled. So I'll set that out here, and I'll let Heather tell us all about it. >> Yeah. So XR8000. Let's talk about flexibility first. So the chassis is a two U chassis with a hot swap shared power supply on the right. Within it there are two form factors for the sleds. What James brought out here, this is the one U form factor. Each sled features one node or one CPU first sled. So we're calling the one U the highest, highest density sled right? Cause you can have up to four one node one U sleds in the chassis. The other form factor is a two U sled, on the right here. And that's just really building on top of the one U sled that adds two PCIe sleds on top. So this is really our general purpose sled. You could have up to two of these sleds within the chassis. So what's really cool about the flexibility is you can plug and play with these. So you could have two one Us, two two Us, or mix and match of each of those. >> Talk about the catalyst to build this for telco and some of the emerging trends that, that you guys have seen and said this needs to be purpose-built for the telco. There's so much challenge and complexity there, they need this. >> Want me to take this? So actually that, that's a great question by the way. It turns out that the market's growing. It's nascent right now. Different telecommunication providers have different needs. Their workloads are different. So they're looking for a form factor like this that, when we say flexible, they need to be able to configure it for theirs. They don't all configure the same way. And so they're looking for something that they can configure to their needs, but they also don't want to pay for things that they don't need. And so that's what led to the creation of, of this device the way we've created it. >> How is it specific for edge use cases, though? We think of the edge: it's emerging, it's burgeoning. What makes this so (pause) specific to edge use cases? >> Yeah, let's talk about some of the the ruggedized features of the product. So first of all, it is short depth. So only 430 millimeters. And this is designed for extreme temperatures, really for any environment. So the normal temperatures of operating are negative five to 55, but we've also developed an enhanced heat sink to get us even beyond that. >> Dave: That's Celsius? >> Celsius. Thank you. >> Lisa: Right. So this will get us all the way down to negative 20 boot in operating all the way up to 65 C. So this is one of the most extreme temperature edge offerings we've seen on the market so far. >> And so this is all outside the data center, so not your typical data center server. So not only are we getting those capabilities, but half the size when you look at a typical data center server. >> So these can go into a place where there's a rack, maybe, but definitely not, not doesn't have to be raised for... >> Could be a cell side cabinet. >> Yeah. Okay. >> Heather: Yeah. And we also have AC and DC power options that can be changed over time as well. >> So what can you pack into that one one U sled in terms of CPU cores and memory, just as an example? >> Yeah, great. So, each of the sleds will support the fourth generation of Intel Sapphire Rapids up to 32 corp. They'll also be supporting their new vRAN boost SKUs. And the benefit of those is it has an integrated FEC accelerator within the CPU. Traditionally, to get FEC acceleration, you would need a PCIe card that would take up one of the slots here. Now with it integrated, you're freeing up a PCIe slot, and there's also a power savings involved with that as well. >> So talk about the involvement of, of the telco customer here and then design, I know Dell is very tight with its customers. I imagine there was a lot of communications and collaboration with customers to, to deliver this. >> Interesting question. So it turns out that early on, we had had some initial insight, but it was actually through deep engagement with our customers that we actually redesigned the form factor to what you see here today. So we actually spent significant amount of time with various telecommunication customers from around the world, and they had a very strong influence in this form factor. Even to the point, like Lisa mentioned, we ended up redesigning it. >> Do, do you have a sense for how many of these, or in what kinds of configurations would you deploy in like the typical BBU? So if we're thinking about radio access network literally tran- tower transmitter receiver... somewhere down there (pause) in a cabinet, you have one of these, you have multiple units. I know, I know the answer is "it depends". >> You are right. >> But if, but if someone tells you, well you know, we have 20, 20 cellular sites, and we need (pause) we're we're moving to an open model, and we need the horsepower to do what we want to do. I'm trying to, I'm trying to gauge like what, one of these, what does that, what does that mean? Or is it more like four of these? >> So that, so we'll go >> It depends? >> Yeah it depends, you're absolutely right. However, we can go right there. So if you look in the two U >> Yeah. >> we have three PCIe slots, you know, as Heather mentioned. And so let's say you have a typical cell site, right? We could be able to support a cell site that could have it could have three radios in the configuration here, it could have a, multiply by three, right? It could have up to 18 radios, and we could actually support that. We could support multiple form factors or multiple deployments at a particular cell site. It really then to your point, it does depend, and that's one of the reasons that we've designed it the way we have. For example, if a customer says their initial deployment, they only need one compute node because maybe they're only going to have, you know, two or three carriers. So then, there, you've got maybe six or eight or nine radios. Well then, you put in a single node, but then they may want to scale over time. Well then, you actually have a chassis. They just come in, and they put in a new chassis. The other beauty of that is, is that maybe they wait, but then they want to do new technology. They don't even have to buy a whole new server. They can update to >> Heather: Yeah. the newest technology, same chassis put that in, connect to the radios, and keep going. >> But in this chassis, is it fair to say that most people will be shocked by how much traffic can go through something like this? In the sense that, if a tower is servicing 'n' number of conversations and data streams, going through something like this? I mean somehow blow, it blows my mind to think of thousands of people accessing something and having them all wrapped through something like this. >> It, it'll depend on what they're doing with that data. So you've probably talked a lot about a type of radios, right? Are we going to be massive MIMO or what type of radio? Is it going to be a mix of 4G or 5G? So it'll really depend on that type of radio, and then where this is located. Is it in a dense urban environment, or is it in a rural type of environment at that cell site shelter, but out in a suburban area. So will depend, but then, that's the beauty of this is then, (pause) I get the right CPU, I get the right number of adding cards to connect to the right radios. I purchase whatever, what I need. I may scale to that. I may be (pause) in a growing part of the city, like where we're from or where I'm from or in San Diego where Heather's from where she's in a new suburban, and they put out a new tower and the community grows rapidly. Well then, we may, they may put out one and then you may add another one and I can connect to more radios, more carriers. So it really just comes down to the type and what you're trying to put through that. It could edit a stadium where I may have a lot of people. I may have like, video streaming, and other things. Not only could I be a network connectivity, but I could do other functions like me, multi-axis axon point that you've heard about, talked about here. So I could have a GPU processing information on one side. I could do network on the other side. >> I do, I do. >> Go for it >> Yeah, no, no, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't want to, don't want to hog all of the time. What about expansion beyond the chassis? Is there a scenario where you might load this chassis up with four of those nodes, but then because you need some type of external connectivity, you go to another chassis that has maybe some of these sleds? Or are these self-contained and independent of one another? >> They are all independent. >> Okay. >> So, and then we've done that for a reason. So one of the things that was clear from the customers, again and again and again, was cost, right? Total cost of ownership. So not only, how much does this cost when I buy it from you to what is it going to take to power and run it. And so basically we've designed that with that in mind. So we've separated the compute and isolated the compute from the chassis, from the power. So (pause) I can only deal with this. And the other thing is is it's, it's a sophisticated piece of equipment that people that would go out and service it are not used to. So they can just come out, pull it out without even bringing the system down. If they've got multiple nodes, pull it. They don't have to pull out a whole chassis or whole server. Put one in, connect it back up while the system is still running. If a power supply goes out, they can come and pull it out. We've got one, it's designed with a power infrastructure that if I lose one power supply, I'm not losing the whole system. So it's really that serviceability, total cost of ownership at the edge, which led us to do this as a configurable chassis. >> I was just going to ask you about TCO reduction but another thing that I'm curious about is: there seems to be like a sustainability angle here. Is that something that you guys talk with customers about in terms of reducing footprint and being able to pack more in with less reducing TCO, reducing storage, power consumption, that sort of thing? >> Go ahead. >> You want me to take that one as well? So yes, so it comes at me, varies by the customer, but it does come up and matter of fact one- in that vein, similar to this from a chassis perspective is, I don't, especially now with the technology changing so fast and and customers still trying to figure out well is this how we're really going to deploy it? You basically can configure, and so maybe that doesn't work. They reconfigure it, or, as I mentioned earlier, I purchased a single sled today, and I purchased a chassis. Well then the next generation comes. I don't have to purchase a new chassis. I don't have to purchase a new power supply. So we're trying to address those sustainability issues as we go, you know, again, back to the whole TCO. So they, they're kind of related to some extent. >> Right. Right, right. Definitely. We hear a lot from customers in every industry about ESG, and it's, and it's an important initiative. So Dell being able to, to help facilitate that for customers, I'm sure is part of what gives you that competitive advantage, but you talked about, James, that and, and we talked about it in an earlier segment that competitors are coming by, sniffing around your booth. What's going on? Talk about, from both of your lenses, the (pause) competitive advantage that you think this gives Dell in telco. Heather, we'll start with you. >> Heather: Yeah, I think the first one which we've really been hitting home with is the flexibility for scalability, right? This is really designed for any workload, from AI and inferencing on like a factory floor all the way to the cell site. I don't know another server that could say that. All in one box, right? And the second thing is, really, all of the TCO savings that will happen, you know, immediately at the point of sale and also throughout the life cycle of this product that is designed to have an extremely long lifetime compared to a traditional server. >> Yeah, I'll get a little geeky with you on that one. Heather mentioned that we'll be able to take this, eventually, to 65 C operating conditions. So we've even designed some of the thermal solutions enabling us to go there. We'll also help us become more power efficient. So, again, back to the flexibility even on how we cool it so it enables us to do that. >> So do, do you expect, you just mentioned maybe if I, if I heard you correctly, the idea that this might have a longer (pause) user-usable life than the average kind of refresh cycle we see in general IT. What? I mean, how often are they replacing equipment now in, kind of, legacy network environments? >> I believe the traditional life cycle of a of a server is, what? Three? Three to five years? Three to five years traditionally. And with the sled based design, like James said, we'll be designing new sleds, you know, every year two years that can just be plugged in, and swapped out. So the chassis is really designed to live much longer than, than just three to five years. >> James: We're having customers ask anywhere from seven to when it dies. So (pause) substantial increase in the life cycle as we move out because as you can, as you probably know, well, right? The further I get out on the edge, it, the more costly it is. >> Lisa: Yep. >> And, I don't want to change it if I don't have to. And so something has to justify me changing it. And so we're trying to build to support that both that longevity, but then with that longevity, things change. I mean, seven years is a long time in technology. >> Lisa: Yes it is. >> So we need to be there for those customers that are ready for that change, or something changed, and they want to still be able to, to adopt that without having to change a lot of their infrastructure. >> So customers are going to want to get their hands on this, obviously. We know, we, we can tell by your excitement. Is this GA now? Where is it GA, and where can folks go to learn more? >> Yeah, so we are here at Mobile World Congress in our booth. We've got a few featured here, and other booths throughout the venue. But if you're not here at Mobile World Congress, this will be launched live on the market at the end of May for Dell. >> Awesome. And what geographies? >> Worldwide. >> Worldwide. Get your hands on the XR8000. Worldwide in just a couple months. Guys, thank you >> James: Thank you very much. >> for the show and tell, talking to us about really why you're designing this for the telco edge, the importance there, what it's going to enable operators to achieve. We appreciate your time and your insights and your show and tell. >> Thanks! >> Thank you. >> For our guests and for Dave Nicholson, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live, Spain in Mobile MWC 23. Be back with our sho- day two wrap with Dave Valente and some guests in just a minute. (bright music)

(upbeat music) >> Hey everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's continuous coverage of AWS reinvent 2021, I'm Lisa Martin. This is day four for theCUBE. We have two live sets, I'm here with Dave Nicholson, Dave two live sets, 100 guests on theCUBE for AWS Re:Invent 2021. >> Not all at the same time. >> Not all-- That's a good, he brings up a good point, not all at the same time, we are pleased to welcome Gretchen Peri who's going to be sitting down and chatting with Dave with me next. She is from Slalom, at the US State Local and Education, SLED leader. We're going to be talking about Slalom and AWS digital innovation in the public sector. Gretchen, it's a pleasure to have you on the program. >> Thank you for having me. >> For the audience that might not be familiar with Slalom before we dig into AWS and SLED in particular, talk to us about Slalom and what it is that you guys do. >> I'd love to. So Slalom's a modern business and technology consulting firm. We're headquartered in Seattle Washington, we have about 11,000 employees across 40 markets globally. And what's different about Slalom is we're local model firm, so our consultants live and work in the same locale, which means we're personally invested in our client's outcomes because they impact us directly in the communities in which we live. >> And you've been in a leader in SLED for a long time, talk to us about what's going on on SLED these days. Obviously the last 18, 22 months have been quite dynamic, but what's going on in the market? >> Absolutely. What we're seeing is an extra emphasis on data data data, obviously, data is king and data is queen right now, right? So when the pandemic hit, we saw a ton of digital innovation, as our SLED clients needed to get their services online. That had been going on for a long time but it absolutely accelerated when then pandemic it and then it was a public health hazard, to ask people to come into the location. So what we saw was for constituents, we saw just absolute blast of omni-channel service delivery, so we saw the advent of SMS and chat bots and the more tech services, right? Leveraging AWS Lex and Transcribe and other services of AWS really helped our SLED clients react to the pandemic and respond to make sure that their constituents were receiving the digital services they needed, and their employees were able to be productive at home. >> Well, that was one of the keys the employee productivity, the student productivity, when everything's went remote overnight, one of the most challenging things was the demand for collaboration tools. Then of course, there's security challenges, there was concerns there, but talk to us about, and we've seen so much innovation out of AWS in the last, I mean always, but even what they announced the last couple of days, the innovation flywheel of AWS is probably stronger than ever enabling organizations like SLED, FED, private sector, public sector to be data-driven. >> Absolutely. One thing that's really exciting right now is to see the evolution of how our SLED customers are thinking about data. So we've been working on like integrated visions in SLED for a long time, integrated justice, integrated health care, integrated eligibility, how do we bring all this information together so that we can supply the right information to the right people at the right time to deliver the right outcomes? And AWS has been a huge part of that. It's not the journey to get to the cloud, it's the destination once you get there, right? Because then you can leverage all their AIML tools, IOT, edge, container, blockchain. And so our customers, who have already made that switch to AWS, they're able to take advantage of that. It's not what you can do in the cloud anymore is what you can't do without it really, right? So we're seeing tons of advances, intelligent document processing is one area I'm really excited about for our SLED clients, and working very closely with AWS to make sure that we see our clients adopt that and achieve the value out of it. >> AWS is dominating the IT space, although what five to 15% of IT is in the cloud, which means the vast majority is still on premises. So there's a huge potential for growth. In this sort of wild, wild west that we're in, there are all sorts of different kinds of services and consultancy partners, that are seeking to bridge the gap between the technology that AWS delivers and the outcomes that customers desire. >> Right. >> Now I've had a couple of experiences actually with Slalom folks, that were very, very positive. And what I saw was that the Slalom people were embedded in a way that you don't see some other consultancies embedded. You mentioned that something that piqued my interest, you talked about the local nature, is that your superpower? Because it sure seemed to be powerful to see this person where some of these very, very large global companies had no idea who Slalom was, until they realized that Sally was the one who had the best relationship with the customer. So Sally's a fictitious name that I just came up with, but I want to hear a little more about Slalom and your superpower and your differentiation. 'Cause it's a crowded space, you've got global systems integrators, you got all kinds of people. What makes you special? >> It's really the breadth of professional services that we provide, combined with AWS's cloud technologies and services. What we do I think a little bit differently is whereas AWS works back from the customer, we work back from our customer's vision. And so what we do with our, especially with our SLED clients, but with all of our commercial clients, is we say, what is your business strategy and your business vision, and how do we design the technology solutions, working back from that. So you're able to answer the business questions through data-driven tech technology, that's really important to you. And when we look at that, it's not just generating data to create information to then garner insights, but let's go one step further. And how do we create knowledge and how do we create wisdom this space, right? Where we understand situational awareness, common operating pictures, that's really what we want to do. When we talk about criminal justice and public safety, I love how we're thinking about joining data in new and different ways. It's not necessarily applications anymore, right? How do we create data as a service? How do we create documents as a service? Where we're pulling out the exact information that we need from semi-structured, structured and unstructured data and providing it to the right people to make the right decisions. >> Talk to us about intelligent document processing, a lot of buzz going on with that. What is it? Where are public sector agencies in terms of embracing it, adopting it and having it be part of that vision? >> Yeah, the promise is huge for IDP. What IDP is basically is leveraging AWS AI services to create intelligent automation solutions that help extract information from printed documents, digital documents, paper documents, right? So leveraging AWS services like Amazon Textract, Comprehend, Augmented AI, things like, and Kendra. What that does in combination, is it helps our clients unlock the data from, you can imagine government, it's heavy, heavy documents, and in criminal justice and public safety in particular, these documents represent key milestones and processes, right? So we're never going to get rid of documents in SLED, they're going to be used in perpetuity, it's important for accessibility and practicality and everything else. But what this does is it lets us unlock the data from those kind of stale documents and create it into usable formats for so that people can make decisions. >> That's critical because there's, I mean, we talk about in Amazon, AWS been this week have been talking about it and Dave, we have too. Every company, public sector, private sector, it needs to be a data-driven company, but they need to be able to extract that value from the data and the data isn't just digital. And that's something that, to your point, that's going to be persistent within SLED, they have to be able to extract the value from it quickly. >> Yes. >> To be able to see what new products and services can we deliver? What directions should we be going? And what outcomes should we be driving based on that visibility? And that visibility is critical. >> Exactly. And right now we absolutely have to support our communities. And we have a lot of our slide clients who are talking about this is a time where we don't just respond in a way that helps people kind of navigate this pandemic, we have to build resiliency as well in our communities and we do that through helping people through these hard times and making sure that we're moving our services to places where people can access them, in any language from wherever they are, right? We're having to actually go into people's homes on their couches, to deliver government services. Where we used to bring them into a single location. >> Right. >> Typically public sector has often been seen as lagging behind the private sector in some ways, the pandemic, as I'm sure ignited a fire with, especially with federal acknowledgement of things that need to happen, budgets flowing, are you seeing even more of an awakening from a cloud perspective within public sector? >> We are, we are and we're seeing really interesting initiatives pop up like, behavioral health initiatives, that are meant to address some really serious concerns in our country like nationwide 988 suicide prevention projects, right? And the federal government is providing a lot of funding to states and local governments so that they can help take care of our communities and also make sure that we're moving our services online so everyone can access them. >> I'm curious about that point, the funding. >> Yeah. >> Do you find yourself almost in the position of prize patrol? Where were some of the state local governments aren't necessarily as aware as Slalom might be of programs that are coming down immediately. Is that part of the conversation? >> It is part of the conv-- That's a great point because what we do is we look at what's coming down from the federal government, how is it going to flow to the states? How is it going to land ultimately, and then helping governments come up with a strategy for how to spend that money in the right way is really important, right? And we saw with some of the funding that come out, that there were delays on getting like eviction prevention funding out to folks. And so making sure that we have the technology to support those outcomes. >> It's all about outcomes. >> Yes. >> Speaking of outcomes, something I want to congratulate Slalom on is winning the first ever National Essay Partner of the Year for the US. >> Yes. >> Nice. >> That's awesome, congratulations. >> What does that mean for Slalom and what direction can we expect the Slalom and AWS partnership to go? >> Up and up. >> To the right? >> Yes. For us it's about validating the relationship that we have, right? It's really, when we walk into a client conversation, what we want to do is develop trust that our clients know we're looking for their best interest and their best outcomes. We're not trying to sell them something we're trying to solve their problems together. And it validates that for us, our partnership with AWS obviously is so important. And what we're doing in terms of making sure that we have a strong bench full of certifications and we can go to market together in the right way for our clients. This is a huge award and the recognition is very powerful for us. >> Well, congratulations. And so last question, you mentioned AWS and we always talk about when we talk with them at their event, we talk about their customer obsession, right? They work backwards, as you said, from the customer. And you guys from customer vision. Talk to me about when you go in jointly together, work with the customer, what does that alignment look like? >> Absolutely. So what we typically do is, Slalom will focus on what is the business outcome that we want to generate? And we will help design, how are we going to go about solving that problem? And how is AWS going to help support us with enabling technology? And so we will go into client conversations together, say, what is the outcome we want from this initiative together? And how are both partners going to get aligned to support the client in that conversation, in that product. >> That alignment is (indistinct). Gretchen, thank you for joining Dave and me today, talking about Slalom, what you guys are doing, how you're really helping organizations in SLED transform and not just survive challenging time but really thrive and be data-driven. We appreciate your insights and congratulations again on the National Essay Partner of The Year. >> Thank you so much. >> All right. For Dave Nicholson, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, the global leader in live tech coverage. (lively music)

(upbeat music) >> Good evening, guys. Welcome back to Las Vegas, theCUBE is here live at AWS re:Invent 2021. I'm Lisa Martin. We have two live sets, two remote sets, over 100 guests on theCUBE talking with AWS, and its massive ecosystem of partners bringing you this hybrid tech event, probably the biggest of the year, and I'm pleased to welcome Stephen Kovac next, the Chief Compliance Officer at Zscaler. Stephen, how's it going? >> Well, it's going well, Lisa. Thank you for asking, enjoying Vegas, loving the conference, unbelievable. >> Isn't it great to be back in person? >> Oh, it's so great, I've seen people. >> Conversations you can't replicate on video conferencing, you just can't. >> Can't, and you see people you haven't seen in two years, and it's like all of a sudden you're best buddies again. It's just wonderful, it's so great to back. >> It is, and AWS in typical fashion has done a great job of getting everybody in here safely. I'm not at all surprised, that's what I expected, but it's been great. And I hope that this can demonstrate to other companies, you can do this safely. >> You can, I think so. I mean, there's a lot of effort going into this, but as usual AWS does it right. So, you expect that. >> They do. Talk to me about the Zscaler-AWS partnership. What's going on? >> Well, it's a great partnership. So AWS and Zscaler have been partners since the beginning of Zscaler. We are the largest security cloud in the world. We're born and bred in the cloud security company. So literally we wrote one application that does global security, everything from firewall to proxy, secure web gateway, to DLP, to all this in one piece of software. So, in the past where people would buy appliances for all these devices and put them in their own data center, we wrote a software that allows us to put that in the cloud, run it on the cloud globally around the world. And our partnership with AWS is, we originally built that on AWS, and today still AWS is our prime partner, especially in the zero trust side of our business. So, great relationship, long-term and great I think for both of us, it's been a very, very... >> Fruitful partnership, synergistic? >> Synergistic, love that, so yes. >> You mentioned zero trust, and we have seen such massive changes to the security and the threat landscape the last 20, 22 months. Talk to me about the recent executive order calling for zero trust, how does Zscaler's partnership with AWS help you enable organizations, fed, SLED, DoD, to be able to actually bring in and apply zero trust? >> Yeah, great question. Five years ago I was tasked to bring Zscaler into the government side of the business. So I was employee one to do that. It was a great honor to do it. And the first thing we did is we partnered with AWS because we needed to get FedRAMP compliant. We knew we were going to go into DoD. So we needed to go to the Impact Level five. And eventually we'll be able to go up level six with AWS. And so it was our partnership started there. And as you've seen in five years with all the change that's happened, that obviously the breaches like SolarWinds, and the people up here talking about them all week with you I'm sure. The executive order came down from the Biden Administration, who I completely salute for being just tremendous leaders in the cybersecurity space. And the executive order, one of the big pieces of the executive order was every agency must produce a plan for zero trust. So our cloud platform that is on AWS is a zero trust platform. It is the first and only zero trust platform to get authorized by the federal government at the FedRAMP level, and now the IL five level. So, together we are literally capturing and taking over the, being the leader in the zero trust space for the federal government. And I'm going to get a sip of water, so forgive me, I've been here all week talking to a lot of people, so forgive me for that. >> That's one thing that we don't have to deal with when we're on Zoom, right, is you don't really have the risk of losing your voice. >> Stephen: There you go. >> But in terms of the executive order, something that you mentioned, SolarWinds, Colonial Pipeline, we only hear about some of the big ones. The fact that ransomware happens one attack every 10, 11 seconds, it's a matter of when we get hit, not if. >> As you know, the story coming up from me, coming up on stage with you today, I just got myself breached just this morning, just individually. So yes, it's going to get all of us. And especially, I think when you look at zero trust and ransomware and how they worked out how zero trust can prevent it, you look at the SLED market, you know, state, local governments, they don't have the dollars to go spend like DHS does, or say, some of the DoD does. So, our partnership with AWS allows us to produce a product that is very cost-effective on a per user basis, consumption model, which is what AWS has been famous for since day one, right, the consumption model, use it when you need it, don't use it when you don't. We built our software the same way. So, at some point in a year, in a school year, we'll ramp up with some schools up to a hundred thousand users in the district, and over the summer we'll ramp down to a thousand, and we just bill them for that. So it's a beautiful relationship that we partner in not just the executive order, but being a partner in SLED, fed in the sense that matches making our business together, match the government's business. And that makes us a true leader and makes us a cost-effective solution. And if you think about it just for a moment, yesterday, I told you I was testifying in front of the Senate. And one of the questions I got asked was, oh, how many security updates do you guys see a year? I said, a year, well, we do over 200,000 a day. 200,000 security updates from potential hackers every single day. And we're doing that over 200 billion transactions a day run on AWS. So it's tremendous partnership, and to be able to work like that, and at that kind of volume, and be able to go up and down with the, and you got AWS able to scope up and down, and us to be able to ride that wave with them. It's been great. >> One of the things that we always talk about when we talk AWS is they're customer focused or customer obsession that, hey, we start backwards, we work backwards from the customer. Same thing, synergistic from a cultural perspective? >> Absolutely, I mean, one of the things I always love about AWS and I've been a customer of AWS for many years, even prior to my Zscaler days, I love the way they approach things, right? If they're not trying to go out and sell it, they're trying to meet with the customer and find out what the customer needs, and then build a solution. We're the same way. I always tell, you know, when you think of our solutions, Zscaler, I always tell my sales teams, I say it takes four sales calls for people to really understand what we do. And AWS, in the beginning of AWS, it was kind of the same thing. In the old days, you know, we all just built data centers and we had all these racks, and all this expense and mesh is what you did. It was unusual back in the day, 10 years ago, and I've been to every single re:Invent. I mean, the first one there was like, you're actually going to put all your stuff in this unknown cloud thing, and it will be available when you need it? So yes, you know, the way that they did it is the same way we do it together today. And we do it together today. We partner on many deals today where we're both, our teams are in there together, selling together, whether it's the DoD, federal agencies, SLED agencies, and commercial, you know, selling it hand-in-hand because it's that same philosophy is we're going to build what a customer needs. We're not going to tell the customer what they need. We're going to hear what they need, and that's the same relationship. So I'm going to get another sip real quick. >> Go for it. One of the things that has been a theme that we've heard the last couple of days is every company needs to be a data company or private sector, public sector, and if they're not, they're probably not going to be around much longer. How do you help customers get their handle around that? Because the security threats are only increasing. I mean, it's ransomware as a service. The fact that these criminals are getting much more brazen, you just had this happen to yourself, but enabling them to become data-driven organizations and use the data, extract the value from it securely, that's hard. >> It is, I mean, if you think back in the day, I mean, companies didn't have chief compliance officers that worked in the space that we do. Their chief compliance officer back in the day was the guy that was writing your HR issues and what OSHA issues, and of course, I still deal with some of that stuff, but my true job is really around the data, right? You know, how do we build our platforms, what decisions we make on our platforms, how we're going to certify them to support that, and I mean, chief data officers, chief security officers, I mean, you go into companies today, even car dealerships today. I mean, I'm picking one, you never thought of them having a security officer, but they do, they have to, they have to. And I mean, basic school districts, I mean, I don't about you, when I was a kid and went to school, they didn't have computers, but when my kid went to school, they did, but they didn't have a security officer. Now today, every single school district has security officers. I mean, I love how you said it, that data-driven, that data thought is there. It has to be, it's a real threat. And the sad thing is of these ransomware attacks, how many don't get reported. >> Oh, right, we're only hearing about a select few. >> The numbers are something like 88% don't get reported. It's that big. So that just tells you, we hear the big ones, right, Colonial Pipeline, things like that. We don't hear about West Texas or Middle Illinois school district that paid five grand because somebody had something on the school. That's how, as you said, this ransomware as a service security, we call it a security as a service, there's SaaS, which is software as a service, we're security software as a service, and AWS is the infrastructure as a service that we run on. And that's how it works well together. >> Do you guys go into accounts together from a go-to-market perspective? >> We, do, we can always do a better job. And my good friend here at AWS, who's probably listening, we can always do better. But yeah, so it is become something that, especially in the government space we do, in federal, DoD, because the certifications are really important, certifications are important everywhere, and we have many, we talked about all the certifications we have in federal, FedRAMP and IL five, and we have a plethora of those certifications in the commercial space. But they mean in a federal space, they're really the ticket. They call them the ENERGY STAR of approval, good housekeeping piece. So, you know, having that, teaming up with AWS who we partner together and because AWS has the same certs, we can sell at the same levels. And we do a really great job of co-selling in that space together. And I think when they look at us and they say, well, you're AWS, they've got their FedRAMP high, IL five, and you're Zscaler, you got your FedRAMP high, IL five. Yes, we can do business with these guys, and that's important. >> So you guys both open doors for each other. >> We do, we do in many cases, yeah. As a matter of fact, re:Invent five years ago, a buddy of mine here opened a big, big account for us, which is today our largest account in federal came from re:Invent, where came up to me and said, hey, my customer wants to, he's looking to do something, they're an agency that has global footprint, and they're like, we want to do something as a security as a service. They don't want to ship boxes all over the place. And we just met the customer for a coffee, and next thing you know, became our, still today, our probably largest customer in federal. >> Wow, well, this is the 10th re:Invent, you said you've been to all of them. >> Stephen: I have been to all of them. I can't lie, but I can't say I did all the virtual ones. I mean, I was logged in. (laughs) >> That's okay, we'll wink on that one. But, one of the things then, we've just got about a minute left here, is in new leadership, Andy Jassy being promoted to the CEO of Amazon, we've got Adam Selipsky, heard lot of announcements and news from Adam yesterday, but some of the things that we've been talking about on theCUBE is the first 15 years of innovation at AWS, that's going to accelerate. Do you see that also, like if you look forward to the next decade, do you see things moving much faster than they did the past decade? >> I don't think they can't. I mean, I shouldn't say they have to. And the change of the guard as you might call it here, is it's always good to have a change of the guard I think. You know, the question is when's Andy going to go to space? I mean, that's the next. (Lisa laughs) I think you have the guys who got AWS to the dance, and now the dance, who's going to become the belle of the ball. And this next generation of leadership coming in is fabulous. I think they've made great decisions, and I think they're going to do really well. And we're behind them, we support it. I got a chance to meet with most of them, love a chance to meet with Andy, I haven't met with him yet. So Andy, I'd love to meet you sometime soon. But I'm very impressed with what they've done. And yes, I think it's going to be, the last 10 years of growth is going to be a year next year. I think literally, you take 10 years be compressed to a year, and then next year it will be compressed to a day. So it's moving that fast. >> Yep, get your neck brace on, prepare for that whiplash. >> Yeah, right? That's what I said to Jeff when Jeff went to space, that's how fast we're about to travel, right? But it's really relative. >> It is, there is no limit. Well, Stephen, thank you for joining me, talking about Zscaler, AWS, what you guys are doing, how you're helping to revolutionize the public sector, fed, SLED, a lot of great stuff there. Security is an ever-evolving topic, and we appreciate all of your insights. >> Well, it was wonderful to be here. Great to see you again. And great to be back with all our friends at re:Invent. >> All of our friends, exactly. >> Stephen: Thank you so much for the time today. >> My pleasure. For Stephen Kovac, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, the global leader in live tech coverage. (pleasant music)

>> announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE covering HPE DISCOVER VIRTUAL EXPERIENCE. Brought to you by HPE. >> Welcome to theCUBE coverage of HPE DISCOVER 2020, the virtual event this year. I'm Lisa Martin, and I have a couple of women from HPE joining me next first time on theCUBE. Very pleased to welcome Jas Sood, the US VP of Sales, Commercial and SLED at HPE, and Sandy Ono, the VP of Marketing Strategy at HPE. Ladies great to have you on the program. >> Thanks for having us. >> Wow, excited. >> So we want to talk about customers, what's going on. The SMB market is one that has been near journal. A lot of folks hearts the last few months, we're hearing so much, even in our local neighborhood about small and medium local businesses, really being challenged as COVID has just disrupted everything. What are some of the things Jas, we'll start with you that you're seeing in today's SMB market? >> Yeah, so I think the SME market is dynamic. And you got a lot of really, really small customers. You have the medium-sized businesses and so forth. So there is a wide range of what customers are feeling today. I think on the one spectrum, just thinking about, how are they going to stay open as a viable business, given the current economic condition? Whereas others are trying to figure out, now that we are in more of a remote working environment, how do they support their employees? How do they make sure that there's remote connectivity that we're able to communicate? Obviously, we're all using the same sort of bandwidth. How do we make that work? I'm also thinking about, there was still a lot of exchange of data going through the remote workplace. And so, how do we make sure that information coming back is secure and so forth? So, one of the things that we're trying to do is just make sure that we're there for our customers, let them know that, "Hey, we just want to hear you. "We want to be there for you." And be able to provide many, many options, which I'm sure we'll talk about here in a couple of minutes. But Sandy, what's your take? >> Certainly, Jas, I echo everything you're saying. I think revenue and cash flow is very much on top of everybody's mind, and just 75% of SMEs revenues have been disrupted. And when you think about that, really, how do you not just move to the new normal, but a lot of businesses are going to have to go through some change. Now, change really first is how do we contain costs? Look at the cost things we need to get done to service customers, have a supply chain, how can infrastructure an IT help with that to contain costs? And then, second, how do you find new revenue streams? The world is much more virtual today than it was yesterday. How do we evolve our businesses in order to actually find new revenue streams? I think is very much on that people signed. >> That's an interesting one, Sandy, that you bring up new revenue streams. Jas, let me ask you as the leader of Sales for Commercial and SLED in the US, how are you finding new revenue streams, knowing that as Sandy said, 75% of SMBs are dramatically affected by COVID, what are you doing? What do you think, even working with your channel partners to open up some new revenue opportunities? >> Yeah, that's right. I mean, channel partners are a key part of our strategy. To go to market strategy first. So we work with them on a daily basis trying to think about, "Hey, how could we really help? "How can we really be out there to provide certain options for customer?" So, one of the few things in terms of helping SMB customers to continue the revenue stream is to provide really lucrative financing options as well. So currently, we have many offers that they don't have to pay until the end of this calendar year, which is the end of our fiscal year. So being able to really think out of the box to say, how could we come together and really be able to help when there is a certain sort of cash flow shortfall right now. I think the other thing too is there are certain industries within SMBs that actually have higher demand right now, healthcare customers, some financial services customers as well. I mean, those are areas that as people in the community that we rely on heavily these days. So, again, being able to be there for those customers to help them think through ways that we can help them to monetize their businesses a little bit more proactively today is also an area where we're trying to help. >> And Jas, how has your role as an executive sponsor in a lot of accounts, how is it changing? >> Very interesting question. And it's more actually often conversation now that we've all been at home. It's not really a, "Hey, can we talk about this project?" Or, "Can we talk about what you have kind of coming up "and how can I help," but it's just more around just a general conversation. So I've had so many conversations with customers just to say, "Hey, how are you guys coping? "How are you dealing with being able to... "Are you able to work remotely? "First of all." I mean, I think we all have that capability, but really to have all your employee base, being able to do that, what impacts does that have on their business long term, short term? And I think that's just opened up just a general, how's it going conversation, we share best practices, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. We're trying to figure that out as well. We are all at home as well. And so it really creates more of a personal conversation. I think the main thing that we want to make sure is that we're just there for our customers. We realize that it's a trying time right now, and cash flow might be tight, and that's okay. Because, eventually, we're going to come back as the United States, as the economy and things are going to come back in, we just want to make sure that we're there for our customer base, whenever that time comes for them. >> That personal vision is so important. Is there I'm a marketer you're a marketer. And for a long time, we've been talking about personalization and how effective those marketing tactics can be when they can really deliver a message to a perspective buyer that hits exactly, "That's what I'm looking for." Even more, as Jas was saying, now it's even more important, not just your SMB customers, to get personal with them, but to allow them to have that experience with their customers. Sandy, how have you changed your marketing mix or even your marketing messaging in light of this new need for a different type of personal touch, that's only virtual? >> It's a great question. Two things are from how you talk to your customer-based perspective. And it's true for Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and it's true for all of our customers out there. Really it has to be authentic to the point where we can't just be selling the thing anymore. Everybody is not only cash-strapped, time-strapped. But they're also looking for a genuine connection to something that they need. So to be much more articulate around the problems we solve, the solutions that are readily deployable, how can we help in these moments has been much more forefront and the marketing messages and just the way we talk with our customers. The other thing is from a marketing mix perspective. We're going to the same thing everybody else is right? I was just thinking the other day, probably half of our typical marketing investment is in physical events, just like Discover was a year ago. And really having to rethink what that is now, how do you stay connected with customers? What does a virtual event have to be? What is a meetup now in a Zoom. Getting really comfortable with that. And these technologies that can help us, but still maintaining those customer touchpoints. And particularly, as we think about... Everybody's thinking about new revenue streams, how do you get to the newer customers that don't know you yet? What are the points of personalization, interconnectedness, the ongoing ways you can stay in touch via digital, all become much more forefront as we think about conical the new normal? And along those lines engagement, is so key. You brought a Discover being for how many years before this year physical event, and the cute covers many physical events a year. And so it's very... Everyone's trying to figure out how do we actually engage our customers and our prospects as vendors and maintain their engagement? Because now you're not just in an audience with a phone and email and phone calls as distractions, you're at home, you're sharing bandwidth. You've maybe have kids at home. There's more distractions. So Sandy, what are some of the things that HPE is doing at DISCOVER 2020, the VIRTUAL EXPERIENCE to engage folks and maintain that engagement? >> Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, talk about getting ourselves an order of being very, I guess I'll use the worst snackable, a lack of anything else. We are used to being in a room, talking about the problems we solve, and the solution we have in for an hour. Discover what you're going to find is 15 minutes, that's all people have in a virtual world is 15 minutes. What used to be two, three hours in terms of a keynote, is much more targeted. And we're doing a lot more on demand. I would say that, if one of the things that we're really trying to do, particularly with this fund and across the board, is, how do you stay connected? And it's not just about one way delivery of content, but it's really that interaction plan. Are people talking to our chat agents? What are they chatting about? How do we get them to the next phase? What are all the different ways you can light up in a digital way that helps people follow up? Again, they're going to come in and out experience something. And this is the world of digital is not a one conversation. It's kind of a... It's like a dating game. You got to keep going. To keep the conversation going just the read of me. >> That two-way conversation, is... I'm glad that you brought that up. Because Jas, so many events, every event probably is a big opportunity for every vendor to close some big deals. There's just something about that face-to-face connection where execs can sit down with customers or whatnot. We can't do that this year. So what are some of the ways that your team and through your channel is doing what Sandy was talking about and doing that really, that dialogue, that interactive conversation through just video conferencing? >> Yeah, well, the neat thing about it is that we've still been able to keep some of those personable tracks through Discover. So we have like the CIO Summit, so that'll be an area of open dialogue. It's sort of an invite-only type of thing event. We will be having customer round table specific to many different topics. I'm hosting a couple of those myself. And so it's an intimate group of 12 to 15 customers doing the same thing on the partner side and having our senior executives being there with us to host it. So I think just the neat thing about it is even though it's virtual and to Sandy's point in trying to keep some of the keynotes and of that nature at a shorter timeframes so that we keep attention and make it succinct. I think at the same time, we're able to still chip the small group environment where we're able to have open dialogue. And I think one of the great things about being able to do that now is, there's so much that customers can learn from one another. We talked about us really sharing with them. I mean, customers are a little bit more open to talking to one another as well, and figuring out, "Hey, what are you doing? "Is this working?" "This is sort of issue that we have, "how are you handling that?" So, I think just in our environment now there's a little bit more opportunity, an openness to share. And the good thing about being virtual is, you can do more of that. 'Cause, as Sandy mentioned, some of that too, the sessions are on demand. So a little bit on your own time also based on your own schedule. So I think having the variety of both will be key and successful. >> Yeah, having that mix of those intimate conversations that can help really HPE, from a revenue perspective, close big deals, as well as allowing folks with 70 cents. Give me some... It's like crazy, right? That snackable digestible content on my time, probably one of the things that we're hearing on theCUBE, the last a couple of months of everything being virtual is that so many events are getting even more and more and more attendees because people don't have to travel and budgets and that sort of thing. But I got to ask you a question, Sandy, as a marketer, how do you measure engagement? Typically they think of like badge stands at a booth or downloads is as this pivot was done so quickly, and I accolade HPE for being able to do that. That's hard thing to do. How are you as a marketer... What are you looking to do to measure success for this event? >> It's a great question. We look at success in kind of three ways. Obviously is the reach, how many folks we can bring in this is the first time we're doing this so global, which is quite fascinating to kind of see it come to life. Really being able to address the global audience, the customers, the partners, and our employee base that we're going to be able to reach. Second is relevance. We're thinking about, are we talking about the right things that are going to resonate with our customers? How are they reacting to that? There's so many mechanisms. We are going to get feedback from social to the way they engage with us. They're going to vote by their clicks. That's the end of the day. They're going to tell us what they're interested in after we put the content out there, and we're going to soak that up as digital signals that come back. And then lastly, obviously just driving pipeline, this is a conversation. And hopefully an acceleration point, we in digital marketing have a lot of different ways that we're going to score engagement. We tend to think about it pretty simply. It's either a hot lead, a warm lead, or a cold lead. And it's a way to kind of almost think about engagement in a way of the speed of follow up. Is the customer ready to engage in the next step? Maybe they're super hot. Maybe they're just slightly warm. But we have kind of data science models that help us take all that data that we're going to sit on because it's digital, turn it into something that makes sense and then be able to hand over to like Jas's team, some of those signals. So our sales teams can actually the next steps. >> I like that. It's all about speed these days, right? >> Yeah. >> HPE, quickly to turn this event digital. We also knew that SMBs and customers are having to work quickly to start in place the right digital equipments to move forward. Last thing I want to leave you guys with, Jas, what are some of the things that are going on at Discover that you're excited about to engage with customers? >> Yeah, so I think just one, the virtual experience, I think, is going to be really cool. We have some cool entertainment type things going on as well. We'll give all that away, but I think that keeps it fun. I think it'll be unique experience. I'm really excited also about the different tracks that we have. So we actually do have a small, medium business track, a lot of on-demand sessions. So there's a lot of vertical sessions. There's a lot of industry sessions as well. So really to be able to go in there depending upon what your area of interest is and focus is, I think you're going to find something and it's really easy to navigate. I'm excited because I think there'll be more customers that can come having our state and local government customers be able to log on, and really get a sense for what's really happening in the industry with all of the cares act funding and so forth. So I think it'll be really exciting to be able to showcase tracks like that now that we have a virtual environment that we didn't get an opportunity to do for. So I think there's more that we have to offer and I'm really interested and excited about that. >> More without the... As ladies will know and appreciate that the mass of foot ache-- >> That's fine. >> From walking miles and miles and Las Vegas. (Jas and Sandy laughing). And next thing, Sandy, you're hosting a panel, I've discovered. Tell me a little bit about that. >> Yes, I am. Jas mentioned that we have a whole SMB track. So we're hosting a panel that's going to be just geared for the small-medium businesses. It's going to be on June 30th as we kind of continue of rolling thunder with DISCOVER VIRTUAL. It's with an analyst, couple of our SMB experts really talk a little bit deeper around the solutions that we have, the problems we're hoping to help people solve, and certainly have those on-demand sessions. I'll just add onto what Jas is saying. I'm really excited because, for the first time, particularly for our small-medium businesses, this is a no entry fee type of event. So there's no entry fee. We're actually giving $10 back to charity. So for our smaller businesses to be able to kind of consume this content and really see the demos, see the technology, really help shape what's the next step for them. I think what I'm excited about, that's all. >> Excellent, Sandy, Jas, thank you so much for joining me on theCUBE today. It was great talking to you both. >> Yeah, thank you so much. >> Thank you so much, cool. >> I appreciate it. >> Our pleasure, looking forward to seeing the impact. Well, for my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE Coverage at HPE DISCOVER the VIRTUAL EXPERIENCE. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

from the silicon angle media office in Boston Massachusetts it's the queue now here's your host Stu minimun hi I'm Stu minimun and welcome to a special cube conversation here in our Boston area studio and health happy to welcome to the program someone we've known for a long time but actually first time on the program also a Boston area native I believe yes Jim and so it's Jim Sullivan who's the CEO of nwn Jim's thanks so much for joining us let's do it's great to be here watching you guys forever and first time and happy to be here so we've got a lot of shared history we both we overlapped a little bit at a company that some people might remember was EMC before it was the largest acquisition in tech history you've worked for a number of companies we've covered here on the cube XIV actifi oh and the like so tell us first you know nwn it's not a company that you know the vast majority of people are going to know of but you know good-sized company been around for a while Waltham based tell us tell us a little bit about what brought you to nwn thanks to yet nwn is a you know solution service provider been around 10 years hundreds of millions of dollars of revenues 1,300 customers and a lot of really incredible you know platform offering service offerings and so was really excited to be able to kind of get involved with the company and begin to look at we could do for the industry and for customers all right yeah you talk about it you know an area that that's transforming greatly I mean tech in general you know we say that the the only constant in industry is change when you talk about services you talk about platforms that means a lot of things to a lot of people maybe explain a little bit that the spaces that end everyone plays in and where some of the core capability of the company are sure so if you look at as you know this a lot of everything for you know digital transformation is around the end-user experience so we all want to have great access to you know voice video you know clean network the ability to kind of have this great experience to collaborate with customers so India nwn really the core offerings unified communications which has really always been a kind of core of the company the network's underpinning those communications along with a contact center collaboration security and so security really wraps around everything and then those are the core areas where we are but the core IP of the company is the platform that can manage all those environment you know as a self-service function that the customers use or that arts contacts and her team can kind of run okay so when I hear that the solutions that you're talking about the the thing that comes kind of front and center in the industry that I've been hearing about it's the CX it's the customer experience you know what is the ultimate end users how are they interacting with as well as the employees themselves you know if you've got people at the contact centers that are running things how are you making their jobs easier so you know how does that play into you know what you're seeing in the market and how nwn you know delivers offerings in that space so everything's really tied together whether you have a device a a phone system everything's gonna be tied into the network and required really high security so the the management platform that we have allows customers to have that ability to provision in a real secure fashion a device that we can kind of deliver and manage the right phone systems that we can also deliver and manage all tied into a really secure Network and it can be anywhere they want it can be you know private cloud hybrid cloud or hosted cloud is how we deliver it today yeah there's the cloud discussion that's going on right now I was at Enterprise Connect earlier this year and you know everything seemed to be you know cloud enable an AI infused underneath from a customer standpoint you know that they can get a little bit overwhelmed with some of the jargon that's get gets thrown out there so help explain a little bit you know what solutions what is nwn build you know how does it fit in with kind of you know big tech companies that they probably have relationships with and debut and has been part of the channel for many of these products there to talk a little bit about that mix overall we're gonna deliver a solution for the customer in those areas right so in a unified communications area or a network area security so and the solutions going to be required you know some hardware you know a lot of services which is our people and then most importantly this management platform which is going to be the management capability the business analytics the knowledge center that kind of pull off from everybody right so our focus is really delivering the solution delivering it you know kind of a solution as a service so the customer has the ability that it's not outsourcing it's not managed services but we're gonna be running the service but they have the ability to self provision interact with pulling all their own analytics all their own data on their own environment so it's a much more interactive relationship than kind of the old-school managed services of the past you know I I like that term solutions as a service because we've learned the the failings of just pure outsourcing it was like oh can I get my mess for Less well no no you don't want your mess what customers need is they need to be able to deploy something today and as the business changes adjust that and you can't have something that you have to throw over the wall and say oh hey can you do this oh yeah we'll get back to you in six months maybe and here's your new bill and how that changes in the cloud era I need to be able to deploy something today and stay flexible to be able to take advantage of new technologies new innovations as they come along how do your offerings help customers stay current and you know drive that innovation adoption right so a huge part of we talk about this in a lot of industries particularly our old kind of infrastructure of days and that everything becoming more software-defined is is really everywhere or cloud offerings really everywhere and with software these changes are happening so fast so the customer gets an environment that's stable and secure deployed and managed by us but as changes happen our team and our kind of best practices capabilities allows to interact with their end users so you kind of drive the adoption which a lot of time it's more getting and training and making sure the new practices sort of happened because the efficiencies gained are huge that's sort of one and then two is is it's beginning to get adopted you're beginning to kind of roll that out across the entire enterprise so the customer gets that end user experience which it helps with employee retention you know really helps with business ROI and ultimately the investments they made are now being used and they're getting what they want so it might be excellent you know lying quality with great business analytics in a secure environment but it goes back down to you know is the network being utilized all the software capabilities being deployed and managed and really what's the business outcome for the customer so these this world is very much less speeds and feeds or technology or all of that versus okay where's the customer stand today and where do they want to bring the business to and what business outcomes they looking to drive the adoption services you know ensures that they get the business outcomes all right Jim you know what what industries what geographies gives a little bit of kind of the scope and breadth of your team right so it's 1,300 customers more than half the customers are really large enterprises you know companies like eversource the other half of the business is sled state local education so Yale University really big customer state of California we manage over 200,000 endpoints over 400 agencies so really some huge scale but it really maps to a great balance in the business of sled and enterprise accounts okay and you talked about cloud you have some of your own data centers how do you play with some of the public cloud and customer environments what's right what's kind of that mix and what are you yeah so so today customers want to have like I don't think they quite care but they want to have fast deployments really agile environments consistent costs really effective and so for us we able to provide that because we can provide private cloud on-premise we can service any public cloud for these deployments and we also have three data centers where we can provide a cloud solution for them or hybrid clouds lifts and really mapping particularly the enterprise accounts as we know they're beginning to learn like all public clouds little scary you know but if you get into a fireman where you can have really a shop that has you know private clouds that delivers a hybrid cloud environment for them much more flexible much more agile for them it's been a perfect scenario where the predominance of our customers are deployed in a cloud scenario managed by us but in their data centers in our cloud as well yeah right I think a really good point their customers are still sorting out where everything goes and you've got to have flexibility to say okay it's not one or the other it's usually more of an and right in helping customers you know move through what I do in there and for us most of these environments are you know really mission-critical applications that are gonna be rolled out whether it's the voice systems which really kind of backing and the underpinning the whole the whole customer experience it might be device as a service so when we kind of talk about end user experience it starts with really the voice that devices it's got to be really secure which is becomes a kind of a compliance issue and a lot of this is all tied together into the network so the the big differentiator for it end WN is the ability that we can have the management portal that really manages all these five environments together into one seamless into one seamless platform that they can pull the data from okay so talked about you've got team you've got technology you've got really important you've got a lot of good customers seems like you have a good relationship nwn is going through a bit of a transformation here since you've been on board just a few months now I've had a chance to look at the website and the biggest thing for me is I'll tell you from the old one to the new one the new one is simpler I really kind of grasped much faster what any of the wnd does so maybe speak a little bit to you know what nwn of today how that's different from how we might have thought of nwn in the past sure nwn been around 10 years as nwn but they've been acquiring companies and really had has incredible employees great customers really loyal customers and big accounts that were strategic too but as we really went through kind of the assessment of what's really resonating with customers we were able to really focus all the offerings down to these five core offerings that we've been talking about and then really have the right investments around all the IP that we've developed and really wanted to put against those five offerings and then have the customer success teams be able to be organized around that so the company has really focused on where 95% of the business was the ability to really put all the wood behind the arrow you know for those environments and for our customers to really focus and that's about a 50 billion dollar market in the u.s. right so that focus area is a big space big opportunity for growth and a lot of it was in the predominance of our 1,300 customers they buy one or two of these offerings from us and now the ability to really expand that but so many of these customers are so happy we're gonna kind of take it in those industries we're in probably about five core industries to really kind of take it to their peer their peer companies and really expanded in that account-based marketing sort of kind of program okay so five specific offerings we've talked about a couple of them already unified communications as a service of course we talked about contact center we touched on device as a service you talked about some of the devices security and advanced technology solutions maybe start with security you know I think one of the you know you know most important topic being discussed I looking back at my career and you know 10 or 15 years ago security was what I would call top of mind bottom of budget all right and today it is often a board level discussion there are lots of dollars lots of investment lots of concern around security so what piece is the security market does nwn playing you know what we're what's good you know what what do you what are you creating and what are you working with the ecosystem and where do we need to go sure enough space so for unified communications for the 80s you know practice around the supporting network and device as a service our security offerings are for the environment right and a lot of it is where there's a lot of tools deployed but customers you know are really okay once something happens an incident happens they have a tool that identifies something that happens but a lot of the security will be really really mapping those environments that they have a secure platform but Incident Response is really where we're gonna really be doubling down on so something's happened in one of those environments what happened and then how do you respond to that that's going to be the big focus of what nwn it's been doing and kind of what will invest more in its really Incident Response okay great advanced technology solutions talk to us a little bit about that so a lot of the core the core expertise in the company for years has been around the network but then that really expanded with doing you know full you hosted unified communication so the company today can deploy any type of networking solutions for customers along with all the connectivity so the bandwidth you know any type of a next generation networks like 5g so all of that really tied together that you have the network you know the right connectivity to kind of get to the the right performance and then mapping it to the SL A's that have to go with the the offerings of unified communications and devices of service because everything's going to be inter intertwined and you think about any like collaboration technologies I mean how many times have we been in a meeting where a collaboration technologies not really working but the performance is not really there it's not that software it's something that was tied beneath that so nwn can really bridge the two together to have that the right networking capability the right connectivity so you're getting the fast connectivity right away of what really matters to the end user experience which is that collaboration system yeah you know we talked a little bit about innovation you know where where are your customers what's exciting you that's helping your customers move forward and you know where are those areas that were still struggling a little bit you know III think back you know I worked in the you know Telecom Unified Communication space you know back in the late 90s and you know by now we were supposed to have the flying cars with the ubiquitous video everywhere and well FaceTime you know and some some things have us there a little bit sure I use my you know my webcam way more than I did five or ten years ago but yeah maybe speak a little bit where were having success and where if we still need to go number one thing for me that I learned of one of the most unique assets that NW and has is the business analytics and data capability right so a lot of these environments have been deployed we've got all these multiple different vironment but what I learned of the nwn capability is we have every piece of data of all those different environments in every customer in every customer environment so we have the ability now with our portal and they've had the ability to do this it's really any type of function that the customer wants to learn more about in kind of an automated fashion that they can self provision this data themselves we have the data so it could be billing capabilities of really what what groups are being built it could be any type of compliance so what type of calls are being made and who's doing calls any type of productivity for call centers of what capabilities we have so I think the the the biggest thing to answer your question is one the nwn capability is all the business data that we have that maps across multiple industries to deliver best practices but people have been to plot deploying networks deploying devices deploying phone systems but never really having the intelligence of what you're gonna do with that data to drive the business forward and so one it's like got to have the end user experience be like that's like table stakes where the end user experience is great but now how the business use the data of how all those systems are working together to really bring forward like okay what business decisions do we make to move forward in terms of what's working what's not working and comes back to driving the right business outcomes alright so a lot a lot of effort in the last few months yeah focus and execution doing the relaunch here let's look forward a little bit Jim as you know six or twelve months from now as we look back what are some of the key KP at KP is how for those of us the outside do we know that nwn is executing and meeting you know where you want the company to go its 100% about customer satisfaction right so it's the as we continue to expand the offerings inside customers and then add new customers will be you know solely how we're going to manage the business and that's really where it's as customers do upgrades with us the the predominance of our customers is long-term contracts so as customers continue to do renewals and add new offerings and kind of new capabilities that we bring to the table and as they tell their peer companies which is people are really excited about being references for us then we'll continue to add more companies into the mix and more more customers and grow the 1302 mm great and you know for for potential customers out there there any of the kind of key things that you would call out that they said oh I've got this issue or I'm looking to do this kind of project I want to make sure to have nwn on my short list I see a couple areas right it's it's everyone is it's a 50 billion dollar market so everyone is dealing with unified communications issues right in terms of what decisions are gonna make were an expert in that space the device is a service you know really like we manage two hundred thousand endpoints with the state of California so that's a device of the service is really a space that not a lot of people are in a lot of people doing devices but really as an end end service not really you know strong you know kind of capability and then the security requirements are for everybody so I think for these solutions than to have the right service people the right network expertise so that that five areas is kind of the core space and I think the biggest thing that I would say to customers is everything's intertwined right so it's like you can have you know one person to talk about one if you don't really tie it all together that's where the challenges and the problems usually kind of come from and we're also really sizable Ike the companies you know you know a lot a lot of large customers but the companies hundreds of millions of dollars with a lot of forty's over the last 10 years yeah so Jim last thing talk about the team in the culture you know talk about what you you want to build on what NW always has and you know are you doing some hiring either here locally in the Boston area or you know in other geographic areas sure so companies Nate you know national company so we'll be hiring sales reps solution engineers nationally and really kind of continue to scale that out the service desk function that we have and really the customer success team is continuing to expand and really supporting the growth of the business and really kind of driving it so those are really the key areas the rest of the company that people are the people and the and the culture of the company are amazing the passion commitment to customer success people have been here a long time and so they have a lot of experience and a lot of kind of patch with the company so a lot of the changes we made all came from within side right so everyone really rallied to be like hey here the things were good at then we want to get great at and that sort of been kind of the big focus and we have really strong presence in in in the Carolinas all over the Northeast California Texas and so we're gonna really look to kind of connect all those geographies together to have one national you know kind of powerhouse player across the country all right Jim Sullivan thank you so much for the updates congratulations on the progress and look forward to watching the continued growth of NW thank great to be here all right and lots more coverage here as always on the cube net on to minimun and thank you for watching the Q

>> Live, from Washington DC it's the Cube. Covering AWS Public-Sector Summit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back everyone to AWS public sector here in Washington DC, the Cube's live coverage, two-day coverage, I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. Co-hosting alongside John Ferrier, and we are welcoming back to the Cube, 13 time Cube alum, Sanjay Poonen in the COO of VM-Ware. Thank you so much for coming back on the show >> VIP status, by the way. >> Yes, absolutely. >> Thank you, Rebecca. >> That's definitely VIP status. >> Yes we have a red carpet rolled out >> Delighted to be here. I've lost track of the number of times, but when you're having fun it's good. >> Exactly, so tell us a little bit about what is VM-ware's role here in the public sector, what are you doing here at this conference? >> VM-ware and AWS announced a partnership in October 2016, and it really was the coming together of the best in the public cloud, with the best in the private cloud for what we describe as the hybrid cloud opportunity. And the past two and a half years, coming up on three years pretty soon, has been incredibly exciting. We started off with some of the key industries that we felt, for us, the public sector is among our top three industries. But financial services, telco, public sector, healthcare, manufacturing, all the key industries, technology, we're looking for ways by which they could take their applications into the cloud without having to re-factor and re-platform those applications. That's a big deal because it's wasted of work, if you can lift and shift and then innovate. And that's the value we brought to the public sector and some of our earliest customers, were customers in the public sector like MIT, schools, most of the regulated industries. In the on premise world, we're very strong in almost every, civilian, military, the legislative advance, the judicial advance, the federal agency, all of them use us. Millions and millions of work loads. The question really is how is they think about modernization can they get the best manifesto of the public cloud while leveraging their VM footprint >> So some would say that modernization may not include the original VM-ware vision because a lot of the governments are tryna replace and equated old systems like coldblow, mainframes, whatever, but you guys have been around dominated the operating side of IT for a while so you're kind of seeing the first wave of virtualization, the first wave of modernization but there's some cloud native people they might see that as like "Whoa, is that old school?" So what is particular perspective on that innovation dynamic? Because a lot of the public sector investors are awakening now going "Oh my god, I can move fast with Cloud" So Cloud is bringing on a new set of disruptors in IT, you guys have already been there on the first wave of disruption, so how do balance that kind of presence, >> Yeah >> But also disruption, you might be viewed that way, I'm not sure. >> Yeah, I would say, actually, that the first wave of our free reign modernization started with this device before Cloud. Okay, in 2007 when the iPhone came out there was a significant move by big parts of the public sector to move away from blackberry, which is kind of what they use for the decade prior to that. And when we brought AirWatch, we began to see some of the earliest industries that were adopting the public sector. Many of the agencies started to look at us now, so we actually began our journey into this modernization discussion in the workplace transformation, part of the discussion before we got to Cloud. So we were prepared for some of what that looked like, for example, census 2020 that entire for all the workers something is being done with mobile devices now as opposed to paper or surveys that were done maybe 10, 20 years ago, and all powered and secured by Workspace ONE. Now, when it got to Cloud we were prepared for that because, you know, we knew a little bit of what that meant and mobile and Cloud were some of the two top discussion items that people were talking about as modernization at first under the banner of digital transformation. We had to begin to showcase to a customer that moving an application, now we're talking clients server three tier architectures as opposed to a cobalt mainframe that's really where we have but the bulk of the 886 architecture that's from virtualized VM-ware if you could take them now to the cloud and then use some of the services that these guys are building whether it's data based, whether it's artificially intelligence, machine learning, if you waste all your time in re-platforming and re-marketing an application it's that much less time you have to do some of those innovative things. And the lift and shift process once we had this sort of highway into the Cloud, so to speak, which is what VM-ware Cloud and AWS does, it became so apparent, so we are that process, we had to then work what we can talk about Fred RAM certification all of these things that I'm (inaudible) >> In AirWatch was really a critical acquisition, turns out a boom for you guys with public sector. >> Oh yeah. >> You guys had the iPhone was a driver not so much the blocking and tackling of virtualizing data centers and IT, which you had a presence in, but it was the mobility piece. >> Well since 1998, 99, since the company was founded, the public sector business of VM-ware has been very important, I mean I would say, like I said it's the top three and so, we have tremendous amount of relationships some of our biggest deals. Eight figures plus deals where done with some of the biggest and many of our partners here. >> So it's a large business. >> Large business. >> Did you break that in the numbers? >> We did but we have always said it so a top three, we have always talked about in our earnings calls, some big, large customer examples like US Army, and then , which is also a sort of representative of this community here. Safe, local education. All the universities are using us. So the footprint of VW-ware premise was well documented, well understood, lots of spent going on there. What we didn't have an access to, we had some virtual desktops, VDIs. This mobile aperture gave us a whole new banner of spending. But then the Cloud aperture is kind of taking this to a whole new level. And quite frankly if you look at the commercial sector, the overall IT spent in the world is about one trillion we track and about 150 to 200 billion of that, 15 to 20 % is being spent on the Cloud. And the public sector, governs sector is starting to track that, they are probably a little bit lagging in certain areas to commercial. But that 15 to 20 % is only going to get 30 or 40 % in the next five years. VM-ware has been one the top infrastructure companies, we are looking at our move, a bigger part of the wall of share that we gain as people move their investment to the Cloud. >> When you are thinking about the different clients and customers that you're working with, the Sled groups and then the corporate customers, what-how different are they and how, what's on the public sector's mind versus your corporate clients? And how do you manage the relationships differently? >> Yeah, we have sort of segment them at VM-ware and many companies have done the same thing into three pockets. One is who we describe as the federal public sector customers that are civilian, military and we mirror that in almost every country so Theresa here, for example, runs AWS and we have a similar type of work structure to hear in each of the key regions. The second big segment is healthcare, many of the healthcare organizations are regulated there's similar characteristics and the third is SLED, state local education. And those three pockets are very similar patterns in the way in which they buy, their CIOs are similar and they also have often very similar security requirements. So the highest maybe something like a FED and FedRAMP and we some specialized needs that they have for certain certifications on the device or certifications on the Cloud and we have to comply with all of those. But then as you get to the ones that are in the state local maybe they don't as many and higher certifications but what it's helped is to basically work with partners with a very similar across this, and the proposition on the initial transformation is really modernization of either the data center and their applications or modernization of the device. And VM-ware is very uniquely provisioned to help on both those fronts. >> And security is really top of mind >> Absolutely >> I mean we've heard on the main stage and we know how big a threat these cyber threats face. These Cyber threats pose. >> Absolutely, and if you think about aspects of security. Security has multiple aspects of where you can think of them as control points. The network, the end-point, the cloud, identity and lots of event management that is collected. These are the five biggest markets of security. In each of those areas VM-ware is starting to play more. For example, network, you know, five, six years ago people didn't think of VM-ware in that area but with NSX our leading software define networking area, we have become the lead on that segment and about half of our use cases are security related for a use case called micro-segmentation. So the government can basically segment out a set of their apps and through software, think of these as on-off switches almost like light switches only allow certain apps to access certain parts of the data center. That's very easily done through NSX. Workspace ONE, the endpoint can now be extremely secure and provide all the levels of security that Blackware provided in their proprietary devices but now on any device. So we've been systematically looking at each of these areas I would estimate about 15 to 20 % of VM-ware revenue is security related use cases and public sector this is a very, very key place where we get grilled on and we have to satisfy their level of requirements for security. >> Sanjay, what are you doing here? I know you said you are speaking at a panel, Fireside chat, what's your agenda of the week? What's the story? What some of the key talking points for VM-ware? >> VM-ware is one of the top sponsors here, I don't know whatever is global or platinum or whatever the highest level is, you will see our name's there. And largely what we did when we announced this partnership was, you know, Andy and I were classmates at school. We wanted to build a very close partnership at their big events, so you will see us at all the major summits. VM-ware is a top sponsor, and you'll see them also at >> Doubling down on the relationships. >> Yep, we're doubling down. And they're doing the same at VM-world, so we said "Listen" and I think I talked about this in one of your previous shows. If you can mingle, VM-ware has collectively about 100,000 people that come to all the VM-ware events across the world and maybe about half a million to people who watch those events online. Amazon has probably twice that number. But if we can mingle each other audiences because they are coming off into both shows and we, the best showing up at AWS summits and we'll give them lots of access to VM-world. >> Ups* >> (laughs) There we go. >> Operations >> Hey, that's got a ring to it. I like it >> That's exactly the vision. So we, first of all, VM-ware is a big presence and the acquisition we've done, also, like Cloud helped also has a big presence, so that's one. Number two, we try as often as possible to have either a key note or some kind of Provence, I've had a good friendship with Theresa. She invited me to speak, I think there's an event with their top five hundred customers, sort of a key note inside that. And I do that a little later this afternoon. And it's also a tremendous opportunity, I think they have 13 or 15,000 attendees here to meet some of our top customers, so those are the three things that I'm doing over the course of the next day and a half. >> You got the CIA deal 2013, what that has done, in gestation period since then, a lot of other folks in the DC circuit here, public sector, government, agencies, they are all going "Hmm, Amazon has got the right formula" so Theresa put the formula together, people are adopting it, you guys do the strategic deal with AWS with your AA gown on, as a student of the game if you will in tech, Sanjay, which you are, knowing what you know now at VM-ware what's your perspective on this? Because you got a big tail wind with Cloud, you get clarity in what you guys do, in what AWS does, you also have multi Cloud with other Clouds, I mean you got NSX with a nice product, you got multi Cloud built-in hybrid, I mean, pretty good at spot for VM-ware for public sector. What's your perspective on this? >> Yeah, two parts to your question. First off, tremendous respect for Andy. I was describing before I go out on the show with both of you, when we were in school, I wouldn't have put him, in 1987 when we graduated, as the person who would of been the pied piper of this public Cloud revolution. But kudos to him, Theresa a fantastic executive and I think that, you know, 2013 CIA deal put them on an incredible place to be, a front runner in this and many other deals they've done similarly. VM-ware, we saw over the last, you know, 3, 4, 5 years is a significant rise of Amazon in our accounts. Customers were asking us "Why can't we get the best of both worlds? Why does it have to be on premise runs and VM-ware and public lines and I've got to portent and refactor and re platform my applications?" So our customers drove a us together and what we've sort to do in our relationship with Amazon is we meet on a quarterly basis, we review feature and function, product road map, we're aggressive, with our sales teams are trying to pursue opportunities together. And that's really helped us, you know, that's part of the reason I'm here, so, the more that we can do together to satisfy customers, customers like seeing big partners come together, even if, it feels a little bit like Berlin wall moment, right? You remember 1987? You had the US and Soviet Union and people were surprised by that. I that that the general consensus was complete surprise in 2016 when we announced the project with Amazon. But with every move we made like for instance, recently we announced the FedRAM status, one of our biggest 8 figure deals we had announced in our queue for was with a major customer that's in this segment, actually. Our public sector SLED and the more that we can do this, I think there's a lot of future ahead of us. >> Berlin is interesting, you know, tearing down that wall that was a moment that came down and the government, the theme that we are hearing over and over again is red tape. Lag with data it hurts application work loads so fast data, make it available, cut the read tape out of procurement, I mean, basically, 1980s, 1990s, procurement rules don't apply to how people consume and deploy technology today. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Tear down that red tape. >> I think you got that right. I think the governments mandate to go Cloud first in the, you know, last several administrations was absolutely key and certain elementary work loads like websites, I mean why, so if it's a public website that's holding public information, I mean, of course, you've got to worry about security but the data public anyway. Okay, so, what's going to get hacked? I mean, why don't you move all websites that are web content, so some of those early work loads are moved over very easy. I would call it so, the 1-O-1 of posting. Why would you want to have server just to host a website? But once that's done the more mission critical applications, Windows work loads, Oracle's sequel service databases, Virtual desktops, now you are starting to see and I think eventually some of the more mission critical apps like SAP or Oracle apps, I think you see them also now with a lot of customers in both public sectors and commercial- >> Military DOD tactical edges, >> Absolutely. >> The military lives are on the line, it's not a video game, lag actually will kill people. So you want to have that application peaked. >> Exactly. >> With the right architect >> One of the things that are so inspiring about being here at the public sector summit is that we are seeing all these used cases, of using the Cloud for good to solve pressing environmental challenges, health challenges, social challenges, what are you seeing, what is VM-ware working on that is, that is particularly inspiring to you? >> I am glad you asked that Rebecca. I would say that's one the things and Amazon shares a similar value where we think that, you know, technology companies have to think beyond themselves and be a force for good. I think that one of the first times at any major conference, last year we had the Nobel Peace Prize winner who's changed the world, Malala, come and speak and I think everyone who comes to major tech conferences, and we had one of the biggest conferences, was, I mean, we had grown big men, 6 foot tall crying at the end of that. And we had a number of customers that we loved to be able to talk about there stories, Make A wish is an example of an organization that, you know, if someone's with a terminal disease and they want to have some wish that they could wish for, all the infrastructure runs in VM-ware and we can help them serve that audience better, we have a number of charitable organization, Red Cross was on (unintelligible), so we, a big part of pad mind the attire of companies, kind of charter in our EPICC values has been people of integrity, people of work with the customers and the community. Our values EPICC stands for execution, passion, integrity customer and community. And that last C I think is very important, cause, you know, we live in a world and the more important thing is not necessarily how much money you make but what a force you can be for changing people's life. That lasts forever. You can't take your money into the grave but the more you can have on people, impact on people's lives, I mean, John, I am delighted to see your daughter. >> Yeah. >> I mean that generation continues >> Well, it's community right? >> And you're passing on those values onto the next generation or helping people that's the bigger story of life and that gets us equally excited as innovation. >> Communities can now be instrumented via digital technologies, so your faster time to find truth, people who have communities were very active, the data is there, it's all in the data and so you can see the impact >> You know, I think that's absolutely key. So John, I would agree with you and I think you as, you know, you talk to companies that's an important question to ask them. Because we are all in this together. There is no whether it's competitors or what's not, we can all serve the greater community, here for good and make this world a better place, you know there is a lot of what we do that helps the world run better, that's good, infrastructure helps us run better, but helping the world be a better place, it takes both individual and collective will. >> Well one of the talent gaps is not just computer programming and tech people it's architects for the new society that needs help and these key policy questions like governance and responsibilities, you're seeing YouTube and Facebook and our neck of the woods responsible for all this impact and they don't really kind of, there's no oversight. (laughs) >> Well, listen I'm not going to get into the public debate about, you know, privacy and governance and so on. I would say that one thing that, you know, we're also really excited to kind of give back to the community in terms of education. One of the things that is very powerful to VM-ware is our user groups. We call them V-mugs, VM-ware user groups and there's collectively about 150, 200000 of them and it's amazing when you spend time with them, they are really, really, they are members of the community really because they're customers and partners and they dedicate their time to educating others and the more that we can use online forums, I love the way in which you're using your online platform with the AI and other techniques. I think artificial intelligence becomes the ground equalizer, give access to everybody. >> Access to the voice is access to the data but right now as you pointed out we need a society that's going to have shared values and I think that's like where the good is coming from and it's easy to get on the bad tech band wagon which everyone is on right now but there are examples of tech for good, you mentioned- >> But when you say shared values, is that you, I mean is that possible? >> Well, I think there is, there is an awakening going on now from Silicon Valley where I live and here in DC which it's, it's in my face here because people as tech savvy here as they are in say Silicon Valley, no offense, but those people aren't as tech savvy here as they are in Silicon Valley, they don't go deep on the impact of tech but they see the results of bad tech. So I don't see a lot of a vandalizing going on outside of certain areas around tech for good. So I think there's a lot of great examples, human trafficking, you're seeing tech for hiring, new generations onboard training, skills gap, so efficiencies in healthcare, there is so many areas that tech could be used for good and if people were educated on focusing on that and not the bad, I mean bad's got to eradicated, certainly, I'm not for bad things but maybe there's a lot more good, the good pile is much bigger than the bad pile in tech, so, when I say shared values is recognition of that which is let's get on the same page, there's bad and there's good, have that debate and then apply the tech. >> Yeah, interesting. It's a galvanizing force. >> Well, it's just like any invention whether it's the printing press or the use of fire, I mean, there is good use of it and there's bad use of it. And we got to to find ways by which technology while this debate is going on as to as some of these social media platforms, my fundamental belief is that technology is going to transform society, the reason I came to the United States as an immigrant was to study computer science and I felt like the United States had, you know, when I came to this college I hade never heard of called Dartmouth College in Haven New Hampshire, was very fortunate to have a scholarship to go there but that's because I wanted to study computer science and I felt like computer science could change a lot of the way at which, you know, at that time, I was just trying to program and learn how to, you know, create algorithms but if you look at what transformed every aspect whether it's the mobile device which is really a computer in your pocket or Cloud computing which is kind of bringing the super computer into the Cloud. >> (inaudible) >> I think it's tremendous what we can do and we have to constantly find ways by which artificial intelligence and these forces of, you know, the next part of general mobile, Cloud computing can be used for greater good. >> Did you go to scholarship on full bode with basketball? (all laugh) >> Man, we got the Warriors with two ball games. >> So you are a big Warriors and for the folks that don't know Sanjay, we always used to talk about every time Warriors looking good to stay alive but not looking good >> So sad to see. I mean it's sort of, the last game I was watching last night, it was, it was sad, it was, of course, it was a win but also a loss to see KD go down that way was just absolutely tearful, yeah, but, you know, we have one more game. >> It's going to be hard >> It's going to be hard to, you know, kind of beat the crowd and the crowd is really loud at Oracle and get one more game and then, yeah, I think it'll get to game 7, we'll what happens but it's just great to their heart. >> I'm from Boston so I'm kind of over Golden state but I am sure everyone is over Boston and our red socks and our throw-ins and our pads >> Duck tour has only been 15 months? >> I know exactly! Exactly! We're still- >> There will be a Celtic warriors game >> That would have been so good >> That would have been so good like the Lakers (inaudible) >> It was more recent than that. It was the pads victory, so yeah >> Okay >> Yeah, anyway. Just saying, just saying. Sanjay, thank you so much for coming back on The cube, we look forward to your 14th visit on the show. >> Thank you, Rebecca. Thank you, John. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for John Ferrier, stay tuned for more AWS public sector summit here in Washington DC. (Upbeat Music)

(upbeat music) >> Thank you for coming to the HBCN AI Innovation Lab. So, I'm sure that you've heard a lot of excitement in the industry about what we can do with AI and machine learning and deep learning. And our team in our lab has been building solutions for this space. So, very similar to what we do with our other solutions, including high performance computing where we take servers, storage, networking, software, and put it all together to build and design targeted solutions for a particular use case and then bring in services and support along with that, so that we have a complete product. That's what we're doing for the AI space, as well. So, whether we're doing with machine learning, algorithms and whether your data, say for example in Hadoop, or whether your doing deep learning, convolution neural networks, R&M. And no matter what technology you're using, right? So, you have different choices for compute, that those compute choices can be CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, custom ASICs. There's all sorts of different choices for compute. Similarly you have a lot of different choices for networking, for storage, and your actual use case. Right, are you doing image recognition, fraud detection, what are you trying to do? So our goal is multiple form. First, we want to bring in all these new technologies, all these different technologies, see how they work well together. Specifically in the AI space, we want to make sure that we have the right software framework. Because of a big piece of putting these solutions together is making sure that your MXNet and CAP B, and Tensorflow, and all these frameworks are working well together, along with all these different neural network models. So putting all these things together are making sure that we can run standard benchmark datasets so we can do comparisons across configurations, and then as a result of all that work, share best practices and tuning. Including the storage piece as well. Our top 500 cluster is over here, so multiple racks, this is a cluster that is more that 500 servers today, so around 560 servers. And on the latest top 500 list, which is a list that's published twice a year of the 500 fastest supercomputers in the world. We started with a smaller number of CPUs. We had 128 servers. And then we added more servers, we swapped over to the next generation of CPUs, then we added even more servers, and now we have the latest generation Intel CPUs in this cluster. One of the questions we've been getting more and more, is what do you see with liquid cooling? So, Dell has had the capability to do liquid cooled systems for a while now, but we recently added this capability into factory as well. So you can order systems that are direct contact liquid cooled directly from factory. Let's compare the two, right? Right over here, you have an air cooled rack. Here we have the exact same configuration, so the same compute infrastructure, but with liquid cool. The CPU has a cold plate on it, and that's cooled with facilities water. So these pipes actually have water flowing through them, and so each sled has two pipes coming out of it, for the water loop, and these pipes from each server, each sled, go into these rack manifolds, and at the bottom of the rack over there, is where we have our heat exchanger. In our early studies, we have seen that, your efficiency in terms of how much performance you get out of the server, should not matter whether you're air cooled or liquid cooled, if you're air cooling solution can provide enough cooling for your components. So, what they means is, if you have a well air cooled solution, it's not going to perform any worse than a liquid cooled solution. What the liquid cooling allows you to do is in the same rack space, put in a higher level configuration, higher TDP processors, more disks, a configuration that you say cannot adequately air cool, that configuration in the same space in your data center with the same air flow, you will be able to liquid cool. The biggest advantage of liquid cooling today, is to do with PUE ratios. So how much of your infrastructure power are you using for compute and your infrastructure versus for cooling and power. This is production, this is part of the cluster. What we are doing right now is we are running rack level studies, right? So we've done single chassis studies in our thermal lab along with our thermal engineers on the advantages of liquid cooling and what we can do and how it works for our particular workloads. But now we have a rack level solution, and so we are running different types of workloads, manufacturing workloads, weather simulation, some AI workloads, standard high performance, linpack benchmarks, on an entire rack of liquid cooled, an entire rack of air cooled, all these racks have metered PDUs, where we can measure power, so we're going to measure power consumption as well, and then we have sensors which will allow us to measure temperature, and then we can tell you the whole story. And of course, we have a really, you know, phenomenal group of people in our thermal team, our architects, and we also have the ability to come in and evaluate a data center to see, does liquid cooling make sense for you today. It's not a one size fits all, and liquid cooling is what everybody must do and you must do it today, no. It's a, and that's the value of this lab, right? Actual quantitative results, for liquid cooling, for all our technologies, for all our solutions, so that we can give you the right configuration, right optimizations, with the data backing it up for the right decision for you, instead of forcing you into the one solution that we do have. So now we're actually standing right in the middle of our Zenith super computers, so all the racks around you are Zenith. You can hear that the noise level is higher, that's because this is one cluster, it's running workload right now, both from our team and our engineers, as well as from customers who can get access into the lab and run their workload. So that noise level you hear, is an actual super computer, we have C6420 servers in here today, with the Intel Xeon scalable family processors, and that's what you see in these racks behind you and in front of you. And this cluster is interconnected using the Omnipath interconnect. There are thousands and thousands of applications in the HPC space, and over the years we've added more and more capability. So today in the lab we do a lot of work with manufacturing applications, that's computational fluid dynamic, CFDs, CAE, structural mechanics, you know, things like that. We do a lot of work with life sciences, that's next generation sequencing applications, molecular dynamics, cryogenic electron microscopy, we do weather simulation applications, and a whole bunch more. Quantum chromo dynamics, we do a whole bunch of benchmarking of subsystems. So tests, for compute, for network, for memory, for storage, we do a lot of parify systems, and I/O tests, and when I talk about application benchmarking, we're doing that across different compute, network, and storage to see what the full picture looks like. The list that I've given you, is not a complete list. This switch is an Dell Network H-Series switch, which supports the Omnipath fabric, the Omnipath interconnect, that today runs at a hundred gigabits per second. What you have is all the clusters, all the Zenith servers in the lab, are connected to this switch. Because we started with a few number of servers and then scaled, we knew we were going to grow. We chose to start with a director class switch, which allowed us to add leaf modules as we grew. So the servers, the racks, that are closest to the switch have copper cables, the ones that are coming from across the lab have our fiber cables. So, you know, this switch is what allows us to call this HPC cluster, where we have a high-speed interconnect for our parallel and distributed computations, and a lot of our current deep learning work is being done on this cluster as well on the Intel Xeon side. (upbeat music)

>> Live from Washington, DC, it's TheCube, covering AWS Public Sector Summit 2018, brought to you by Amazon Web Services and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome to TheCube, Silicon Angle Media's Production here at the NWS Public Sector show in Washington DC, I'm Stu Miniman, my host for this week will also be Dave Vellante and John Furrier, doing a day-and-a-half worth of programming, I've covered lots of Amazon ecosystem shows, happy to welcome to the program first-time guest, and first-time on the program Dan Fallon, who's the director of Public Sector Systems Engineers at Nutanix, Dan, great to see ya. >> Thank you, Stu, happy to be here. >> Alright, so you know, you and I have known each other for a number of years. I've been at every .NEXT actually that Nutanix has has, really most of the time at Nutanix, you know, we're talking about people's data centers, but you know, we've been watching how Nutanix really went from, you know, that hyper-converged term that we through out, but now you know, the messaging is around Enterprise Cloud, the portfolio has definitely expanded, as have the partnerships. Give us, Dan, why Nutanix is at the show, and a little bit about your role at the company. >> Yeah, yeah. So, I lead our public sector technical groups systems engineering, so we have all our government business, state, local, and federal, rolled up into one group. So, local show for me in the DC area, and this is our second year attending the Public Sector Summit, so you know, last year it was after our Calm acquisition, we're really starting to step into the space of, I'd say, solving the cloud problem for organizations, and blending your on-prem environment into your public cloud. So, that was you know, kind of our focus last year when the marketing team and we kind of get together, and figure out what shows we're at, we're like "Let's do, you know, AWS", it was kind of a new one, we're like "Alright, we'll be good." I would say it was a hit last year, and then this year, you know, we made some additional acquisitions, and now it's at our large .NEXT conference, and really focusing on Beam and cost optimization. >> Dan, I remember back a couple of years ago, people would, you know, knock on Nutanix, they're like "Ah, they're just VDI, and really, they only work on the government sector." You know, it's like federal is like a big thing, cause they can get to a certain price point that, you know, some person can sign off on, and we're like "Um, government's pretty, you know, pretty impressive segment." You know, you look at this show, I hear we're expecting about 10,000 people, which is typical for these regional shows, but this is more than that, the Public Sector, so tell us a little bit about your customers, and love to hear you talk about what use cases they are, and how they think about cloud, and look at Amazon, and look at Nutanix and how that fits for them. >> Yeah, and I actually just heard from our director of marketing here that it's approaching 14,000, so they're blowing up the attendance. Yeah, and I mean, definitely government is unique, that's kind of why we have it divided into a vertical, and Nutanix was very early on in the federal, and unlike a lot of startup small companies, instead of running away from the additional security burden, the compliance requirements, the leadership, Dheeraj, leaned into it. They said "Alright, let's build out our federal team, let's go our and do common criteria compliance.", some certifications that cost a lot of money. So they really, you know, leaned into that, and helped the organization grow in federal, and that kind became our beach head, and then obviously Nutanix has just grown around the world since then, but across public sector, really a couple different verticals. They actually combined the government units about a year ago, now, so I'm getting more and more familiar with the state and local business, as well as the education, and you can kind of look at those as three separate verticals, and then my kind of background is federal, I've been here doing contracting consulting work for the federal government, and now Nutanix. So, they all kind of have a different spin. In the federal government, since we're in DC, start there first. Really big focus on data center optimization, and Cloud First mandates, so you know, I get into discussions, cause there's really a larger conversation to be had on, like, what is cloud. A lot of people see it as a destination, but really they have scorecards that they need to close, consolidate data centers, and part of that involves moving to the cloud, part of that involves just refactoring their on-prem, and you know, could be hyper-converged, just really getting to a better optimized state in their on-prem data centers. >> Yeah, and one thing I like is when you talk to customers, they don't get into these arguments over, like, "Well, what is a private cloud? How do I measure these public clouds?" They're like "Yes, I have a cloud strategy", and you're right, the government has certain, here's the criteria we need to follow, here's the services you can buy, you know, I'm sure they've got GSA contracts for lots of different things that they can buy off of, but Nutanix has a tool that you're talking about at the show called Beam, why don't you explain how that fits into helping customers understand, you know, what applications they put where, and how they manage their entire infrastructure. >> Yeah, and I think whenever I get into those conversations with cloud, I always like to understand "Alright, why cloud, why are you moving into cloud?", and a lot of times it is higher-level mandates, you know, that there's a presidential memo, there's a new, you know, so there are laws they have to follow in terms of optimization of the data center, but if you peel it back, there are, you know, agility, and getting rapid time to market, but the cost is a big thing, and a lot of times because of those mandates, the cost kind of has to be a second factor, and so it might end up being more expensive because they're not really taking that into consideration. Cause, they're being told to go, so when Nutanix launched Beam at .NEXT, I really see it as a very good play in the public sector space, because I hear agencies kind of get the bill after the fact, and then they have this shock of like "Well our budget for cloud spend this year is going to be eaten up in our first couple months, you know, based on this first bill." So, with Beam, we have a lot of governance and cost control, but also the budgeting aspect, which I think will be huge in government, cause they have a fixed budget, they're not as used to doing things opex, they're very capex minded, so the cloud spend, they kind of have to change how they're thinking, and beam gives them that budget analysis so they can say "Alright, I'm going to spend this much a month", and do the allocation and break it down. >> Yeah, it's funny, for people that don't work with the government, they always hear like "Oh, well they've spent, you know, $100 for a hammer, they're overspending", and on my career, I've worked with government, and you get the calls at the end of the quarter, which is like "Oh my gosh, I haven't actually used up my budget, and I better use it now or I won't get it next quarter, or next year", so, you know, cost absolutely a key concern. Maybe drill us in one down level as to, you know, what kind of things, how does Beam help them, you said understand, optimize what they have, as well as plan for the future. >> Yeah, yeah, so you know, Beam hooks into the public cloud providers, as well as your on-prem staff. There are a couple different views, we've already refactored it into the nice Nutanix UI, so that you have the same look and feel. But, you have a couple different views, you have the cost visibility view, so your spend per day, per month, per year, and then you have an analyze view. So, there's a spend efficiency view, so you can actually get a quick visualization of "Am I getting the best value out of my cloud contract?", and this is, you know, really common in government. They'll cut some type of ELA or longer-term contract, but if you're not using all those credits, or taking the best benefit, you're not getting your RLI. So the spend efficiency will help in that aspect. You know, Beam goes beyond just visibility, so you have ability to do one-click cost controls. So maybe, you know, change things from spot to reserve instances. You can also drill down into the sub-services, so "Oh, that's costing more than I thought, you know, is it my NAT service or my load balancer service, like which exact spot is taking all that cost?" And then, the budget allows you to build cost centers within your org. So, build out and you know, charge back is hit or miss in government, sometimes it's way up at the top of the command, but you know, we are seeing more and more orgs, and especially on the service provider and fed integrator side, you know, common scenario is government contract awarded to a fed integrator, and they build out a private cloud and need to do charge back. So that's another big aspect. >> Yeah, it's so funny. Remember, you know, just a few years ago it's like "Oh, public cloud, it's super easy and super cheap, and like well, when you actually dig into it, well it's different.", is I guess what they would say. Simple isn't necessarily what I would say, and cost depends on what you're doing with it and how you do it, so we talked a little bit about federal. You were telling me off camera that you were seeing a lot of SLED customers here. Give a little insight as to what are some of the concerns, what are some of the real things that, you know, that segment of public sector are looking for at this show in the ecosystem. >> Yeah, it's one reason we love doing this show, and it's a great spot that brings together, cause state and local is so regionalized, you know, 50 states and then all the different counties, and cities, and a lot of them attend here. I, you know, kind of just gotten into public sector when this show happened last year, and I met a lot of our SLED customers here for the first time, so you know, bring them all to one spot, which is rare in state and local, it's a lot more regional conferences. So, the challenge of staying local is because it's so regionalized, and then you really have four verticals within state and local, you have the state business, which kind of mirrors federal in more large enterprise. Some states are adopting Cloud First strategies, some states are kind of still figuring it out. So, some states are mirroring fed government, and they have this kind of Cloud First, and trying to figure out how to make that work. And then, at the local level, you have the county and cities, and they're very scattered on their approach. We have some significant size counties that are using Nutanix with things like CloudConnect to backup into AWS, and then I would say higher ed is probably the most forward leaning in terms of their cloud usage. A lot of higher ed pushing aggressively in the cloud. Actually, where I used to work, Maryland, University of Maryland, aggressive push there. So, they still have a lot of fragmented IT on-prem though, they have different orgs, business school, engineering school with their own kind of little IT fiefdoms, and then you have central IT trying to standardize and make more public cloud usage. So, they have a lot of the same challenges of a big enterprise, where they need to kind of get that visibility and cost control across, not only, the on-prem, but also as they move into public cloud. >> Yeah Dan, one of the things I've loved when I dig into, you know, whether it's the federal government or even the local government, how technology and IT are helping drive innovation. You know, we often think of, you know, you think about government, you know, just mired in bureaucracy, wonder if you have any, you know, customer stories you can share about, you know, fun and interesting things people are doing, you know, on top of the infrastructure transformational type of activities? >> Yeah, I mean, I think you know kind of the buzzword maybe of this year seems to be a lot around the IOT and machine learning, so it's still a lot in the pilot phases, but Nutanix, we announced Project Sherlock at .NEXT, so kind of our approach to really a PAS IOT at the edge, so PAS machine learning at the edge, and we actually just deployed our first customer on the commercial side a week ago. So, still early days, but I would say the interest at the state and local level is huge, you know, Smart City initiatives, self-driving car initiatives, and just the data is overwhelming. So, they're planning ahead, some of them are pretty far along, but there's obviously starts and stops on where these initiatives are going, but the amount of data, and it's all dispersed, and just how to get their arms around that, how to control that, and then in federal there's a lot of requests for machine learning out at the tactical edge, so we have our, you know, soldiers forward deployed, how do they take their imagery and analyze that, and not have to wait 24 hours for someone to come back from the main data center, and that's real lifesaving, game changing. For them to be able to analyze it right then and there, and also big in disaster relief scenarios, so you know, being able to analyze. I was talking to one customer we had at a CXR round table last week at our local .NEXT event, and they were talking about after the hurricanes in Puerto Rico, just how to analyze like, where's there even power, where's the water good, and overlaying all that on imagery. But, right now, that's like 15 different sources that they were trying to pull together into one system, so a lot of challenges like that, that people are trying to address. >> And I love that, Dan. I think you hit right on it. It's data at the center of it. How can I leverage it? How can I get new value out of it. I've talked to some government agencies that are like, you know "How do I transform how we do parking in a city? I have the data, the have some sensors, oh wait, we can actually make an app." Sometimes it's partnering with the commercial side and business, but other times it's government just driving these. Dan, want to give you the final word, you know, we're just kicking off the event, but you know, give us a final takeaway for Nutanix AWS here at Public Sector Summit, what you want the takeaways to be. >> Yeah, well I mean, we're here both days, I encourage everyone to stop by and talk to Nutanix, and really, Beam was just launched, so the great thing is it's our first SAS offering, which is obviously a mind shift for us, but you can demo it just by signing up. But, it's kind of you know, traditional where we've been in the infrastructure market, where we get customers that are like "Oh, I want to try it out", and you have to ship them a system, or they have to download software. Now, it's just "Oh, go sign up on the SAS offering", so I think that'll be a great new delivery vehicle for Nutanix, and I think as we kind of shape our ecosystem of not only different ways to consume with Xi Cloud Services, Beam being SAS, but also different capital models in terms of way the customers purchase. I think that's another big driver around cloud is how the finance side consumes IT, so I think it's great to see, you know, we're kind of expanding, blending into the AWS ecosystem as well, but tying it all together, so people can manage everything from one spot. >> Alright, well Dan Fallon, pleasure chatting with you this morning helping me kick things up, and absolutely, the diversity of technologies, the how we are going to purchase things changing quite a lot, everything from, you know, modernizing our data center to SAS application. You know, I remember at .NEXT I said "Modernize the platform, then we can modernize the applications on top of it", so working through its customers through changes. Alright we have, just like Dan said, day-and-a-half work of coverage here on TheCube, of course, check TheCube dot net for all the recordings, as well as all the shows we'll be at. I'm Stu Miniman, and thanks so much for watching TheCube. (techno music)

(upbeat music) >> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Fortinet Accelerate 18. Brought to you by Fortinet. >> Welcome back to theCUBEs continuing coverage of Fortinet Accelerate 2018. I'm Lisa Martin here in Las Vegas with my co-host Peter Burris and we're excited to welcome a Cuba alumni back to theCUBE, please welcome Eric Kohl, the VP of Advanced Solutions from Ingram Micro. Welcome back! >> Thank you, thanks for having me back. Excited to be here. >> Yes, we're very excited. So tell us, what's new? We talked to you last year at this event, what's new and Ingram? Tell us about your role there and the things that are all exciting Ingram Micro. >> Yeah, brand-new for me. I'm in my 20th year at Ingram Micro. I lead our security practice for Ingram Micro U.S. and I have responsibility for sales, vendor management, strategy and execution on behalf of our manufacturer partners. It's a ever evolving space. It's such a great space to be in, I love watching the news every day. You know there's going to be some big logo but just as much fun as I have watching those, that's some of these small breaches that you don't hear about and it's just fascinating. So much more exciting than virtualization. (laughs) >> Some might argue with that. So tell us about the partnership that you guys have with Fortinet. How has that evolved over your time there? >> Yeah so been at Ingram for 10 and I've been working with Fortinet for, I'm sorry I've been at Ingram for 20 and been with Fortinet for over 10, back to when we signed the contract together. Just a very great partnership. They're our security partner of the year, last year. Good friends, excited to see John Bove back leading channels back to Fortinet and you know, we both invest in each other's success and so I think that's pretty unique. Huge investment for them here, having an event like this. Not every company does it but to bring everybody together where you can have security conversations get on the same page, it's extremely valuable, huge investment, and we're proud to be a sponsor. >> I'd love to chat about a little bit of the evolution that you've seen at Fortinet in the last 10 years as we look at, you mentioned breaches. I mean, there were some very notable things that happened in 2017. How have you seen the evolution from them on a security transformation standpoint as it relates to your customers and digital transformation. >> Yeah, so I mean it's something that we see every day from you know, as you know we sell to and through partners but you know, one thing obviously is their breath of solutions has expanded. But you know, also things that partners are asking us today is how is this technology being consumed? And in the face of digital transformation, that's a huge value point because ultimately we want to help our partners to architect, recommend the right technology to solve that business problem and then how do you want to consume it? How does your want to your client want to consume that? So I think that's one of the biggest kind of trends that we're seeing right now. >> So as you think about where you've come from to where you are and we'll talk a little bit about where you think might go, what were the stories you told about security 10 years ago? And how are they different from the stories you're telling about security today? >> I would say it's changed from my perspective because at Ingram, we have never ever been a services company like we are today. And so what I mean by that is, we wrap our services, partner services around the Fortinet solution to make it stronger. 10 years ago I would say we are living more in the traditional distribution role of hey, how do we get a box from here to there? Certainly channel enablement, we've been doing that for a long time but our offering of services to help drive demand is incredibly strong. You know, we work with Fortinet for example, on their threat assessment program and we have an engineer that can go and help. Our partners understand to do that, it's a huge partner ecosystem and so we've got to help them with all those channel enablement efforts. >> What are some of the biggest security challenges that you're hearing, say in the last year or so through the channel, that your partnership with Fortinet can help address? >> You know, it's all around complexity and that as you have likely heard that the shortage of folks that can get out and do some of these services have limitations. There's incredibly high demand for services, you know we're serving a channel ecosystem of roughly 12,000 companies that are buying security technology from us, all with varying degrees of capability and so we've really got to help them understand, hey, how can we help you deploy these services, etc. >> So as you imagine then the steps associated with helping the customer, the roles and relationships between Fortinet, Ingram, and your partners also must be evolving. So how is, as a person responsible for ensuring that that stays bound together in a coherent way for customers, how are you seeing that changing? >> Well you know, look it's a three-legged stool. (laughs) It's us, it's Fortinet and that's our partner community and we're reliant on each other to go and be successful in the market. Look, we couldn't be as great as we are working with our Fortinet channel ecosystem if we didn't have the support of Fortinet, the investments they make, the team that they have wrapped around our business, the team we've put in place wrapped around their business so that's kind of what I'm seeing there. >> They shared a lot of momentum not only in the keynotes this morning but also a number of the guests that we've had on the show today in terms of what Fortinet achieved last year. 1.8 billion in billing, nearly 18 thousand new customers acquired, a lot of momentum, a lot of numbers, I love that theme of the event today. So if we look at some of the things that were shared by Kenzie this morning for example, like I mentioned that the customer numbers and even talking about what they're doing to protect 90% of customers in the global S&P 100 and showed some some big brands there. Tell us a little bit about the partnership and how you're leveraging the momentum of what Fortinet is able to do in terms of capturing customers. How does that momentum translate and really kind of maybe fuel Ingram and what you're able to do? >> Well look, I mean there's incredible demand in security today. There was a slide that they showed this morning and I think it was the perfect storm. I like to call the security space a beautiful disaster. It's a mess, it's complicated, it's scary, the threat attacks are you know new and different and they're never going to stop but it again comes back to hey, how do we work together to kind of harness this? How do we go and there's a great partner community here, lots of our friends are here but they can't all be here. So we want to be able to help take that message out to our channel partners that were not here. Things like that. >> What are some of, oh sorry, go ahead Peter. >> I was going to say so Ingram, Ingram itself has changed. You said you've now, are now introducing security or you're introducing more services. So how is that.. How is security leading that charge to move from a more of a product and a distributor to now services? Is security one of the reasons why Ingram is going in that direction? >> It's one of them. I joked on virtualization but there's a lot of services that we can wrap around and I think, obviously there's a high demand of services and we will lead with Fortinet services and solutions where we can. We want our partners to lead with theirs but really we've hired people to go out do assessments. We have a partner ecosystem where, hey I can't get down to New Mexico to do an install. We have a partner network where they can tap into that and make sure that everything is installed correctly, all the features are turned on. You think about all these breaches that happen in the news, it's not that they didn't have the technology, they missed an alert or they didn't have it all deployed. We want to be able to help our partners solve for that. >> Along the partnership front, what are some of the things that excite you about the Fabric-Ready Partner Program and the announcements they've made today? >> Yeah, love it. Look Fortinet has built comprehensive end-to-end solutions within their Fortinet, I'm sorry, for their Fabric ecosystem but they've also recognized that they can't do it all alone and so they've introduced a lot of partners into that. And so what's exciting for me, leading our security category is, hey how do we bring new partners into our ecosystem too? Because it is a differentiator for Ingram to be able to provide multi-vendor solutions. To have somebody you can go to to say, how does SentinelOne work with for Fortinet Fabric? Those types of things, those conversations are happening all the time. >> Another thing that was announced today was what they're doing with with AI. Tell us a little bit about that and how are you seeing what they're going to be able to do with AI as an advantage for your partners and customers. >> Again the artificial intelligence, machine learning, it all goes back to making the technology easier to use. I still think, you think intelligence and I think back to the human factor. Some of these big breaches, look the threat actors are going to get in but how you recover from a breach, I think if we could inject some artificial intelligence into some of these companies that haven't figured out how to successfully pivot. You know paying your hacker a hundred thousand dollars to keep quiet is not the answer but I think that some of these machine learning things are going to make it easier. It's going to be easier to manage the alerts that are happening every day. So anything that helps eliminate, as they said today, the enemy of security is complexity. Things that help to discover these threats and remediate against them, all good stuff for our partners. >> On the enablement side, when we were talking with the channel chief, John Bove, earlier today and talking about sort of this long history of partner focused culture at Fortinet. Tell us about that in terms of the enablement that you're able to glean from them and then pass on to your channels in terms of selling strategies, marketing to, marketing through. What are some of the things that-- >> Look, we have an amazing team. John Bove, Curt Stratton, the folks that really spent so much time working with Ingram and then we've built an amazing team. I think we have 12 people from our company here at this event to make sure we're making the most out of it but you know. If you heard, we're at The Cosmo. They have Secret Pizza, have you been there? Have you heard about it? >> Lisa: No, Secret Pizza? >> Yeah, it's amazing, it's pretty good, okay. (laughs) >> You didn't bring any, I noticed that but continue. >> I didn't but it's secret not-so-secret pizza but we have some secret not so secret weapons. Jenna Tombolesi an NSE 7. She's one of the highest certified engineers on the planet and she works for Ingram Micro helping to technically enable some of our partners. We've got a guy by the name of Will The Thrill Sharland and The Thrill is out talking to partners every single day, helping them to be more profitable, trusted security advisors helping them through anything you can imagine from a channel enablement perspective. And then just huge teams of people that we go to serve this big market together. >> Are you seeing any vertical specificities? When Ken was sharing some slides this morning, they were talking about, they showed some verticals from a kind of market share perspective but I'm curious some of the verticals that kind of come to mind where security is concerned that maybe are a little bit more elevated than some of the others in terms of risk or health care education and financial services. Maybe Fed, SLED, are you seeing any verticals in particular, maybe those that are really going to be kind of having to be leading-edge, where security transformation is concerned? >> They have to be. Think about health care and when they're big ransomware attack hit last year. There's guys on CNN saying, they had to postpone my surgery because ransomware head. I mean that's life-and-death stuff there but I don't think there's any vertical that's immune to what's going on today. So I think you know regardless of your vertical, you have to be prepared, you have to choose the right technology, and choose the right partner to help you implement it. >> If you imagine where Ingram's going to go with this relationship, what kinds of things are you looking to be able to do as a consequence of great strong partnership with Fortinet. >> Look, the way that companies want to consume technology is changing in the space of digital transformation. Once we work with Fortinet and the partner to recommend the right technology and I mentioned this, like how do you want to consume it? Is it public cloud, is it AWS, or Azure? We have an answer for that today is that hey, it's on premise but I need some creative financing to help close this deal to solve a budget constraint. We have an answer for that. There's several variations of that but however that technology wants to be consumed, we have an answer together. So I think that's a testament to the strength of our relationship. >> And I think one of the words that I saw in, at least one of the press releases, was adaptability. Adaptability of some of the technologies and even John Madison was kind of talking about how customers can go, I've got 20-plus security products, how do I start this Fabric? And that word adaptability kind of jumped out at me as how do you enable adaptability when your customers, through the channel, have so many technologies in place and how does Fortinet help that adaptation? >> I would say they're placing bets like we are on top partners that are going to lead with that technology. They've got to go be the experts in that field and really start driving that. Events like this help get everybody on the same page, understand the new offerings. I mentioned Jenna, she was locked in a room all day yesterday all excited about all these things. She's been running around all day but look we've just got to help the channel understand what the new technologies are, what are the new offerings, and hey, how do we go solve that customer problem together. >> So are there any particular new approaches or tactics or techniques that you're using to get the channels to understand better? >> I don't think that there's anything necessarily new. We're all driving towards the same common goal. Having a security conversation today is easier than ever before so you know, I think we're we're going to continue doing what we've been doing. It's been very successful for us but that's, you know. >> What are some of the things, kind of wrapping up here, that you're looking forward to throughout the rest of 2018? We're kind of still in the first quarter calendar, some big announcements from your partner here today. What are some of the things that excite you at Ingram about the year of 2018? >> Look, it's a market that's that's really ripe right now and I think that when you talk about their new technologies, when you talk about the machine learning, there's a lot of these things happening out there. It's just look, we've got a huge market. The potential is unlimited and I think one area where we're really going to drill down this year is down market, down SMB in mid market because they need enterprise grade technology and Fortinet delivers that and has a history of delivering that. So I think we're going to double click down there together this year and John and his team have been great around putting some programs together for us to go and tackle that together. >> Excellent, well we thank you so much Eric for stopping by theCUBE again. >> Yes and I'll bring pizza next time. >> Please do. >> All right. >> Yes and maybe some beverages so we don't have dry throats. >> Of course, yes. >> So we wish you and Ingram the best of luck in this next year and we look forward to talking to you next year, if not sooner. >> Sounds good. Great, thank you. >> We want to thank you for watching theCUBE's continuing coverage of Fortinet Accelerate 2018. For Peter Burris, I'm Lisa Martin, after the short break we'll be right back. (upbeat music)