(lighthearted music) >> Hey all. Welcome back to theCube's coverage of Kubecon North America '22 CloudNativeCon. We're in Detroit. We've been here all day covering day one of the event from our perspective. Three days of coverage coming at you. Lisa Martin here with John Furrier. John, a lot of buzz today. A lot of talk about the maturation of Kubernetes with different services that vendors are offering. We talked a little bit about security earlier today. One of the things that is a hot topic is national security. >> Yeah, this is a huge segment we got coming up. It really takes that all that nerd talk about Kubernetes and puts it into action. We actually see demonstrable results. This is about advanced artificial intelligence for tactical decision making at the edge to support our military operations because a lot of the deaths are because of bad technology. And this has been talked about. We've been covering Silicon Angle, we wrote a story there now on this topic. This should be a really exciting segment so I'm really looking forward to it. >> Excellent, so am I. Please welcome back one of our alumni, Nick Barcet senior director, customer led open innovation at Red Hat. Great to have you back. Greg Forrest joins us as well from Lockheed Martin Director of AI Foundations. Guys, great to have you on the program. Nick, what's been your perception before we dig into the news and break that open of KubeCon 2022? >> So, KubeCon is always a wonderful event because we can see people working with us in the community developing new stuff, people that we see virtually all year. But it's the time at which we can really establish human contact and that's wonderful. And it's also the moments where we can make big topic move forward and the topics have been plenty at this KubeCon from MicroShift to KCP, to AI, to all domains have been covered. >> Greg, you're the director of AI foundations at Lockheed Martin. Obviously well known, contractors to the military lot of intellectual property, storied history. >> Greg: Sure. >> Talk about this announcement with Red Hat 'cause I think this is really indicative of what's happening at the edge. Data, compute, industrial equipment, and people, in this case lives are in danger or to preserve peace. This is a killer story in terms of understanding what this all means. What's your take on this relationship with Red Hat? What's the secret sauce? >> Yeah, it's really important for us. So part of our 21st century security strategy as a company is to partner with companies like Red Hat and Big Tech and bring the best of the commercial world into the Department of Defense for our soldiers on the ground. And that's exactly what we announced today or Tuesday in our partnership. And so the ability to take commercial products and utilize them in theater is really important for saving lives on the ground. And so we can go through exactly what we did as part of this demonstration, but we took MicroShift at the edge and we were able to run our AI payloads on that. That provided us with the ability to do things like AI based RF sensing, so radio frequency sensing. And we were also able to do computer vision based technologies at the edge. So we went out, we had a small UAV that went out and searched for a target on the ground. It found a target using its radio frequency capabilities, the RF capabilities. Then once we're able to hone in on that target, what Red Hat device edge and MicroShift enables us to do is actually then switch sensing modalities. And then we're able to look at this target via the camera and use computer vision-based technologies to actually more accurately locate the target and then track that target in real time. So that's one of the keys to be able to actually switch modalities in real time on one platform is really important for our joint all domain operations construct. The idea of how do you actually connect all of these assets in the environment, in the battle space. >> Talk about the challenge and how hard it is to do this. The back haul, you'll go back to the central server, bring data back, connecting things. What if there's insecurity around connectivity? I mean there's a lot of things going, can you just scope the magnitude of how hard it's to actually deploy something at a tactical edge? >> It is. There's a lot of data that comes from all of these sensors, whether they're RF sensors or EO or IR. We're working across multiple domains, right? And so we want to take that data back and train on that and then redeploy to the edge. And so with MicroShift, we're able to do that in a way that's robust, that's repeatable, and that's automated. And that really instills trust in us and our customers that when we deploy new software capabilities to the edge over the air, like we did in this demonstration that they're going to run right on the target hardware. And so that's a huge advantage to what we're doing here that when we push software to the edge in real time we know it's going to run. >> And in realtime is absolutely critical. We talk about it in so many different industries. Oh, it's customers expect realtime access whether it's your banking app or whatnot. But here we're talking about literally life and death situations on the battlefield. So that realtime data access is literally life and death. >> It's paramount to what we're doing. In this case, the aircraft started with one role which was to go find a radio frequency admitter and then switch roles to then go get cameras and eyes on that. So where is that coming from? Are there people on the ground? Are there dangerous people on the ground? And it gives the end user on the ground complete situational awareness of what is actually happening. And that is key for enhanced decision making. Enhanced decision making is critical to what we're doing. And so that's really where we're advancing this technology and where we can save lives. >> I read a report from General Mattis when he was in service that a lot of the deaths are due to not having enough information really at the edge. >> Greg: Friendly fire. >> Friendly fire, a lot of stuff that goes on there. So this is really, really important. Nick, you're sitting there saying this is great. My customer's talking about the product. This is your innovation, Red Hat device edge in action. This is real. This is industrial- >> So it's more than real. Actually this type of use case is what convinced us to transform a technology we had been working on which is a small form factor of Kubernetes to transform it into a product. Because sometimes, US engineers have a tendency to invent stuff that are great on paper, but it's a solution trying to find a problem. And we need customers to work with us to make sure that do solution do solve a real problem. And Lockheed was great. Worked with us upstream on that project. Helped us prove out that the concept was actually worth it and we waited until Lockheed had tested the concept in the air. >> Okay, so Red Hat device edge and MicroShift, explain that, how that works real quick for the folks that don't know. So one of the thing we learned is that Kubernetes is great but it's only part of the journey. In order to get those workloads on those aircraft or in order to get those workloads in a factory, you also need to consider the full life cycle of the device itself. And you don't handle a device that is inside of a UAV or inside of a factory the same way you handle a server. You have to deal with those devices in a way that is much more akin to a setup box. So we had to modify how the OS was behaving to deal with devices and we reduced what we had built in real for each edge aspect and combined it with MicroShift and that's what became with that Red Hat device edge. >> We're in a low SWAP environment, space, weight and power, right? Or very limited, We're on a small UAS in this demonstration. So the ability to spool up and spool down containers and to save computing power and to do that on demand and orchestrate that with MicroShift is paramount to what we're doing. We wouldn't be able to do it without that capability. >> John: That's awesome. >> I want to get both of your opinions. Nick, we'll start with you and then Greg we'll go to you. In terms of MicroShift , what is its superpower? What differentiates it from other competing solutions in the market? >> So MicroShift is Kubernetes but reduced to the strict minimum of a runtime version of Kubernetes so that it takes a minimal footprint so that we maximize the space available for the workload in those very constraints environments. On a board where you have eight or 16 gig of RAM, if you use only two gig of that to run the infrastructure component, you leave the rest for the AI workload that you need on the drone. And that's what is really important. >> And these AI payloads, the inference that we're doing at the edge is very compute intensive. So again, the ability to manage that and orchestrate that is paramount to running on these very small board computers. These are small drones that don't have a lot of weight that don't allow a lot of space. >> John: Got to be efficient >> And be efficient with it. >> How were you guys involved? Talk about the relationship. So you guys were tightly involved. Talk about the roles you guys played together. Was it co-development? Was it customer/partner? Talk about the relationship. >> Yeah, so we started actually with satellite. So you can think of small cube sets in a very similar environment to a low powered UAV. And it started there. And then in the last, I would say year or so, Nick we have worked together to develop MicroShift. We work closely on Slack channels together like we're part of the same team. >> John: That's great. >> And hey Red Hat, this is what we need, this is what we're looking for. These are the constraints that we have. And this team has been amazing and just delivered on everything that we've asked for. >> I mean this is really an example of the innovation at the edge, industrial edge specifically. You got an operating system, you got form factor challenges, you got operating parameters. And just to having that flex, you can't just take this and put it over there. >> But it's what really is a community applied to an industrial context. So what happened there is we worked as part of the MicroShift community together with a real time communication channel, the same slack that anybody developing Kubernetes uses we've been using to identify where the problems were, how to solve them, bring new ideas and that's how we tackle these problems. >> Yeah, a true open source model I mean the Red Hat and the Lockheed teams were in it together on a daily basis communicating like we were part of the same company. And and that's really how you move these things forward. >> Yeah, and of course open source is great but also you got to lock down the security. How did you guys handle that? What's going on with the security? 'Cause you got to make sure no take over the devices. >> So the funny thing is that even though what we produce is highly inclusive of security concern, our development model is completely open. So it's not security biopurification, it's security because we apply the best practices. >> John: You see everything. >> Absolutely. >> Yes. >> And then you harden it in the joint development, there it is. >> Yeah, but what we support, what we offer as a product is the same for Lockheed or for any other customer because there is no domain where security is not important. When you control the recognition on a drone or where you control the behavior of a robot in a factory, security is paramount because you can't immobilize a country by infecting a robot the same way you could immobilize a military operation- >> Greg: That's right. >> By infecting a UAV. >> Not to change the subject, but I got to go on a tangent here cause it pops in my head. You mentioned cube set, not related to theCUBE of course. Where theCube for the video. Cube sets are very powerful. People can launch space right now very inexpensively. So it's a highly contested and congested environment. Any space activity going on around the corner with you guys? 'Cause remember the world's not around, it's edge is now in space. Mars is the edge. >> That's right. >> Our first prototype for MicroShift was actually a cube set. >> Greg: That's where it started. >> And IBM project, the project called Endurance. That's the first time we actually put MicroShift into use. And that was a very interesting project, very early version of MicroShift . And now we have talks with many other people on reproducing that at more industrial level this was more like a cool high school project. >> But to your point, the scalability across different platforms is there. If we're running on top of MicroShift on this common OS, it just eases the development. Behind the scenes, we have a whole AI factory at Lockheed Martin where we have a common ecosystem for how we actually develop and deploy these algorithms to the edge. And now we've got a common ecosystem at the edge. And so it helps that whole process to be able to do that in automated ways, repeatable ways so we can instill trust in our DRD customer that the validation of verification of this is a really important aspect. >> John: Must be a fun place to work. >> It is, it's exciting. There's endless opportunities. >> You must get a lot of young kids applying for those jobs. They're barely into the whole. I mean, AI's a hot feel and people want to get their hands on real applications. I was serious about space. Is there space activity going on with you guys or is it just now military edge, not yet military space? Or is that classified? >> Yeah, so we're working across multiple fronts, absolutely. >> That's awesome. >> What excite, oh, sorry John. What excites you most, never a dull moment with what you're doing, but just the potential to enable a safer, a more secure world, what excites you most about this partnership and the direction and the we'll say the trajectory it's going on? >> Yeah, I think, for me, the safer insecure world is paramount to what we're doing. We're here for national defense and for our allies and that's really critical to what we're doing. That's what motivates me. That's what gets me up in the morning to know that there is a soldier on the ground who will be using this technology and we will give be giving that person the situational awareness to make the right decisions at the right time. So we can go from small UAVs to larger aircraft or we can do it in a small confined edge device like a stalker UAV. We can scale this up to different products different platforms and they don't even have to be Lockheed Martin >> John: And more devices that are going to be imagined. >> More devices that we haven't even imagined yet. >> Right, that aren't even on the frontier yet. Nick, what's next from your perspective? >> In the domain we are in, next is always plenty of things. Sustainability is a huge domain right now on which we're working. We have lots of things going on in the AI space, stuff going on with Lockheed Martin. We have things going on in the radio network domain. We've been very heavily involved in telecommunication and this is constantly evolving. There is not one domain that, in terms of infrastructure Red Hat is not touching >> Well, this is the first of multiple demonstrations. The scenarios will get more complex with multiple aircraft and in the future, we're also looking at bringing a lot of the 5G work. Lockheed has put a large focus on 5G.mil for military applications and running some of those workloads on top of MicroShift as well is things to come in the future that we are already planning and looking at. >> Yeah, and it's needed in theater to have connectivity. Got to have your own connectivity. >> It's paramount, absolutely. >> Absolutely, it's paramount. It's game-changing. Guys, thank you so much for joining John and me on theCube talking about how Red Hat and Lockheed Martin are working together to leverage AI to really improve decision making and save more lives. It was a wonderful conversation. We're going to have to have you back 'cause we got to follow this. >> Yeah, of course. >> This was great, thank you so much. >> Thank you very much for having us. >> Lisa: Our pleasure, thank you. >> Greg: Really appreciate it. >> Excellent. For our guests and John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE Live from KubeCon CloudNativeCon '22 from Detroit. Stick around. Next guest is going to join John and Savannah in just a minute. (lighthearted music)

>>The Cube presents UI Path Forward five. Brought to you by UI Path. >>Hi everybody. Welcome back to Las Vegas. You're watching the Cube's coverage of UI Path Forward. Five. We reach cruising altitude on day two. Christina Seacrest is here. She's the process Artificial intelligence and automation GPS automation leader at ey. And Bob PCIs, executive director for Intelligent Automation for the state of Tennessee. Folks, welcome to the cube. Thank you for Adam. >>Good >>To have you. Okay, I don't know if I messed up that title, Christina, but it's kind of interesting. You got process, you got ai, you got automation, you got gps. What's your role? >>I have a lot of rules, so thank you for that. Yeah, so my focus is first and foremost automation. So how do you get things like UI path into our clients, but also I focus specifically in our government and public sector clients. So sled specifically. So state local education. So that's why I'm here with the state of Tennessee. And then we also like to take it beyond automation. So how do you bring an artificial intelligence and all the technologies that come with that. So really full end to end spectrum of >>Automation. So Bob, when you think about the sort of the, the factors that are driving your organization of, how did you describe that, Those sort of external factors that inform your strategy. What, what's, what are the catalysts for how you determine to deploy technology? >>Well, it was primarily that we know tendency has a tendency to provide good customer service, but we want to get to a great status best in class, if you will. And we had an external advisory review where it said, Hey, you know, we could make automation to improve our customer experience. And so that was like a directive of the, the state leaders to go across the board and automate all processes statewide, starting with the 23 executive agencies. >>So where's the focus from that standpoint? Is it on just providing better interfaces to your constituents, your customers? Is it cutting costs or you actually have more budget to invest? Kind of a combination of >>Those? Yeah, so it's, it's really both qualitative and quantitative, right? So quantitative is where we're able to reduce hours and therefore we can redirect people to more less mundane work, if you will. And then qualitative is where we're able to reduce the errors, improve data quality, reduce cycle time for our citizens, you know, when they're making requests, et cetera. So it's, I think it's a combination of both of those quantitative and qualitative metrics that we are mandated in, in micromanaged, quite frankly to, to bring, make those >>Numbers. So I'm from Massachusetts, when I go to a a mass.gov website, I say, all this was done in the 1990s and you could just see where the different stovepipes were, were. But then every now and then you'll hit one and you'll say, Wow, okay, this is up to, it's such a great experience. And then the flip side of that is you want your employees to be happy and not have to do all this mundane work so you can retain the best people. You don't have to. So you're living that in, in state and, and local. So where did you start your automation journey? What role did EY play? Let's go. Yeah, >>Sure. So I, I, I think the thought for process automation was probably three or four years ago, but then we started the program about 18 months ago and there was a lot of, let's say behind the scenes work before we could bring EY in, you know, like what resources was I gonna have in, in the state that were gonna help me address all of the agency simultaneously, right? Cuz normally you'll see a project that'll do be more siloed across the state and say, we're gonna do this agency, we're gonna do this division. Well, you have 40 other agencies that are, you know, the momentum is it's just gonna fall, it wayside. So how we looked at it was let's blanket it and go across all 23 agencies at the same time, you know, identify common processes that are used across 40 divisions, for example, right? >>So, so what we basically did is we procured the software, you know, did the contracts, and then it was really about, I designed, I'm gonna say a multistream approach where they were, we could run multiple work streams, independent define all the architectures, required dev tests, production, the disaster recovery at the same time in parallel developed the center of excellence, the operation model, the processes, methodologies. And the third one was, let's go out to a few divisions, business administration, health, you know, health, human resources, and be able to do a process inventory to see what was there. And then based on that, there's all this theory of well let's do a proof of concept. Let's do a proof of technology, let's do apply. Well, the bottom line is rpa technology's been around for a long time. It's proven there's nothing to prove. But really what was important to prove before we decided to go, you know, full tilt was, you know, develop a proof of perceived business value. >>Are we gonna bring in the, the business value, the hours and the qu qualitative metrics that is expected by our ex executive team, The leadership, we were able to do that, you know, with the help of help of ey, we built out the prototypes and we got the green light to go forward, got ey to start, and then we just basically went pedal to the metal. We had our foundation already defined. We built up the architecture in less than one to two months. Now, in, in a public sector or private sector, it's just not heard of, right? But we have a tendency with EYs technical team, myself, we look around the, the road around the rock instead, the rock in the road, right? So we ended up coming up with a very unique, very easy to easy to handle architecture that was very scalable. And then were able to hit the ground running and deploy in production by December where head of >>Was EY involved in the whole, you know, dev test production, dr. Center of excellence, the, the process inventory or did you bring them in? Did you kind of do that internally then bring EY in for the proof of >>Value? EY was actually awarded the contract for soup to nuts, basically the first phase, which was those four work streams I told you about. And they worked with myself and the state of Tennessee infrastructure architecture teams. We needed to get these things defined and signed off the architecture so we could expedite getting them built out. And then they, and they basically ran all four work streams, you know, the process, inventory, the prototype, the, the proof of perceived business value, the building out the center of excellence, working with myself. And, and this wasn't just us in a, a vacuum, we ended up having to, I mean, I could do the strategy, I could do the technology and I could said the roadmap and all the good stuff, but we had to actually meet with a lot of the state or tendency organizations on change management. How do we end up putting this process or an automation in the middle of the, the normal traditional process, right? So there was a lot of interaction there and getting their feedback and then tweaking our operational model based on feedback from the state of Tennessee. So it was all very collective collaborative. I think that would be the keyword is collaborative and then building out everything. So then, and then we ended up going to the next way where they knew so much and we were, we had such a tight timeframe that we continued with ey. >>So Christina, Bob mentioned center of excellence a couple of times in the state of Tennessee, but then beyond state of Tennessee, other organizations you've worked with in this space, what's the relationship between center of excellence and this thing we've been hearing about over the last couple of days, the citizen developer has that been, has, has, has that been leveraged in the state of Tennessee? Bob, have you seen that leveraged in other places? Christina? What's that relationship look like? >>Yeah, so we don't leverage that, that model yet we have centralized model and there's reasons for that. So we don't end up having maverick's, runoff runoffs have one off, have, you know, have a a UI path version or down this division or have another RPA tool in another division, right? So then all of a sudden we're, we have a maintenance nightmare. Manageability nightmare. So we basically, you know, I I I negotiate an ELA with UI path, so therefore if anyone wants to go do another automation on another division, or they would basically follow our model, our design, our coe, our quality gates. We we're the gatekeepers to bring into production. >>Got it. Now, yeah. Now Christina, what's your perspective? Because I can imagine Nashville and Memphis might have very different ideas about a lot of things. Yeah. Little Tennessee reference there, but what, what, what about what, what about other places are you, are you seeing the citizen developer leveraged in, in some kinds of places more than others or >>What? Yeah. Yeah. And that's part of, because of the foundation we're building. Yeah. So we laid, you know, when, when Bob talks about the first phase of eight weeks, that was amazingly fast, even in that's ridiculous. Spoke about it to say you're gonna lay these four foundations. I was excited, like, I was like, wow, this, this is a very serious client. They wanna go fast and they wanna get that momentum, but the AUM was laid out so we could propel ourselves. So we are at 40 automations right now. We're in the works of creating 80 more automations in this next year. We'll be at 120 really quickly. The AUM is critical. And I will say at a client, I've, I've worked with over 50 clients on automation programs. The way state of Tennessee treats the aom and they abide by it, it is the living document of how you go and go fast. Got it. And the one thing I would say is it's also allowed us to have such immense quality. So I always talk about you put in forward, you put in another 80, we're at 98% uptime on all our automations, meaning they don't go down. And that's because of the AOM we set up. And the natural progression is going to be how do you take it to citizen developer? How do you take it to, we call, you know, process automation plus, >>But methodically, methodically, not just throwing it out at the beginning and, and hoping the chaos >>Works. Exactly. Exactly. And >>The ratio of of bots to automations, is that one to one or you have automation? Oh no, the single bot is doing multiple. So how many bots are you talking about? >>We're doing, Bob, you're gonna answer this better than I will, but the efficiency is amazing. We've been pushing that. >>So our ratio now, cause we have a high density architecture we put in is four bots, excuse me, four processes. The one bot and four bots, The one virtual machine EC two server. Right? So it's four to one, four to one. Now what we're going to get by next summer, we'll do more analysis. We'll probably get the six to one, six to one that's made serious shrinkage of our footprint from a machine, you know, management perspective from 60 down to seven right now we're gonna add the next chunk. We add another 80 automations in FIS gear 24. We're only gonna add two more bot, two more servers. Right? So that's only 10 running like close to 200 bucks. >>And, and is doing this on prem in the cloud? >>No, our, the architecture's fully >>Oh, cloud based >>Ct. Yeah. So we use UiPath SAS model. Yeah. Right. So that handles the orchestrator, the attended bots, all the other tooling you need automation hub, process minor et etc. Etc. Cetera. And then on the state side in aws we have, we use unattended bots, cert bots that have to go down into the legacy systems, et cetera. And they're sitting on EC two instances. >>Was there, was there a security not hole that you had to get through internally? What was that like? >>No, actually we, we, we were lock and step with the security team on this. I mean, there are some standards and templates and you know, what we had to follow, you know, but they're doing an assessment every single release, they do assessments on little bots, what systems it's activating or are accessing, et cetera. The data, because you have fedra data of FTI data, you know, in the public sector to make sure we're not touching it. >>Do you guys golf? >>I do, yeah. Not Well, yes, >>If you mean I I like golf but not don't golf well, but so you know what, what a mulligan is. If you had a Mulligan right, for the state of Tennessee, what'd you learn? What would you do differently? You know, what are some of the gotchas you see maybe Christina in, in other customers and then maybe specifically state of Tennessee, >>Right? I would say, you know, it is the intangibles. So when we talk about our clients that go fast and go big, like state of Tennessee, it's because that, that we call it phase zero that gets done that Bob did. It's about making sure you've got the sponsorship. So we've got executive sponsorship all the way up. You've got amazing stakeholder engagement. So you're communicating the value of what we're trying to do. And you're, you're showing them the value. We have been really focused on the return on investment and we'll talk a little bit about that, but it's how do you make sure that when you do, you know, states are different with those agencies, you have such an opportunity to maximize return on investment if you do it right, because you're not talking about automation in one agency, you're talking it across multiple agencies. We call that the multiplier effect. And that's huge. And if you understand that and how to actually apply that, the value you get is amazing. So I, I don't, I can't say there's a mulligan here, Bob, you may think of some, I know on other clients, if you don't line up your stakeholders and you don't set the expectations early on, you meander and you may get five, six automations in over the year. You know, when I go to clients and say, we're doing 40, we're doing 80, they're like, >>Wow, that's the, but that's the bottom line. Gotcha. Is if you, if you want to have an operational impact and have multiple zeros, you gotta go through that process that you said up front. >>Exactly. A >>Anything you do differently, Bob? >>Well, I I what I do differently, I mean, I think, I mean we, we did get executive sponsorship, you know, and in one area, but we still have to go out to all the 23 agencies and get, and bring awareness and kind of like set the hook to bring 'em in, right? Bring 'em to the, to the, to the lake. Right. And, and I think if, if it was more of a blanket top down, getting every agency to agree to, you know, in investigate automation, it would've been a lot easier. So we're, we're, we're getting it done. We've gone through 13 agencies already and less than a year, all of our releases are sprinkling across multiple agencies. So it's not like a silo. I'll look at that. Everyone at every agency is being impacted. So I think that's great. But I, I think our, our Mueller now is just trying to make sure we have enough backlog to do the next sprints. >>Is it, you know, the ROI on these initiatives is, is, is so clear and so fast. Is it self-funding? Is there gain sharing or do you just give business, give money back to the state and have to scramble for more? Do you get to, you know, get a lick off that cone? >>Unfortunately we don't, but I, I, I try to see if we could get some property like, nah, we don't do that. It's all cost, cost based. But, but our ROI is very attractive, I think for, for doing a whole state, you know, transformation. I think our ROI is three and a half to four years. Right. And that's pretty mind blowing. Even if you look at private sector or, I, I think some of the, the key things which people are noticing, even though we're in public sector, we're we are very nimble. This project is extremely nimble. We've had people come in, exactly, we need this, so we're gonna get penalized. Okay, knock it out in four hours, four days. Right? So it's that nimbleness that you just don't hear of even in private sector or public sector. And we're just able to do that for all the collaboration we do across ey, across myself and across all the other organizations that I, that I kind of drag along or what have, >>What do you, what do you, do you see any limits to the opportunities here? I mean, is this a decade long opportunity? Is you have that much runway >>Or that's just not my dna, so we're gonna, we're gonna probably do it like in four years, but Well, when >>You say do it, I mean, will you be done at that point? Or do you see the weight, >>Look at, you know, we could boil the ocean and I think this is one of the reasons why we're successful is we could boil the ocean and and be, it will be 10 attended 20 year program. Yeah. Okay. Or we looked at it, we had some of EY guys look at it and say, I said, what's the 25 80 rule? Meaning, you know, give me, So if we had 500 processes, tell me how many processes will gimme 80% of the hours. And it was 125, it was a 25 80 rule. I said, that's what we're doing it, we're doing, we're gonna do the 80% of the hours quantifiably. Now when we're done with that pass, then we'll have those other ones that are bringing 20% of the hours, that's when we might be bringing citizens in. That's what we're bringing state workers in. But at that same time, we will be going back in the wave and doing advanced ai. Right. Or advance ia, in other words. So right now we do rpa, ocr, icr, but you know, there's NL ml nps, there's virtual agents and stuff. So that's like the wave we're gonna do through the ones we've already gone through. Got it. Right. So it'll probably be a two or three wave or iterations. >>Cool. Guys, thanks so much for coming into the cube. Great story. Really appreciate you taking us through it. Thank you so much for having us. You're very welcome. All right, keep it right there. Dave Nicholson. The Dave ante. We back at UI path forward five from the Venetian in Las Vegas. Keep it right there.

>>Hey, welcome back everyone. Through the cubes coverage of VMware Explorer, 22, I'm John Fett, Dave ante, formerly world, our 12th year extracting the signal from the noise. A lot of great guests. It's very vibrant right here. The floor's great. The expo halls booming, the keynotes went great. We just had a keynote announce. So our next first guest here on day one is car Capor C co-founder and COO min IO. Welcome to the cube. Thanks for joining us. >>Thank you for having >>Me. You're also angel investor of variety of companies of Q alumnis and been in the valley for a long time. Thanks for coming on sharing. What's going on. So, first of all, obviously VMware still on the wave. They've always been relevant and they've always been part of it. Yes. But as that's changing a lot's going on security data's big conversation. Yeah. And now with their multi-cloud we call super cloud. But their multi-cloud it's it's about hyperscaler participation. Yes. Yes. Cloud universal. Yes. It's clear that VMware has to be successful in every cloud. Okay. And that's really important. And storage is one of it. You guys do that? So talk about how you guys relate with min IO, the vision, how that connects with what's happening here. >>Yeah. So like you already said, right? Most of the enterprises are become data enterprises in itself and storage is a foundation layer of how, and you do need a system that is simple, scalable, and high perform it at scale. Right? So that's where min IO fits into the picture. And we are software defined, open source. So, you know, like VMware has traditionally been focused on enterprise it, but that world is fast changing. They are making a move in terms, developer first approach and min IO, because it's open source. It's simple enough to start, get, start deploying object storage and cloud native applications on top. So that's where we come in. We have around 1.3 million DACA downloads a day. So we own the developer market overall. And that is where I feel the partnership with VMware as they are coming into multi-cloud on their own min IO is a foundational layer. >>So just to elaborate on it, whenever you talk about multi-cloud, there are two pieces to it. One is the compute side and one is on the storage side. So compute Kubernetes takes care of the compute sites. Once you containerize an application, you can deploy it any cloud, but the data has gravity and all the clouds that you see AWS, your Google cloud, they're inherently incompatible with each other. So you need a consistent storage layer with industry standard APIs that you can just deploy it around with your application without a single line of code change. So that's what we >>Do. Oh, so you got a great value proposition, love the story. So just kind of connect on something. So we heard the keynote today. We gotta win the developers. They didn't say that, but they said, they said that they have the ops lockdown, but DevOps is now the new developer. Yes. We've been covering a lot of the poop coupon as you know, and shifting left everyone's in the C I C D pipeline. So developers are driving all the action and it has to be self-service. Absolutely. It has to be high velocity. Can't be slow. Yes. Gotta be fast. So that sounds like you're winning that piece. >>Yes. Yes. And I think more than that, what is most important is it needs to be simple. It needs to get your job done in a very simple and efficient way. And I think that is very important to the developers overall. They don't like complex appliances or complex piece of software. They just want to get their job done and move on the next thing in order to build their application and deploy it successfully. So whatever you do, it needs to be very simple. And of course, you know, it needs to be feature rich and high performant and whatnot that comes with the, with the flow in itself. But I think simplicity is what wins, the developers, hearts and minds overall. >>So object storage always been simple, get put right. Pretty simple, you know, paradigm. Yes. But it was sort of the backwater before, you know, Amazon, you know, launched. Yes. You know, it's cloud. How have you seen object evolve? You mentioned performance. So I presume yes. Yes. You're not just for cheap and deep you're for cheap bin performance. So you could describe that a little bit if you would, >>For, for sure. Like you mentioned, right. When AWS was launched, S3 was the foundation layer. They launched S3 first and then came everything else around it. So object storage is the foundation of any cloud that you go with. And over a period of time, when we started the company back in 20 end of 2014, beginning 2015, it was all about cheap and deep storage. You know, you just get, put it into one basket, but over years, if you see, because the scale of data has increased quite a bit, new applications have emerged as well. That require high performance. That is where we partnered very closely with Intel early on. And I have to give it to them. Intel was the one who convinced us that you need to do high performance. You need to optimize your software with all the AVX five, 12 instruction set and so on. >>So we partnered very closely with them and we were the first one to come up with, you know, you need high performance, object storage and that in collaboration with Intel. So that's something that we take a lot of pride in, in terms of being the leader in that direction of bringing high performance object storage to the market, especially for big data workloads, AI ML, workloads, they're all object first, like even, you know, new age applications like snowflake and data bricks, they are not built on sand or file system. Right. They're all built on object storage rates. So that's where the, you need >>Performance. And I think the, I think the data bricks, snowflake examples. Good. And then you mentioned in 2014, when you started yes. At that time, big data was Hudu and you know, data, legs, data swamp. Yes. Yes. But the ones that were successful, the ones who optimize had the right bets, like you guys. Yeah. Now we're in an era. Okay. I gotta deploy this. So you got great downloads and update from developers. Now we see ops struggling to keep up yes. With the velocity of the development cycle. Yes. And with DevOps driving the cloud native yeah. Security data ops becomes important. Okay. Exactly. Security and data. A lot with storage going on there. Yes. How do you guys see that emerging? Cuz that becomes a lot of the conversations now in the architecture of the ops teams. I want to be supportive in enablement of dev. Yes. Yes. Do you guys target that world too? Or >>Yeah, we, we do target that. So the good thing about object storage is that if you look at the architecture in itself, it's very granular in terms of the controls that it can give to the end user. Right? So you can really customize in terms of, you know, what objects need to be accessible to whom what kind of policies you need to implement on the bucket level, what kind of access controls and provisions that you need to do. And especially like with ransomware attacks and what not, you can enable immutability and so on, so forth. So that's an important part of it. Especially I think the ransomware threats have increased quite a bit, especially with, you know, the macro, you know, situation with war and stuff. So we see that come up quite a bit. And that's where I think, you know, the data IU immutability, the data governance and compliance becomes extremely, extremely important for organizations. So we, we are partnering very closely with a lot of big organizations just for this use case itself. >>So how's it work if I want to build some kind of multi-cloud whatever X, right. Okay. I, I can use S three APIs or Azure blah. Okay. And I, and are all different. Yes. But if I want to use min IO, what's the experience like describe how I go about doing >>So if you've had any experience working with AWS, you don't need to even change a single line of code with us. You can just bring your applications directly onto min IO and it just behaves and act same way transparently what you would've experienced in AWS. Now you can just lift and shift that application and deploy it wherever you need it to be. Whether it is Azure, blah, whether it is Google cloud or even on edge. Like what we are seeing is that data is getting generated outside of public cloud. And most of the data that, you know, the emerging trend is that we see that data gets generated on edge quite a bit, whether it is autonomous cars, whether it is IOT, manufacturing units and so on. And you cannot push all that data back in the central cloud, it's extremely expensive for bandwidth and latency reasons. >>So you need to have an environment that looks and feels exactly what you have experienced at the central cloud on the edge itself. So a lot of our use cases are also getting deployed with Mani on the edge itself, whether it is on top of VMware because of the footprint of that VMware has within all these organizations itself. So we see that emerging quite a bit as well. And then you can tier the data off to any cloud, whether it is mid IO cloud, whether it is AWS, Azure, Google cloud, and so on. So you can have like a true multi-cloud environment. >>So you would follow VMware to the edge and be the object store there, or not necessarily if it's not VMware Kubernetes or whatever. >>Exactly. Exactly. Depending on the skill set that the organization has within, within their setup, if their DevOps savvy Kubernetes is becomes a very natural choice. If they are traditional enterprise, it, VMware is an ideal choice. So yeah. >>So you're seeing a lot of edge action you're saying, and we, >>We, we have seen starting it increasing yes. And >>Are customers. So they're persisting data at the edge. Yes. Yes they >>Are. Okay. >>It's not just the femoral and >>No, they are not because what the cost of putting all the data through bandwidth is extremely expansive to push all the data in central cloud and then process it and then store it. So we see that the data gets persisted on edge cloud as well in terms of processing and only the data that you need for, for the processing through whatever application systems that you, whether it is snowflake or data, bricks and whatnot, you know, you choose what applications from compute side, you want to bring on top of storage. And that can just seamlessly and transparently work. Yeah. >>Maria, you were saying that multi-cloud yeah. Games around Kubernetes. You, yes. That Kubernetes is all about multi-cloud that's the game. >>Yes. >>Yes. Can you explain what you mean by that? Why is multi-cloud a Kubernetes game? >>So multi-cloud has two foundations to it. One is the compute side. Another one is the storage side. Compute Kubernetes makes it extremely simple to deploy any application that is containerized. Once you containerize an application, it's no longer tied to the underlying infrastructure. You can actually deploy it no matter where you go. So Kubernetes makes that task extremely easy. And from storage standpoint, you know, the state of applications need to be held somewhere. You know, it's it, people say it's cloud, but it's computer somewhere. Right? So >>Exactly it's the >>Container. It needs, it needs to be stored somewhere. So that's where, you know, storage systems like man IO come into play where you can just take the storage and deploy it wherever you go. So it gets tightly bound with application itself, just like Kubernetes is for compute. Mano is for storage. >>I saw Scott Johnson, the CEO of Docker in Palo Alto last week did yeah. The spring to his step. So to speak Dockers doing pretty well as a result, they got, you know, starting to see certifications. Yes. So people are really rallying around containers in a more open way. Yes. But that's open source, but it's the Kubernetes, that's the action. Absolutely. That the container's really there now Docker's got a great business. Yes. Right now going yes. With how they're handling. I thought they did a great job. Yeah. But the Docker's now lingua Franco, right? Yes. That's the standard. It >>Is. It is. And I think where Kubernetes really makes it easy is in terms of when the scale is involved. Right. If there are, if the scale is small, it's okay. You can, you can work around it. But Kubernetes makes it extremely simple. If you have the right Kubernetes skill, I just need to put a disclaimer around there because not lot of people are Kubernetes expert, at least not yet. So if you have the expertise, Kubernetes makes the task extremely simple, predictable and automate and automated scale. I think that is what is >>The, so take me through a use case, cuz I've talked to a lot of enterprises, multiple versions, we're lifting and shifting to the cloud, that's kind of the, you know, get started, get your feet wet. Yes. Then there's like, okay, now we're refactoring really doing some native development and they're like, we don't have a staff on Kubernetes. We do a managed service. Yeah. So how does, how do you see that evolution piece taking place? Cause that's a critical adoption component as they start figuring out their Kubernetes relationship yes. To compute yes. How they roll it out. Yes. How do you see that playing out as a big part of this growth for a customer? >>Yeah. So we see a mix, you know, we see organizations that are born within cloud. Like they have just been in mono cloud like AWS. Now they are thinking about two things, right. With the economy being, you know, and the state that it is, they're getting hurt on the margin. Some of the SaaS companies that were born in cloud. So they are now actively thinking in terms of what mode they can do to bring the cost down. So they are partnering with min IO either to, you know, be in a colocation at Equinix, like data centers or go to other clouds to optimize for the compute modes and so on. So that's one thing that we see increasingly amongst enterprise. Second thing that we see is that because you know of that whole multi-cloud and cloud does go down, it's not like it, you know, and it's been evident over the last year or so that, you know, we've seen instances where Amazon was down or Google cloud was down. So they want to make sure that the data is available across the clouds in a consistent way. So with man IO, with the active, active application and so on, you can make the data available across the cloud. So your applications, even if one cloud is down for Dr. Purposes and so on, you can, you know, transparently, move the applications to another cloud and make sure that your business is not affected. So from business continuity reasons as well, the customers are partnering with us. So like I said, it's a mix. >>So the Tansu, you know, 1.3, the application development platform that we heard in the keynotes this morning, critical, you have to have that for cross cloud services. If you don't have a consistent experience, absolutely forget it. I mean it's table stake. Absolutely. But there's a lot of chatter on Twitter. A lot of skepticism that VMware can appeal to developers, some folk John as well chimed in saying, well, you know, it's, don't forget about the op side of the equation as well. They need security and consistency. Yes. What are you seeing in the marketplace in terms of VMware, specifically their customers and, and what do you, what do you, how do you rate their chances in terms of them being able to track the developer crowd, your, your peeps? >>Yeah. So VMware has a very strong hold on enterprise. It, you know, you have to give it to them. I don't come across any organization that does not have VMware, you know, for, with 500,000 customers. Right. Right. So they have done something really right for themselves. And if you have such a strong hold on the customers, it's not that hard to make the transition over to the developer mindset as well. And that is where with VMware partnership with partners like us, they can make, make that jump happen. So we partnered with them very closely for the data persistence layer and they wanted to bring Kubernetes the VMware tan natively to the VSAN interface itself. So we partnered with them, you know, we were their design partner and in, I think, 2020 or something, and we were their launch partner for that platform service. So now through the vCenter itself, you can provision object storage as a service for the developers. So I think they are working in terms of bridging the gap and they have the right mindset. It's all about execution like this. Right. >>They gotta get it >>Justed >>And it's the execution and timing. Exactly. And if they overshoot and the, it shifts over here, you know, this comes up a lot in our conversations. I want to get your reaction to this because I think that's a really great point. You guys are a nice foundational element. Yes. For VMware that plugs into them. That makes everything kind of float for them. Yes. Now we would, we were comparing OpenStack back in the day, how that had so much promise. Yes it did. If you remember, and storage was a big part of that conversation. It, it did. But the one thing that a lot of people didn't factor in on those industry discussions was Amazon was just ramping. Yes. So assuming that the hyper scales aren't stopping, innovating. Yeah. How does the multi-cloud fit with the constant struggles? Cuz abs is not rah multi-cloud cause they're there for the cloud, but customers are using Azure for yeah. Say office productivity teams or whatever, and then they have apps over here and then I'll see on private, private. Right. So hybrids there we get hybrid. Yeah. The clouds aren't changing. Yes. How does that change the dynamics in the market? Because it's a moving train. Some say, >>You know, it is, I would not characterize it like that because you know, AWS strength is that it is AWS, but also that it is not outside of AWS. Right. So it comes with the strengths and weaknesses and same goes for Azure. And same goes for Google cloud where VMware strength lies is the enterprise customers that it has. And I think if they can bridge the gap between the developers, enterprise customers and also the cloud, I think they have a really fair shot at, you know, making sure that the organizations and enterprise have the right experiences in terms of, you know, everyone needs to innovate. There is just no nothing that you can just sit back and relax. Everyone needs to innovate. And I think the good part about VMware is the partnership ecosystem that they have developed over the years and also making sure that their partners are successful along with them. And I think that is, that is going to be a key determining factor in terms of how well and how fast they can execute because nobody can do it alone in, in the enterprise world. So I think that that would be the >>Key, well, gua you're a great guest. Thanks for coming on and sharing you for having perspective on the cube. And obviously you've been on a, this from day 1, 20 15. Yes. I mean that's early and you guys made some great moves. Thank you. In a great position with VMware. Thank you. I like how you're the connective tissue and bridge to developers without a lot of disruption. Right? Real enablement. I think the question is can the VMware customers get there? So congratulations. No, thank you. And we got a couple minutes left. Take a minute to explain what's going on with the company that you co-founded, the team what's going on. Any updates funding very well, well funded. Yeah. How many people do you have? What's new. Are you gonna hire where take a minute to give the plug, give the commercial real quick >>For sure. So we started in 24 15, so it has been like seven, eight years now that we are at it. And I think we've been just very focused with the S3 compatible object storage, being AWS S3 for rest of the world. Like we get characterized at and over the years we've been like now we, we are used 60% in fortune 500 companies in some shape or format. So in terms of the scale and growth, we couldn't be more happier. We are about to touch a billion dollar billion Docker downloads in September. So that's something that we, we are very excited about. And in terms of the funding, we closed the, our series B sometime I think end of December last year and it's a billion dollar valuation and we have great partners in Intel capital and Dell ventures and soft bank. So we couldn't be in a more happier >>Spot. You're a unicorn soon to be decor. Right. >>What's next? Yes. I think, I think what is exciting for us is that the market, we could not be more happier with how the market is coming together with our vision, what we saw in 2015 and how everything is coming together nicely with, from the, the organization, realizing that multi-cloud is the core foundation and strategy of whatever they do next and lot has been accelerated due to COVID as well. Yeah. So in those terms, I think from market and product alignment, we just couldn't be more happier. >>Yeah. We think multi-cloud hybrids here. Steady state multi-cloud is gonna be a reality. Yeah. It becomes super cloud with the new dynamics. And again, David and I were talking last night, storage, networking, compute never goes away, never goes the operating. System's still gonna be out there. Just gonna be looked different and that >>Differently. Yes. I mean, yeah. And like, you know, in 10 years from now, Kubernetes might or might not be there as the foundation for, you know, compute, but storage is something that is always going to be there. People still need to persist the data. People still need a performance data store. People still need something that can scale to hundreds and hundreds of petabytes. So we are here. You bet against data >>As indie gross head once, you know, let chaos rain, rain in the chaos. There you go. Chaos cloud is gonna be simplified. Yeah. That's what innovation looks like. That's, >>That's what it is. >>Thanks for coming on the queue. Appreciate thank you for having me more coverage here. I'm John furrier with Dave Alane. Thanks for watching. More coverage. Three days just getting started. We'll be right back.

(upbeat music) >> Hello, and welcome back to AWS Startup Showcase, I'm John Furrier, your host. This is the Hero panel, the AWS Heroes. These are folks that have a lot of experience in Open Source, having fun building great projects and commercializing the value and best practices of Open Source innovation. We've got some great guests here. Liz Rice, Chief Open Source Officer, Isovalent. CUBE alumni, great to see you. Brian LeRoux, who is the Co-founder and CTO of begin.com. Erica Windisch who's an Architect for Developer Experience. AWS Hero, also CUBE alumni. Casey Lee, CTO Gaggle. Doing some great stuff in ed tech. Great collection of experts and experienced folks doing some fun stuff, welcome to this conversation this CUBE panel. >> Hi. >> Thanks for having us. >> Hello. >> Let's go down the line. >> I don't normally do this, but since we're remote and we have such great guests, go down the line and talk about why Open Source is important to you guys. What projects are you currently working on? And what's the coolest thing going on there? Liz we'll start with you. >> Okay, so I am very involved in the world of Cloud Native. I'm the chair of the technical oversight committee for the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. So that means I get to see a lot of what's going on across a very broad range of Cloud Native projects. More specifically, Isovalent. I focus on Cilium, which is it's based on a technology called EBPF. That is to me, probably the most exciting technology right now. And then finally, I'm also involved in an organization called OpenUK, which is really pushing for more use of open technologies here in the United Kingdom. So spread around lots of different projects. And I'm in a really fortunate position, I think, to see what's happening with lots of projects and also the commercialization of lots of projects. >> Awesome, Brian what project are you working on? >> Working project these days called Architect. It's a Open Source project built on top of AWSM. It adds a lot of sugar and terseness to the SM experience and just makes it a lot easier to work with and get started. AWS can be a little bit intimidating to people at times. And the Open Source community is stepping up to make some of that bond ramp a little bit easier. And I'm also an Apache member. And so I keep a hairy eyeball on what's going on in that reality all the time. And I've been doing this open-source thing for quite a while, and yeah, I love it. It's a great thing. It's real science. We get to verify each other's work and we get to expand and build on human knowledge. So that's a huge honor to just even be able to do that and I feel stoked to be here so thanks for having me. >> Awesome, yeah, and totally great. Erica, what's your current situation going on here? What's happening? >> Sure, so I am currently working on developer experience of a number of Open Source STKS and CLI components from my current employer. And previously, recently I left New Relic where I was working on integrating with OpenTelemetry, as well as a number of other things. Before that I was a maintainer of Docker and of OpenStack. So I've been in this game for a while as well. And I tend to just put my fingers in a lot of little pies anywhere from DVD players 20 years ago to a lot of this open telemetry and monitoring and various STKs and developer tools is where like Docker and OpenStack and the STKs that I work on now, all very much focusing on developer as the user. >> Yeah, you're always on the wave, Erica great stuff. Casey, what's going on? Do you got some great ed techs happening? What's happening with you? >> Yeah, sure. The primary Open Source project that I'm contributing to right now is ACT. This is a tool I created a couple of years back when GitHub Actions first came out, and my motivation there was I'm just impatient. And that whole commit, push, wait time where you're testing out your pipelines is painful. And so I wanted to build a tool that allowed developers to test out their GitHub Actions workflows locally. And so this tool uses Docker containers to emulate, to get up action environment and gives you fast feedback on those workflows that you're building. Lot of innovation happening at GitHub. And so we're just trying to keep up and continue to replicate those new features functionalities in the local runner. And the biggest challenge I've had with this project is just keeping up with the community. We just passed 20,000 stars, and it'd be it's a normal week to get like 10 PRs. So super excited to announce just yesterday, actually I invited four of the most active contributors to help me with maintaining the project. And so this is like a big deal for me, letting the project go and bringing other people in to help lead it. So, yeah, huge shout out to those folks that have been helping with driving that project. So looking forward to what's next for it. >> Great, we'll make sure the SiliconANGLE riders catch that quote there. Great call out. Let's start, Brian, you made me realize when you mentioned Apache and then you've been watching all the stuff going on, it brings up the question of the evolution of Open Source, and the commercialization trends have been very interesting these days. You're seeing CloudScale really impact also with the growth of code. And Liz, if you remember, the Linux Foundation keeps making projections and they keep blowing past them every year on more and more code and more and more entrance coming in, not just individuals, corporations. So you starting to see Netflix donates something, you got Lyft donate some stuff, becomes a project company forms around it. There's a lot of entrepreneurial activity that's creating this new abstraction layers, new platforms, not just tools. So you start to see a new kickup trajectory with Open Source. You guys want to comment on this because this is going to impact how fast the enterprise will see value here. >> I think a really great example of that is a project called Backstage that's just come out of Spotify. And it's going through the incubation process at the CNCF. And that's why it's front of mind for me right now, 'cause I've been working on the due diligence for that. And the reason why I thought it was interesting in relation to your question is it's spun out of Spotify. It's fully Open Source. They have a ton of different enterprises using it as this developer portal, but they're starting to see some startups emerging offering like a hosted managed version of Backstage or offering services around Backstage or offering commercial plugins into Backstage. And I think it's really fascinating to see those ecosystems building up around a project and different ways that people can. I'm a big believer. You cannot sell the Open Source code, but you can sell other things that create value around Open Source projects. So that's really exciting to see. >> Great point. Anyone else want to weigh in and react to that? Because it's the new model. It's not the old way. I mean, I remember when I was in college, we had the Pirate software. Open Source wasn't around. So you had to deal under the table. Now it's free. But I mean the old way was you had to convince the enterprise, like you've got a hard knit, it builds the community and the community manage the quality of the code. And then you had to build the company to make sure they could support it. Now the companies are actually involved in it, right? And then new startups are forming faster. And the proof points are shorter and highly accelerated for that. I mean, it's a whole new- >> It's a Cambrian explosion, and it's great. It's one of those things that it's challenging for the new developers because they come in and they're like, "Whoa, what is all this stuff that I'm supposed to figure out?" And there's no right answer and there's no wrong answer. There's just tons of it. And I think that there's a desire for us to have one sort of well-known trot and happy path, that audience we're a lot better with a more diverse community, with lots of options, with lots of ways to approach these problems. And I think it's just great. A challenge that we have with all these options and all these Cambrian explosion of projects and all these competing ideas, right now, the sustainability, it's a bit of a tricky question to answer. We know that there's a commercialization aspect that helps us fund these projects, but how we compose the open versus the commercial source is still a bit of a tricky question and a tough one for a lot of folks. >> Erica, would you chime in on that for a second. I want to get your angle on that, this experience and all this code, and I'm a new person, I'm an existing person. Do I get like a blue check mark and verify? I mean, these are questions like, well, how do you navigate? >> Yeah, I think this has been something happening for a while. I mean, back in the early OpenStack days, 2010, for instance, Rackspace Open Sourcing, OpenStack and ANSU Labs and so forth, and then trying, having all these companies forming in creating startups around this. I started at a company called Cloudccaling back in late 2010, and we had some competitors such as Piston and so forth where a lot of the ANSUL Labs people went. But then, the real winners, I think from OpenStack ended up being the enterprises that jumped in. We had Red Hat in particular, as well as HP and IBM jumping in and investing in OpenStack, and really proving out a lot of... not that it was the first time, but this is when we started seeing billions of dollars pouring into Open Source projects and Open Source Foundations, such as the OpenStack Foundation, which proceeded a lot of the things that we now see with the Linux Foundation, which was then created a little bit later. And at the same time, I'm also reflecting a little bit what Brian said because there are projects that don't get funded, that don't get the same attention, but they're also getting used quite significantly. Things like Log4j really bringing this to the spotlight in terms of projects that are used everywhere by everything with significant outsized impacts on the industry that are not getting funded, that aren't flashy enough, that aren't exciting enough because it's just logging, but a vulnerability in it brings every everything and everybody down and has possibly billions of dollars of impact to our industry because nobody wanted to fund this project. >> I think that brings up the commercialization point about maybe bringing a venture capital model in saying, "Hey, that boring little logging thing could be a key ingredient for say solving some observability problems so I think let's put some cash." Again then we'd never seen that before. Now you're starting to see that kind of a real smart investment thesis going into Open Source projects. I mean, Promethease, Crafter, these are projects that turned off companies. This is turning up companies. >> A decade ago, there was no money in Dev tools that I think that's been fully debunked now. They used to be a concept that the venture community believed, but there's just too much evidence to the contrary, the companies like Cash Court, Datadog, the list goes on and on. I think the challenge for the Open Source (indistinct) comes back to foundations and working (indistinct) these developers make this code safe and secure. >> Casey, what's your reaction to all of this? You've got, so a project has gained some traction, got some momentum. There's a lot of mission critical. I won't say white spaces, but the opportunities in the big cloud game happening. And there's a lot of, I won't say too many entrepreneurial, but there's a lot of community action happening that's precommercialization that's getting traction. How does this all develop naturally and then vector in quickly when it hits? >> Yeah, I want to go back to the Log4j topic real quick. I think that it's a great example of an area that we need to do better at. And there was a cool article that Rob Pike wrote describing how to quantify the criticality. I think that's sort of quantifying criticality was the article he wrote on how to use metrics, to determine how valuable, how important a piece of Open Source is to the community. And we really need to highlight that more. We need a way to make it more clear how important this software is, how many people depend on it and how many people are contributing to it. And because right now we all do that. Like if I'm going to evaluate an Open Source software, sure, I'll look at how many stars it has and how many contributors it has. But I got to go through and do all that work myself and come up with. It would be really great if we had an agreed upon method for ranking the criticality of software, but then also the risk, hey, that this is used by a ton of people, but nobody's contributing to it anymore. That's a concern. And that would be great to potential users of that to signal whether or not it makes sense. The Open Source Security Foundation, just getting off the ground, they're doing some work in this space, and I'm really excited to see where they go with that looking at ways to stop score critically. >> Well, this brings up a good point while we've got everyone here, let's take a plug and plug a project you think that's not getting the visibility it needs. Let's go through each of you, point out a project that you think people should be looking at and talking about that might get some free visibility here. Anyone want to highlight projects they think should be focused more on, or that needs a little bit of love? >> I think, I mean, particularly if we're talking about these sort of vulnerability issues, there's a ton of work going on, like in the Secure Software Foundation, other foundations, I think there's work going on in Apache somewhere as well around the bill of material, the software bill of materials, the Secure Software supply chain security, even enumerating your dependencies is not trivial today. So I think there's going to be a ton of people doing really good work on that, as well as the criticality aspect. It's all like that. There's a really great xkcd cartoon with your software project and some really big monolithic lumps. And then, this tiny little piece in a very important point that's maintained by somebody in his bedroom in Montana or something and if you called it out. >> Yeah, you just opened where the next lightening and a bottle comes from. And this is I think the beauty of Open Source is that you get a little collaboration, you get three feet in a cloud of dust going and you get some momentum, and if it's relevant, it rises to the top. I think that's the collective intelligence of Open Source. The question I want to ask that the panel here is when you go into an enterprise, and now that the game is changing with a much more collaborative and involved, what's the story if they say, hey, what's in it for me, how do I manage the Open Source? What's the current best practice? Because there's no doubt I can't ignore it. It's in everything we do. How do I organize around it? How do I build around it to be more efficient and more productive and reduce the risk on vulnerabilities to managing staff, making sure the right teams in place, the right agility and all those things? >> You called it, they got to get skin in the game. They need to be active and involved and donating to a sustainable Open Source project is a great way to start. But if you really want to be active, then you should be committing. You should have a goal for your organization to be contributing back to that project. Maybe not committing code, it could be committing resources into the darks or in the tests, or even tweeting about an Open Source project is contributing to it. And I think a lot of these enterprises could benefit a lot from getting more active with the Open Source Foundations that are out there. >> Liz, you've been actively involved. I know we've talked personally when the CNCF started, which had a great commercial uptake from companies. What do you think the current state-of-the-art kind of equation is has it changed a little bit? Or is it the game still the same? >> Yeah, and in the early days of the CNCF, it was very much dominated by vendors behind the project. And now we're seeing more and more membership from end-user companies, the kind of enterprises that are building their businesses on Cloud Native, but their business is not in itself. That's not there. The infrastructure is not their business. And I think seeing those companies, putting money in, putting time in, as Brian says contributing resources quite often, there's enough money, but finding the talent to do the work and finding people who are prepared to actually chop the wood and carry the water, >> Exactly. >> that it's hard. >> And if enterprises can find peoples to spend time on Open Source projects, help with those chores, it's hugely valuable. And it's one of those the rising tide floats all the boats. We can raise security, we can reduce the amount of dependency on maintain projects collectively. >> I think the business models there, I think one of the things I'll react to and then get your guys' comments is remember which CubeCon it was, it was one of the early ones. And I remember seeing Apple having a booth, but nobody was manning. It was just an Apple booth. They weren't doing anything, but they were recruiting. And I think you saw the transition of a business model where the worry about a big vendor taking over a project and having undue influence over it goes away because I think this idea of participation is also talent, but also committing that talent back into the communities as a model, as a business model, like, okay, hire some great people, but listen, don't screw up the Open Source piece of it 'cause that's a critical. >> Also hire a channel, right? They can use those contributions to source that talent and build the reputation in the communities that they depend on. And so there's really a lot of benefit to the larger organizations that can do this. They'll have a huge pipeline of really qualified engineers right out the gate without having to resort to cheesy whiteboard interviews, which is pretty great. >> Yeah, I agree with a lot of this. One of my concerns is that a lot of these corporations tend to focus very narrowly on certain projects, which they feel that they depend greatly, they'll invest in OpenStack, they'll invest in Docker, they'll invest in some of the CNCF projects. And then these other projects get ignored. Something that I've been a proponent of for a little bit for a while is observability of your dependencies. And I don't think there's quite enough projects and solutions to this. And it sounds maybe from lists, there are some projects that I don't know about, but I also know that there's some startups like Snyk and so forth that help with a little bit of this problem, but I think we need more focus on some of these edges. And I think companies need to do better, both in providing, having some sort of solution for observability of the dependencies, as well as understanding those dependencies and managing them. I've seen companies for instance, depending on software that they actively don't want to use based on a certain criteria that they already set projects, like they'll set a requirement that any project that they use has a code of conduct, but they'll then use projects that don't have codes of conduct. And if they don't have a code of conduct, then employees are prohibited from working on those projects. So you've locked yourself into a place where you're depending on software that you have instructed, your employees are not allowed to contribute to, for certain legal and other reasons. So you need to draw a line in the sand and then recognize that those projects are ones that you don't want to consume, and then not use them, and have observability around these things. >> That's a great point. I think we have 10 minutes left. I want to just shift to a topic that I think is relevant. And that is as Open Source software, software, people develop software, you see under the hood kind of software, SREs developing very quickly in the CloudScale, but also you've got your classic software developers who were writing code. So you have supply chain, software supply chain challenges. You mentioned developer experience around how to code. You have now automation in place. So you've got the development of all these things that are happening. Like I just want to write software. Some people want to get and do infrastructure as code so DevSecOps is here. So how does that look like going forward? How has the future of Open Source going to make the developers just want to code quickly? And the folks who want to tweak the infrastructure a bit more efficient, any views on that? >> At Gaggle, we're using AWS' CDK, exclusively for our infrastructure as code. And it's a great transition for developers instead of writing Yammel or Jason, or even HCL for their infrastructure code, now they're writing code in the language that they're used to Python or JavaScript, and what that's providing is an easier transition for developers into that Infrastructure as code at Gaggle here, but it's also providing an opportunity to provide reusable constructs that some Devs can build on. So if we've got a very opinionated way to deploy a serverless app in a database and do auto-scaling behind and all stuff, we can present that to a developer as a library, and they can just consume it as it is. Maybe that's as deep as they want to go and they're happy with that. But then they want to go deeper into it, they can either use some of the lower level constructs or create PRs to the platform team to have those constructs changed to fit their needs. So it provides a nice on-ramp developers to use the tools and languages they're used to, and then also go deeper as they need. >> That's awesome. Does that mean they're not full stack developers anymore that they're half stack developers they're taking care of for them? >> I don't know either. >> We'll in. >> No, only kidding. Anyway, any other reactions to this whole? I just want to code, make it easy for me, and some people want to get down and dirty under the hood. >> So I think that for me, Docker was always a key part of this. I don't know when DevSecOps was coined exactly, but I was talking with people about it back in 2012. And when I joined Docker, it was a part of that vision for me, was that Docker was applying these security principles by default for your application. It wasn't, I mean, yes, everybody adopted because of the portability and the acceleration of development, but it was for me, the fact that it was limiting what you could do from a security angle by default, and then giving you these tuna balls that you can control it further. You asked about a project that may not get enough recognition is something called DockerSlim, which is designed to optimize your containers and will make them smaller, but it also constraints the security footprint, and we'll remove capabilities from the container. It will help you build security profiles for app armor and the Red Hat one. SELinux. >> SELinux. >> Yeah, and this is something that I think a lot of developers, it's kind of outside of the realm of things that they're really thinking about. So the more that we can automate those processes and make it easier out of the box for users or for... when I say users, I mean, developers, so that it's straightforward and automatic and also giving them the capability of refining it and tuning it as needed, or simply choosing platforms like serverless offerings, which have these security constraints built in out of the box and sometimes maybe less tuneable, but very strong by default. And I think that's a good place for us to be is where we just enforced these things and make you do things in a secure way. >> Yeah, I'm a huge fan of Kubernetes, but it's not the right hammer for every nail. And there are absolutely tons of applications that are better served by something like Lambda where a lot more of that security surface is taken care of for the developer. And I think we will see better tooling around security profiling and making it easier to shrink wrap your applications that there are plenty of products out there that can help you with this in a cloud native environment. But I think for the smaller developer let's say, or an earlier stage company, yeah, it needs to be so much more straightforward. Really does. >> Really an interesting time, 10 years ago, when I was working at Adobe, we used to requisition all these analysts to tell us how many developers there were for the market. And we thought there was about 20 million developers. If GitHub's to be believed, we think there is now around 80 million developers. So both these groups are probably wrong in their numbers, but the takeaway here for me is that we've got a lot of new developers and a lot of these new developers are really struck by a paradox of choice. And they're typically starting on the front end. And so there's a lot of movement in the stack moved towards the front end. We saw that at re:Invent when Amazon was really pushing Amplify 'cause they're seeing this too. It's interesting because this is where folks start. And so a lot of the obstructions are moving in that direction, but maybe not always necessarily totally appropriate. And so finding the right balance for folks is still a work in progress. Like Lambda is a great example. It lets me focus totally on just business logic. I don't have to think about infrastructure pretty much at all. And if I'm newer to the industry, that makes a lot of sense to me. As use cases expand, all of a sudden, reality intervenes, and it might not be appropriate for everything. And so figuring out what those edges are, is still the challenge, I think. >> All right, thank you very much for coming on the CUBE here panel. AWS Heroes, thanks everyone for coming. I really appreciate it, thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Okay. >> Thanks for having me. >> Okay, that's a wrap here back to the program and the awesome startups. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCube with digital coverage of Vmworld 2020 brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back, I'm Stuart Miniman and this is theCube's 11th year of VMworld. Here we are in 2020 of course, rather than being together at the moscone or at the sand. We're coming to you in your place of work or home when you're watching video, happy to welcome back. We have two of our long time guests on the program. First we have Travis Vigil. He is the Senior Vice President of Product Management with Dell Technologies and joining him is Lee Caswell who's the Vice President of Product Storage and Availability Business unit at VMware, Lee and Travis, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you Steve, it's good to see you again. >> All right, so we love kind of the maturation of what's happened. I mentioned 11 years, I get to usually sit down and talk with both of you, we talk about strategy we talk about how customers, and at the end of the day, we know things are changing. Like 2020 things are changing more every day, but one of the big transitions here is talking about that, how applications are changing. In the old days it was hey, I have an application, let me just stick it in a VM and it's going to be good there forever. We know that today I need to be able to react fast, I need to move things forward. And that impacts what VMware and Dell are doing together. So hey Lee, if maybe we come with you give the VMware perspective on that application changing and what that means to there and Travis feel free to chime in when Lee's done. >> Sure. >> Yeah thanks so much Steve and great to have to be back here on theCube. And VMworld is always a great opportunity to talk about how the industry is changing. What's really happening here and so one of the things that we're all finding is that the pace of application change is speeding up. And you know what, I mean you think about infrastructure. We want to think about how you can organize around the fastest changing element. This is one of the things we kicked off with project Pacific and our Tanzu portfolio a year ago. And you're starting to see all the products come roaring through right now as we're integrating Kubernetes. So that container based applications can be managed, secured, protected, just the same way with all the same tools that we have with our traditional VM applications. >> Yeah it's an excellent point. I mean, we are seeing the adoption of the modern applications in VMware environments, just accelerate beyond belief. And we're getting increasing requests from our customers to protect, to manage production workloads in Kubernetes environments and with our power protect data manager. Yeah we're actually announcing that we have all support for the Tanzu portfolio. So that includes TKG TKGI, Kubernetes Clusters, Kubernetes Clusters, and vSphere. So we're really excited to be able to offer this capability to our joint customers. And I think one thing that we're seeing is that the roles in IT are oftentimes blending together. So one of the things we're excited about with our solution is that with our direct data protection integration and vSphere environments. It's actually the be admin that can provision, monitor, manage, and protect the Kubernetes workloads, give unified experience and provide that peace of mind in this next generation world. >> Yeah Travis I'm glad you brought up some of those changing roles. I mean, that was such a big theme for so many years as the Virtualization Admin taking on more responsibility. And Lee teed up the changing application, you've got other roles coming together. You've got the application development team, which often times is disconnected from the infrastructure team. So, from either of you just what are you seeing from your customers? How are they sorting through that? I need to move agile, I need to move faster and that's not traditionally how the infrastructure team has worked. >> Things that we've been working on for example is how we've integrated SRM with vVols and PowerMax. And when you think about that, and we've talked for years right about the vVols for example. What we're responding to now is that customers are coming back and saying, listen, I have HCI, but I also have storage system and I need your help to go and be able to manage these with a consistent operating model and the same team. And that career path for the Virtualization Administrator just continues to grow. They're adding now five native applications, Kubernetes Orchestrated Applications, and being able to manage those across traditional storage and newer HCI systems. This is a really interesting blend of where the companies are working together to make sure that customer responses are being addressed really quickly. >> Yeah, it's a great example Lee. I mean, if you think about Three-tier architecture and PowerMax being the flagship of the heart of a lot of data centers that have been in operation for decades, the fact that we're seeing from our customers, hey, can you take a SRM and vVols, Can you integrate it with PowerMax and SRDF and be able to provide me a step along the way on my modernization journey? Such that I can utilize what I've built up my IT operations about around over the last couple of decades along with the newer deployment models like Hyper-converged infrastructure. And we're seeing that kind of that step forward and a blurring of the lines in terms of roles all over the place. I think another good example Lee is Cloud Native App Dev, right? And customers looking object, S3 object storage capability to provide a simple dev apps friendly way of, developing applications and hybrid cloud environments. And that's why we're really happy that we're able to provide early access for what we refer to as object scale, which works in conjunction with the vSAN Data persistence Platform to allow our customers to deliver modern applications. But at the same time use infrastructure that the IT organization is deploying, for other standard applications. I think that's another good example. >> It's a good point we had blocks through VSand of course right? And added files, what was missing well objects. (laughing) And so... >> Exactly >> We're already together with this persistent storage platform. We've got a way to go on basically supply object scale, object scale storage that can be used for Cloud Native Development. And I think this is a good example, right? This isn't just one hand clapping, right? This is both companies working together to make sure that customers have a seamless experience. That's really important. It doesn't come for granted, right? I mean it really takes co-engineering, joint testing and developing and go-to market together between our companies. I've never seen it working better. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Go ahead Stuart. >> I know Travis I was just saying, we saw how fast VMware went from announcing project Pacific to the GA of the base solution where you needed the cloud foundation to update one already allowing everything to move open. That's going to be a little bit challenging to keep up with that pace of innovation. We've been talking for years on the queue, but we went from the 18 month release cycle to now, most things are like a six week release cycle. So, give us through any other pieces that were portfolio we need to understand the fitting with Tanzu and yeah. How do you move things along and where are the customers with their adoption? Are they sitting there waiting for it, or is this something that is going to be a more traditional enterprise slow roll? >> No I think you hit it spot on Stu the adoption and the deployments of these new architectures are coming very, very quickly, right? Traditional IT is trying to and in many cases successfully moving to a more cloud-like delivery CI/CD approach to how they run their shops and the speed of innovation and the speed and the dynamics of new technologies within the data centers are just, accelerating at a really fast pace. And in order to continue to keep up with these changes, it's I'll reflect back on a little bit on what Lee was talking about. It's understanding where customers are going and jointly working together to target those pain points. And I'll give a very specific example. And then I think maybe Lee, we should start to talk a little bit about Monterey as well, but I'll say a very specific example on joint innovation is, as customers have deployed VMware more broadly and they put more mission, critical large applications on VM, there's been sort of this persistent issue that some of those VMs just were so large or required such high availability, that they were what some IT professionals would refer to as unprotectable. And so we're actually demonstrating with VMware innovation that allows those VMs, those large mission critical Vms that can take zero downtime or even a pause in availability or performance, the ability to take backups without impacting the performance on those VMs. So, that's a very specific thing we're doing, a very specific pin point, but I think it's an example of us working together to target customer customer needs. And then I think more broadly, there's a big trend in composability that part talked a little bit about this morning Project Monterey I'll let Lee kick it off and then kind of talk a little bit about what we're doing to partner with VMware on this initiative. >> Yeah, well great. I definitely want to hear Monterey obviously, edge computing has everybody excited. Travis we've been hearing from the Dell team the last couple of years is that strategy's muttering some of the investment pieces that Dell's doing. So Lee, we hear edge computing. What does that mean? VMware has got a strong telco play that we've watched, for many years. So, just as you said Project Pacific rolled out pretty fast, help us understand a bit more of this Monterey and how fast will this turn into that cascade of products that you talked about for that we sell the last year. >> Yeah thanks, and it's exciting at VMware, right? We're willing to go and share a projects. Overtime project to become products, it's the way it works. And so the project is really a directional vision that says, if you think about what we did with Project Pacific a year ago, and Pacific being like going broad. The idea was applications are changing, we needed to go and basically make Kubernetes integrated with these sphere, with our full VMware Cloud Foundation, and then basically simplify it for customer consumption, and we did that together with the Tanzu brand. Now, Project Monterey, if you think of the Monterey Canyon is now going deep. And what it says is that not only the software architecture has to change, but also hardware, new hardware capabilities, particularly through the use of Smart NICs are a new way for us to think about re-architecting, how compute is basically optimized within a server and then across clusters and even across the hybrid cloud. And so Monterey will be a new way to look at how we go in efficiently offload CPUs and use these new Smart NIC offload engines as a way to think about where hypervisors run, where let's call it software defined, whether it's storage or compute. And most importantly and probably is security. 'Cause one of the things we're finding that applications new applications are demanding is encryption for example or distributed firewalls thinking about like how do we do that secure boot or how do we think about air gapping applications from the infrastructure? And so we're really thinking about how to re-architect the world of security. So the security is integrally distributed throughout an architecture. And so you'll be seeing with Project Monterey our ability to go and drive new products out of that and we're working very closely on an engineering to engineering level with Dell Technologies to make sure this new technology becomes available for customers and fully integrated in the VMware Cloud Foundation. So we have an easy way for customers to digest it which I think that's the thing Stuart right now is there's a lot of new technologies coming so fast, really their partnership means that we're able to consume those more quick. >> Wonderful, yeah Monterey so we're going to go deeper than the grand canyon is deep, but I guess we need to all a breathe under water too. So Travis, as I mentioned, Dell's had for a couple of years, some of these analysts sessions that I've had the opportunity to go through, been watching out that growth of the edge strategy, obviously Dell has everything from some of the hardened pieces on the consumer side, through tying into broad ecosystems. So the software obviously is going to be a huge component of what edges we saw in the keynote stage and video, a big partnership they're obviously a huge important partner for both Dell and VMware. So Travis, from the Dell side, what does this vision of Monterey mean? >> It's extremely important, I'd say transformational potentially for IT going forward and Lee did a really good job of describing the trends, whether that be cloud native Telco 5G, machine learning and data-centric applications, multicloud, and hybrid cloud and that security concern that Lee was talking about. Those are our real trends, and if we can offer infrastructure that is more composable into these dis-aggregated resources, across the edge, across the cloud, across the core, all software defined and seamlessly managed. I mean, that's a powerful vision. And we're just really excited to be partnering with VMware, jointly engineering this future focusing first on those Smartnecks that Lee was talking about because you need that higher compute, you need that increased bandwidth. You need easier manageability of a distributed infrastructure, and you need that ability to provide easier and more distributed security. So lots more to come, we will be incorporating these technologies specifically in the form of Smartnecks into our HCI and our server portfolio. But this like Lee said, this is a trend that will move from initiative to project to products very quickly. >> Wonderful, well we covered that breadth in that depth as you said Lee. Want to give you both just final takeaways, what you want people to take from Vmworld 2020 Lee we'll start with you and then Travis you get the final word. >> Yeah, we're really looking at a changing world in terms of applications. And so for customers around the globe, look for the partnerships that will bring those new capabilities and make it easy to go and deploy as fast as possible. We started off making sure that people weren't looking down at the infrastructure and started looking up at the apps. We're continuing that process with what we're doing around Tanzu, around our Kubernetes portfolio and stay tuned there'll be more to come, much more as we work together on Project Monterey, lots of exciting news and glad that you were here from VMworld to go and see it all of the light. >> Yeah, I think I obviously agree with everything that Lee just said. I think for me the this VMworld is just, another step forward in a great partnership across Dell technologies and VMware. And I mentioned several things, all of the things that we're doing together I forgot to mention actually that we're the first company to be, to offer a certified solution to protect VMworld Cloud Foundations which I use that specific example again expect more first, expect more joint in engineering and integrations. And I think the power of these two organizations coming together is what's going to be needed to help drive forward into this next generation of modern applications and dynamic workloads and dis-aggregated resources. And so we're just really excited about the innovation, the ability to address customer issues and the strong partnership that we have across Dell technologies and VMworld. >> Well, one of the measurements six that we have today is how fast everyone can respond and move fast. Congratulations on all the progress you've both made in your teams in the last year. And absolutely look forward to hearing more about Project Monterey as that matures. Travis and Lee, thanks for joining us. >> Thanks to you. >> Thanks to you. >> All right, and stay tuned for more coverage of VMworld 2020, I'm Stuart Miniman and as always. Thank you for watching theCube. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> From Cambridge, Massachusetts, it's the CUBE. Covering MIT Chief Data Officer and Information Quality Symposium 2019. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. (upbeat music) >> Welcome back to MIT in Cambridge Massachusetts everybody you're watching the CUBE the leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise we hear at the MIT CDOIQ. It's the MIT Chief Data Officer event the 13th annual event. The CUBE started covering this show in 2013. I'm Dave Vellante with Paul Gillin, my co-host, and Michael Conlin is here as the chief data officer of the Department of Defense, Michael welcome, thank you for coming on. >> Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here. >> So the DoD is, I think it's the largest organization in the world, what does the chief data officer of the DoD do on a day to day basis? >> A range of things because we have a range of challenges at the Department of Defense. We are the single largest organization on the planet. We have the greatest scope and scale and complexity. We have the most dangerous competitors of anybody on the planet, it's not a trivial issue for us. So, I've a range of challenges. Challenges around, how do I lift the overall performance of the department using data effectively? How do I help executives make better decisions faster, using more recent, more common data? More common enterprise data is the expression we use. How do I help them become more sophisticated consumers of data and especially data analytics? And, how do we get to the point where, I can compare performance over here with performance over there, on a common basis? And compared to commercial benchmark? Which is now an expectation for us, and ask are we doing this as well as we should, right across the patch? Knowing, that all that data comes from multiple different places to start with. So we have to overcome all those differences and provide that department wide view. That's the essence of the role. And now with the recent passage of the Foundations for Evidenced-Based Policymaking Act, there are a number of additional expectations that go on top of that, but this is ultimately about improving affordability and performance of the department. >> So overall performance of the organization... >> Overall performance. >> ...as well, and maybe that comes from supporting various initiatives, and making sure you're driving performance on that basis as well. >> It does, but our litmus test is are we enabling the National Defense Strategy to succeed? Only reason to touch data is to enable the National Defense Strategy to be more successful than without it. And so we're always measuring ourselves against that. But it is, can we objectively say we're performing better? Can we objectively say that we are more affordable? In terms of the way we support the National Defense Strategy. >> I'm curious about your motivations for taking on this assignment because your background, as I see, is primarily in the private sector. A year ago you joined the US Department of Defense. A huge set of issues that you're tackling now, why'd you do it? >> So I am a capitalist, like most Americans, and I'm a serial entrepreneur. This was my first opportunity to serve government. And when I looked at it, knowing that I could directly support national defense, knowing that I could make a direct meaningful contribution, let me exercise that spirit of patriotism that many of us have, but we just not found ourselves an opportunity. When this opportunity came along I just couldn't say no to it. There's so much to be done and so much appetite for improvement that I just couldn't walk away for this. Now I've to tell you, when you start you take an oath of office to protect and defend the constitution. I don't know, it's maybe a paragraph or maybe it's two paragraphs. It felt like it took an hour to choke it out, because I was suddenly struck with all of this emotion. >> The gravity of what you were doing. >> Yeah, the gravity of what I'm doing. And that was just a reinforcement of the choice I'd already made, obviously right. But the chance to be the first chief data officer of the entire Department of Defense, just an enormous privilege. The chance to bring commercial sector best practices in and really lift the game of the department, again enormous privilege. There's so many people who could do this, probably better than me. The fact that I got the opportunity I just couldn't say no. Just too important, to many places I could see that we could make things better. I think anybody with a patriotic bone in their body would of jumped at the opportunity. >> That's awesome, I love that congratulations on getting that role and seemingly thrive in it. A big part of preserving that capitalist belief, defending the constitution and the American way, it sounds corny, but... >> It's real. >> I'm a patriot as well, is security. And security and data are intertwined. And just the whole future of warfare is dramatically changing. Can you talk about in a format like this, security, you're thinking on that, the department's thinking on that from a CDO's perspective? >> So as you know we have a number of swimlanes within the department and security is very clear swimlane, it's aligned under our chief information officer, but security is everybody's responsibility, of course. Now the longstanding criticism of security people is that they think they best way to secure anything is to permit nobody to touch it. The clear expectation for me as chief data officer is to make sure that information is shared to the right people as rapidly as possible. And, that's a different philosophy. Now I'm really lucky. Lieutenant General Denis Crall our principal cyber advisor, Dana Deasy our CIO, these people understand how important it is to get information in the right place at the right time, make it rapidly available and secure it every step along the way. We embrace the zero trust mantra. And because we embrace the zero trust mantra we're directly concerned with defending the data itself. And as long as we defend the data and the same mechanisms are the mechanisms we use to let people share it, suddenly the tension goes away. Suddenly we all have the same goal. Because the goal is not to prevent use of data, it's to enable use of data in a secure way. So the traditional tension that might be in that place doesn't exist in the department. Very productive, very professional level of collaboration with those folks in this space. Very sophisticated people. >> When we were talking before we went live you mentioned that the DoD has 10,000 plus operational systems... >> That's correct. >> A portfolio of that magnitude just overwhelming, I mean how did you know what to do first when you moved into this job, or did you have a clear mandate when you were hired? >> So I did have a clear mandate when I was hired and luckily that was spelled out. We knew what to do first because we sat down with actual leaders of the department and asked them what their goals were for improving the performance of the department. And everything starts from that conversation. You find those executives that what to improve performance, you understand what those goals are, and what data they need to manage that improvement. And you capture all the critical business questions they need answers to. From that point on they're bought in to everything that happens, right. Because they want those answers to those critical business questions. They have performance targets of their own, this is now aligned with. And so you have the support you need to go down the rest of the path of finding the data, standardizing it, et cetera. In order to deliver the answers to those questions. But it all starts which either the business mission leaders or the warfighting mission leaders who define the steps they're taking to implement the National Defense Strategy. Everything gets lined up against that, you get instant support and you know you're going after the right thing. This is not, an if you build it they will come. This is not, a driftnet the organization try to gather up all the data. This is spear fishing for specific answers to materially important questions, and everything we do is done on that basis. >> We hear Mark Ramsey this morning talk about the... He showed a picture of stove pipes and then he complicated that picture by showing multiple copies within each of those stove pipes, and says this is organizations that we've all lived in. >> That's my organization too. >> So talk about some of those data challenges at the DoD and how you're addressing those, specifically how you're enabling soldiers in the field to get the right data to the field when they need it. >> So what we'll be delicate when we talk about what we do for soldiers in the field. >> Understood, yeah. >> That tends to be sensitive. >> Understand why, sure. >> But all of those dynamics that Mark described in that presentation are present in every large cooperation I've ever served. And that includes the Department of Defense. That heterogeneity and sprawl of IT that what I would refer to, he showed us a hair ball of IT. Every large organization has a hair ball of IT. And data scattered all over the place. We took many of the same steps that he described in terms of organizing and presenting meaningful answers to questions, in almost exactly the same sequence. The challenge as you heard me use the statistics that our CIO's published digital monetization strategies, which calls out that we have roughly 10,000 operational systems. Well, every one of them is different. Every one's put in place by a different group of people at a different time, with a different set of requirements, and a different budget, and a different focus. You know organizational scope. We're just like he showed. We're trying to blend all that in to a common view. So we have to find what's the real authoritative piece of data, cause it's not all of those systems. It's only a subset of those systems. And you have to do all of the mapping and translations, to make the result add up. Otherwise you double count or you miss something. This is work in progress. This will always be a work in progress to any large organization. So I don't want to give you impression it's all sorted. Definitely not all sorted. But, the reality is we're trying to get to the point where people can see the data that's available and that's a requirement by the way under the Foundations Act that we have a data catalog, an authoritative data catalog so people can see it and they have the ability to then request access to that through automation. This is what's critical, you need to be able to request access and have it arbitraged on the basis of whether you should directly have access based on your role, your workflow, et cetera, but it should happen in real time. You don't want to wait weeks, or months, or however long for some paperwork to move around. So this all has to become highly automated. So, what's the data, who can access it under what policy, for what purpose? Our roles and responsibilities? Identity management? All this is a combined set of solutions that we have to put in place. I'm mostly worried about a subset of that. My colleagues in these other swimlanes are working to do the rest. Most people in the department have access to data they need in their space. That hasn't been a problem. The problem is you go from space to space, you have to learn a new set of systems and a new set of techniques for a new set of data formats which means you have to be retrained. That really limits our freedom of maneuver of human beings. In the ideal world you'd be able to move from any job in any part of the department to the same job in another part of the department with no retraining whatsoever. You'd be instantly able to make a contribution. That's what we're trying to get to. So that's a different kind of a challenge, right. How do we get that level of consistency in the user experience, a modern user experience. So that if I'm a real estate manager, or I'm a medical business manager, or I'm a clinical professional, or I'm whatever, I can go from this location in this part of the department to that location in that part and my experience is the same. It's completely modern, and it's completely consistent. No retraining. >> How much of that challenge pie is people, process and technology? How would you split that opportunity? >> Well everything starts for a process perspective. Because if you automate a bad process, you just make more mistakes in less time at greater costs. Obviously that's not the ideal. But the biggest single challenge is people. It's talent, it's culture. Both on the demand side and on the supply side. If fact a lot of what I talked about in my remarks, was the additional changes we need to put in place to bring people into a more modern approach to data, more modern consumption. And look, we have pockets of excellence. And they can hold their own against any team, any place on the planet. But they are pockets of excellence. And what we're trying to do is raise the entire organization's performance. So it's people, people, and people and then the other stuff. But the products, don't care about (laughs). >> We often here about... >> They're going to change in 12 to 18 months. I'm a technologist, I'm hands on. The products are going to change rapidly, I make no emotional commitment to products. But the people that's a different story. >> Well we know that in the commercial world we often hear that cultural resistance is what sabotages modernization efforts. The DoD is sort of the ultimate top-down organization. It is any easier to get buy-in because the culture is sort of command and control oriented? >> It's hard in the DoD, it's not easier in the DoD. Ultimately people respond to their performance incentives. That's the dirty secrets performance incentives, they work every time. So unless you restructure performance measures and incentives for people their behavior's never going to change. They need to see their personal future in the future you're prescribing. And if they don't see it, you're going to get resistance every time. They're going to do what they believe they're incented to do. Making those changes, cascading those performance measures down, has been difficult because much of the decision-making processes in the department have been based on slow-moving systems and slow-moving data. I mean think about it, our budget planning process was created by Robert McNamara, as the Secretary of Defense. It requires you to plan everything for five years. And it takes more than a year to plan a single year's worth of activities, it's slow-moving. And we have regulation, we have legislation, we're a law-abiding organization, we do what we have to do. All of those things slow things down. And there's a culture of expecting macro-level consensus building. Which means everybody feels they can say no. If everybody can say no, then change becomes peanut butter spread across an organization. When you peanut butter spread across something our size and scale, the layer's pretty thin. So we have the same problem that other organizations have. There is clearly a perception of top-down change and if the Secretary or the Deputy Secretary issue an instruction people will obey it. It just takes some time to work it's way down into all the detailed combinations and permutations. Cause you have to make sophisticated decisions now. How am I going to change for my performance measures for that group to that group? And that takes time and energy and thought. There's a natural sort of pipeline effect in this. So there's real tension I think in between this perception of top-down and people will obey the orders their given. But when you're trying to integrate those changes into a board set of policy and process and people, that takes time and energy. >> And as a result the leaders have to be circumspect about the orders they give because they want to see success. They want to make sure that what they say is actually implemented or it reflects poorly on the organization. >> I think that out leaders are absolutely concerned about accomplishing the outcomes that they set out. And I think that they are rightfully determined to get the change as rapidly as possible. I would not expect them to be circumspect. I would anticipate that they would be firm and clear in the direction that they set and they would set aggressive targets because you need aggressive targets to get aggressively changed outcomes. Now. >> But they would have to choose wisely, they can't just fire off orders and expect everything to be done. I would think that they got to really think about what they want to get done, and put all the wood behind the arrow as you... >> I think that they constantly balance all those considerations. I must say, I did not appreciate before I joined the department the extraordinary caliber of leadership we enjoy. We have people with real insight and experience, and high intellectual horsepower making the decisions in the department. We've been blessed with the continuing stream of them at all of the senior ranks. These people could go anywhere, or do anything that they wanted in the economy and they've chosen to be in the department. And they bring enormous intellectual firepower to bear on challenges. >> Well you mentioned the motivation at the top of the segment, that's largely pretty powerful. >> Yeah, oh absolutely. >> I want to ask you, we have to break, but the organizational structure, you talked about the CIO, actually the responsibility for security within the CIO. >> Sure. >> To whom do you report. What's the organization look like? >> So I report to the Chief Management Officer of the Department of Defense. So if you think about the order of precedents, there's the Secretary of Defense, the Deputy Secretary of Defense and third in order is the Chief Management Officer. I report to the Chief Management Officer. >> As does the CIO, is that right? >> As does the CIO, as does the CIO. And actually this is quite typical in large organizations, that you don't have the CDO and the CIO in the same space because the concerns are very different. They have to collaborate but very different concerns. We used to see CDOs reporting to CIOs that's fallen dramatically in terms of the frequency you see that. Cause we now recognize that's just a failure mode. So you don't want to go down that path. The number one most common reporting relationship is actually to a CEO, the chief executive officer, of an organization. It's all about, what executive is driving performance for the organization? That's the person the CDO should report to. And I'm blessed in that I do find myself reporting to the executive driving organizational improvement. For me, that's a critical thing. That would make the difference between whether I could succeed or whether I'm doomed to fail. >> COO would be common too in a commercial organization. >> Yeah, in certain commercial organizations, it's a COO. It just depends on the nature of the business and their maturity with data. But if you're in the... If data's the business, CDO will report to the CEO. There are other organizations where it'll be the COO or CFO, it just depends on the nature of that business. And in our case I'm quite fortunate. >> Well Michael, thank you for, not only the coming to the CUBE but the service you're providing to the country, we really appreciate your insights and... >> It's a pleasure meeting you. >> It's a pleasure meeting you. All right, keep it right there everybody we'll be right back with our next guest. You're watching the CUBE live from MIT CDOIQ, be right back. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: Live from London, England, it's theCUBE covering AWS summit London 2019, brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back to XL London everybody, My name is Dave Velante and you're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. This is our one-day coverage of AWS summit, London. theCUBE will go up to the events we extract the signal of the noise and I have recruited a co-host Theresa Carlson who's a friend and vice president worldwide public sector at AWS and we have a really special segment for you today. Anna Sergeant is here. She's a computing teacher and Charlotte who's a student at Townley. Wait till you see what we have in store for you. Theresa, let's get it started. So first of all, welcome (mumbles). >> Well, and I'm so thrilled to be your co-host, I just wanna tell you that right now. >> That's a first for you, right? >> Yes, it is. >> I finally got one up on for you. >> Yeah, exactly, I get to be on theCUBE (mumbles). >> So here's the deal, so you have this GetIT program. Tell us what that's all about and then we'll get into it. >> Well you know, we talked about over the last few years just in general about skills. Skills development, how critical it is and important for every age and GetIT is really a continuation of what we're trying to do to create job skills around cloud computing at every age, especially in elementary and primary school years. So GetIT today, what you're going to see from both Charlotte and Anna is we did a competition, there was over 160 applicants and it got netted down to ten schools that came here today and then we had two finalists and then we deemed a winner and they're going to get support and help but also, all these schools are gonna get support and help but it's really about the experience of them learning how to utilize cloud computing in a real-world application that actually matters to them which you can also fight to kind of social responsibility which most of these young people really relate to because they want to do something that matters to them. Just tech for tech is not exciting but tech for good is very exciting and I think that's what you're gonna hear about here today. >> We love to talk about tech for good and Anna, you're at the heart of this so how did you get into this, how did you get this all started, tell us your story. >> Well, my head teacher is quite an innovative person and she's been in conversations with Amazon and Future Foundations and they came to the school with the idea last year and invited the school to be part of the pilot program and so the Amazon ambassadors delivered their presentation to the school in September and as a team in the computing department, we got together and said, well we think this is a great opportunity for girls in tech. So we actually rolled it out as an actual scheme of lessons so the whole year eight, so that's 224 year eight students got together. They all were divided into groups of their own choice and we gave them the outline or the brief and said you know, think of an app for good that would fulfill a social need in your community. So think about the community and prepare a pitch and we then set timelines and deadlines and helped them through the research and obviously spoke to Amazon, came to the London offices as well and spent some time with your colleagues in the London office and you know, and then basically helped the girls pitch their final idea. >> So Charlotte, you got this prompt essentially and then you took it from there. Tell us a little bit about yourself and then how this all came about and what you guys did with that prompt. >> And today is your birthday so happy birthday. >> Congratulations. >> Thank you. So basically I'm 13 at the moment but we've been doing this project in year eight as Anna said and basically, we were given the idea to make an app and everyone was really excited initially, but we weren't too sure about what we wanted to make it on and we were lucky enough to have the choice to choose whatever topic we wanted to make it on and kind of decide what cause we wanted to help and the solution to help it with and then we were given loads of help with the Amazon ambassadors and they really were like really kinda generous with all their help. They came to visit us and they watched our presentations and it really gained our confidence because we presented to the class and in front of the teachers and Amazon ambassadors and it's been really lovely because we've been able to gain skills that we didn't have before in computing and it's gained our confidence, it's boosted it and we've just become much like more interested in STEM and computing. >> Charlotte, let me ask you, what was your application about and what inspired you for the application? >> So my app was called Positive Of Me and we based it off of a mental health and kind of having a more positive outlook on life and we decided to do that topic because we thought that it was really important to students to have a stress-free time in school rather than always feeling stressed and under the weather because they have a lot of work or they're under-organized and stuff like that so we believe that it was quite important to help people like that so our features included like a planner, a mood tracker and just other things to kind of keep you organized and happy throughout your school life. >> So fascinated by the adoption of this approach and were you always interested in STEM or was it something that, this catalyzed your interests in your colleagues. >> I was always interested in STEM and in Townley, they like promote it a lot and they're very interested in like, because it's an all-girls school. We promote females and like we try to make sure that girls are interested in all subjects no matter what and it's been quite nice but I believe that it kind of made me more interested in STEM with my classmates because we've had a fun experience. It's not just been doing computing, it's been having a fun experience. We've been designing our own thing that we're passionate about so it's been really lovely in that sense. >> Dave: So, please go ahead. >> Well, I was gonna ask you, how did you bring it together as a group. What were kind of the core components that you worked on to bring the app together and then have the final that you got here today with. >> So we kind of thought of the idea first about mental health, that was kind of our starting point and then we developed it to what features we can include in the app. We made a mind map saying whatever features we wanted, what topics we wanted to cover and then we thought about the target audiences and they really helped us think about this in the boot camp that they hosted. It was really helpful because Amazon ambassadors came to each kind of app and they helped us with what we could include and how to build on that idea. So that helped us include the target audiences, the ages that we wanted to target our app towards and it kind of helped us with that general theme and how many features we wanted to include. >> Because you had time pressures, right, so you have to make some trade-offs. So how did you make those trade-offs? You just talked to the potential recipients of the app or sort of brainstorm? >> We did a lot of surveys to what features people thought were the most important for our app and a lot of groups did that because it kind of, because there were a few different times that we needed to get it done by and every time we obviously had a time limit and so we needed to put the most important features in to our PowerPoints and our presentations and the prototypes and so people, we did surveys and people answered what features they thought were the most important to put in the app and then we implemented those before any other like more unnecessary ones. >> How did you organize your team? How many pizzas did they eat? >> Did you hear about that two pizza team, did Amazon talk to you about, Amazon Web Services, that if you had more people on your team that feeds two pizzas, that's too many 'cause that way you can move faster. >> We mainly decided to team because we got to choose like our friends to work with and obviously, we work better with the people who we're more comfortable around. So that was quite nice that we got to decide who we worked with but then the roles that we were given, we kind of just decided on what each person knew the most about, wanted to do research on and then from there, we kind of just carried on with the topics that we were initially started with. >> You told me something a while ago that really peaked my interest. You said you're an all-girl school and you almost had to reverse engineer your gender because it was all too pink. Can you talk about your thinking around a different kind of diversity. >> So basically we wanted to make the app like accept all the beliefs and stuff so that was our main focus with diversity and we didn't really realize initially that it was mainly quite girly, but then when we presented our initial presentation, obviously we got through the first round where we presented to the class but then we got some feedback from Miss and she really helped us telling us that you know, we want to make it unisex so that it's more approachable for all people and all students rather than just girls schools and then it would have more not purchases but it would have more audience. >> Yeah, better adoption but so, what did that involve? Was it colors, was it language, was it, what made it less girly? >> I mean, it was more colors and the whole theme of the app like the logo. We made it logo that was quite like not young, but quite young and girly a bit and it was mainly the colors though. We did like pink, which is, I mean it's traditionally seen as girly, pink, so we tried to make it, we searched up like unisex colors and it was more green, purple, blue, stuff like that so we implemented that into our app in the second round so that it was more unisex. >> Last time I interviewed you, I had my pink tie and pink shirt on. >> Yes, which I like, I think that was good. I've got my unisex on screen but one of the things that you did do that I really liked is you did the usability which you went out and you asked individuals what features would they like the most. I think that was really important and you can of course always do that with those boys and girls and figure out but that was really smart. So let me ask you another question. One of the things that we do find with girls and something I've been passionate about is they don't get into STEM or technology and they don't stay there. After going through this experience, one, do you think you might be more inclined to stay with technology and then I'd like to just know your opinion on how we can continue to forward this with girls after this experience, what else would you recommend? >> Yes, so as I said earlier, Townley promotes STEM massively. They have STEM days and everything so the girls at our school, we are really interested in it. This project has like really boosted my confidence and like my interest in STEM though because it's, as I said, it's made it more fun. It's not only just doing the computing work, it's made it a fun way to do it and you're working for, you're targeting towards an achievement at the end, to get the app made so everyone's trying really hard to get it done and that kind of gains your knowledge and then you learn all the new technology as you're going along so it's quite interesting. >> What are your thoughts on that Anna. I mean, we're always having this discussion on theCUBE. You look around the show, amazing show first of all, but there's a lot of men here. The line out the men's room is huge and so, because in a male-dominated industry, you look inside your own circles and your circles happen to be other men's so it's a challenge that we want to surface and be aware of. What more would your recommendations be to break those barriers? >> To do the programs like this, to actually go into schools and encourage young people because I think by encouraging all young people you know, you'll get the diversity and also the awareness. We're very subject driven in a way that our education system and actually a lot of the job roles out there we're in school, we're not aware of because we're busy teaching. So it's great to actually come in and we think about app developers and we think about testers and we think about programmers but there's all the other aspects as well which actually, unless industry comes into education and helps us show the students what the breadth of roles are out there you know, it's very easy for students to just go into a sort of like a very sort of set path. So by having programs like this coming into schools and having the industry come and talk to the students and inspire them is you know, a fantastic opportunity hence the reason why we decided to run in the whole year eight, the program >> And I've seen, like you saw today from all the groups but the kind of tech for good that the girls and the boys were able to actually decide on something that was meaningful to them and I've seen that a lot just around the world that when you go and talk to children about tech, you've got to connect the dots and I think you guys did that really well and what you were doing with your particular application but across the board the thing that we saw today which I think inspired them even more 'cause it was the thing that they were passionate about which teaches them along the way. >> Yes, yeah. >> So we love tech and I was introduced at age 12, the C prompt and learn basic. Kids today, you learn tech before you can speak you're you know, punching devices but so what was the tech behind what you were doing. Were you programming, were using cloud technologies. What was behind it? >> We mainly use more simple technology and most of the work was just making PowerPoint presentations and Word documents but obviously there were side things like we made the surveys on Word. We used Photoshop to make prototypes of the screens for the app and we learned a lot of technology at the bootcamp as well. We learned about the different kind of things we could use to make features of the app work and we learnt about obviously, Amazon were like the leaders of the program. >> You Learned about S3 storage, right. You learned about EC2, you learned about all the applications in AWS that you could build it because at the end as you build it, you'll use hopefully all those technologies is what we'll be helping you with. >> You know what I love about this story though is, and Teresa you know this, you can do almost anything with tech. Now sometimes it's too expensive or too complicated but the tech in many ways is the least important. It's more important to understand what the consumer wants, what the customer wants, what that experience is like, what the colors should be, right and then you can make the tech, apply the tech to solve that problem. >> 100%, and put all those tools together but I do hope that you learned what cloud computing was during your, because that was, I always kind of joke because one of the students at the beginning they use it but they don't always know what cloud computing is. So kind of learning the scalability and how, the ease and testing and just moving fast. So I think that's what you guys have done in a big way. From a teacher's point of view, are there other aspects that you think that should be done like either continued or done even better or faster that we're not getting to. >> This is definitely a step in the right direction. We are a bit more traditional because we introduce the students to Python. So they sort of start programming using Python and perhaps we should look more at cloud technology in greater detail in schools but we're kind of a little bit behind in terms of education in the way that we actually, and we need and we need to speed that up. >> And this is one of the big things that we're trying to do on the AWS side, is bring the new technologies into education because that is the highlight of what we see is there's using kind of older outdated technologies and getting them excited to understand how they learn with and utilize new technologies within AWS and a cloud platform because you can move faster, experiment, have quick failures and recoveries and the expenses you know a lot less expensive than you normally did. >> Well I've been around a long time. AWS changed the world and it changed it from a world where technology, especially information technology and enterprises was a world of no. We can't do that because it'll take too long, it's too expensive, no, no, no and what Amazon has done has sort of removed all that friction and turned it into a world yes you know, and builders and it's just amazing what's happening. You're the future and it's really such a pleasure having you both today. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for having us. >> Anna and Charlotte and of course Teresa, thank you guys for being on theCUBE. >> It's an honor, I agree, it's an honor to co-host but to have you guys and hear your passion and excitement for what you're doing. So my advice, keep it up, don't give up, stick with technology and STEM, you will not regret it, it's a great career. >> And have fun, all right, thanks again. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> All right and thank you for watching. Keep it right there, we'll be back with our next guest. We're live from the Excel center here at AWS summit London, you're watching theCUBE. (light electronic music)

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell Technologies World 2019. Brought to you by Dell Technologies and it's ecosystem partners. >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE. Lisa Martin with John Furrier coming to you live from Dell Technologies World 2019. This is our third day of coverage from two CUBE sets. What do you call that John? >> CUBE Cannon. >> CUBE Cannon of content. And guess who's back? One of our alumni Shannon Champion. >> Hello. >> Director of Product Marketing Dell EMC, Shannon thank you so much for joining us. >> A pleasure as always. >> Day three you still have a big smile on your face. >> I do do, it has been exhilarating, I'm completely exhausted but I'm thrilled to be here talking with you. >> You don't look exhausted but we're thrilled to have you. >> Thank you. >> So everything started, talking about cannons, Michael came out on Monday morning with all the gang, lots of news, lots of information that we've heard throughout the last three days, people are very excited about this. Excited about the deeper collaboration within the Dell Technologies companies. But something that you guys announced that we want to kind of really break through is Dell Technologies Cloud, VMware Cloud on Dell EMC, can you help me as a non-technologist understand those two differences, consumption model. >> Absolutely yeah, so it's all in a name really, Dell Technologies Cloud is the unification of the strategies between Dell EMC Cloud and VMware Cloud, one unified cloud strategy called Dell Technologies Cloud. Under that there are offers. So there's two categories of offers, one is the Data Center-as-a-Service, the fully managed, on-prem infrastructure where VxRail is the foundation. People know this as Project Dimension announced last year, it now has a formal, VMware Cloud on Dell EMC. So it's an offer underneath the category of Dell Technologies Cloud. >> And the VxRail components, explain VxRail for a minute, I think that's super important, it seems to be everywhere a key part of the architecture. >> It is yeah, so if you are here at the show, you've seen that VxRail is everywhere, it's on stage in lots of demos and it is the core foundation of our Dell Technologies Cloud offers. The collaboration between Dell EMC and VMware to bring VxRail to market kind of showcases the power of what this partnership can do. So it makes sense that this tightly integrated enterprise grade hyper-converged platform is the foundation of these Dell Tech Cloud offers. >> What's some of the use cases that was really driving the project, obviously multiple clouds was a key message here, but what was some of specific use cases you guys were really attacking? >> Sure, so when you look at the Data Center-as-a-Service offer, it's the fully managed capabilities. So customers are going to public cloud for the simplicity, agility, that cloud-like operations. But we started to see customers slowing down the adoption of that to some extent because they needed the security and the control of having infrastructure on premises and that's what we do with Data Center-as-a-Service, basically deliver the benefits of both, in a monthly subscription type model where they have all the infrastructure on premise but they get the benefit of a public cloud-like experience. >> And that's in beta, the announcement in the news was that Project Dimension, now Data Center-as-a-Service, which I love that name by the way, I think it's going to be great. But it's in beta, what does that mean beta? Select customers, preview, what's specific? >> Yeah, it's in beta phase, we have a couple customers that are running it today, so we're looking for customers to help shape the future, help us prioritize, you know, what are the key use cases that they're seeing a need for this technology. So we're looking for a few good companies still, so if anyone's out there interested, hit up our reps. Yeah, it'll be available in the market in the second half of this year, but currently in beta. >> It seems to be great for the edge, shipping a data center is almost like, okay with all this new technology, the bundling's literally nice, you guys did a good job on that. Shipping a data center, it almost was a dream years ago, We'll just ship a data center to the edge. That seems to be the the big use case that people are talking about, the edge of the network's going to have more capabilities, moving data around is not the answer, 'cause of latencies and as Pat Gelsinger would say laws of physics. This is identified as a big sweet spot. Michael Dell commented the edge in the next 10 years is going to be explosive, is that pretty much the core kind of direction? >> Yeah, it's interesting, you know it's called Data Center-as-a-Service and edge is a key use case for Data Center-as-a-Service, but also the core data centers when we are polling our customers they're actually telling us, they have a need for this in both locations, so both are key use cases, the edge obviously for the reasons you pointed out too. >> So talk to us about the customers involvement in the manifestation of Project Dimension. We've been hearing a lot the last three days, you really even felt it on stage from day one. Collaboration, not just within the Dell Technologies companies, we saw Microsoft. But where are the customers in terms of influencing Project Dimension now becoming a reality? >> Sure yeah, I mean this has been a collaboration with customers, but also between Dell EMC and VMware jointly with our joint customers going out to talk to them about the possibility and the promise and the capabilities that are being delivered. So certainly a joint effort from both companies along with our customers to give us feedback in terms of you know, where they see this as a key use case for them. >> Customers just looking for tighter integration, tighter collaboration, what are some of the business imperatives, where your customers are saying, hey guys, this is really the way to go here and here's why. >> Yeah I mean I touched on it a little bit in terms of like, the transparency, the security, the control, the data latency, improvements of having infrastructure on premises whilst still wanting sort of that agility and simplicity of a public cloud-like operating model, and that's essentially what's driving this new category of infrastructure consumption, Data Center-as-a-Service. And we have a whole nother side of Dell Tech Cloud, which is the Dell Technologies Cloud platform and we deliver that through VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail, so I mentioned VxRail's kind of everywhere, that offer is available today for customers on premises. And with VxRail it's really the only VMware Cloud Foundation infrastructure offering that has full stack integration, we're calling it full stack integration because there is a set of software capabilities for VxRail that tie together what VMware does with the SDDC Manager automation together with the infrastructure management VxRail through RESTful APIs, through software that integrates the two. So for customers, they have a complete seamless all in one management experience with cloud foundation on VxRail. So, we're really excited about that and it's only been shipping for two weeks and already customers are willing to be reference customers for us, talking about the potential, the promise, wanting to work with us on what this could mean for their organizations. >> Was going to ask you about their reactions. >> Give us some feedback on the customer, I'd love to hear what they're saying, obviously demand, what's the main euphoria around it? >> Yeah so, hybrid cloud is part of every customer's strategy and really understanding how they can best get there, what's the simplest and the fastest way for them, has been what they're considering. And if you look at what we're doing with VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail, we have a fast and simple way and they back by the promise of both Dell EMC and VMware working together to bring these two technologies in a unified way that's a seamless experience. So, you know the power of hyper-converged is to let businesses get out of the, maintaining the infrastructure so they can focus on business outcomes. The same is true for other use cases like hybrid cloud. So that's what customers are excited about there. >> Yeah Pat Gelsinger says "don't look down, look up." Meaning if you can take advantage of the modernizations of hyper-converged which you guys have been doing for a while, the packaging's more consumable and you bolt on the VMware piece. So then you got consistent cloud operations, but then can focus in on the software. This is the dream of software defined data center, this is what people had hoped for, I think two years ago, but it's kind of, come in now this is reality. >> This is reality, for sure. >> So it sounds like, you've got nearly what 5,000 VxRail customers, it's over a billion dollar run rate, are customers looking at VxRail as a foundational component of really accelerating their modernization of their IT and their data center. >> Yeah, that's been the core of what VxRail's delivered since the start, so it's three years old, as you mentioned nearly 5,000 customers to date. It's the fastest growing HCI system, thanks to that strong customer adoption. But really it's been a catalyst for data center modernization to date. And what we're talking about this week is how it's really going beyond an HCI appliance. So it's the foundation for hybrid cloud for the Dell Tech Cloud offers. And we're also offering up additional deployment options, so people think of VxRail as an appliance, but now they can get it as fully integrated rack with or without networking and if they choose Dell EMC Networking, they get the power of SmartFabric Services integration, for hyper-converged networking can be a pain point now it's fully automated, deployment, life cycle management as part of the full stack, so lots of options. >> Talk about the software innovation, 'cause we've been hearing and this has been happening, they've done a software transition, there's more software engineers than hardware engineers these days, you guys have the system software and some analytical software, how does that play in on the HCI side and where's that sit on the VxRail side, is it on the stacks, so where is your software piece? >> Yeah, thanks so there's really great software innovation from the PowerEdge side from the VMWare vSAN side, but we also have additional software innovation, specifically for VxRail that kind of ties those things together and that now includes VMware Cloud Foundations. So there's things like the RESTful APIs that I talked about that enable VMware Cloud Foundation full stack integration, that also have downstream connectors that allow networking automation. But now we're introducing another piece of software innovation that we're calling VxRail ACE. Analytical Consulting Engine, so you know, it's a marketing term, but what does this do, it's intelligent analytics to further simplify operations. We like to call it infrastructure machine learning for VxRail. So we're excited, we have a data lake, it has an analytics engine and historical data of how customers have been using VxRail to date. Now we're able to have enough data to apply machine learning to that and offer up customers insights into how to best optimize their configurations, forecast consumptions, I was just talking with some customers in a session before about how a few years back they would try and project their resource consumption over a five year period and now they can't even look six months ahead. So a tool like this can help them forecast it. At what point in time am I going to need to add more drives or add more nodes based on my current usage rates and that's pretty powerful technology. >> And with the consumption model changing too to the subscription, this gives them more agility on both sides, proactive planning and also understanding kind of what's going on. Not look back six months to a year like, well we should have bought or over-provisioning, the old days right? >> Yeah exactly yeah, that's good a point. >> So what's the future hold, tell us about where this is going to go next. Obviously selling like hot cakes, congratulations. >> Thanks. >> What's next, where's the next innovation coming, what's going on? >> Yeah I mean, like I said, we're seeing VxRail as more than just a catalyst for data center modernization, a lot of customers are going to keep choosing it for that turnkey simplicity. But we're now enabling fast and simple hybrid cloud and as edge use cases start to emerge, VxRail as a hyper-converged infrastructure has a lot of promise there too, so we really see it as a opportunity and a foundation for a wide range of use cases with our customers. >> So a lot of customers as we mentioned. Any favorite stories that really showcase how VxRail as a foundation for hybrid cloud, customer's cloud strategies, how it's really enabling them to unlock the data capital as it's been talking about here as obviously data has so much potential, but if you can't find it and you can't harness the insights. Any customer stories that really in your opinion speak to, this is really unlocking customer's data so that they can make better decisions, identify new revenue streams and ultimately deliver an awesome customer experience. >> Yeah definitely, I mean we have over 25 VxRail customers here at the show telling their stories throughout. It's hard for me to pick a single one. You know what's interesting is when we just had a session, we had two customers there and we asked them what are the business drivers that VxRail is enabling for you? They both, completely different industries, one is an insurance industry and one was a financial services industry, and they both came back to the same premise of I need to deliver IT services faster to my customer base and I can't spend time being in the business of maintaining the infrastructure, I just need automation that enables me to let my teams accelerate the pace of innovation and stay competitive. So, that's the role that it's playing. >> And in any industry, because as we know, every company these days, if they're not technology companies already, they need to be. >> Yeah that's true, yeah we were just talking about IT as a business, how IT leaders really need to work hand in hand with the CEOs, understand the business strategy and then create their own IT strategy. And really drive a culture around a business plan specifically for IT and technology. Which is a really interesting way to think about it. >> I was going to ask you about cultural change, as we all know that's very challenging to do. These two customers that you mentioned did they talk about that at all, like how it's actually enabling cultural change that drives the business forward. >> Yeah they did actually and you know, the core there is that people is harder to change than technology and tools and processes. Some of the tips that they had were really insightful, one of which is, a lot of people fear change. But if you can inspire them to fear obsolescence more than fearing change, then you can motivate them around that, but also creating a vision for them around what their role will be when they're not maintaining infrastructure will also help kind of inspire them to do things differently. So that was pretty cool to hear directly from customers around how their innovating, inspiring their people. >> Competition real quick, obviously HCI's been very competitive, new other vendors are out there, we know who they are, how do you guys fit in versus the competition, obviously the differentiators, the multiple piece parts of Dell Technologies. But where's the real innovation and competitive advantage that you guys are putting out there? >> Yeah, from a VxRail perspective it's easy. There's no deeper integration with VMware. All customers pretty much are VMware customers, a majority of them right? And being jointly engineered with VMware gives us inherent advantages and an experience that customers come to us and tell us, is superior to others that they're able to find, so we always go back to that and we get validation from our customers on that too. >> Okay Shannon as we wrap up here in the last few seconds. What are some the things you're personally going to be taking away as you hop on that red-eye tonight? >> Personally, I think Dell Technologies World is like the culmination of so much hard work of a ton of people, so I'm going to send a ton of thank you notes to all the people that made this happen, but really reflect on how exciting a time it is in technology, in what we're doing in hyper-converged that plays a role in everything that we've heard this week. And just be proud of what we're doing. >> Awesome, you should be proud, well Shannon thank you for joining John and me on theCUBE again this afternoon we appreciate your time. >> Thank you. >> Go get some rest. >> I will. (laughs) >> For John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin you're watching theCUBE live from Dell Technologies World 2019. Thanks for watching. (upbeat techno music)

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Dell Technologies World 2019. Brought to you by Dell Technologies and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of Dell World Technologies here in Las Vegas. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Stu Miniman. We have two guests on this segment. Both CUBE veterans, so. (laughs) We have Varun Chhabra. He is the VP, Product Marketing, Cloud Dell EMC and Muneyb Minhazuddin, VP Solutions Product Marketing at VMware. Thank you so much for coming on the show. >> Thanks for having us. >> Thanks for having us. >> So we just had the keynote address. We heard from Michael Dell, Sachin Adela, Pat Gelsinger. It's a real who's who of this ecosystem. Break it down for us. What did we hear? What is sort of the most exciting thing from your perspective, Varun? >> So, Rebecca, what we hear from customers again and again is it's a multicloud world, right? Everybody has multiple cloud deployments. We saw Pat mention five on average, cloud architectures in customer environments. And what we keep hearing from them is there are operational silos that develop as part of the tool set, the SLAs that are different, the machine formats. All of these things just lead to a lot of operational silos and complexity. And what customers are overwhelmingly asking Dell EMC as well as VMware, is that how do we reduce this complexity? How do we be able to move work loads together? How do we manage all of this in a common framwork and reduce some of that complexity, so that really they can take advantage of the promise of multicloud. >> So Muneyb, theCUBE goes to, you know, all the big industry shows. >> Right. >> I feel like everywhere I go used to be, you know, it's like Intel and NVIDIA up on stage with the next generation. Well, for the last year, it felt like, you know, Pat and Sanjay were, you know, somebody like that, you know, up on stage. We have the Google cloud event a couple of weeks ago. There was Sanjay up on stage. You come here, there's Sachin Adela up on stage. So, let's talk about that public cloud piece. You know, we know the relationship with AWS, VMware cloud on AWS sent ripples through the industry. And, you know, the Google cloud piece. So tell us what's new, anything different about the Microsoft piece when it comes to public cloud. And how does that fit in relation to all the other clouds? >> Sure, no, I'll amplify what Varun said, right. We think about customer's choice first. And really customer choice as you know, you got multiple cloud providers. We've seen customers makes this choice of, I need to make this, you know, a multi-cloud world. Why are they going towards the multi-cloud world is because applications are going there. And really VMware's strategy has been to say how do we empower customers with that choice? Our, you know, AWS partnership is as strong as ever. We continue to innovate there. And that was our first kind of choice of platform. And Pat alluded to this on the stage. We have 4,000 cloud provider partners, right. And the 4,000 cloud provider partners we've built over the years, and that include, you know, not small names. They include IBM. Like you know they've got Rackspace, some of the biggest cloud providers. So our strategy has always been how do we take our stack and land it in as many public clouds as possible? So we took the first step of IBM, then about 4,000 other cloud providers, be it Rackspace, Fujitsu, Hitachi. Then came Amazon, Amazon being the choice of destination for a lot of public clouds. Today, we kind of further extend that with Microsoft, and you know a few weeks ago with Google. So this is really about customer choice and customers when they want the hybrid multi-cloud piece, it's app-driven. Right, you got two worlds. You got an existing application and you're looking to get some scale out of that existing application. And you're building a lot of native cloud, native applications. They want this, you know, in multiple places. >> All right, so if I could just drill down one level deep. So if I'm going to ask your customer today, my understanding is the VMware's DDC Stack, what does that mean, what do I use, how is that look and feel compared, do I use the Microsoft system center, am I using vCenter, you know. >> Sure, this is really, again, an app-driven conversation, right. There were multiple announcements in here, just to unpack them. It was like, hey, we have the Dell Technologies cloud platform. The Dell Technologies cloud platform is powered by DELL EMC infrastructure and VMware Cloud Foundation on top, virtualizing your full compute network storage with vShere, vSAN, NSX, and management, right. And the second part was really we've got VMware Cloud on a Dell EMC. This is to bring cloud to the work loads, which did in public clouds. We're seeing this repatriation of work loads back on the data center or the edge. This is really driven by a lot of customers who have built native IP in the public cloud, be it Amazon, be it Azure, who want to now bring some of those work loads closer to the data center or the edge. Now this comes to, how do I take my Azure work loads and bring it closer to the edge or my data center? Why is that a need? You know we have large customers, large customers, multi-national, they have 500,000 employees 90 locations worldwide who've built IP, or when I say IP applications natively in cloud. Suddenly for 500,000 employees in 90 locations, they're going ingress egress traffic to the cloud, public cloud, it's huge. How do I bring it closer to my data centers, right? And this is where taking Azure work loads, bringing them on prem, closer, solves that big problem for them. Now, how do I take that work loads and bring them closer, is that's where we landed in the VMware on Dell EMC infrastructure because this brings you closer to the data center, gives me either low latency, data governance, and control, as well as flexibility to bring these work loads back on prem, right? So the two tangents that you're driving, both your cloud growth and back to the edge, the second tangent of growth or explosion is cloud native work loads. You're able to bring them closer to your data center is purely the value proposition, right. >> Well, we heard so much about that on main stage this morning, about just how differently the modern workforce works, in terms of the number of devices they use, the different locations they are when they are doing the tasks of their job. Can you talk a little bit about the specifics in terms of customers you're working with, you don't need to name names, but just how you are enabling those people to be more productive, be more collaborative, and to get their jobs done. >> You know, we get feedback from customers in all industries, so Muneyb can share a few as well. We have large banks that are, you know, they're standardized their work loads on VMware today, as have many more organizations and they're looking for the flexibility to be able to move stuff to the cloud or move it back on premises and not have to reformat, not have to change their machine formats and just make it a little bit easy. They want the flexibility to be able to run applications in their bank branches in the cloud. But then they don't necessarily want to adopt a new machine format or a new standardized platform. That's really what the Azure announcement helps them do. Just like with Data Blue S can now move work loads seamlessly to Azure, use vCenter, use your other tools that you're familiar with today already to be able to provision your work loads. >> All right, Varun, wonder if we can drill into the stack a little bit here. I went to the Microsoft show last year and it was like, oh, WSSD is very different than Azure Stack, even if you look at the box, then it's very much the same. Underneath the covers, there was a lot of discussion of VxRail. We know how fast that's been growing. Can you, I believe there was two pieces to this, there's the VCF on VxRail and then, you know, help explain some of the differences. >> Yeah, so for the Dell Technologies cloud platform announcement, which is, as you said, VxRail HCI infrastructure with VMware Cloud Foundations tightly integrated. So that that the storage, compute, and networking capabilities off of VMware Cloud Foundation are all incorporated and taken advantage of within the HCI infrastructure. This is all about making things easier to consume, reducing the complexity for customers. When they get VxRail, they overwhelmingly tell us they want to use VMware Cloud Foundations to be able to manage and automate those work loads. So we're packaging the sup out of the box. So when customers get it, they have the cloud experience on premises without the complexity of having to deploy it because it's already integrated tightly. The engineering teams have actually worked together and then you can then, as we mentioned, extend those work loads to public cloud using the same tools, the same VMware Cloud Foundation tools. >> And you know, we built on Cloud Foundation for a while. I'm sure you followed us on the Cloud Foundation. And that has been, when, yes, we talk about consistent infrastructure, consistent operations in this hybrid cloud world. And what we really mean is that VMware Cloud Foundations stack. Right, so when we talk about VMC on AWS, is that Cloud Foundation stack running inside of Amazon. When we talk about, you know, our partnership with Azure is that VMware Cloud Foundation stack running on Azure. When we talk about these 4,000 partners, cloud certified, IBM, it is the Cloud Foundation stack. And the key components being the full stack, vSphere, vSAN, NSX, and there's a critical bar in Cloud Foundation call life cycle management. It's missed quite easily, right. The benefit of running a public cloud, they key three attributes you get is you get everything as a service, you get all your infrastructure as software, and the third part is you don't spend any time maintaining the inter-operability between your compute, network, storage. And that is a huge deal for costumers. They spent a lot of time just maintaining this inter-op. And VMware Cloud Foundation has this life cycle manager which solves that problem. That is key. >> Thank you for bringing that up, because, right, one of the big differences you talk about public cloud, go talk to your customer and say, hey, what version of Microsoft Azure are you running? And they'll laugh at you and say, like, well, Microsoft takes care of that for me. Well, when I differentiate and I say, Oh, okay, I want to run the same stack in my environment, how do I keep that up-to-date. We know that VMware customer, it's like, there's lot of incentives to get them there but oftentimes they're N minus one, two, or something like that. So how do we manage and make sure that it is more cloud-like and up-to-date? >> Yeah, absolutely, so there's two ways to do that. One of them is, because the VMware and Dell EMC teams are working on engineering closely together, we're going to have the latest version supported right out of the gate. So you have an update, you know that it's going to work on your hardware, or vice versa. So that's one level. And then with VMware Cloud on Dell EMC, we're also providing the ability to basically have hands-off management and have that infrastructure run in your data center or your edge locations, but at the same time not have to manage it. You leave that management to Dell Technologies and to VMware, to be able to manage that solution for you. So really, as Muneyb said, bringing that public cloud experience to your on-premise locations as well. >> And I think that's one of the big differentiators that's going to come, right? People want to get that consumption model, and they're trying to say, hey, how do I build my own data center, maintain it, but at the same time I want to rely on Dell and VMware to come and help us build it together, right. And the second part of the announcement was really, hey, VMware, Dell, on a Dell EMC, is that manage service offer. The demo you saw from June Yang was being able to have a consumption interface where you can kind of click of a button roll it back into a data center as well as an edge. 'Cause you have really literally very little IT skill sets where in the edge environment, and as edge compute needs become more prolific with 5G, IoT devices, you need that same kind of data governance model and data center model there as well. And that really the beauty of coming to VMware and Dell DMC, Dell Technologies' power, is to maintain that everywhere, right? >> I want to ask you about innovation. One of the things that was really striking during the keynote was the Bank of America executive saying I rely on Dell Technologies to be thinking about four steps ahead of me, even though I obviously have my own customers' needs that I need to be thinking of. I need Dell to be four steps ahead. So how are you, how are you getting in the heads of these obvious problems. >> I think it really comes down to listening to customers, right. As Dell Technologies, as VMware, we have the advantage of working with so many customers, like hundreds of thousands of customers around the world. We get to hear and listen and understand what are the cutting-edge things that customers are looking for. And then we can now take that back to customers like Bank of America, who may have thought about certain scenarios that we would learn from, but they might not have thought about other industries where things could be applicable to their industry. So that drives a lot of our innovation. We are very proud about the fact that we are customer-focused. Our innovation is really driven by listening to customers and having smart people just work on those problems. >> And, you know, customer voice is a big deal. Customer choice, that's why we're doing what we're doing with multiple cloud providers, right? And I think this is really a key to, if you just look at VMware's innovation, we're already talking about this multi-cloud world, where it's like, hey, you've got work loads natively, so how do you manage those? We're already ahead in thinking about Kubernetes with acquisition of Heptio. And you think about it, we've done this innovation in the cloud space, established this hybrid credibility, and we've launched it with Dell Technology now. We're already ahead in this multi-cloud operational model, we're already ahead in this Kubernetes evolution. We'll bring it back with the family and listen to the customers for choice because at the end of the day, we're here to solve customer problems, right? >> I think that's another dimension of choice that we offer, which is both traditional applications as well as applications of the future that will increasingly be customer container based. >> Yeah, I'm just wondering if you can expand on a little bit. You know, one of the things I said, VMware is great, it really simplified the environment. I go back 15 years ago. One of the things it did is, let me take my old application that was probably long in the tooth to begin with, my hardware's out of date, my operating system out of date, stick it in a VM and leave it for another five years. And the users of that are like, oh my gosh, I need an update. How do we get beyond that and allow this joint solution to be an accelerant for applications? >> Yeah, and I think that application is probably the crux of the business, right, we're-- >> It's a long pole in the tent for making change, but uh. >> And applications have evolved. This is actually the evolution journey of IT itself, is where there used to be support systems, now they become actually translate to business dollars, 'cause you know the first thing that your customer, often customer touches, is an application. And you can drive business value from it. And customers are thinking about these old applications and new applications, and they have to start thinking about where do I take my applications, where do they need to land, and then make the choice of what infrastructure is the best platform for it. So really you're going to flip the thing on, don't think infrastructure first and then retrospect apps to it, think app first and then make a choice on infrastructure based on your application need. And really, like you said, VMware kind of took the abstraction layer away from infrastructure and made sure that your VMs could from everywhere. We're taking the same for applications to say, doesn't matter if it's a VM-based, it's a cloud native, we'll give you the same consistent infrastructure and operations. >> Okay, Varun, last thing, could you just tell us of the announcements that are made. What's available today? What's coming later this year? >> Absolutely, so the Dell Technologies cloud platform that's based on VxRail and VMware Cloud Foundation is available now as an integrated solution. The VMware Cloud on Dell EMC, the fully managed offer, is available in the second half of this year. It's in beta right now and, as you saw, we have really good feedback from our customers. And then I think the Azure VMware Solutions offer will be available soon as well. >> All right, well, Varun and Muneyb, congratulations on the progress. We look forward to talking to the customers as they roll this out, and Rebecca and I will be back with lots more coverage here at Dell Technologies World 2019, wall-to-wall coverage, two sets, three days, tenth year of theCUBE at EMC and Dell World. I'm Stu Miniman and thanks so much for watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)

(soft music) - [Narrator] Live CUBE coverage at VMworld 2018 continues in a moment. Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering VMworld 2018. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. - Hello everyone, and welcome to back to theCUBE, live coverage here in Las Vegas with VMworld 2018. This is our three days of exclusive wall-to-wall coverage, two sets, it's our ninth year covering VMworld, when Dave and I started theCUBE nine years ago, Paul Maritz was the CEO, he actually got referenced on stage by Pat Gelsinger. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante, our next guest Ray O'Farrel, CTO, Chief Technology Officer at VMware, keynote today on stage with Pat; great to see you again, thanks for coming on. - Really good to see you guys again. - So, reaction from the keynote was very positive. Probably, from a content standpoint, probably one of the most meatiest content pieces I've seen, mega news, serious announcement with Amazon, with Andy Jassy coming on stage releasing the Relational Database Service, RDS, on VMware, on-premises. Monster news. That is like, I don't think the world has yet felt the reverb for this thing yet. - But that was only one of the many stories. - [John] That was just one, that was just like (makes explosion noise). And then the CloudHealth acquisition, and you had tons of demos, pretty intense. - [Ray] Well, it's been- - Summarize what you did (laughs) in ten seconds. - Summarize all of that. So, you know, the key thing that we wanted to achieve with the keynote was obviously to make sure Pat drives the the vision that VMware has and, a lot of focus on that was focused on multi-cloud, this view of the world that you've now got multiple clouds emerging. And you know one of our key rules is to make sure that enterprises are able to work across all of those, networking, how we do management, how we work across all of these, and CloudHealth is a key part of that, making it easier to use cloud, in particular multi-cloud. You know as the CTO I get the fun part of tryna you know let our customers know all the cool work that the engineering teams are doing, so one of the things we want to do is make sure we put a lot of good demos in there. The feedback we get from our customers at VMworld over and over again is they want to see demos, they want to know that stuff is real. You can take a look for instance at the hands on labs. I came in here on Saturday night, walked down there about 6:30 am on Sunday morning, and there was people lining up to go in there and use those labs. So what did we talk through? Broadly speaking we spoke to how you can use VMC on AWS, and the easy way it is to migrate vSphere applications onto vSphere on AWS; we had some new features there around live migration. The next thing we spoke about was around RDS itself and what this project is about. Broadly speaking, at its most basic, it allows you to take the RDS components from Amazon but run them in your data center. With all of the implications of that in terms of how your developers work and they build those applications. We spoke about Project Dimension, which is also around a now delivery as a service, a cloud experience, but again, at your infrastructure, whether it's at the edge or whether it's your data center. And, you know we spoke about what we're doing in blockchain, some opensource components that we're doing over there. New features of Workspace ONE, particularly around the relationship with Dell, and how that will now be combined with some of their laptops And, oh and of course, what we did with some of the Nvidia GPUs, demonstrating the ability to be able to run the most sophisticated AI workloads on a vSphere environment. And I suspect I forgot something in that list, but- - [John] You're going to have to hit the pillow tonight and have a good nap, and crash. - [Dave] Project Magma. - [Ray] Project Magma which is a very future looking concept around basically where we think AI and ML is going to be used to drive a lot of the automation moving forward. - [Dave] Self-driving data center, - Self-driving data center. - [Dave] I think you'd call it (John laughs) Are they coinin' a new term there? - No it's great, we can reuse an old term, and you know rebrand it. - Auto pilot. Put your data center on auto pilot. I want to just drill down on one, on the Amazon relationship, because that was obviously the height, big news in there what you're talking about is the depth of the relationship is deep on the partnership side. I want to, and you guys, you pointed that out, I want to amplify that, but I also want to ask you around the RDS demand. You know, talkin' to some of the Amazon sources, they tell me that the demand for this was very strong, over multiple years. So, first on the RDS, the demand, some of the customer feedback, this is not just you guys in a room goin' hey, let's just do this; it makes sense, but it's customer driven. - Yeah, when you look at what VMC on AWS actually is, it's creating this bridge between the on-prem and the private cloud, sorry, and the public cloud on Amazon. But, initially most of that is really an I as relationship, yes we can move workloads, yes we can move VMs, yes we can manage networking, but one of the key things you want from a public cloud or from cloud in general is access to services. So, as we went down that first part of saying we'll give you this basic infrastructure, very quickly customers began to ask for some other things, some other aspects of that, and that of course was services. So after lots of discussions around what are services, one, that are appropriate to be able to put into this new type environment, but which had to demand RDS certainly rode very quickly to the top of that. In the end almost everybody has some form of database in their application, and so it's a very likely start for us to make them. - So I remember when customers first started wanting to run, to virtualize Oracle, with of course VMware; and Oracle, didn't really embrace that early on. They would say things, their sales guys would scare the customers, we're not going to certify it, but then some of the customers said "Dam the torpedoes, we're going to do it." it actually worked great. - [Ray] Right. - Now, I don't know if that's 'cause, just that's the inherent nature of VMware, or you guys had to do some work, so my question is: two fold, was that just the inherent nature of VMware, and what did you have to do or will you have to do to get RDS running the way that customers want it, trust it on AWS, I mean on VMware? - So, in the case of the Oracle situation, we didn't have to do a whole lot to make that happen, we were virtualizing in x86, Oracle runs on x86, and so you got that basic pattern and mix. In the case of RDS, the actual database that you're running on your VMware infrastructure, our database is such as my SQL, we run an enormous amount of those databases already, so that core aspect of getting the database running is not something that's fundamentally difficult for us to do The challenging part is, how do bridge all the management aspects of that? The RDS components, the APIs, that a developer wants to use, and which are used to using over on, with RDS on AWS, so that's where the work is involved. Now by the way, you're implying that maybe this is a future thing, right? A lot of that work has already occurred, in fact, you know the demo you're seeing is not based on this is what we could do at some possible time in the future, it is actually tied to some very close future releases. - [Dave] So recovery, I'm going to be co-, that's future release of recovery and all the things, if something goes wrong, I'm going to be comfortable as a customer that - [Ray] Correct, correct. - You're going to be backed. - Some of those things we still need to work true, because there's tons of features that you can begin to add onto this, disaster recovery, backup, all of those sort of things, and they're not all going to be there on day one, but you can expect us to continue to add all of that. - [Dave] And you'll have all of those? - Correct. - Now the other question I got to ask you is about migration. When I hear the term migration I go, ugh, you know IT practitioners they tighten up, but what I heard on stage today is we're going to make this really easy. But moving data, help me square that circle, Ray, because, you know data, people say data has gravity, speed of light, network bandwidth, proximity. What's the secret sauce that enables you guys to solve those problems? - So the core secret sauce there is if you're virtualized on VMware on-premise, and you're using VMC on AWS, the basic unit of execution is still that virtual machine, and that virtual machine encapsulates the storage, the networking, everything associated with that box, right? So virtual machines have that very core strength of encapsulating not just the application, or some aspect of the, even some aspect of a minimal piece of the operating system, it encapsulates everything which is tied into that box almost on a physical level. So when you say I'm going to move a virtual machine, you're moving the disk, you're moving the storage, you're doing all of those things. So now think of a database running in a virtual machine, it might not even be the applications, just the database, we're able to capture that and represent that as we moved the virtual machine, you're moving all of that as well. Now there's two aspects of that, one of them is moving the underlying storage, the disk, which might well be even a a virtual disk on NFS or something like that, that's slower task, and that's why we leverage vSphere replication for that. And then the final live part which is, it's always the cool part, but is in fact in this stage maybe not the most difficult part, and what we're describing here is moving the actual memory contents of a given VM and flipping it over to VMC on AWS. - [Dave] Okay, so the key there, you've got the replication piece, and then you just unhook the original and then you're up and running. - Correct. Traditional vMotion relies that both servers access the same disk, so I don't need to move the disk, in this case I need to actually move the disk, and that's what the replication does. - [John] Ray, I want to ask you about something that Pat Gelsinger kind of cheesed out on the keynote. You could tell he had so much confidence, he wanted to expand on this one section but he got a couple digs in on it but, he did point out that the telco piece was very big; and only, he had a percent, I think 10% or 20% is virtualized when enterprises are like 80, I forget what now, I forget the exact numbers but his point was: huge opportunity in telco. What was he referring to there? - So, broadly speaking, if you look across most of you know where workloads run, you look at your IT infrastructure, you look at most of the public clouds and private clouds, they're virtualized to an enormous extent. Now when you go into the telco side of things and begin to look at what's happening at the edge, what's happening in the large telco infrastructure, both, a little bit from a cloud point of view, but also from everything to do from all the services and so on that the run; much of that is not virtualized. Now we actually made a very distinct focus on that over the last few years, we created a, basically a product line and a mini business unit, focused on telco, and that's where you see products like the virtual network functions, all of those technologies coming from. But actually the key product from that area is actually VIO, VMware Incubated Openstack, that's because the telco providers, to a large degree, attempted to leverage Openstack, had some challenges of getting the reliability, the stability you need on that, so what we did was merged the hypervisor, the infrastructure of VMware, with the Openstack management APIs, produced VMware Incubated Openstack, and the telco providers are very aggressively taking that on - [Dave] Now, I got to ask ya, whaddya got against capex? (Dave and Ray laugh) Pat said "You should never spend capex for DR again." it was basically- - [Ray] Yep. So I mean, I think the key part of that solution is it is now so, I will use the word easy, the technology behind it is not easy, but it easy for an end user to be able to say: "I can connect my application from a private infrastructure to a public infrastructure, in a way which is very highly connected using NSX, which is easily replicated, which is easily moved; therefore, I now have a ready ability to be able to create DR scenarios leveraging the public cloud." It is easier than it's ever been before, so instead of building another data center to do that, leverage VMC on AWS, leverage those type of technologies to be able to do that. - Ray, can you clarify, or amplify the VMware Cloud Foundations, how does, trials and tribulations over the years has evolved, it's now front and center in the conversation. How has that evolved from a product standpoint, tech, is it integration layer, how are you guys looking at that, what is the role of VMware Cloud Foundation, and what does it mean for your partners and customers? - Yeah, so I think that, your comments about it having a a kind of an early mixed reaction or so on is actually partially because a naming challenge that we called right? VMware Cloud Foundation is a unified story where we basically take the core elements of the SDDC and we combine in management infrastructure with that, which is actually called SDDC Manager, we don't necessarily spell that out but it's combined into that. But that's the key aspect of this, and then we build architectures based on that; so VxRack is based on VMware Cloud Foundation. The infrastructure which runs in Amazon which we manage as part of the VMC on AWS is built on VMware Cloud Foundation. So it's an architectural and, it's an architectural statement as opposed to a product statement. Where the confusion arises, we also have products that people call VMware Cloud Foundation. One of the ones they're with now as an instance of that is for instance VxRack, right? Which is basically a rack of infrastructure, think of it as a really big VxRail, but it's got all of this management software combined with it as well. And actually, you know your comment about that having some mixed reaction, some of that is because of our renaming that - [John] Renaming. - we've done along the way. But that is actually growing, and quite successful product at this stage, so. - It's been getting a lot of good buzz. - It's getting a lot of good buzz, yes. - [John] And the value is what? Times in market on, on solution building, or pull out, what's the main value? - In some way it goes back to the core value of hyper-converged infrastructure, somebody else is taking care of making sure that the software components all blend together; somebody else is making sure that there's any easy way to update and manage all of these things together, and in many cases, making sure it's well integrated with underlying hardware. So it's all around making it easy to get that basic SDDC up and running. - [Dave] So I got to question on your architecture, and I honestly don't even know how to ask it, but, maybe you can help me as a technologist; you've got, you know the VMware architecture which was developed initially decades ago, and now you've got all this microservices, and Kubernetes, and containers comin' into the fore, and you see the quote unquote modern architectures, speed of deployment, software release is much faster, much more cloud-like, cloud first. How do you go from you know the historical architecture to that level, how do you bridge the two worlds? - So, as with any company, as these transitions have taken place, we've had to be able to make sure we invest in those new techniques and new technologies as well. So you see for instance VMC on AWS, you see for instance Project Tango the cloud-based VR realms product. All of those are cloud-based infrastructure using, you know those more, well I guess they're described new or modern ways of developing applications, microservices, containerized, leveraging Kubernetes and so on in the mix. So just like the rest of the industry, we've been doing the same as part of that broader sorry, that broader industry momentum. There isn't a conflict that you, I think might think is there. The bottom line is our primary purpose is to deliver enterprise software which is solid, stable, secure, easily connected to the rest of the infrastructure. And that might sound a little bit boring, but it is the thing that keeps most of the data centers running and safe. VMware's ESX architecture, VMware's VC architecture has been at the very heart of that. And while they've matured over the years, right, they're still at the very heart of that virtualization part of what we do, but all of these other things we do, what we do in terms of cloud monitoring, what we do in terms of Wavefront, what we do in terms of VMC on AWS, they're new code, new architectures, broadly expanding that story, leveraging microservices and the things you would expect in that space. - Well, and VMware has proven to the gold standard in that regard. Maybe it is boring, but it's super important. - [John] So you got some compliments on theCUBE today, for the work you guys are doing, Andy Bechtolsheim was on earlier, a well-documented career he's had he knows a thing or two about networks. He said "VMware as NSX is ..." this is a quote from today, "... is the best solution that's available today that I can use for a use case of the large numbers I have between smooth connection between on-premise and off-premise public cloud, into the future, to edge, and telco, and all other things cloud." - Yeah, I'm not going to argue with that quote. (laughs) - [John] So, instant testimonial. Okay, NSX has become really this, and Pat was giddy about this last year, he's all like, you watch more NSX, you know more goodness coming; it seems to be the center piece to the a lot of the VMware's connection strategies to cloud and other things including manageability. What's the big thing about NSX, what should people know about NSX? - I think the single biggest thing is software-defined networking had a promise, and the promise is this highly flexible, easily configured, and in many ways, automated, or policy-driven in some cases; networking infrastructure. So it's all around that flexibility and fluidity of software-defined networking. The key strength that NSX does, it delivers on that promise, so it's easy to say software-defined networking, it's not easy to build it, right? And that's where I think NSX is proving all of its strength, it is a very strong implementation; I would argue, obviously, the best implementation of software-defined networking. So that testimonial is an echo of that, it's delivering on all the things you expect from a software-defined network. - [John] And what is NSX enabling? - In terms of the cloud connectivity story which you just described a second ago, what it enables is, really in some ways, because it is not tied to a specific infrastructure, I'm able to run NSX on a public cloud infrastructure and on a private cloud infrastructure, or on a hyper-converged infrastructure, but it's essentially the same NSX. It's the same control plane, it's managed in the same way, all of those different instances know how to interoperate with each other. So what it's enabling is this massive ability to have these networks very quickly brought up, connect to each other, and reliably communicate with each other, and be managed in a unified fashion. - [John] And it's targeting one of the hardest things people are working on which is interoperability. - [Ray] Correct, it's also targeting security. I mean one of the things when we think about networking that you should never forget is this key aspect of security, and NSX is clearly targeting that as well. So some of the things, even the features you see around app defense, a combination of app defense and NSX gives you enormous power. Pat's made a good presentation today where he was talkin' about the adaptive micro-segmentation. You can only do that because you have a great NSX underlying that network. - What's interesting about the NSX, just want to get your reaction to is that that the people are talking about here on theCUBE and also in the industry is that by having the security at the application portion of it, when NSX plays, takes the pressure of the network teams; security teams can have comfort in their piece, and then, (laughs) you don't intertwine them. Is that true, or is that ...? - So I'm reluctant to say it's true because the bottom line is, everybody needs to be paranoid, right? (John laughs) So- - Well from a segmentation standpoint, form a cohesiveness, not this finger pointings, there's not a lot of, it's not thorny. - [Ray] Because it moves the networking layer up a level, and that level is closer to the application. But, when I really I looked at, I think the key strength there is because it's software-defined, because it's flexible, where you get a lot of the problems is when applications change, there's a new version of the application, or we're now popping up a new instance of the application; now because NSX is this software layer beneath that, it is able to react to that. So instead of, you know the finger pointing back to the security or networking person saying you didn't reconfigure the network to deal with my new application; instead, the application and the network are intimately bound together. Actually Pat used some phrase today where he said "I think the app is the network" and so, or something like that, he was talking a little bit differently about it, but broadly speaking that's what's going on there. It's all around the flexibility and the fluidity that you get from NSX. - [John] The application is a network! - [Ray] Correct, that's what he said, yes. - Was his word. - [Ray] Yep, yep. - Which I love, to think he's right on the money. Complex and if some services evolve, the service measure are right around the corner. - [Ray] Yeah, highly interconnected, you know what app, think of any application on your iPhone or your Android device, which doesn't rely on about 20 other applications or databases or cloud services. - [John] Well, Ray, we'll have to get you on a white board sometime, and have you do a deeper dive, love this conversation, congratulations. Final word I'm going to ask you, what is this VMworld all about on stage, if you could knot down the technical engineering successes that you've had this year, what's it about this year, what's the scene from your perspective? - So I think one of the key things is, we've got a lot of products, a lot of technologies under development for the last few years, a lot of them are now starting to see fruition and the light of day; you know, you know you spoke about NSX, NSX is now reaching a real strength right? But that's work we've had to start two and three and four years ago. So to me, that's probably the strongest thing here, products, ideas, research that we've done over the years, development we've done over the years is now becoming real, is getting out and making available to customers; and in the end, that's what we're about, tryna get those technologies to hand to customers. - [John] And we're going to do our job to share that, and we're going to be tracking the successes; and also thank you for inviting us to your radio event where you had your top scientists. - Oh yeah it was great, very good to see you guys there, thank you. - [John] Great to see the energy, and the engineering prowess of VMware continuing strong, technical team, community, and customer base. This is theCUBE, bringing you our hardcore tech coverage here at VMworld 2018, three days, we're in day one, stay with us for more after this short break. (bubbly music)

(upbeat music) >> Hi, I'm Peter Burris. Welcome to another Cube Conversation from our beautiful studio here in Palo Alto, California, and once again I'm joined by Eric Herzog. Eric is the CMO and vice president of channels in IBM Sports Group, Eric? >> Well thank you, we love coming to see theCUBE. And by the way, I'm a Palo Alto native! >> Hey, I've heard that! You know, I don't think we're going to get into that today. Maybe some other time we can talk about that. But what I do want to talk about is, storage has historically been way down in the food chain of strategy, of business strategy. >> Eric: Right. >> Now we're talking about digital business. And digital business at least from our perspective, and I think you would agree, is predicated on the idea that you use data as an asset. In fact, Wikibon says that the difference between business and digital business is that digital businesses use data as an asset. Now, since storage is where you put that data, and is responsible for availability, throughput, reliability, flexibility, in how you do things differently with data, that kind of elevates storage's position as part of a strategic digital business capability. But nobody talks about it. So, as a smart guy in the storage community, I'd like to talk to you about that. First off, do you agree with my proposition? >> Ah yeah, I would posit that in today's digital business world build around private clouds, storage is, if not the critical foundation, one of the top two critical foundations you have to rely for your digital business. So if you're the CEO or you're the CFO and you know you're gone digital business, if the storage goes down or the storage is slow, your digital business and the value of that data you're driving both internally and for your customers just dramatically shrank. So it's critical, critical. Just as when you're building a giant building in downtown San Francisco or downtown New York or downtown Singapore, if you don't have that foundation right, the building literally can fall right down. >> And in San Francisco, one of the big buildings is actually starting to lean about two or three degrees. It's got a bunch of people pretty freaked out. But let's talk about, therefore what are the strategic digital business capabilities that are associated with storage that CXOs have to start thinking about? You mentioned one, we call it true private cloud. >> Right. >> The idea that you're still going to need some capacity where the data has to be. Because you're not going to be able to put everything in the public cloud. So a true private cloud is going to be one of them. >> Eric: Right. >> What's another one? >> So I think the big thing here is modern data protection. In the modern data protection scheme, because you're a digital business, which means you probably have test guys, you have some DevOps guys, inside, that are constantly playing with your own code or commercial code that you've bought. To optimize for your digital business, you've got to be able to give them real data sets to work with. Now that doesn't mean you can't track it in case there's a data leak or whatever, but the bottom-line is you want those developers to be A, always be able to get it, B, have it to be self service, because the IT guys are keeping your digital business up and going, they can't be bothered with hey can you get me real data set? The quality of the data that those developers produce for you goes way up, so you have less downtime which by the way, if you're a digital business you don't want to have any downtime. >> Peter: Right. >> And it gets it faster. So if you're playing with some commercial software writing your own that you're using in a digital business, you want to get there before your competitors do. >> Peter: Right. >> So you want those DevOps guys constantly working, and you want to be able to do that. Yet at the same time the IT guy can focus on what they need to do. And by the way, they can track where all those copies of the real data sets are. So everybody wins and it makes it work well. >> So in other respects, what you're saying is that availability, which used to be associated with the performance of an individual application, is now associated with digital business strategy. Because you need to be able to test new business ideas, pursue new business ideas, be fast in bringing things to market. And the whole notion of availability extends beyond just making sure the data is where you need it to be, or where the application says it needs to be, to now using availability as a metric for ensuring that the data can be where it needs to be within the business, so the business can make the appropriate changes and adjustments and extensions to what its strategy is. >> Well, think of this as you've got a data set. The more you use that data set, not just for the primary storage that's used by the end users that are coming to your digital business, but for everything else. Back it up, okay great. Check box. Okay, interface with common API so the DevOps guys can use it. Another check box. Making sure that the test guys can test real data sets, not faux ones, guess what? Faster test time, more accurate test time, boom, better impact for your digital business. So extending the value of the data from just primary storage throughout your entire digital software development process is critical. And in today's world, that's what you can do with the modern data protection that, for example, we have with our IBM solutions. >> So let me build on top of that, because I think another capability might be increasing the association with speed of development. It used to be, again, that storage was very closely aligned with what your server needed. Increasingly, we're starting to see the concept of data protection and the concept of data availability actually start to mean something very, very different to developers. Are we now seeing developers and the developer ecosystem start to drive more of what's required in storage? >> Well, you've got to look at it, the developer wants to be able to spin things up quickly on their own. So in the old world, you do a ticket, you give it to the VMaura guy, the HyperV guy, the IT guy, takes a week or so. You don't want to do that. So with our stuff, for example, you could check in and check out, it integrates with all their APIs, they can quickly do their work. It's a real data set, not using fake data, so that makes it better from a reliability perspective, and it gets done faster and they know how it really is going to work when you deploy that in your digital business. They can check it in and check it out themselves, so it happens way faster. So all that means for you as a digital business guy is better time and faster time to market with more reliable products for your end users and your clients. >> And that's kind of a key, that's kind of what the goal is. So we've got three thus far. This notion of true private cloud, where we need resources where the data demands. This notion of modern data protection, which is to say that the notion of availability is beyond just backup and restore, >> Right. >> Peter: So now the multiple ways to use it. New communities are going to be more closely associated with storage capabilities like the developer world. >> Eric: Right, the DevOps. >> Are there multi-cloud? Are there other kind of strategic business capabilities that CXOs have to think about as they envision their digital business strategy and the role that storage is going to play in either constraining it or facilitating it? >> Well, I think there's a couple things. First of all, you can look at it in three buckets. Item one is that your storage infrastructure, you still may have some of your older tuff. You still may be using Oracle, not yet using Hadoop. And using an Oracle data warehouse versus Hadoop big data analytic workload. >> I hear there's some customers out there that still have z-series installed, running things. >> So, you've got to be able to take the thing and cut costs on your traditional infrastructure, and your traditional applications workloads and use cases, while you're going to the next generation and modernizing. So you want to be able to handle the older workloads and cut their costs, at the same time invest more in things like Hadoop and Spark and Mango. And Cassandra. You want to be able to do both. At the same time, as you create your private cloud infrastructure, you want to be able to use new paragons, such as containers. And if you're going to do that, you want a set of storage solutions, both software and array infrastructure that can support that. And that's a critical element, is being able to A, modernize and cut costs of your older while you're moving to the new. For all your new stuff you want to be out that it's optimized and the DevOps guys can work it and you've got all the right APIs. And then, for the true private cloud, you're going to containerize model just like the public cloud guys do, because you want every advantage for your own digital business that the public does, and we can do all of that, but it's critical that you do all of that continuum, from the newest of the new, to the application in the middle, but you still have the old stuff while you're getting the new stuff up and running. So it's critical, if I'm the CEO, to make sure that my storage does all of that. 'Cuz if I fall down on the old stuff, well that's a problem. I can't bill, I can't invoice, I can't ship things. >> Right. >> If I fall down on the new stuff, guess what? I'm completely uncompetitive. >> Mm hm. >> Right? If I fail on the container world, what I'll call the refactoring of my infrastructure, I've totally lost the game because I'm not making it fast, I'm not making it resilient, I'm not cutting my costs, because everything is cost competitive. If data is the value, everything is built around that data, that doesn't mean you want your data to be super expensive, got to figure a way to do it cost-effectively, yet still deliver the value in your digital business that the end user wants. >> And it's got to be flexibility across the board. Okay, so we've got some strategic capabilities that CXOs have to think about that storage is going to enable. It's February 2018, we're looking at say, October 2019, next 18 months. What's going to be the one or two biggest changes in the storage world do you think? >> Ah, okay. First thing is going to be the automation of storage software across the board. Not just for the storage guy, not that all storage companies don't love the storage guy, but increasingly there's a move to DevOps and other functions. So, while each company is managing eons and eons and eons of more storage capacity, they're not adding eons and eons of storage admins. So you've got to have the docker guy, you've got to have the application guy, be able to backup, be able to optimize their workloads, be able to go ahead and spin up a new container without calling the IT guy, because the IT guys are overworked. So that's item one, is integration with all the coming APIs, automation, self-service are critical. The more it's automated the more self-serve is is, the more you can factor in the non-storage guys into creating a true digital business. That's on number one. Second thing you've got is a new technology known as NVME. This is a very high performance storage interface, it's new to the market, all the big storage vendors are working on it including IMB. We did an announcement on February 20th all about NVME. The value there is more and more applications and workloads, because the performance of the system itself, which is already highly resistant, highly available, and highly capable of handling any failure mode, is it's super fast, which means you can put more and more applications and workloads on a physical infrastructure, which saves you time and saves you money. So those are two critical things. The rise of this automation paradime, and the self-service paired across all of your storage software, and integrating it with your application layer, being able to use real data sets, right, as modern did, and then this new high-performance storage interface that will dramatically allow more workloads for every ounce of storage you buy, saving you money, and also making highly performing to meet your digital business SLAs. >> I think those are two great ones. I'm going to add one more and I'm sure we're going to be talking more about this. I think over the course of the next year and a half we're going to see even greater understanding of the relationship between storage and data, and new rules, new conventions, new approaches to how to think about that relationship so that all this great stuff that's happening when the storage actually does become a strategic business capability. >> Yeah, you could say that storage managing software will morph into data management, or at least a hybrid of partially managing the storage but actually also managing the data. And things like what is the metadata and how can you use metadata to more effectively manage your business. And we're going a whole bunch of that with IBM and we've already announced several things around that, so that's an actually great observation. >> And it's not too far from there to say digital asset management. Not in a traditional marketing sense, but overall how it works. Eric Herzog, CMO, vice president of channels, IMB storage, once again thanks for coming theCUBE and talking to us about some of the things that are going to happen over the next 18 months in the storage world. >> Great, thank you very much, we always apprecite being with you, and thanks again. >> I'm Peter Burris, once again this has been a Cube conversation from our Palo Alto studios with Eric Herzog of IBM. Until next time. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live, from Boston, Massachusetts, it's the Cube. Covering Red Hat Summit 2017. Brought to you by Red Hat. (futuristic tone) >> Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of the Red Hat Summit here in Boston, Massachusetts. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host Stu Miniman. We are welcoming right now Sam Ramji. He is the Vice President of Product Management Google Cloud Platforms. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you, Rebecca, really appreciate it. And Stu good to see you again. >> So in your keynote, you talked about how this is the age of the developer. You said this is the best time in history to be a developer. We have more veneration, more cred in the industry. People get us, people respect us. And yet you also talked about how it is also the most challenging time to be a developer. Can you unpack that a little bit for our viewers? >> Yeah, absolutely. So I think there's two parts that make it really difficult. One is just the velocity of all the different pieces, how fast they're moving, right? How do you stay on top of all the different latest technology, right? How do you unpack all of the new buzzwords? How do you say this is a cloud, that's not a cloud? So you're constantly racing to keep up, but you're also maintaining all of your old systems, which is the other part that makes it so complex. Many old systems weren't built for modernization. They were just kind of like hey, this is a really cool thing, and they were built without any sense of the history, or the future that they'd be used in. So imagine the modern enterprise developer who's got a ship software at high rates of speed, support new business initiatives, they've got to deliver innovation, and they have to bridge the very new with the very old. Because if your mobile app doesn't talk to your mainframe, you are not going to move money. It's that simple. There's layers of technology architecture. In fact, you could think of it as technology archeology, as I mentioned in the keynote, right, this we don't want to create a new genre of people called programmer archeologists, who have to go-- >> I'm picturing them just chipping away. >> Sam: I don't think it'll be as exciting as Indiana Jones. >> No. >> Digging through layers of the stack is not really what people want to be doing with their time. >> Sam: Temple of the lost kernel. >> I love it. >> So Sam, it's interesting to kind of see, I was at the Google Cloud event a couple months ago, and here you bring up the term open cloud, which part of me wants to poke a hole in that and be like, come on, everybody has their cloud. Come on, you want to lock everybody in, you've got the best technology, therefore why isn't it just being open because it's great to say open and maybe people will trust you. Help explain that. >> Puppies, freedom, apple pie, motherhood, right. >> Stu: Yeah, yeah. (laughs) >> So there's a couple sides to that. One, we think the cloud is just a spectacular opportunity. We think about 1.2 trillion dollars in current spend will end up in cloud. And the cloud market depending on how you measure it is in the mid 20 billions today. So there's just unbounded upside. So we don't have to be a aspirational monopolist in order to be a successful business. And in fact, if you wind the clock forward, you will see that every market ends up breaking down into a closed system and a closed company, and an open platform. And the open platforms tend to grow more slowly, sort of exponential versus logarithmic, is how we think about it. So it's a pragmatic business strategy. Think about Linux in '97. Think about Linux in 2002. Think about Linux in 2007. Think about Linux in 2012. Think about Linux today. Look at that rate. It's the only thing that you're going to use. So open is very pragmatic that way. It's pragmatic in another direction which is customer choice. Customers are going to come for things that give them more options. Because your job is to future proof your business, to create what in the financial community call optionality. So how do you get that? In 2011, about eight other people and I created a nonprofit called the Open Cloud Initiative. And the Initiative is long since dead, we didn't fund it right, we kind of got these ideas baked, and then moved on. >> Stu: There's another OCI now. >> That's right, it's the Open Container Initiative. But we had three really crisp concepts there. We said number one, an open cloud will be based on open source. There won't be stuff that you can't get, can't replicate, can't build yourself. Second, we said, it'll have open access. There'll be no barriers to entry or exit. There won't be any discrimination on which users can or can't come in, and there won't be any blockers to being able to take your stuff out. 'Cause we felt that without open access, the cloud would be unsafe at any speed, to borrow a quote from Ralph Nader. And then third, built on an open ecosystem. So if you are assuming that you have to be able to be open to tens of thousands of different ideas, tens of thousands of different software applications, which are maybe database infrastructure, things that as a cloud provider, you might want to be a first party provider of. Well those things have to compete, or trade off or enrich each other in a consistent way, in a way that's fair, which is kind of what we mean when we say open ecosystem, but being able to be pulled through is going to give you that rate of change that you need to be exponential rather than logarithmic. So it's based on some fairly durable concepts, but I welcome you to poke holes in it. >> So we did an event with MIT a little while back. We had Marshall Van Alstyne, professor at BU who I know you know. He's an advisor at Cloud Foundry, and he talked about those platforms and it was interesting, you know, with the phone system you had Apple who got lots of the money, smaller market share as opposed to Android, which of course comes out of Google, has all of the adoption but less revenue. So, not sure it's this, yeah. >> Interestingly, we've run those curves, and you kind of see that same logarithmic versus exponential shift happening in Android. So we've seen, I don't have the latest numbers on the top of my head, but that is generating billions of dollars of third party revenue now. So share does shift over time in favor of openness and faster innovation. >> So let's bring it back to Red Hat here, because if I talk to all the big public cloud guys, Microsoft has embraced open source. >> And they're not just guys, actually, there's lots of women. >> Rebecca: Yes, thank you. >> Stu: I apologize. >> Sorry, I'm in a little bit of a jam here, where I'm trying to tell people the collective noun for technologists is not guys. >> Stu: Okay. >> It could be people, it could be folks, internally we use squirrels from time to time, just to invite people in. >> So, when I talk to the cloud squirrels, Microsoft has embraced open source. Amazon has an interesting relationship. >> I was there when that happened. >> You and I both know the people that they've brought in who have very good credibility in the open source community that are helping out Amazon there. Is it Kubernetes that makes you open because I look at what Red Hat's doing, we say okay, if I want to be able to live across many clouds or in my own data centers, Kubernetes is a layer to do that. It comes back to some of the things like Cloud Foundry. Is that what makes it open because I have choice, or is there more to it that you want to cover from an open cloud standpoint, from a Google standpoint? >> Open and choice effectively is a spectrum of effort. If it's incredibly difficult, it's the same as not having a choice. If it's incredibly easy, then you're saying actually, you really are free to come and go. So Kubernetes is kind of the brightest star in the solar system of open cloud. There's a lot of other technologies, new things that are coming out, like istio and pluri. I don't want to lose you in word soup. Linker D, container D, a lot of other things, because this is a whole new field, a whole fabric that has to come to bear, that just like the internet, can layer on top of your existing data centers or your existing clouds, that you can have other applications or other capabilities layered on top of it. So this permission-less innovation idea is getting reborn in the cloud era, not on top of TCP/IP, we take that for granted, but on top of Kubernetes and all of the linked projects. So yeah, that's a big part of it. >> I want to continue on with that idea of permission-less innovation and talk about the culture of open source, particularly because of what you were saying in the keynote about how it's not about the code, it's about the community. And you were using words like empathy and trust, and things that we don't necessarily think of as synonymous with engineers. >> Sam: Isn't it? >> So, can you just talk a little bit about how you've seen the culture change, particularly since your days at Microsoft, and now being at Google, in terms of how people are working together? >> Absolutely, so the first thing is why did it change? It became an economic imperative. Let's look at software industry competition back in the 90s. In general, the biggest got the mostest. If you could assemble the largest number of very intelligent engineers, and put them all on the same project, you would overwhelm your competition. So we saw that play out again and again. Then this new form of collaboration came around, not just birthed by Linux, but also Apache and a number of other things, where it's like oh, we don't have to work for the same company in order to collaborate. And all of a sudden we started seeing those masses grow as big as the number of engineers who went a single company. Ten thousand people, ten thousand engineers, share the copyright to the Linux kernel. At no point have they worked at the same company. At no point could a company have afforded to get all of them together. So this economic imperative that marks what I think of as the first half of the thirty years of open source that we've been in. The second half has been more us all waking up, and realizing open source has got to be inclusive. A diverse world needs diverse solutions built by diverse people. How do we increase our empathy? How do we increase our understanding so that we can collaborate? Because if we think each other is a jerk, if we get turned off of building our great ideas into software because some community member has said something that's just fundamentally not cool, or deeply hurtful, we are human beings and we do take our toys away, and say I'm not going to be there. >> That's the crux of it too. >> It's absolutely a cutthroat industry, but I think one of the things I'm seeing, I've been in Silicon Valley for 22 years, less three years for a stint at Microsoft, I've actually started to see the community become more self-reflective and like, if we can have cutthroat competition in corporations, we don't have to make that personal. 'Cause every likelihood of open source projects is you're employed as a professional engineer at a company, and that employment agreement might change. Especially in containers, right? Great container developers you'll see they move from one company to another, whether it's a giant company like Google, or whether it's a big startup like Docker, or any range of companies. Or Red Hat. So, this sort of general sense that there is a community is starting to help us make better open source, and you can't be effective in a community if you don't have empathy and you don't start focusing on understanding code of conduct community norms. >> Sam, I'm curious how you look at this spectrum of with this complexity out there, how much will your average customer, and you can segment it anywhere you want, but they say, okay I'm going to engage with this, do open source, get involved, and what spectrum of customers are going to be like, well, let me just run it on Google because you've got a great platform, I'm not going to have Google engineers and you guys have lots of smart people that can do that in any of the platform. How do you see that spectrum of customer, is it by what their business IT needs are, is it the size of the customer, is there a decision tree that you guys have worked out yet to try to help end users with what do they own, what do they outsource? It's in clouds more than outsourcing these days. The deal of outsourcing was your mess for less, and this should be somewhat more transformational and hopefully more business value, right? >> Yeah, Urs Hölzle, who's our SVP of Technical Infrastructure, says, the cloud is not a co-location facility. It is different, it is not your server that you shipped up and you know, ran. It's an integrated set of services that should make it incredibly easy to do computing. And we have tons of very intelligent women and men operating our cloud. We think about things like how do you balance velocity and reliability? We have a discipline called site reliability engineering. We've published a book on it, a community is growing up around that, it's sort of the mainstream version of dev ops. So there are a bunch of components that any company at any size can adopt, as long as you need both velocity and reliability. This has always been the tyranny of the or. If I can move fast I can break things, but even Mark Zuckerberg recently said you know, move fast and break fewer things. Kind of a shift, 'cause you don't want to break a lot of people's experience. How do you do that, while making sure that you have high reliability? It really defies simple classification. We have seen companies from startups to mom and pop shops, all the way to giant enterprises adopting cloud, adopting Google cloud platform. One of the big draws is of course, data analytics. Google is a deeply data intensive business, and we've taken that to eleven basically with machine learning, which is why it was so important to explain tense or flow, offer that as open source, and be able to move AI forward. Any company, at any size that wants to do high speed, high scale data analytics, is coming to GCP. We've seen it basically break down into, what's the business value, how close is it to the decision maker, and how motivated is an engineer to learn something different and give cloud a try. >> Because the engineer has to get better at working with the data, understanding the data, and deriving the right insights from the data. >> You're exactly right. Engineers are people, and people need to learn, and they need to be motivated to change. >> Sam, last question I have for you is, you've been involved in many different projects. We look at from the outside and say, okay, how much should be company driven, how much does a foundation get involved? We've seen certain foundations that have done very well, and others that have struggled. It's very interesting to watch Google. We'd give you good as we've talked on the Cube so far. Kubernetes seems to be going well. Great adoption. Google participates, but not too much, and Red Hat I think would agree with that. So congratulations on that piece. >> Sam: Thank you. >> What's your learnings that you've had as you've been involved in some of these various initiatives, couple foundations. We interviewed you when you were back at the Cloud Foundry, and things like that, so, what have you learned that you might want to say, hey, here's some guidelines. >> Yeah, so I think the first guideline is the core of a foundation is, the core purpose of a foundation is bootstrapping trust. So where trust is missing, then you will need that in order to create better contribution and higher velocity in the project. If there's trust there, if there's a benevolent dictator and everyone says that person's fine or that company's fine, then you won't necessarily need a foundation. You've seen a lot of changes in open source startups, dot coms that are also a dot org, shifting to models where you say well, this thing is actually so big it needs to not be owned by any one company. And therefore, to get the next level of contribution, we need to be able to bring in giant companies, then we create trust at that next level. So foundations are really there for trust. It's really important to be strong enough to get something off the ground, and this is the challenge we had at Cloud Foundry, it was a VMware project and then a Pivotal project, and many people believe this is great open source, but it's not an open community, but the technology had to keep working really well. So we how do we have a majority contributor, and start opening up, in a thoughtful process and bringing people in, until you can say what our target is to have the main contributor be less than 50% of the code commits. 'Cause then the majority is really coming from the community. Other projects that have been around for longer, maybe they started out with no majority. Those organizations, those projects tend to be self-organizing, and what they need is just a foundation to build a place that people can contribute money to, so the community can have events. So there's two very different types of organizations. One's almost like a charity, to say I really care about this popular open source project, and I want to be able to give something back, and others are more like a trade association, which is like, we need to enable very complex coordination between big companies that have a lot at stake, in which case you'll create a different class of foundation. >> Great, well Sam Ramji, thank you so much for being with us here on the Cube. I'm Rebecca Knight, and for your host Stu Miniman, please join us back in a bit. (futuristic tone)

>> Announcer: Live, from San Francisco. It's The Cube, covering Oracle Open World 2016. Brought to you by Oracle. Now, here's your host, John Furrier and Peter Burris. >> Hey, welcome back everyone, we are live here in San Francisco. This is SiliconANGLE Media's The Cube. It's our flagship program, we go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, the CEO of SiliconANGLE Media, joined by co-host Peter Burris all week. Three days of wall-walk of day three. He's the head of research at SiliconeANGLE Media Inc., as well as the general manager of Wikibon research. Our next guest is Roddy Martin, VP of SC Supply Chain Cloud Product Marketing at Oracle. Welcome to The Cube. >> Thank you very much for the opportunity. I look forward to the discussion. >> Thanks for coming on. Really want to hear your thought leadership around the supply chain transformation, because it might be a little bit bumpy depending upon your perspective. But is a huge opportunity going on in every single theater of where software used to be a point solution. The cloud is now an opportunity for customers to think differently, and is a catalyst for essentially a business model change as well as a fundamental data-driven change. Your thoughts on this? What do you see going on? What are the key inflection points? >> So a very interesting part of my background is I came out of the brewing industry in South Africa. and then I led the supply chain practice at AMR Research, which today is Gartner. And we did a lot of studies on, what are companies doing to lead this transformation? Because it's a transformation of the interim business operating model of a company. This is not stitching data together in the traditional supply chain system sense. So one of the very first foundations that is really fundamental, and Gartner has done a great job of carrying the search forward, is the idea that every company progresses to an interim operating model in five stages of capability, and every one of those builds on the other. So they're either reacting in stage one's problem and never saw the shortage coming and ran out of product. Stage two is I performance improve around projects. Stage three is I drive functional excellence. And stage four I start working as an engine outside an operating model. In other words, I'm driving the business from what's happening in the market and I'm making sure that supply is matching demand. So it's very interesting and it's very important to consider that as the base foundation for this whole discussion. >> So that outside is interesting, we've heard this before, a lot of people are going that way, but there's no shortcuts. Can you talk about, cause you talk about the endpoint is then outside-in. >> Right, when you're operating as a demand-driven interim supply channel operating model, you can't run out of supply, right? So if you saw a change happening in the marketplace but there's nothing to supply, you've really just messed up the business. And so, each of these stages builds on every other stage. So functional excellence is: Am I good at planning? Am I good at product management? Am I good at logistics? Because those are the foundations for operating in the interim business model. This is why the Oracle's blanching in the cloud, in fact all of Oracle's developments in the cloud are so important because you're effectively building a new process oriented operating model that spins the entire business. If I started off with ERP systems and then I put logistics in place and tied it together, there's all sorts of disconnects in the business. When you pick it up in cycle times, you pick it in disconnect sometimes, they don't see changes to the marketplace for weeks. So, this overarching end to end supply chain operating model in the cloud is a fundamental enabler. >> So how do you gauge a customer? First of all, I buy everything that you said, but I want to bring up a point, because it seems to me that the theme of Oracle OpenWorld that traditional applications and I won't say, I'll just say the word Silo just to use it as a point, has been a specific domain specific thing. But to be end to end and be outside-in, which is the end game, you have to know how to talk and integrate with other systems which might have been a problem if you built the most badass end to end system. >> That is a part of the challenge and in fact, a lot of companies that I've worked with over the 15 years I've been researching this, they get stuck for that very reason. In other words, this is a re-engineering of the whole IT infrastructure versus having a thousand consultants come in and tie all my data together over a question of four years and move 15 instances of whatever system you want to one. >> So, if I question on the journey thing, you mentioned thousands of consultants, which customers are now seeing. They want faster mile posts, they want to see faster agility but a lot of the customers actually outline the journey for the customer. So they're saying, here's your journey and they shorten the mile posts for the deliverables. But they're the one getting paid for it so is that the right model, should they be outlining the journey for the customer? >> And they are. It's been very interesting because I was a partner with a major global consulting company for four years and I've been mixing with them here, they suddenly recognizing that this path to the cloud is something they've better get on the bandwagon because they're not going to have a thousand consultants deploying whatever ERP system you talk about as the future of IT. So, what's happening is the business is having much more of a say in this fast deployment, fast time to value, putting these new-- >> So they're driving the journey for parameters? >> They are gearing up for this new journey, the consultants are. >> So, let's get to the fundamentals behind all this and ask a question about it. At the end of the day, digital technologies give customers an option to do their journeys very differently whether in a B2B sense or a consumer sense. And as they use digital technologies, they're also giving data up and so we have now a combination where customers are getting something out of digital, they are demanding it as part of the engagement model. They are giving up data along the way, and the technologies for sensing and doing something with that data in business are now, we're not figuring out how that impacts business design, process design, and offering design. >> So, that's stage 4S, what we talk about is people, process, and technology versus, in the past, when you had stage one, two, and three. People as one set of projects, process as another set of projects, and technology as another set of projects. >> Yeah, I may or may not take some middlings with the model you put out, but it does matter. At the end of the day, what is driving this increasingly is that it used to be that the dominant consideration in, I think, and I'm testing you, the dominant consideration was assets. Where is the physical asset, where are the materials, where is the machine, and we'll focus our returns on this things and then presume that there's a demand for it and now we're getting all this data about demand and that is having an impact on how we talk about arranging the assets. >> That is the inside-out to outside-in. So, let me give you an example without mentioning companies. A major retailer and a major pharmaceutical company. They share pollen data, they share weather data, they mine Facebook to find out what are people saying about allergies, let's say in New England. And the ragweed's busting and they say, do we have the right levels of inventory, and they're moving inventory to make sure that people who aren't on Facebook are saying we can't buy this particular product. They're moving inventory, that's the difference. >> So, they're sharing data amongst themselves. >> Yes, and they're collaborating between retailers. >> Arguably a similar example, and a retailer that's actually not moving inventory but moving pointers and offering new channel options so that someone decides may not, that they know somebody's going to come into the store, the size may not be there but they can still get it to them that day. >> So, it's very interesting, Procter and Gamble, who I did a lot of work with, and this is public domain information, the CEO drove two fundamental transformation messages in the business. And they called it the two moments of truth. He said, we will always have our product when we say we've got a product. So, if we promote a new product, the consumer goes to the shelf, it will be there. Moment of truth number two, we understand why consumers choose and use our products. And you don't fix number two until you fix number one because if I wanted a small tube of toothpaste and I went in and there were only big ones, it's the wrong buying signal. So, what you're seeing is that whole flip to measuring what the market's looking for and shaping their demand and then making sure that the assets and the supply system is geared to deliver. >> Right, I want to ask you a question. First of all, I love that point, I love your point about the data, but here's the question: cause supply chain has been very instrumentation drive, okay, and that certainly is transforming but now you mention Procter and Gamble. We are living in an era where, in the history of business, you can actually now potentially measure everything. So how does that impacting the reconfiguration of the business model? I mean, Procter and Gamble has those moments of truth, every company will have a moment of truth which is, everything is now measurable so, advertising to employee things and everything. >> So let's take the asset story versus the on shelf thing, right, so when I have assets and I'm getting all the data out of my assets, what am I doing with all of that data, right? Because it's not connected to demand. What I got to know is what demand data do I really want to be able to move my assets to the right place. >> Peter: By the way, the shelf is an asset. >> Of course it is, yes. It's a sensing point and it's an asset. They own it, they replenish that shelf. So the point is, data is everywhere and now these, the consulting and the BPM organizations supporting and companies doing their own business process manner, they got to know what data is really important and what data from the outside-in is going to allow me to leverage a new operating model for my business and become digital. >> So, this is really awesome, I was talking with an Oracle executive last night at one of their customer parties and we had a conversation around this data sharing. This is a new, different behavior. This is a theme of the show that no one's really talking about but it's in plain sight which is there is a data sharing aspect of systems and vendors and companies. >> Roddy: That's why the cloud is so important. >> John: This is now impacting everything. >> Everything. >> How do companies go forward and do this? What are you seeing, is there a best practice, is there a starting point? Is there a five step process on that? >> Well, first of all, these transformations are being lead by the C level executive team in a business. This is now longer somebody who decides to buy a new IT system and plug it in to the business. So, the business is saying, how do we change the operating model of the way we work, right? So, and then, what are the capabilities, and this is where that five stage model comes in, what capabilities do we need to look at building over the next three years so that we can operate in this intent way because you can't wake up tomorrow and go from an inside-out asset driven business to an outside-in demand driven business in two weeks. It ain't going to happen. >> So what's the progression? What's the progress bar look like when you have that moment of an epiphany and say, you know, I'm the CEO-- >> What's the earning point of the business? If it's Procter and Gamble, I want X number of one billion dollars brands. If you're a pharmaceutical company, you want to launch brand new drugs and you want to do it at half the price and half the speed that you're used to. It's the business articulating, this is why the leadership teams are so fundamental, articulating what's the burning platform and then translating that back into the capabilities-- >> So you get a reverse engineer. >> Outside-In. >> Outside-In, I love it. >> The way our research says it, and it's very similar but I want to test this because it's, we say start with context. >> Yes. >> What are you going to do with your customer that you have to do better than everybody else? And then identify the community that you're going to do it with and identify the capabilities that are going to delight that community. So it's context, community, and capabilities. >> Now here's the context, further piece to context. If context changes, how quickly do I sense that change and how fast can I respond to that change? Because if I've got all my asset capabilities and my supply capabilities locked into one set of context and that changes and I now have to re-engineer my whole business, I may lose the whole show in the process. I got to see those changes as they are happening, literally in real time. This is where the internet of things, this is where demand shaping, demand sensing, retailers collaborating, supplies connected into supply chain, everybody sharing that information and the fact that not many people, they don't know how to do it. The culture of business is not yet at the points-- >> That's why the measurement thing I brought up, I mean Procter and Gamble, they used to say to their agencies, we know that 50% of our advertising is good, we don't know which half. So now they can measure it all just like in every other aspect so this is where the business model-- >> You also have to be careful about whether or not, again going back to context changes, measurements change, data can blow you away. You have to be very smart about how you do it so a lot of these intelligent things, machine learning, how the models get built, how the insides get delivered, all become very very important. Very quickly, I have two quick questions for you. One is really approximate to the conversation, one less so but the approximate one: IOT. IOT is, has many many applications. Certainly turning analogue data into digital data so you can build models is a crucial piece of it. But it also has another implication in how you enact the output of that model back into the real word. How does supply chain and IOT come together? >> So if you look at the studies that are being done by Oracle and Gartner et cetera on what's important to the supply chain, two things come up. One is visibility and the other is analytics. Right, so there's tons of data available, to your point just now. That data could cause massive noise to the business unless you know what you're looking at. I know companies that will say, 95% visibility of changes on their demand side is good enough but I'm good enough on the supply side to be able to adjust. But you got to know which data to look at. So I'm looking at on shelf. I'm looking at what consumers are choosing and using, I'm looking to see what of my contract manufacturers-- >> Peter: Analyze key constraints. >> Bingo, so it's not about, I think what we're all going to have to learn in the internet of things is we need, again, a cloud based internet of things platform that does the analytics. >> Because we can rewire things faster. >> Exactly, you can adjust the business to new scenarios based on what you're reading from the demand side and what you're reading from the supply side. >> So you're a great foil for my second question. My second question is you look back at the history, or the recent history let's call it, of strategy, very asset based, Porter said pick the industry that has the best returns, pick your position in that industry, then choose your games based on the five factor analysis that you want to play to get to that position. Very asset oriented, we're in control, that's going to dictate how things change. What you just suggested was a very very different way of thinking about strategy. >> Same fundamentals. It's the same fundamentals but it's allowing yourself to adjust those fundamentals based on what's happening in the market place. >> Peter: But you're not going to base it on just the assets. >> No, we're not going to base it on the assets unless you've focused on, like if you're an engineering company and that's all you make is machines, you can't suddenly start producing toothpaste, for example. There are, that's why I say it's a reconfiguration of those same principles but flexible enough to meet demand. >> So how does, how does the world of design and the world of strategy start to come together in C suite? >> Fundamentally, because it's the voice of the customer that starts to count. It's the voice of the customer that dictates the strategy. So if my customers don't want green Guinness for Saint Patrick's Day, don't make any, because it's going to hang around and get thrown away, right? So, the voice of the customer determines what's happening on the demand side and the supply side has to be agile enough to meet that need. >> So, I would suggest keep Guinness the way it is because it's damn good the way it is, so personally I would agree on the Guinness comment. No green Guinness. >> So, what's the South Africa beer? >> Castle Lager. Well, SAB, South African Brewery, has been bought by Anheuser-Busch InBrev, a massive big giant. >> We love beer and if there's any beer sponsors out there, we're happy looking for our Budweiser. We want a, maybe an IPA in there. Roddy, thanks for spending the time, coming in with you, appreciate it. Some thought leadership here on Reconfiguration and looking at some of the nuances that are really going to impact the buyers here on The Cube. Oracle Open will be back with more live coverage from SiliconANGLE's The Cube after this short break.

>> Announcer: Live, from the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering VMworld 2016. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem sponsors. Now, here are your hosts, John Furrier and Stu Miniman. >> Welcome back, everyone. We're live here in Las Vegas for VMworld 2016. This is SiliconANGLE Media's theCUBE. It's our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier and my co-host this week, Stu Minniman, for three days of wall-to-wall coverage. Our next guest is the chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies, Inc., that's the first time we've actually used that. Congratulations on, I think last Thursday or Wednesday, the name officially became Dell Technology. Michael Dell, welcome back to theCUBE. >> Thank you. Super excited to be with you and obviously super excited about the formation of Dell Technologies as we bring together Dell and EMC and VMware and Pivotal and RSA and Virtustream and SecureWorks and so many other great organizations. >> So Dell Technology, now it's official, but EMC, Dell EMC is not yet official. Quick, give us the update. That's the number one thing people are asking. What's the update with the merger and the China situation. What's the quick update there from your standpoint? >> You know, we announced this back in October of last year and we're very much on track with the original timeline that we said, which was that we'd close between May and October of this year, and on the original terms. So everything is moving along and we're making great progress. >> Chinese government not playing monkey business with you, looking at the big mega-merger and thinking, whoa, slow down. >> We're continuing to work with them, and as I said, we're on track with the original schedule and terms that we said when we announced it back in October of last year. >> Exciting things on the global landscape, we'll get to that in a second. But I want to get your thoughts on VMworld because this is a geek show and this is a technology show and on the keynote they're showing debugging ports, migrating from the cloud, I mean you don't see that. You usually see the pomp and circumstance, all the glamour. Here, I mean you're a geek, you're always getting down and dirty with the technology. Thoughts on this community, because this is, these guys roll their sleeves up. And by the way, they're very vocal on social media so you can always get the Twitter feed, but your thoughts on VMworld, the culture of this ecosystem? >> I thought the demos that Guido showed were incredibly cool, showing sort of the evolution of virtualization to the software-defined data center to the hybrid cloud to now Cross-Cloud and all the things that you can do. And as you saw, live examples with Citibank and Columbia and J & J, these are real live organizations. And of course at VMworld you have the ecosystem of VMware in all of its glory, with the whole industry coming together and, as you said, a passionate group of individuals that are excited about what they're doing and VMware is kind of a big part of how the industry is evolving. And we're thrilled be an even bigger part of it now than we have been in the past. It's not my first time to come to VMworld, of course. >> But again, with now Dell Technologies looming, and the merger is going to be a big part of that. >> Yes. >> Technologies, and I'll ask that specific question later. But I do want to get your thoughts as someone who has been in the industry as a power broker, founder, CEO, now going private, you've seen all the waves of innovation. The ecosystem has become a really important part of it in your world there was the Wintel and the developer communities during those days, for the software business, aka the computer industry per se, but now we're on a new inflection point where the computer industry-like movement is happening with cloud and data center, hyper-converged environments. What does the ecosystem mean? Because we've seen the ecosystem kind of sitting there kind of waiting for this explosion with the cloud. Your thoughts on what the ecosystem means in this new era, vis-a-vis other times in history? >> You know, I don't see them waiting. You think about the kind of armada of companies that are coming along as the ecosystem evolves. Again, you see it out there on the show floor. You take NSX as an example. There's tremendous growth in software-defined networking. And NSX is kind of leading the way. And you see all the leading networking companies in the world here at VMworld using NSX as the platform for the software-defined network. It's just another great example. The original growth in the hypervisor and then into software-defined storage, software-defined networking and you can, if you look further on the show floor, right, you'll see kind of software-defined everything. And all aspects of the network, layers four through seven, eventually being virtualized. From the cutting edge -- >> John: So, virtualized stack. >> New things all the way to the mainstream and of course there's a lot of growth in our industry around converged and hyper-converged because it's making it easy to deploy these solutions in a rapid fashion and we're right in the middle of all this. >> So Michael, you speak pretty passionately about VMware and their role in the ecosystem. There's still a lot of noise out there that people I don't think understand how you're going to finance the debt and there's many people, like still during the keynote this morning, they're like, as soon as the deal's done, VMware is going to be sold off. Really, hardware companies don't want to do software. >> Absolutely incorrect. That's totally wrong. Anybody that says that has no clue what they're talking about. So look, I think first thing is you've got do do some math. If you look at the combined cash flows of Dell and EMC and VMware, what you find is they're many, many times greater than the debt service. And so we have, in fact, an advantage capital structure that allows us to not only do what we're doing and have tremendous scale and investment in innovation, roughly $4.5 billion annually invested in R & D, the largest enterprise systems company in the world, the strongest supply chain, and also have the speed and flexibility with some of these new startup instances. You guys are familiar with what we're doing with Pivotal and Cloud Foundry and all the great things that are going on there. With SecureWorks, with Boomi, so we've got both the speed and agility of a startup plus the scale and breadth with the broadest ecosystem and access to customers, and while we're here at VMworld, we're not just about VMware, right? Dell Technologies is a company that embraces all of the major ecosystems, be it the Microsoft ecosystem, the Linux and OpenStack and container ecosystems. So the hardware platforms that we're creating allow customers the broadest set of solutions to be able to stand up against their requirements. >> So back at Dell World, Michael, you talked about, you had Satya Nadella up on stage, how Microsoft fits and understanding, you know, in many ways Dell Technologies is an arms supplier to a lot of environments. You've got the enterprise data center. You've got the public cloud. Where do you see VMware in this evolving multi-cloud very varied ecosystem? >> I think if you look at VMware's business in the first half of this year, it's done quite well. And when I look at the trends for the forward outlook and kind of growth characteristics, VMware is making a very nice transition into this emerging cloud world. And it's doing that by taking the whole virtualization and software-defined technologies beyond the hypervisor into the whole software-defined data center. And things like the VMware Cloud Foundations make it a lot easier to do that, whether you're doing it on premise in a private cloud or whether you're a service provider, a telco, an IBM, for example. And I think you'll see others as well. And customers that have embranced VMware and of course there are 500,000 plus around the world, are looking for ways to be able to extend out to the public cloud. And the kinds of announcements you saw today with IBM, with the VMware Cross-Cloud initiative, will allow for this to extend deep into the public clouds. >> We're getting some questions from Twitter. I'll read a few of them here. Two questions. Have you met Chairman Chang and what's he like? And two, what of the technologies in the portfolio are you most excited about. And I asked VMware or Dell Technologies and they asked, both. So two questions. Have you met Chairman Chang and what's he like? And what technology are you most excited about? >> I have met a number of the distinguished folks over in China for sure, whether it be in one on one meetings or in group meetings and I'm over there on a pretty regular basis. China is the second largest market in the world for Dell to sell its products. So it's also the second largest economy in the world so that shouldn't be too surprising. But we have roughly $5.5 billion business in China, a big part of our supply chain. On the second question, you know, it's kind of like saying >> John: Your favorite child. >> Which of your children do you love the most, right? So that's not, you can get in a lot of trouble with that. But when I look across the whole -- >> We need to categorize here. I'll just rephrase the question because I think that's, I mean that's a political response, I get that. But let's go into, where do you see the disruption coming from? If you had to point out a disruptive enabler that is a lever for the portfolio, where would you look at and say okay, that's going to be a real enabling technology that's going to one, propel Dell on a domestic and global basis, and two, power the ecosystem? >> I think this digital transformation is real. And I think that we are at the very beginning of this period of time where the cost to make things intelligent is approaching zero and the number of them is going to explode. And so the influence and impact that our industry has on the world will expand geometrically as a result. And so the challenge that every organization is going to have, is how do you take all this information in real time and also in time series, because I think there will be some value to the historical data, and turn it into better insights, to be able to make better decisions, to make better products and services. And we're just at the very beginning of that. So, to me, that is the most exciting thing going on and obviously, we're right in the middle of that from lots of different perspectives. >> I've got to ask you a personal question. And I want to get your thoughts on this as someone who's been in the industry and is a chess master, 3D chess player, also running a big business, global business, billions of dollars. In 1994, Bill Gates wrote The Road Ahead and he talked about the future and he completely missed the internet in his forward-looking book. And I bring that up because now we're living in a time where IOT and autonomous vehicles, looking at digital state, digital transformation is a big part of that, so I ask the question, do you worry about missing something? I don't mean FOMO, fear of missing out, but there are big moves being made like technology in autonomous vehicles, drones, all this AI going on, machine learning, do you look at that and go hmmm. Is that on your mind, like maybe you might miss something and how do you handle that? >> It's a good point. If you look at all the smartest people in the industry, whatever that means, and you say what's their ability to predict what happens in five years, 10 years, 15 years, it's actually not been very good, right? And so that has been humbling, if somebody included me in that category of people that could try to do that. But we've got a lot of smart folks. I think we have, at the core of our company, this concept of having big ears, which means we want to listen and we want to learn. And our job is to take all these things that we're learning from our customers and all of our understanding of the core molecular elements of technology, and make the magic happen in the middle that go solves the problems that customers have. >> Do you see IOT and cars and this kind of consumer experience very real for Dell Technologies to play in? >> I think there's no question that the elemental cost of computing is declining and whenever you see that happening, you see, it's like a gas, right? It expands to fit the space available. And I think you'll absolutely see this explosion, proliferation, you're already seeing it. We have hundreds of IOT projects going already within our company and we know of many, many others, so it's real. >> It's in the early phase of the hype cycle. Michael, we've got to wrap but I want to ask one final question and then kind of wrap it up. Everyone wants to know, what's the future of VMware in your words, talk to the customers that are watching and the people in the ecosystem and employees and partners. What is the future of VMware in the Dell Technologies vision? >> I think VMware has got a very bright future. I've seen this in the past where people said, Oh, you know, the PC is dead so forget about Dell. Everything's going to the cloud, so forget about all these other companies. I don't think that's quite the way it all works. So what I see in VMware is an incredibly vibrant ecosystem that's getting stronger. I see VMware remaining independent and we're obviously the majority shareholder and helping to ensure the ecosystem stays very, very strong. And I see very exciting new things, like NSX. Extending the reach of virtualization technology well beyond the core original business of VMware which was a great business and continues to actually be a great business. >> Michael, thanks for spending the time, with your busy schedule, to join us on theCUBE. I appreciate it. Great to see you. Michael Dell here inside theCUBE. I'm John Furrier with Stu Miniman. You're watching theCUBE from SiliconANGLE Media. We'll be right back with more. I'm John Furrier with Stu Miniman. We'll be right back.