>> Announcer: Live from Boston, Massachusetts, it's The Cube covering Red Hat Summit 2017. Brought to you by Red Hat. (electronic music) >> Welcome Back to The Cube's coverage of the Red Hat Summit, Boston, Massachusetts. I'm your host Rebecca Knight, along with my cohost Stu Miniman. We are joined by Paul Cormier. He is the executive vice president and president of products and technologies here at Red Hat. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you. >> I want to ask you about a point you made earlier in your keynote. You talked about the challenges the customer is facing. You talked about how last year the three big ones were cost, security, and automation. This year it's all about Cloud strategy and about the pace of innovation. What is driving this shift in customer priorities and challenges? >> I think the big thing that's driving it, I think over the previous years, people were really test driving a lot of the Cloud and the hybrid technologies. And now, as they actually start to move to the next phase and they actually have to stitch it into their environment, that's where we get real. And that's actually why we see a lot of customers here 'cause that's what we've done over the last 12 to 18 months is worked with our customers in getting this into their environment. Cloud as part of their IT environment and not the entire IT environment. So I think that's what driving it. We're solving real world problems now, and I think that's what we do best, and I think that's what open source does best. >> Paul, I thought it was a great point. I loved to see that the Cloud strategy was like the number one thing, because it is what I've been hearing when I've been talking to practitioners last year or two. I had a T-shirt that said, Blah blah cloud, because we spent so many years talking about it. In the industry it's always, Oh, there's this cool new thing and customer you need to get on it. Now, having a Cloud strategy is critical for any IT department to understand how they're going forward, where they deploy resources, where they go to their partners, like yourself, to be able to change and shift many of the things that they're doing. >> Well, what we've found, even in my own shop, right, even my own development shop, what we've found is you had a lot of departmental groups going out to the public Cloud. And now you're getting, now, because you're spending so much there and pieces going out, now the CIO gets involved, and now they want to look at it. How is this going to fit into my overall strategy? And so, at that point, the only way is hybrid. And so, the CIO now, they don't want five islands of different operating environments, they want one. As a little operating group, really doesn't care, they want their own thing, but when the CIO's now looking at an overall structure for the entire company, that's what's really driving hybrid right now. And that's really driving these implementations, and frankly, that's what's driving a lot of the desire to have this common operating environment that we've been talking about for a long time. And implementing for a long time. >> So how do you do it? When you talked about these five separate islands, but those five islands now need to work together and communicate and collaborate and come up with a unified strategy, how do you do it? >> Two things. First of all, because so much has moved to Linux, RHEL is that platform. The Cloud is about the application. One of the points that I made in my keynote this morning, kind of made it a little subtly, so maybe it didn't come through, we're not building infrastructure for the sake of building infrastructure. We're building infrastructure for the applications. And so, that's the really important part. The applications run on Linux, so the first step, the first step is really getting a common operating environment for the application. We did that 15 years ago with RHEL. So now, when you see RHEL on Bare Metal, RHEL as a virtual machine on US, VMware, or Microsoft, RHEL as a container in a private Cloud, RHEL in one of the public guys, it's the same RHEL. So, we do seven one or seven two, it's seven one or seven two, we upgrade in the same way with the same number of bits. When we have a security update for seven two, it's the same thing. So now the application really with RHEL really gets that consistency. Then, with OpenShift now we bring the infrastructure to maintain it, support it, deploy it, and manage it. And so, that's what's really, the light bulb's going on for a lot of CIO's as they've seen OpenShift, and OpenStack as well, because we're making this hybrid world now manageable and secure. But RHEL's been the key because that's the application. That's the application layer. Frankly, that is the piece that VMware didn't have, right? VMware didn't have any pieces that touched the app. Apps don't run on hypervisors, they run operating systems. And even containers, it's just a Linux OS sliced up in different way. So that's really been the key. We've been at this for 15 years. Really, if you look at it that way, we've evolved this over 15 years. >> Alright, Paul you mentioned briefly in your keynote an announcement with AWS. I know keynote tomorrow is going to go into more detail, but, we think it's a pretty big deal. I've been talking to some of the press, we talked to one of your customers, Optum, who's one of the keynote speakers. I mean, he said game changer. This is, he uses Open Shift, loves what we can do this. You were just talking about the application Affinity, and that's what infrastructure's for. Can you connect that with what we're talking about with AWS here? >> I think why this is a game changer for all of us, and mostly the customer, is because, prior to this, invoking an Amazon service for an application would mean that it could only be invoked from that infrastructure at AWS, can only be run there, frankly. And it really was limiting. With now bringing the connection points back into OpenShift the application can now invoke that Amazon service from on Amazon, or even on Premise. And it really extends the reach of Amazon to come in to really now build a hybrid environment. And I also think it's significant for our customers telling both of us, both Red Hat and Amazon, that they want want to run in a hybrid world. So, that's the game changer. It really extends both of our reaches that way while keeping that consistent operating environment with the RHEL base. >> And that's different than just saying oh, I can run a VM in an Amazon environment. >> Right, because you're running a VM as an island. Now, you're running an actual system that's spanning across the hybrid world being managed and orchestrated from one place. >> I want to talk to you about your approach to the product design and development process. In the past you have talked about the virtues of patience and how you do not build a multi-million dollar product overnight. It takes years. And yet, on the other hand, there is this desire and hunger for fast innovation and changes. How do you strike that balance with your team and also with customers? >> My wife wouldn't say I had that much patience. (laughing) >> But at least you appreciate that it's a good thing. >> No, I mean, frankly, our company and even all the way to our board of directors has been very, very supportive of that. I mean, the first thing we do is we start and ease up stream communities. And really, what we are doing now is we're really integrating multiple communities together. When it was just the OS in the past people used to say all the time there is no Linux community, there's multiple communities and our job is to bring it all together. Right now, it's that on steroids. We try to pick the right technologies and drive it. I mean, I'll give you a great example. We bought a company a few years back, Qumranet. At the time Zen was the hyper visor, the community was going to KVM, we bought the company, they had zero revenue, we had zero additional revenue because it was a hyper visor. We bought it so we could get behind the community, bolster it, and know it would go in the right direction. That is the key that no one else has really figured out, is to place yourself in these communities over the years, and drive it, drive it, drive it, and then bring that innovation into a product. I call it the difference between a project and a product. Our products are really an amalgamation of many communities put together in a platform to solve a real world problem. But you have to have the patience. RHEL has been such a successful product for us, frankly, it's fueled financially, it's fueled us and given us the ability to have the patience for all these next generation platforms. That's what's done it for us really. >> Your CEO Jim Whitehurst, in his book, talked about how from an acquisition standpoint, everything you do, it's got to be open sourced. Does that hamper you at all or are there certain technology areas, things are moving so fast, that would you buy something and keep it internal for a while until it was open source? How do you handle something like that? >> The last five or six acquisitions were not open sourced, so we open sourced them. >> Stu: Okay. >> It's just in our DNA, frankly, I think it's forced us to do it the right way, because we couldn't have a closed sourced product now if we tried. If Jim and I said we're going to have a closed sourced product we'd be in the office alone. And it's in the DNA, and it's really forced us to build better software, because we never ever think here's the line and everything below is open and above is closed. We never have to think that. It's all open. And it just forces that innovation. The landscape is littered with companies that have tried to have that line. It just doesn't work. You confuse your your engineers, you confuse your market, you confuse your customers, you confuse your partners. It's all open. And that's what really drives the innovation. >> Let's talk about recruitment and getting this war for talent that we're seeing in the tech industry. Red Hat's based in North Carolina. You're based here in Boston. Of course we have people here 70 different countries, as your CEO mentioned in his opening remarks. What are you seeing? What are the trends? What do the best and brightest developers want out of an employer? And how are you giving it to them? >> A couple things. Up here in Boston the products group is headquartered up here. Sales group is headquartered up here. So we sort of live together. One of the things we've just did, we just announced we're opening an office right across the street here, for both R&D and our customer briefing center. So one thing is-- >> Congratulations. We're excited for that. Of course you'd had the Westford facility with lots of engineers. But Boston, a block away from where GE's new headquarters going to be. >> A block away. It's about collaborating with the universities, collaborating with the students to come out of the universities. I see it around the world. No, but they want to be in the city. >> Rebecca: Yeah. >> They want to be in the city. That's the first thing. We have a thousand engineers in the Czech Republic that are core to our product. They build many of the products in the Czech Republic. We're near universities. The reason why we did Boston for the R&D is universities, just as the Czech Republic. Because now what's taught in engineering and computer science programs is Linux and open source. So when students can get out, go work for a company, we give them the freedom to really drive where the technology needs to go, that's really our recruiting draw. I would never go into our engineers and say you will implement this this way. They implement it the right way. >> Rebecca: So autonomy? >> Autonomy. >> Rebecca: And cities. (laughing) >> Paul: Well, autonomy and cities in the right places. >> Right, right. >> We're really looking for the talent that really wants to innovate. And they're coming out of the universities now doing that. So that's what's been successful for us. >> Alright, Paul we were talking about this is the 13th year of the show, it's the fourth year we've done it. The Cloud piece has really matured a lot. If you looked forward, if we come back a year from now, what do you kind of see as some of the major things that we'll want to have accomplished? What's on your plate for the next 12 months? >> One of the things that we're looking at now, I sort of ended it up in my keynote, is we really think that we've really abstracted the differences for the application layer, storage layer, application layer, management layer, across the hybrid world, but there's a lot of pieces of the infrastructure that the operations people have to deal with every day. The network stacks, the really underneath and the plumbing storage stacks. Sort of the difference between OpenShift and OpenStack. VM's being orchestrated beside containers. So we really starting to see those pieces come together. Really that application layer and that infrastructure layer coming together. We think of OpenStack as bringing the infrastructure to the hybrid world and OpenShift as bringing the application to the hybrid world. Starting to bring those pieces together. And I think that's what you'll see more of next year. Is commonality around management, orchestration, networking, storage, just more of that, and more ease of plug and play. >> Great, well Paul Cormier thank you so much for joining us. This is Rebecca Knight along with Stu Miniman. Thank you for joining us at Red Hat Summit 2017. We'll be back just after this. (electronic music)

>> Wait. Welcome back to Boston, everybody. This is the Cube. We're live on a special presentation of BMC Day atop of sixty State Street in Boston, Massachusetts. Beautiful view of Boston Harbor. Evelyn Ehrlich is here. She's the vice president and research director for service delivery at Force that we're going to talk about job control, language and cobalt. No, I'm just kidding. We're talking about service delivery. Who'd Evelyn? Yes. So you have a really deep background in it, And I know what J C l stands for, So I had to make that joke. So anyway, uh, welcome to the cubes. Great to see you gave a fantastic presentation today. Who doesn't need better service delivery? It's an imperative for the digital transformation. So, again, welcome to the Cube. Thank you. So tell us a little bit about what you do at Forrester, what your area is, and I want to get into your presentation today. >> Sure. So service delivery. Basically, when the application development team is ready to hand us something, whatever that issa Web service and application a service, we actually make sure that that gets to the work force or to the customer. So anything from Police Management Service Management, the front end relative to the service desk. Tell them anything around management after a performance of the applications operations. Anything like that is all about service delivery. >> And they were two. Two pieces of your talk really struck out to me on Dino. No George for a long time. So two things to majorities that you don't like to use one is users, right end users use it, and then the other really was. So talk about it. Why those terms don't make sense in this digital economy. And what does make sense? >> Yeah, so your users, it almost seems like to me, it is something where people are putting folks into a box that they are that they can like addicts. You know, user. Like I said, in a camp in the drug industry, we have users because they're addicts way have to somehow keep them at bay. We have to somehow keep them low and our engagement with them. It's no, it's not going to be enjoyable. It's not going to be fun, and it's not going to be actually effective. Unfortunately, these users today those are our workforce. There's our employees There's our partners and customers. They have other places to go. They don't need us and technology. So if we don't shift that thinking into that, their customers, so that we can actually enable them, we're might be able to lose our jobs. Because there's outsourcers service providers to workplace services, for example, as many companies out there who provide the service desk who provide of VD I who provide the services cheaper, faster and better. But what we have been lost or what if that's gonna happen? We are losing the understanding of the business for losing the connection to the business, and is that that could be a strategic conversation right? There should be a strategic conversations, not justa cost conversation. And when we think about user, it's all about cost. If you think about customer, its value and relevancy, >> okay, And of course, that leads to not its business. There's no such thing as a project. >> No, there isn't because anything we do if we think of information technology is anything almost like in the back room. It's something which is hidden in a data center somewhere in a storage or a server or in a device and it doesn't really add any value. >> Boiler, the boy, the room >> Exactly and way have done that. We have massaged it, what with whatever way measured the heck out of it. We measure meantime to repair. Well, who cares? It's time to business impact. This what we need to think about. So if we start thinking about customers to empty, TR becomes time to business impact. We're now thinking outside in and the same is true with I t. If we just use it for technology sake to Dr Information, we're not connected if the business, because it is about business technology, is dear to win, retain and sustain our customers. If we don't do that, we become borders. We become the, you know, the companies who all have not focused on the winning technology to make them successful. >> You had a really nice graph, simple sort of digital failing digital masters, and I were in between talked a little about things like I Till and Deb ops, and they feel sometimes like counter counter to each other. Once one's fast one feels home. As you talk to customer, you talk to customers. What can they expect? How long might these transformations take? Or what of the one of those key stepping stones you talked about? It being a journey? >> How do you >> will think about all this change? >> But that that's a good question. It's a very difficult question to have an answer to, and I think it has to. It has to be a little bit more compartmentalized. We have to start thinking a little bit more in smaller boxes, off influences or or areas where we can make some progress. So let's take, for example, Dev Ops and Vital and connect the process release, which is an I told process into this notion. If we combine Deaf ops and Tyto release, we're starting to see that the police management process. It's now a process which is done very agile very much. There is a lot more things behind that process and a lot more collaboration between a D and D and I, you know, to make the process of faster process. So we're now married, I told release management with the journey of Death, Bob's as we're starting to see release cycles off one day. Lookit, lookit Amazon. What they do I mean again, Amazon is a very extreme. Not everybody needs a police processes Amazon has, because it's just not that not every pieces is in the Amazon business. Maybe in ten years, who knows? Maybe in five, but those kinds of things that marriage happens through, more off for design thinking. And I think that's the practical way. Let's not adopt a Iittle blandly and say, All right, we're going to just redo our entire twenty six processes. Let's look at where is the problem? What, where? Where's the pain? What is the ninety day journey to solve that pain? Where's the six months? Nine months, twelve months, twenty four months? And if twenty four months is too far out, which I believe it's staying a twelve month road map and start adjusting it that way and measure it, measure where you are. Measure where you want to go and prove that you have done to Delta. Because if I don't measure that, I won't get funding for support, right? I think that's key. >> Devlin. You talked about the, you know, pray or a predator, right? That's good of a common theme that you hear conferences like this isn't a zero sum game, is is the taxi drivers. You know, the taxi companies screwed is, you know, the hotels in big trouble. I mean, Ken, cos you know who are sort of caught flat footed transform and begin to grow again. Talk about that zero sum game nous. >> Yeah, I think I think there is. There is hope. So I hope it's what dies last week saying right. But there is hope, hope if customers of organizations he's enterprise to see that there's a challenger out there. And if they don't necessarily stand up to fight that challenges start innovating in either copying or leveraging or ten. Gently do something else. Let me give you an example. When about two years we had a two years ago with an event in London and stuff I got Square was completely blocked off by the taxi drivers because uber was there were striking against uber or they were going on. It wasn't really a real strike was in London. It's a little bit of a challenge with unions, but anyway, instead, off going on a strike, why did they not embrace whatever they needed to and example is in the cab At that time, you could not use American Express or discover credit card uber. I never have tipple any money out of my pocket because that's a convenience. It's easy. It's enjoyable. >> Love it, >> We love it. It's simple. So why don't these other companies this cos the taxi cannot? Why don't the equip that technology in such a way? They can at least start adopting some of those innovations to make it a even part right. Some of the other things, maybe they will never get there, because there whatever limitations are there. And so that's what that's what I think needs to happen. These innovators will challenge all these other companies and those who want to stay alive. I mean, they want to because they have for street is forcing them to stay alive. They are the ones who will hopefully create a differentiation because of that >> essay, really invention required. It's applying technology and process that's well established. >> Thinking outside in thinking of you and him and me as >> customers, it becomes, you know, who just does the incumbent get innovation before the the challenger gets distribution? Exactly. You know, Huber, lots of cars. I don't have to buy them, but somebody like Tesla isn't necessarily disrupting forward because they don't have the men. They can't distribute it faster than you know. It depends where you are in the distribution versus innovation. So it's in the brief time. We have love to talk about the landscape. So and that's particularly the transformation of beings. BMC Public Company to private They were under a lot of fire, you know, kind of flattish revenues. Wall Street pound. You got companies like service now picking away at the established SM players. We're talking off camera, saying that's begun to change. Give us the narrative on that that sequence and where we are today. Yeah, we're going. >> Yeah, so if you go back, maybe me way back seven years ago or so you know, it started service now they had a fairly easy game because BMC with a very old platform, it wasn't really it wasn't. There was no fight. Um, and I think they were the enterprises. We're ready for something new, and it is always some new vendor out there is a new shiny object, and I have teenagers, so they always spent the next latest iPhone or whatever. I would >> sort of wave >> so So. And and it kept going in the other vendors into space hp, cia, IBM really had no challenge had no, no, didn't give service now a challenge either because the SAS cloud, the adoption of the cloud in this space was absolutely important. And service now was the first one to be on the cloud. BMC was not really doing much with remedy force at the time. Itis them on demand was in an A S P model. Not really an itis, um, and so service not just took names and numbers and that just grew and grew and steamrolled. Really? All of them and customers just were like, Oh, my God, this is easy. I loved it. Looks it loves it looks beautiful. It's exciting >> over for the >> same thing that innovation, right, That challenge, they served the customers. Then suddenly what happened is service now grew faster than native. You experienced some growing pains Customer saying my account rep. I haven't seen him for a while. They changed the pricing model a little bit too started to blow up their solution. And now board nebula, which is the ninety operations management solution der extending into financials and they're bolstering themselves into more of an enterprise solution, which is where BMC already has been. But they lost the connection to the customer. BMC did not love the customers at that time. Now, through some executive changes to really starting to realize that the install base they need to hug them, they're back in the game >> and watching >> service now. And they're going private. As you were asking the question earlier, try about giving them the funding to invest in R and D. >> It's so necessary if I want to give me your take on icy service now. Is someone on the collision course with sales Force? In a way, where does BMC go for to expand their their tam and to grow? >> Yeah, I said, I think so. So on the first comment Sales force and service. Now, absolutely now the CEO of service now does not think that sales force is his target off competition. I think it has to. He has to, because it is about business applications, everything. It's everything exactly So sales force and service now in I don't know. Is that the year you know, wherever Chris >> No, no, no, >> no. But they will there will collapse. Deborah Crash or you'LL see a fight. I think BMC should stay and really extend in this digital performance management in this operational management and really make it intelligent, intelligent decisions for operation for operations to become automated. To have a staff of eighty eight PM solution the application dependency mapping solution happening to be one of the best, really one of the best in the market. And customers love it. Tying that into two side intelligence, giving them the ability to understand before it happens not when it happens or after and then drive intelligence into different organizations to cmo the CEO, the CFO. Because that's what basis technology is all about. It's not about the journey anymore. They have that capability with products where service now does not have that >> great insight from a sharp analyst. Evan are like Evelyn Evelyn Ehrlich. Thanks very much for coming on the Cube. Forced to research wicked, we find more about the research that you do force the dotcom, obviously, but anything new for you, any upcoming events that we should know about where people should watch >> you go into Crystal Rica, Nicaragua >> mochi ice all right. We'LL leave you alone for a while, right, Evelyn? Great to meet you. Thanks for coming on. I keep right there, buddy. We're back with our next guest Is the Q ber live from BMC Day in Boston right back.