>> From Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Open Systems. The future is crystal clear with security in SD-WAN. Brought to you by Open Systems. >> Welcome back to Las Vegas everybody, my name is Dave Valanti and you're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise. We are covering the Open Systems networking event. They're here as part of the two Gartner events here this week. On the heels of AWS Reinvent, a lot of action going on in Las Vegas. Steve Garson is here, he's the president and founder of SD-WAN experts consultancy in this space. Steve, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Glad to be here. >> So tell us a little bit more about your background. >> Okay. I've been in the networking space since about 2007. Initially, my company was called MPLS Experts, when companies were migrating to MPLS and not understanding, well, what carriers should I use. I helped companies re-engineer their WAN back then. As that developed, the WAN optimization came into the scene and I helped companies evaluate the right WAN optimization solution. Then I had the foresight to see the potential of SD-WAN. I pivoted the business, called it SD-WAN Experts and started writing for network world and blogging on my own sites and with a number of other websites. I've been helping enterprises worldwide re-engineer their network, make a WAN transformation that's secure and supports easy management and save a lot of money. >> So, awesome. So you have a practitioners background, right? >> Exactly. >> That's fair to say. So you know your stuff, let's get into it. So let's talk trends, I mean. At a high level we always talk at theCUBE about the cloud and how that's affecting network traffic. Going from North South to East West has a major impact on security and performance. What are the big trends in the market space that you see, that are relevant? >> Well, we see consolidation obviously. (coughs) Obviously moving to the cloud is a big driver. The WAN has been designed for a data center with an MPLS network. That's a hub and spoke architecture that really doesn't make sense anymore. Companies are moving to Office 365, they're using Salesforce.com, they're using all kinds of softwares and service. That just doesn't work with a data center. So what companies have traditionally done is they have regional secure gateways and they're sending the traffic from an office to a secure gateway and now they're going through the internet. It just is convoluted, the traffic is tromboned and the latency is higher than it has to be. They're spending more money for these expensive circuits that, ultimately, they're going to the internet anyways. >> So, there's a lot of technical debt out there. How does a company go from point A to point B without spending a zillion dollars or bringing in, you know, a huge SI to re-architect everything. Is there a path that you can advise customers, or is it just every situation is a snowflake? >> You could probably define a half-dozen different basic situations that are snowflakes. Essentially you're moving to, you know, if you have an MPLS network companies typically will need more bandwidth and instead of getting more MPLS bandwidth they'll add internet connectivity. Using SD-WAN they'll root traffic over the internet that's supposed to go to the internet. The things that are still required on their MPLS network will stay in play. When those MPLS contracts expire, then there's a question of, do I need MPLS? That's a complicated question to answer. I will not say that you can eliminate MPLS, I'll always say it depends. It depends on the latency between paths on your network. I presented a paper at O-NUG a few weeks ago in New York, in which I analyzed with a lot of empirical data. Latency, packet-loss, and standard deviation of that latency between paths like from Tokyo to New York. You might a have 200 millisecond latency. But your standard deviation over the internet might be 200 milliseconds. So that means, potentially, if you're using only the internet, you might have 400 milliseconds latency. Can your application work appropriately? >> If you need 200 guaranteed, you've got a problem. Right? >> Right, exactly. In a situation like that, you might want to use MPLS or there's a new category of connectivity called SDCore which is an MPLS network in the Cloud that you access through an IPSec VPN to pops that are typically within 20 milliseconds. So you get that stability, but you cut the cost dramatically. >> Now the Edge just confuses us even further, right? IOT, The Edge, I mean certainly a trend everybody's talking about. From your standpoint, how real is it? Is it here today? Is it coming? What is the effect going to be on all these trends? >> You mean, the Edge? >> Yeah, the Edge, IOT. >> I mean it's a complicated thing. I mean the Edge. >> The industrial internet. >> Yeah, I mean, when people talk about the Edge today the Edge used to be their router and SD-WAN devices are supplanting the router. Gartner has indicated that by 2023 nobody is going to be buying routers. Everybody is going to be using an SD-WAN device which will route. >> Amazon, we were at Reinvent last week, they might even look at the data center as the Edge. But, I digress. Let's talk about the horses on the track. Lay out the competitive environment right now. We're here at the Open Systems event. Where do they fit in the market landscape? >> Open Systems is a very unique company where people will say, who's Open Systems competitor. They really don't have a competitor because they're unique. Open Systems is a company that has a secure SD-WAN which means there's a full security stack with SD-WAN. So you have the benefits of SD-WAN, but instead of having to deal with all these different security applications like HASBY, Data-loss Prevention, and IPSIDS, authentication, VPN integration with active directory. They do all of that and it's all managed. It's a very unique offering. >> So the competition is Do-It-Yourself, right? >> The competition is Do-It-Yourself or use a managed service provider who probably doesn't have all the pieces that work together. Open Systems has been doing this for 25 years. They have developed what the customers want. I went to one of their global customer meetings. They called a cap meeting last year. Each year they get input from the customers as far as what kind of enhancements they want to see. They actually take that input and the following year the customers, I was amazed, the customers just are thrilled that the company listens and the company implements what they ask. >> Again, I've mentioned there's a couple of Gartner shows going on this week. Sounds like Open Systems wouldn't really fit cleanly into a magic quadrant. >> They don't. They don't because they're not an Edge device. They're a complete Edge security solution that's managed. >> We talked about this at theCUBE, John Ferrs has brought up several times that the magic quadrants will have to evolve as these managed services, the Cloud certainly affects that. As more and more things get co-opted by the services, you know, economy. But, your thoughts on magic quadrants, how customers are using them. My understanding is, today, you heard a talk from a Gartner analyst that was helping people understand the do's and don'ts of a magic quadrant. Your thoughts? >> Yeah, well what Gartner was talking about today is how many people use the magic quadrant inappropriately. They think this tells us which companies we should look at and really what it's telling you is how that customer's strategy fits in with the market place. But you really have to look at what your requirements are. You can't just say, okay I'm going to look at quote the top three SD-WAN vendors. What are your requirements? That's what my firm does as a consultant is we help companies figure out what their requirements are to find out what's the right solution. A story I love to tell is a company that spent a year evaluating SD-WANs. They were about to make a decision and the CIO basically told the committee after a year of evaluations hey before we sign a contract, let's get an independent sanity check that we've made the right decision. I met with the company, spent a couple weeks assessing their requirements, and I know all of the major technologies and I knew that what they had selected wasn't correct. But you can't tell a client that they've made a mistake. So we set up a meeting with the vendor, which was a carrier, and their technology provider and the committee and I asked the hard questions that the vendor couldn't answer. Which made it really clear to the client that this is the wrong solution. They went a completely different direction. >> Saved them a lot of money. I love those stories. What's your website? >> SD-WAN-experts.com >> Alright, Steve thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. Sharing your knowledge. >> Thank you. >> Awesome stuff. Really appreciate it. >> Pleasure. >> Keep it right there, everybody. We'll be back from Las Vegas Cosmo hotel. Open Systems networking event. You're watching theCUBE. (techno music)