>>Mhm Yes. Hello and welcome back to the cubes coverage of red hat summit 2021 virtual. I'm john for your host of the cube we're here with Hillary Hunter, the VP and CTO and IBM fellow of IBM cloud at IBM. Hillary, Great to see you welcome back, You're no stranger to us in the cube your dentist few times. Thanks for coming on. >>Thanks so much for having me back. Great to talk more today >>I believe I B M is the premier sponsor for red hat summit this year. No, I mean I think they're somewhat interested in what's happening. >>Yeah, you know, somebody is such a great event for us because it brings together clients that, you know, we work together with red head on and gives us a chance to really talk about that overall journey to cloud and everything that we offer around cloud and cloud adoption um, and around redheads capabilities as well. So we look forward to the summit every year for sure. >>You know, the new IBM red hat relationship obviously pretty tight and successful seeing the early formations and customer attraction and just kind of the momentum, I'll never forget that Red hat something was in SAN Francisco. I sat down with Arvin at that time, uh, Red hat was not part of IBM and it was interesting. He was so tied into cloud native. It was almost as if he was dry running the acquisition, which he announced just moments later after that. But you can see the balance. The Ceo at IBM really totally sees the cloud. He sees that experience. He sees the customer impact. This has been an interesting year, especially with Covid and with the combination of red hat and IBM, this cloud priority for IT leaders is more important than ever before. What's your, what's your take on this? Because clearly you guys are all in on cloud, but not what people think, what's your, what's your view on this? >>Yeah. You know, from, from the perspective of those that are kind of data oriented IBM Institute for Business Value, did lots of studies over the last year, you know, saying that over 60% of leaders feel, you know, increased urgency to get to the cloud, um they're intending to accelerate their program to the cloud, but I think, you know, just even as consumers where each very conscious that our digital behaviors have changed a lot in the last year and we see that in our enterprise client base where um everything from, you know, a bank, we work that that that had to stand up their countries equivalent of the payroll protection program in a matter of weeks, which is just kind of unheard of to do something that robust that quickly or um, you know, retail obviously dealing with major changes, manufacturing, dealing with major changes and all consumers wanting to consume things on an app basis and such, not going into brick and mortar stores and such. And so everything has changed and months, I would say have sort of timeframes of months have been the norm instead of years for um, taking applications forward and modernizing them. And so this journey to cloud has compressed, It's accelerated. And as one client I spoke with said, uh, in the midst of last year, you know, it is existential that I get to cloud with urgency and I think That's been that has been the theme of 2020 and now also 2021. And so it is, it is the core technology for moving faster and dealing with all the change that we're all experiencing. >>That's just so right on point. But I got I want to ask you because this is the key trend enterprises are now realizing that cloud native architecture is based on open source specifically is a key architectural first principle now. >>Yeah. >>What's your, what, what would you say to the folks out there who were listening to this and watching this video, Who were out in the enterprise going, hey, that's a good call. I'm glad I did it. So I don't have any cognitive dissidence or I better get there faster. >>Yeah. You know, open source is such an important part of this conversation because I always say that open source moves at the rate and pays a global innovation, which is kind of a cute phrase that I really don't mean it in anyways, cute. It really is the case that the purpose of open sources for people globally to be contributing. And there's been innovation on everything from climate change to you know, musical applications to um things that are the fundamentals of major enterprise mission critical workloads that have happened is everyone is adopting cloud and open source faster. And so I think that, you know this choice to be on open source is a choice really, you know, to move at the pace of global innovation. It's a choice too um leverage capabilities that are portable and it's a choice to have flexibility in deployment because where everyone's I. T is deployed has also changed. And the balance of sort of where people need the cloud to kind of come to life and be has also changed as everyone's going through this period of significant change. >>That's awesome. IBM like Red has been a long supporter and has a history of supporting open source projects from Lenox to kubernetes. You guys, I think put a billion dollars in Lenox way back when it first started. Really power that movement. That's going back into the history books there. So how are you guys all collaborating today to advance the open source solutions for clients? >>Yeah, we remain very heavily invested in open source communities and invested in work jointly with Red Hat. Um you know, we enabled the technology known as um uh Rackham the short name for the Red Hat advanced cluster management software, um you know, in this last year, um and so, you know, provided that capability um to to become the basis of that that product. So we continue to, you know, move major projects into open source and we continue to encourage external innovators as well to create new capabilities. And open source are called for code initiatives for developers as an example, um have had specific programs around um uh social justice and racial issues. Um we have a new call for code out encouraging open source projects around climate change and sustainable agriculture and all those kind of topics and so everything from you know, topics with developers to core product portfolio for us. Um We have a very uh very firm commitment in an ongoing sustained contribution on an open source basis. >>I think that's important. Just to call out just to kind of take a little sidebar here. Um you guys really have a strong mission driven culture at IBM want to give you props for that. Just take a minute to say, Congratulations call for code incredible initiative. You guys do a great job. So congratulations on that. Appreciate. >>Thank you. Thank you. >>Um as a sponsor of Red Hat Summit this year, I am sponsoring the zone Read at um you have you have two sessions that you're hosting, Could you talk about what's going on? >>Yeah, the the two sessions, so one that I'm hosting is around um getting what we call 2.5 x value out of your cloud journey. Um and really looking at kind of how we're working with clients from the start of the journey of considering cloud through to actually deploying and managing environments and operating model on the cloud um and where we can extract greater value and then another session um that I'm doing with Roger Primo, our senior vice President for strategy at IBM We're talking about lessons and clouded option from the Fortune 500, so we're talking there about coca cola european bottling partners, about lumen technologies um and um also about wonderman Thompson, um and what they're doing with us with clouds, so kind of two sessions, kind of one talking a sort of a chalkboard style um A little bit of an informal conversation about what is value meaning cloud or what are we trying to get out of it together? Um And then a session with roger really kind of focused on enterprise use cases and real stories of cloud adoption. >>Alright so bottom line what's going to be in the sessions, why should I attend? What's the yeah >>so you know honest honestly I think that there's kind of this um there's this great hunger I would say in the industry right now to ascertain value um and in all I. T. Decision making, that's the key question right? Um not just go to the cloud because everyone's going to the cloud or not just adopt you know open source technologies because it's you know something that someone said to do, but what value are we going to get out of it? And then how do we have an intentional conversation about cloud architecture? How do we think about managing across environments in a consistent way? Um how do we think about extracting value in that journey of application, modernization, um and how do we structure and plan that in a way? Um that results in value to the business at the end of the day, because this notion of digital transformation is really what's underlying it. You want a different business outcome at the end of the day and the decisions that you take in your cloud journey picking. Um and open hybrid, multi cloud architecture leveraging technologies like IBM cloud satellite to have a consistent control plan across your environments, um leveraging particular programs that we have around security and compliance to accelerate the journey for regulated industries etcetera. Taking intentional decisions that are relevant to your industry that enable future flexibility and then enable a broad ecosystem of content, for example, through red hat marketplace, all the capabilities and content that deploy onto open shift, et cetera. Those are core foundational decisions that then unlock that value in the cloud journey and really result in a successful cloud experience and not just I kind of tried it and I did or didn't get out of it what I was expecting. So that's really what, you know, we talk about in these in these two sessions, um and walk through um in the second session than, you know, some client use cases of, of different levels and stages in that cloud journey, some really core enterprise capabilities and then Greenfield whitespace completely new capabilities and cloud can address that full spectrum. >>That's exciting not to get all nerdy for a second here, But you know, you bring up cloud architecture, hybrid cloud architecture and correct me if I'm wrong if you're going to address it because I think this is what I'm reporting and hearing in the industry against the killer problem everyone's trying to solve is you mentioned, um, data, you mentioned control playing for data, you mentioned security. These are like horizontally scalable operating model concepts. So if you think about an operating system, this is this is the architecture that becomes the cloud model hybrid model because it's not just public cloud cloud native or being born in the cloud. Like a startup. The integration of operating at scale is a distributed computing model. So you have an operating system concept with some systems engineering. Yeah, it sounds like a computer to me, right. It sounds like a mainframe. Sounds like something like that where you're thinking about not just software but operating model is, am I getting that right? Because this is like fundamental. >>Yeah, it's so fundamental. And I think it's a great analogy, right? I think it's um you know, everyone has kind of, their different description of what cloud is, what constitutes cloud and all that kind of thing, but I think it's great to think of it as a system, it's a system for computing and what we're trying to do with cloud, what we're trying to do with kubernetes is to orchestrate a bunch of, you know, computing in a consistent way, as, you know, other functions within a single server do. Um What we're trying to do with open shift is, you know, to enable um clients to consume things in a consistent way across many different environments. Again, that's the same sort of function um conceptually as, you know, an operating system or something like that is supposed to provide is to have a platform fundamentally, I think the word platform is important, right? Have a platform that's consistent across many environments and enables people to be productive in all those environments where they need to be doing their computing. >>We were talking before we came on camera about cloud history and we were kind of riffing back and forth around, oh yeah, five years ago or six years ago was all the conversations go to the cloud now, it's like serious conscience around the maturity of cloud and how to operate that scale in the cloud, which is complex, it's complex system and you have complexity around system complexity and novelty complexity, so you have kind of all these new things happening. So I want to ask you because you're an IBM fellow and you're on the cloud side at IBM with all this red hat goodness you've got going on, Can you give us a preview of the maturity model that you see the IBM season, that red hats doing so that these architectures can be consistent across the platforms, because you've got def sec ops, you've got all these new things, you've got security and data at scale, it's not that obviously it's not easy, but it has to be easier. What's what's the preview of the maturity model? >>Yeah, you know, it really is about kind of a one plus one equals three conversation because red hats approach to provide a consistent platform across different environments in terms of Lennox and Kubernetes and the open shift platform um enables that first conversation about consistency and maturity um in many cases comes from consistency, being able to have standards and consistency and deployment across different environments leads to efficiency. Um But then IBM odds on that, you know, a set of conversations also around data governance, um consistency of data, cataloguing data management across environments, machine learning and ai right bringing in A. I. For I. T. Operations, helping you be more efficient to diagnose problems in the IT environment, other things like that. And then, you know, in addition, you know, automation ultimately right when we're talking about F. R. I. T. Ops, but also automation which begins down at the open shift level, you know with use of answerable and other things like that and extends them up into automation and monitoring of the environment and the workloads and other things like that. And so it really is a set of unlocking value through increasing amounts of insight, consistency across environments, layering that up into the data layer. Um And then overall being able to do that, you know efficiently um and and in a consistent way across the different environments, you know, where cloud needs to be deployed in order to be most effective, >>You know, David Hunt and I always talk about IBM and all the years we've been covering with the Cube, I mean we've pretty much been to every IBM events since the Cube was founded and we're on our 11th year now watching the progression, you guys have so much expertise in so many different verticals, just a history and the expertise and the knowledge and the people. They're so smart. Um I have to ask you how you evolved your portfolio with the cloud now um as it's gone through, as we are in the 2021 having these mature conversations around, you know, full integration, large scale enterprise deployments, Critical Mission Mission Critical Applications, critical infrastructure, data, cybersecurity, global scale. How are you evolve your portfolio to better support your clients in this new environment? >>Yeah, there's a lot in there and you hit a lot of the keywords already. Thank you. But but I think that you know um we have oriented our portfolio is such that all of our systems support Red hat um and open shift, um our cloud, we have redhead open shift as a managed service and kubernetes is at the core of what we're doing as a cloud provider and achieving our own operational efficiencies um from the perspective of our software portfolio, our core products are delivered in the form of what we refer to as cloud packs on open shift and therefore deploy across all these different environments where open shift is supported, um products available through Red hat marketplace, you know, which facilitates the billing and purchasing an acquisition and installation of anything within the red hat ecosystem. And I think, you know, for us this is also then become also a journey about operational efficiency. We're working with many of our clients is we're kind of chatting about before about their cloud operating model, about their transformation um and ultimately in many cases about consumption of cloud as a service. Um and so um as we, you know, extend our own cloud capabilities, you know, out into other environment through distributed cloud program, what we refer to as as IBM cloud satellite, you know, that enables consistent and secure deployment of cloud um into any environment um where someone needs, you know, cloud to be operated. Um And that operating model conversation with our clients, you know, has to do with their own open shift environments that has to do with their software from IBM, it has to do their cloud services. And we're really ultimately looking to partner with clients to find efficiency in each stage of that journey and application modernization in deployment and then in getting consistency across all their environments, leveraging everything from uh the red hat, you know, ACM capabilities for cluster management up through a i for beauty shops and automation and use of a common console across services. And so it's an exciting time because we've been able to align our portfolio, get consistency and delivery of the red half capabilities across our full portfolio and then enable clients to progress to really efficient consumption of cloud. >>That's awesome. Great stuff there. I got to ask you the question that's on probably your customers minds. They say, okay, Hillary, you got me sold me on this. I get what's going on, I just gotta go faster. How do I advance my hybrid cloud model faster? What are you gonna do for me? What do you have within the red hat world and IBM world? How are you gonna make me go faster? That's in high quality way? >>Yeah. You know, we often like to start with an assessment of the application landscape because you move faster by moving strategically, right? So assessing applications and the opportunity to move most quickly into a cloud model, um, what to containerized first, what to invest in lift and shift perspective, etcetera. So we we help people look at um what is strategic to move and where the return on investment will be the greatest. We help them also with migrations, Right? So we can help jump in with additional skills and establish a cloud center of competency and other things like that. That can help them move faster as well as move faster with us. And I think ultimately choosing the right portfolio for what is defined as cloud is so important, having uh, an open based architecture and cloud deployment choice is so important so that you don't get stuck in where you made some of your initial decisions. And so I think those are kind of the three core components to how we're helping our clients move as quickly as possible and at the rate and pace that the current climate frankly demands of everyone. >>You know, I was joking with a friend the other night about databases and how generations you have an argument about what is it database, what's it used for. And then when you kind of get to that argument, all agree. Then a new database comes along and then it's for different functions. Just the growth in the internet and computing. Same with cloud, you kind of see a parallel thing where it's like debate, what is cloud? Why does he even exist? People have different definitions. That was, you know, I mean a decade or so ago. And then now we're at almost another point where it's again another read definition of, okay, what's next for cloud? It's almost like an inflection point here again. So with that I got to ask you as a fellow and IBM VP and Cto, what is the IBM cloud because if I'm going to have a discussion with IBM at the center of it, what does it mean to me? That's what people would like to know. How do you respond to that? >>Yeah. You know, I think two things I think number one to the, to the question of accelerating people's journeys to the cloud, we are very focused within the IBM cloud business um on our industry specific programs on our work with our traditional enterprise client base and regulated industries, things like what we're doing in cloud for financial services, where we're taking cloud, um and not just doing some sort of marketing but doing technology, which contextualize is cloud to tackle the difficult problems of those industries. So financial services, telco uh et cetera. And so I think that's really about next generation cloud, right? Not cloud, just for oh, I'm consuming some sauce, and so it's going to be in the cloud. Um but SAS and I SV capabilities and an organization's own capabilities delivered in a way appropriate to their industry in in a way that enables them to consume cloud faster. And I think along those lines then kind of second thing of, you know, whereas cloud headed the conversation in the industry around confidential computing, I think is increasingly important. Um It's an area that we've invested now for several generations of technology capability, confidential computing means being able to operate even in a cloud environment where there are others around um but still have complete privacy and authority over what you're doing. And that extra degree of protection is so important right now. It's such a critical conversation um with all of our clients. Obviously those in things like, you know, digital assets, custody or healthcare records or other things like that are very concerned and focused about data privacy and protection. And these technologies are obvious to them in many cases that yes, they should take that extra step and leverage confidential computing and additional data protection. But really confidential computing we're seeing growing as a topic zero trust other models like that because everyone wants to know that not only are they moving faster because they're moving to cloud, but they're doing so in a way that is without any compromise in their total security, um and their data protection on behalf of their clients. So it's exciting times. >>So it's so exciting just to think about the possibilities because trust more than ever now, we're on a global society, whether it's cyber security or personal interactions to data signing off on code, what's the mutability of it? I mean, it's a complete interplay of all the fun things of uh of the technology kind of coming together. >>Absolutely, yeah. There is so much coming together and confidential computing and realizing it has been a decade long journey for us. Right? We brought our first products actually into cloud in 2019, but its hardware, it's software, it services. It's a lot of different things coming together. Um but we've been able to bring them together, bring them together at enterprise scale able to run entire databases and large workloads and you know um pharmaceutical record system for Germany and customer records for daimler and um you know what we're doing with banks globally etcetera and so you know it's it's wonderful to see all of that work from our research division and our developers and our cloud teams kind of come together and come to fruition and and really be real and be product sizable. So it's it's very exciting times and it's it's a conversation that I think I encourage everyone to learn a little bit more about confidential computing. >>Hillary hunter. Thank you for coming on the cube. Vice President CTO and IBM fellow which is a big distinction at IBM. Congratulations and thanks for coming on the Cuban sharing your insight. Always a pleasure to have you on an expert always. Great conversation. Thanks for coming on. >>Thanks so much for having me. It was a pleasure. >>Okay, so cubes coverage of red Hat Summit 21 of course, IBM think is right around the corner as well. So that's gonna be another great event as well. I'm john Feehery, a host of the cube bringing all the action. Thanks for watching. Yeah.

>> From around the globe, it's The Cube, presenting Cube on Cloud, brought to you by SiliconANGLE. >> Welcome back to Cube on Cloud. I'm Paul Gillin, enterprise editor of SiliconANGLE. As we look ahead at what is in store for the cloud this year, one of the intriguing possibilities that has emerged is the rise of vertical clouds. IBM has been a leader in this area with its launch in late '19 of the IBM Financial Services cloud. That's a services-ready public cloud with exceptional security, as well as a policy framework for certifying compliance and services from the IBM subsidiary, Promontory. Now, with the IBM Financial Services cloud, that has been a major focus of our next guest, Hillery Hunter. She is the Vice President and CTO of IBM Cloud, an IBM Fellow, and a veteran of, I believe, three previous appearances on The Cube. Am I right, Hillery? >> Yep, sounds about right. Great to be back here today. >> Thanks for joining us. So let's start with getting an update on the IBM Financial Services cloud. What progress have you made in signing up customers and your ecosystem of partners? >> Yeah, we've made really significant progress advancing the IBM Cloud for Financial Services since we last talked, and we're really at that place of establishing a trusted platform for the industry. Just in some specifics, in addition to Bank of America which we had talked about as our U.S. anchor partner for the program, we've announced several global banks that are partnering with us for the global expansion of the program, including BNP party bar, which is one of Europe's largest banks. More than 70 ASVs are signed up with us now as part of the program and adopting IBM Cloud for Financial Services. This level of ecosystem is exciting because it means that banks will have the opportunity to transform what they're doing, but do so in a way which is driven by security and compliance so that they can be confident in those deployments on IBM Cloud for Financial Services. We also released the IBM Cloud policy framework for Financial Services. This is both the security and compliance posture of the environment, as well as guidance on controls, reference architectures, automation to help people onboard. And so both ISVs and banks now are able to onboard to this environment, and offer their wares and deploy their workloads. So it's a really exciting state for us on the program, and we're really in a place where there'll be an ongoing cadence of additional releases and announcements of additional partnerships and clients. So it's an exciting time in the program. >> One of the distinctive features, I think, of this launch is that you're working actively with your customers. They're working with you on building policy frameworks, as well as, I imagine, the features that you're offering on the cloud. How do you orchestrate all of these different customers and get them involved in, actually, co-development. >> Yeah, the ecosystem conversation and the partnership conversation are two of the fundamental aspects of the program. Like you said, this isn't just us sitting off in a bubble and inventing the future. We're working internally with partners within IBM, like IBM Promontory, which is a consultancy that has deep, deep regulatory expertise in jurisdictions globally, with IBM Security Services, and then with these individual partners and banks and clients. One of the ways that we bring everything together is through our council. So our council, our Cloud Council for Financial Services, is where we have global, systemically important financial institutions partnered with us and working together with one another, and that covers CIOs, it covers chief security officers, risk officers, et cetera. So we have some formality around how we work with all of these partners, really, as a body and as a group. >> And what have you learned from this experience? If you were to go into other vertical clouds, what have been the lessons? >> Ecosystem is so important. As I look at this space, I see that everyone has an existing business. They have a platform they're running, they have clients they're trying to service, but the software providers into this space are looking, themselves, to transform. They're looking to transform from being software vendors to being SaaS providers. The banks and financial institutions themselves are looking to transform from working on their own premises to benefit from the elasticity and the scale and the optionality that being in public cloud provides. So there's a lot of parties themselves that are trying to transform, and a lot of vendors into the financial space that are looking to transform. And in that time of a lot of change, ecosystem is absolutely key. And so the ISE and SaaS providers providing their wares on the cloud for financial services is really just as important as those financial services institutions, so that everyone can make that transition together, and so that banks that are looking to digitally transform can leverage partners that are really at the forefront of that change and that innovation in platforms for the industry. >> Would you say that there are- Is this the first of many? Are there going to be other vertical IBM clouds, or is the range of industries that really need that kind of specificity, limited? I think it's actually not limited, though I will say that within the space of industries that are heavily regulated, there's obviously a deeper need for specific cloud embodiments and cloud implementation, so regulated industries like insurance, like telco, health care, et cetera, these are the ones, I think, where there's the greatest opportunity to do verticals that are specific to industry. But as we look at this, this is absolutely part of an IBM Cloud strategy to deliver industry-specific clouds. And this comes from our decades of expertise. Even in financial services, being able to leverage those other entities within IBM that I mentioned, our regulatory background with companies, having helped them address regulatory needs for specific industries, and then translating that into cloud and cloud technologies. And then coming up from the other side, in terms of the technologies themselves, we've partnered with key industries to deliver security, and data protection, and cryptography technologies, and such, on premises, and we're contextualizing that now for cloud and public cloud deployments. And so it brings together the pieces of decades of expertise in platforms, and technology, and regulations, and contextualizes it into cloud, and I absolutely think that's an opportunity for other industries as well. >> Can you give us a bit of a preview? Do you have specific industries in mind? Is there a timeframe? >> Yeah, so late last year we did announce a second industry-specific cloud initiative, and that was IBM Cloud for Telco. So we have in that ecosystem, now, over 40 partners that are now, that are working with IBM and with Red Hat, especially with clients and partners that are looking to help with that transition into 5G and increasing use of IOT. 5G is really this disruptive opportunity for that industry, and also just for many other different types of companies and institutions that are looking to deploy with more efficiency, better operational efficiency, deploy with AI capabilities, really being able to do things at cellular network EDGE, and the places that they're doing business using IOT devices, and 5G will enable much of that to really transform and flourish. So a couple of the partners, initially, in addition to that ecosystem that I mentioned in Cloud for Telco, we've got Samsung working with us, Nokia, AT&T, et cetera, and so these partnerships and capabilities around network EDGE and specific capabilities in Cloud for Telco are that second public announcement that we've made around industry-specific cloud. >> And as far as your competitive position is concerned, are you taking away business from your competitors when you partner with these telcos and these banks, or is this an entirely new line of business that was not previously in the cloud? >> Yeah, these are really, I think, in, by and large, new opportunities. As we look at, for example, how we, as customers, expect to engage with our bank, we are looking to increasingly engage with a bank in a digital way, use our applications, use mobile devices. We're looking for individual bank outlets, branch outlets of a banking institution, to be increasingly smart, to service our needs more quickly, et cetera. And so as we look at 5G and telco EDGE, it's about delivery of smarter capabilities and such. I think much of it really is about, in this digital transformation space, about creating new capabilities, creating new experiences, creating new ways of engagement, and engagement and opportunity to customize and personalize, I think most of those are new experiences and new capabilities for most companies. >> So speak about IBM's positioning right now. You're not one of the big three cloud providers, unlikely to become one, but you do have a big cloud business, and you've got the verticals, you've got the multicloud. I know IBM has been a big champion of multicloud. How is IBM distinctively positioned in the cloud market right now? >> Yeah, we are all-in on hybrid cloud and AI, and if you listen to our CEO and chairman, you'll hear that. It is a really consistent message since he came into his role as as our CEO. So being all-in on hybrid cloud and AI, we really are looking to help our clients transform into holistic cloud architecture. So when I say all-in on hybrid cloud, I mean that there's been a lot of, I jokingly say, random acts of cloud usage. People have ended up using cloud because there's some SaaS function that they want, or some particular line of business has been highly motivated to pursue some service on a particular cloud. And hybrid cloud is really about taking a step back, having a holistic architecture for cloud consumption. And in that sense, clouds are IBM's partners. And we're really looking to enable our clients to have consistency in their deployments, to consolidate across their IT estate and across their cloud deployments so that they can have a common platform, so they can have efficiency in how their developers deploy capabilities, so they can deploy more quickly with security and compliance patterns, and have oversight over everything that's going on in a consistent way that really enables them to have that velocity in their business. And so when we then position things like industry cloud, we're leveraging IBM-specific technologies to deliver differentiated capabilities in data privacy, data protection, security and compliance, for these industries, in public cloud, yes, but it's in the context of helping our clients overall across all the different things, some of which may not need all of that data privacy or be leveraging particular SaaS content. We're looking to help them really have cloud architecture, have a holistic conversation across hybrid cloud, and yet to still be able to choose particular cloud deployments on our cloud for industries that enables data protection and policy for the most sensitive and enterprise grade things that they're looking to do at the core of their business. >> So speaking of hybrid hybrid cloud, the major cloud providers, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Oracle's another one, all have on-premises offerings right now. Several of them are working with telcos to expand their reach out into co-location and into telecom data centers, all of this being to enable this distributed cloud fabric, a hybrid cloud fabric. What's IBM's play in this area? Do you have a similar strategy or is it different? >> Yeah, I really think, and I think you maybe wanted to get a little bit into trends and predictions here in this conversation, and we absolutely see that need for distributed cloud, for cloud to really be alive in all the places where it needs to be, in all the places that someone is doing business, and in a consistent way across cloud environments, to be one of those major trends that's emerging as a really hot conversation. We have introduced IBM Cloud Satellite, that is IBM's hybrid cloud, as a service platform. It enables our clients to leverage OpenShift and Kubernetes environments, developer tooling, consistency in a cloud catalog, visibility and control over all their resources across different environments, and to be able to run end-to-end with consistency from on-premises, to EDGE, to different public cloud providers, and this is absolutely something that, across industries but within, also, those industries, that we're focused on in particular, that we're seeing a lot of interesting conversations emerge, because if cloud is everywhere, if cloud is distributed and can be on premises and in public cloud, it enables this consistency and this parity, really that brings together that seamlessness, not just the random acts of cloud usage. It means that using cloud can be something that drives speed of release of new product. It means that you can deliver more capability and functionality into a retail outlet where you're doing business, or a banking brick-and-mortar location. You can have AI for IT ops and understand what's going on across those different environments, and ensure things are kept secure, and patched, and updated, and you're responding to incidents in efficient ways. And so, really, having a consistent cloud environment and a distributed cloud environment across different locations, it's really key to leveraging the promises of what everyone had originally hoped to get out of cloud computing. >> And of course, one of IBM's distinctive advantages in this area is, you've got a huge hardware install base out there. How do all those 360 mainframes figure into this? >> Yeah, with the OpenShift capabilities and our (audio skips) relations with Red Hat in this area, we are able to actually help our clients leverage Kubernetes, and Linux, and all those things, even on the mainframe. So across the mainframe family, the IBM power family, where folks may also have AIX or IBM i deployments, people can now do Linux, they can do OpenShift, they can do Kubernetes, and we have core technologies that enable that really to be stitched together, and I think that's one of the unique perspectives that IBM has in this whole conversation about hybrid cloud. There are many different definitions of hybrid cloud, but we really view it as stretching from the traditional enterprise IT, like you said, there's a lot of IT out there, and being able to also incorporate OpenShift and Kubernetes in a common cloud platform, on traditional enterprise IT, on private cloud, on fresh deployments, on private cloud, Amazon public cloud, that really is the whole IT estate. So when we talk about hybrid cloud, when we talk about distributed cloud, we're really talking about the entirety of the IT state, not just new deployments of SaaS, or something like that. >> So as someone who's on the front lines of what customers are asking about cloud, do you see customer, the questions that they're asking, changing? Are their decision criteria changing for how they choose a cloud provider? >> Yeah, I think that there's definitely a lot more conversation, and especially in this current era where there's an accelerated rate of cloud adoption, there's a lot more conversation around things like security, data protection, data privacy, being able to run in an environment that you trust not just, is it a cloud and what does it do, but can I trust it? Do I understand how my data is protected, how my workloads are secured? That's really why we started Cloud for Financial Services, because that industry shepherds such vital data, so the reason that they are highly regulated is because of the importance of what they are stewarding, very important data and financial information. So we began there with the Cloud for Regulated Industries, there with with Financial Services, but I see that across all industries. I was participating on a panel with a bunch of CIOs, and I was there interviewing some CIOs who were from a much more consumer-facing, and also from from foods industry, et cetera, and their conversation was exactly the same as I have with many other clients, which is that their cloud choices, their efficiency in cloud deployment, now are largely driven by the ability to get to a secure posture and the ability to demonstrate to their internal security and risk teams that they understand their data protection and data privacy posture. So we are seeing lots of pickup and conversation opportunity around confidential computing, specifically, and that's really about enabling our clients to have full authority and privacy in their computing, in their code, in their data, even when running in a cloud environment. And so I do see a shift. Everyone's more concerned about security, and I think we have great technologies, and we've been working with core partners to establish, and harden, and create generations of technology that can really answer those questions. >> I have to ask you about that term, confidential computing. I haven't heard that before. What does that involve? >> Yeah, it is a buzzword to watch out here for in 2021. So confidential computing means being able to run in an environment where there are others, in a cloud computing environment, for example, but still have full privacy and authority over what you're doing. So you are effectively in an enclave. Imagine yourself protected and secured. And so our confidential computing technology is, we're actually on, basically, our fourth generation of the hardware and software technologies to create that strong degree of isolation. This enables us to deliver a really rich portfolio, frankly, the richest portfolio in the industry, of actual services delivered using confidential computing and secure enclaves. And so we can enable our customers to solution things in a way, for example, where their data can not even be visible to our cloud operators, or where they retain full control over a database, and have full privacy as they're running in that environment. These are really great considerations, but they impact everything from health care, financial services. We have other partners and clients who are working to protect consumer data through these means, et cetera. And so across different industries, everyone's really looking at this topic of data privacy and data protection. And so we have a whole suite and a whole family of confidential computing-based services that we're able to offer, to offer those assurances and that privacy to them in their cloud computing. >> I do have to ask you about the multicloud, because this is a topic of constant debate in the industry of whether customers want to shift workloads across multiple clouds to protect themselves from lock-in. Is that a fantasy? Is that too restrictive? This has been a key part of IBM strategy is enabling the multicloud. How do you see customer attitudes developing right now? How do they want to use multiple clouds, or, in fact, do they? Are they concentrating perhaps more of their workloads in one or two? >> Yeah, we believe vendor lock-in goes against the true spirit of hybrid cloud, that desire to have consistency across environments, that desire to- and the business need to have continuity and resiliency and operations, et cetera, and so I do see this as a really important topic. From the perspective of managing environments, I think in multicloud, I think folks are starting to realize that multicloud isn't necessarily a strategy, it's a reality. People have deployments in lots of different cloud environments that happen somewhat organically, in many cases, and so the key question is how to then get to visibility and control over those resources. I think two of the core topics in that are multicloud management, being able to understand clusters, and virtual machines, and other things that are deployed across different environments, and manage them with a common set of policies, for example. And then, in addition to multicloud management, AI for IT operations is another really important topic in multicloud, being able to respond to incidents, understand and analyze and leverage AI for understanding what's going on across those environments is another really core topic. And then as you said, distributed cloud is a means of getting that consistency. Having a common control and deployment plane across those different environments can help it not just be accidental usage of multiple cloud environments, but very intentional deployment, based on the needs of particular workloads to the environment that they're best suited to. And that's really what you want to aim for. Not that multicloud is necessarily, I guess I would say, is a- It is a complexity that is manageable through these new types of technologies and multicloud management, and such like that, and distributed cloud. >> Well, Hillery 'tis the season for predictions, it's January. Everyone's prognosticating about what the future will look like. What do you think are going to be the main trend lines in cloud this year? >> Yeah, I sprinkled a few in there as we were talking, but I really do think that the conversation around hybrid cloud, number one, how to have an open innovation ecosystem for cloud, where you have consistency across environments, not just random acts of cloud usage, but intentional and holistic architecture. I really see that as the transition, as the second wave of of cloud adoption. And then, secondly, is we were talking earlier about security. Everyone is wondering about data policy, data privacy. We've always taken a strong stance that our client's data is their data. We are not going to be using their data to further develop our AI services on our cloud, or something. We have deployed technologies in confidential computing that enable them to keep full control over their keys so that even our cloud operators don't have access to data, computing in secure enclaves where they have a strong degree of isolation and full privacy and authority over their workload. I really think these two topics, open and secure hybrid computing and with consistency across environments, with distributed cloud technology, and secondly, security. I think these are really important topics for 2021. And they may seem a little bit obvious, but I think it's important as people look at this to look for technologies that are multiple generations into this journey, partner with folks who are committed very clearly to an open ecosystem and open source innovation on the one hand, and secondly, when we talk about security and data protection, you want to know that that provider is several generations into that journey so you really know that that technology has been vetted out, is at production scale, and has a stable basis. And so I think this is the year when folks are transitioning from cloud adoption to consistency in cloud, and security and privacy in cloud. >> A final question, and it has nothing to do with cloud. You're an IBM Fellow, and I see that term turn up occasionally with other other people I've spoken to from IBM. What is an IBM Fellow, how do you become one, and what privileges and responsibilities does it entail? >> Yeah, it's an exciting opportunity to be an IBM Fellow. There's about a hundred active IBM Fellows right now, so there aren't too many of us, but there is a small community of us. IBM Fellow is IBM's highest technical designation within our technical population, so I do have a role within our cloud business, but as one of our technical leaders, get to interact with the other Fellows, work on strategy for IBM in technology overall as a company, and I also get to be a trusted advisor to many of our clients, and so I get to work with CTOs and CIOs and VP of Application Development profiles, and VP of IT, and things like that, in our different clients, and really help them wrestle through those struggles of future IT transformation. And so part of what I enjoy most about the role, and the Fellow role, is being able to be that trusted advisor to many of our clients. There's been so much change in this last year for everyone, and being able to also help our technical population through that, in various means, and then help our clients through all of that change, and really being able to take and grasp onto the opportunities that this last year has had in the way that we work has changed, and the way that companies are looking to deliver capabilities has changed. So that's, for me, the exciting part of the role. >> Well, you're one in a hundred, then, and you do a great job of articulating the IBM strategy, and also the cloud landscape. Hillery Hunter, VP and CTO, excuse me, CTO of IBM Cloud, thank you so much for joining us today on Cube on Cloud. >> Thanks so much for having me. It was a pleasure. >> I'm Paul Gillin, stick with us. (upbeat music)

>>From around the globe. It's the cube presenting cube on cloud brought to you by Silicon angle. >>Welcome back to coupon cloud I'm Paul Gillan enterprise editor of Silicon angle. You know, as we look ahead at what is in store for the cloud this year, one of the intriguing possibilities that has emerged is the rise of vertical clouds. IBM has been a leader in this area with its launch in late 19 of the IBM financial services cloud. That's a services ready public cloud with exceptional security, as well as Polly, a policy framework for certifying compliance and services from the IBM subsidiary. Promintory now with the IBM financial services cloud, uh, that has been a major focus of our next guest, Hillary Hunter. She is the vice president and CTO of IBM cloud and IBM fellow and a veteran of, I believe, three previous appearances on the cube. Am I right Hillary? >>Yep. Sounds about right. Great to be back here today. >>Thanks for joining us. So let's start with getting an update on the IBM financial services cloud. What progress have you made in signing up customers and your ecosystem of partners? >>Yeah, you know, we've made really significant progress, uh, progress in advancing the IBM cloud for financial services since we last talked, you know, and, and we're really at that place of establishing a trusted platform for the industry, just in, you know, some specifics in addition to bank of America, which we had talked about as our us anchor partner for the program. Um, we've announced several global banks, um, that are partnering with us for the global expansion of the program, including BNP party, you know, which is one of Europe's largest banks. Um, more than 70 ASVs are signed up with us now as part of the program and adopting IBM cloud for financial services, this level of sort of ecosystem is, is exciting because it means that, you know, banks will have the opportunity to, to transform what they're doing, but do so in a way, which is driven by security and compliance, um, so that they can be confident in those deployments on IBM cloud for financial services. >>We also released the IBM cloud policy framework for financial services. This is both the sort of security and compliance posture of the environment, as well as, you know, guidance on controls, reference architectures automation to help people on board. And so both ISBNs and banks now are able to, um, onboard to this environment and offer their wares and deploy their workloads. So it's a really exciting state for us on the program. And we're really in a place where there'll be, you know, an ongoing cadence of, you know, additional releases and announcements of additional partnerships and clients. So it's an exciting time in the program. >>Uh, one of the distinctive features I think of this, uh, of this launch is that you're working actively with your customers. They're working with you on building policy frameworks, as well as I imagined the features that you're offering on the cloud. How do you orchestrate all of these different customers and get them involved and actually co-development >>Yeah. You know, it's the ecosystem conversation and the partnership conversation are two of the fundamental aspects of the program. Like you said, this isn't, you know, just us sitting off in a bubble, inventing the future. Um, you know, we're working internally with partners, uh, within IBM like IBM Promintory, um, which is a consultancy that has deep, deep regulatory expertise and in jurisdictions globally with IBM security services. And then with these individual partners and banks and clients, one of the ways that we bring everything together is through our councils. So our council, our cloud council for financial services, um, it's where we have global systemically important financial institutions partnered with us and, and working together with one another. And, and that covers, you know, CIO is it covers chief security officers, risk officers, et cetera. Um, so we have some formality around how we work with, um, all of these partners, uh, really as a body and as a group. >>And what have you learned from this experience? I mean, if you were to go into the, uh, into other vertical clouds, what have been the lessons >>Ecosystem is so important, right? It's as I look at this space, I see that, you know, everyone has an existing business, they have a platform they're running, they have clients they're trying to service. Um, but those, the software providers into this space are looking themselves to transform their they're looking to transform from being a software vendors, to being SAS providers, the banks and financial institutions themselves are looking to transform from working on their own premises to benefit from the Alaska city and the scale and the optionality of, you know, that being in public cloud provides. So there's a lot of, um, parties themselves that are trying to transform and a lot of vendors into the financial space that are looking to transform. And in that time of a lot of change ecosystem is, is absolutely key. And so, um, the ISE and SAS providers, you know, providing their wares on the cloud for financial services is, is really just as important as those financial services institutions so that everyone can make that transition together. Um, and so that banks that are looking to digitally transform can, can leverage partners that are really at the forefront of that change in that innovation and in platforms for the industry. >>Would you say that there are, is this the first of many, I mean, are there going to be other vertical financial or other vertical IBM clouds or is the range of industries that really need that kind of specificity limited? >>I think it's, it's actually not limited, you know, though, I will say that within the space of industries that are heavily regulated, there's obviously a deeper need for sort of specific cloud embodiments and cloud implementation. So regulated industries like insurance, like telco healthcare, et cetera. Um, these are the ones I think, where there's the greatest opportunity to do verticals that are specific to industry. Um, but you know, as we look at this, this is absolutely part of an IBM cloud strategy to deliver industry specific clouds. And, and, and this comes from our decades of expertise, right? Even in financial services, being able to leverage, you know, those other entities within IBM that I mentioned, right. You know, our, our regulatory, um, background with companies, you know, having helped them address regulatory needs for specific industries, and then translating that into cloud and cloud technologies. Right. And, and then coming up from the other side, you know, in terms of the technologies themselves, we've partnered with key industries, um, to deliver security and data protection and cryptography technologies and such on premises. And we're contextualizing that now for cloud and public cloud deployments. And so it kind of brings together the pieces of decades of expertise and platforms and technology and regulations and contextualizes it into cloud. And I absolutely think that's, you know, an opportunity for, for other industries as well. >>Can you give us a bit of a preview? I mean, do you have specific industries in mind? Is there a time? >>Yeah, so, so, uh, late last year we did announce a second industry specific cloud initiative and that was IBM cloud for telco. So we have in that ecosystem now over 40 partners that are announced, that are working with IBM and with red hat, especially with, um, clients and partners that are looking to help with that transition into 5g and increasing use of IOT. 5g is really this disruptive opportunity for that industry. And, and also just for many other different types of companies and institutions that are looking to deploy with more efficiency, better operational efficiency, deploy with AI capabilities, really being able to do things that like cellular network edge, um, and the places that they're doing business using IOT devices and 5g will enable much of that to really transform and flourish. So a couple of the partners, initially, in addition to that ecosystem that I mentioned in cloud for telco, um, you know, we've got Samsung working with us, Nokia ATNT, et cetera. Um, and so, you know, these, these partnerships and, and capabilities around network edge, um, and specific capabilities in cloud for telco, um, are sort of that second, you know, public announcement that we've made around industry specific cloud, >>As far as your competitive position is concerned. I mean, are, are you taking away business from your competitors when you partner with these, these telcos and these banks, or is this an entirely new line of business that was not previously in the cloud? >>Yeah. You know, these are really, I think in, by and large new opportunities as we look at, you know, for example, how we as customers expect to engage with, um, you know, our bank, right. You know, we are looking to increasingly engage with a bank in a digital way, use our applications, use mobile devices. We're looking for, you know, individual bank outlets, uh, branch outlets of, of a banking institution to be increasingly smart, to service our needs, you know, more quickly, et cetera. Um, and so as we look at, you know, 5g and telco edge, it's about delivery of sort of smarter capabilities and such. I think much of it really is about in this digital transformation space about, you know, creating new capabilities, creating new experiences, creating new ways of engagement, um, and engagement and an opportunity to customize and personalize. Um, I think most of those are sort of new experiences and new capabilities for most companies. >>So speak about IBM's positioning right now. I mean, you're not one of the big three cloud providers to, to become one. Uh, but you do have as a big cloud business and, uh, you've, you've got the verticals, you've got the multi-cloud, uh, I know IBM is big, has been a big champion of multi-cloud. I mean, how is IBM distinctively positioned in the cloud market right now? >>Yeah. You know, we are all in, on hybrid cloud and AI. And if you listened to our CEO and chairman, you'll hear that it is a really consistent message. And he, since he came into his role as, as our CEO, um, so being all in, on hybrid cloud and AI, you know, we really are looking to help our clients transform into holistic cloud architecture. Right? So, so when I say all in, on hybrid cloud, I mean that, you know, it's, there's been a lot of sort of, I jokingly say random acts of cloud usage, right? People have ended up using cloud because there's some SAS function that they want, or some particular line of business has been highly motivated to pursue some service on a particular cloud. And hybrid cloud is really about taking a step back, having a holistic architecture for cloud consumption. And in that sense, you know, uh, clouds, uh, are IBM's partners. >>Um, and we're really looking to enable our clients to have consistency in their deployments to consolidate across their it estate and across their cloud deployments so that they can have, um, a common platform, so they can have efficiency in how their developers to like capabilities. So they can deploy more quickly with security and compliance patterns and have oversight over everything that's going on in a consistent way that really enables them to have that velocity in their business. And so when we then, you know, positioned things like industry cloud, we're leveraging IBM specific technologies to deliver differentiated capabilities and data privacy, data protection, security compliance, where these industries in public cloud. Yes. But it's in the context of helping our clients overall across all the different things. Some of which may not need all of that data privacy or, or, or be leveraging particular SAS content we're looking to help them really have cloud architecture have a holistic conversation across hybrid cloud. Um, and yet to still be able to choose particular cloud deployments on our cloud for industries, um, that enables data protection and policy for the most sensitive and, and enterprise grade things that they're looking to do at the core of their business. >>So speaking of hybrid hybrid cloud, I mean the major cloud providers, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and other one all have on premises offerings right now. Uh, several of them are working with telcos to expand their reach out into, uh, into co-location and into telecom, uh, data centers. Uh, all of these things were to enable is this distributed cloud fabric kind of a hybrid cloud fabric what's, IBM's play in this area. Uh, do you have a similar strategy or is it different? >>I really think, and I think you maybe wanted to get a little bit into sort of, you know, trends and predictions here in this conversation and, and, and, you know, we, we absolutely see that need for distributed cloud for cloud to really kind of be alive in all the places where it needs to be in, in all the places that someone is doing business and in a consistent way across cloud environments, um, to be one of those major trends, that's emerging as a really hot conversation. We have introduced IBM cloud satellite, um, that is IBM's hybrid cloud as a service platform, um, and enables our clients to leverage, um, uh, OpenShift and Kubernetes environments, developer tooling, uh, consistency in a cloud catalog, visibility and control over all their resources, um, across different environments. And to be able to run end, to end with consistency from on-premises to edge to different public cloud providers. >>Um, and this is absolutely something that across industries, but, you know, within also those industries that we're focused on in particular, um, that we're seeing a lot of interesting conversations emerge because if cloud is sort of everywhere, if cloud is distributed and can be on premises and in public cloud, it enables this consistency in this parody, um, really that sort of brings together that, that seamlessness, not just the random acts cloud usage, right? I mean, it means that using cloud, um, can be something that, that drives, you know, speed of release of new product. It means that you can deliver more capability and functionality into, you know, a retail outlet where you're doing business or a banking, you know, brick and mortar location. Um, you can have, you know, AI for it ops and understand what's going on across those different environments and ensure things are kept secure and patched and updated, and you're responding to incidents in efficient ways. Um, and so really having a consistent cloud environment and a distributed cloud environment across different locations, um, it's really key to leveraging the promises of what everyone had originally hoped to get out of out of cloud computing. >>Of course, one of IBM's distinctive, uh, advantages of this area is you've got a huge hardware install base out there. I mean, how do all those three 60 mainframes figuring it out, figure into this, >>Um, with the OpenShift capabilities in our Clara operations with red hat in this area, we are able to actually help our clients leverage Kubernetes and Linux and all those things, even on the mainframe. So across the mainframe family, the IBM power family, um, you know, where folks may also have AIX or IBMI deployments, people can now do Lennox, they can do open shifts, they can do Coopernetti's. Um, and we have core technologies that enable that really to be stitched together. And I think that's one of the unique perspectives that IBM has in this whole conversation about hybrid cloud. Um, there are many different definitions of hybrid cloud, but we really view it as stretching from the traditional enterprise. It, like you said, there's a lot of it out there and being able to also incorporate OpenShift and Kubernetes in a common cloud platform, um, on traditional enterprise, it on private cloud, on fresh deployments, on private cloud, Amazon public cloud, that really is the whole it estate. So when we talk about hybrid cloud, when we talk about distributed cloud, really talking about the entirety of VIT state, not just sort of new deployments of, of SAS or something like that. >>So as someone who's on the front lines of, you know, what customers are asking about cloud, do you see customer the questions that they're asking changing? Are they, are they their decision criteria changing for how they choose a cloud provider? >>Yeah. You know, I think that, um, there's definitely a lot more conversation, especially in this current era where there's an accelerated rate of cloud adoption. Um, there's a lot more conversation around things like security, um, data protection, data, privacy, being able to run in an environment that you trust, not just is it a cloud and what does it do, but can I trust it? Do I understand how my data is protected, how my workloads are secured? Um, you know, that's really why we started cloud for financial services because that industry shepherds such vital data, right? So the reason that they are highly regulated is because of the importance of what they are stewarding very important data and financial information. Um, so, you know, we began there with the cloud for regulated industries there with, with financial services, but I see that across all industries, I was participating on a panel, um, that was, uh, with a bunch of CEOs. >>And I was there interviewing some CEOs who were from a much more sort of consumer facing and also from, from foods industry, et cetera. And their conversation was exactly the same as I have with many other clients, which is that their cloud choices, their efficiency and cloud deployment now are largely driven by the ability to get to a secure posture and the ability to demonstrate their, to their internal security and risk teams that they understand their data protection, data, privacy posture. So we are seeing lots of pickup and, and conversation opportunity around confidential competing specifically. Um, and you know, that's really about enabling, uh, our clients to have full authority and privacy in their computing, in their code and their data, even when running in a cloud environment. And so I do see a shift everyone's more concerned about security, and I think we have great technologies and we've been working with core partners to establish and harden and, and create, um, generations of technology that can really answer those questions. >>I have to ask you about that term confidential computing. I haven't heard that before. What, what does that involve? >>Yeah. You know, it's, it is a buzzword to watch out here for an in 2021. So confidential computing means being able to run in an environment where there are others in a, in a cloud computing environment, for example, um, but still have full privacy and authority over what you're doing. So you are effectively in an enclave, uh, imagine yourself sort of protected and secured. And so our confidential competing technologies, um, we're actually on basically our fourth generation of, of, of the hardware and software technologies to create that strong degree of isolation. Um, this enables us to deliver a really rich portfolio. Um, frankly, the, the, the richest portfolio in the industry of actuals services delivered, um, using confidential, competing and secure enclaves. And so we can enable our customers to solution things in a way, for example, where their data, you know, can not even be visible to our cloud operators or where they, uh, retain, you know, full control over, you know, a database and have full privacy as they're running in that environment. Um, these are really great, um, you know, considerations, but they impact everything from health care financial services. Uh, we have other partners and clients who are working to protect consumer data, um, you know, through these means et cetera. And so, um, across different industries, everyone's really looking at this topic of data, privacy, data protection. Um, and so we have a whole suite and whole family of confidential competing based, uh, services that we're able to offer to, uh, offer those assurances and that privacy to them in their cloud competing. >>I do have to ask you about the multi-cloud because this is a topic of constant debate in the industry of whether customers want to move shift workloads across multiple clouds to protect themselves from lock-in. I mean, is that a fantasy? Is that real? Is that a too restrictive? Uh, this has been a key part of IBM strategy is enabling the multi-cloud. How do you see customer attitudes developing right now? How do they want to use multiple clouds or in fact, do they, are they, are they, uh, concentrating perhaps more of their workloads in one or two? >>Yeah. You know, we believe vendor locking goes against the true spirit of hybrid cloud, right. Um, that desire to have consistency across environments, um, that desire to, uh, and the business need to have, you know, continuity and resiliency and operations, et cetera. Um, and so I do see this as a really important topic, um, from the perspective of, you know, managing environments, I think in multi-cloud, um, I think folks are starting to realize that multicloud isn't necessarily a strategy. It's a reality. Um, people have deployments in lots of different cloud environments, um, that happened somewhat organically in many cases. And so the key question is how to then get to visibility and control over those resources. Um, I think kind of two of the, the, the core topics in that are multicloud management, um, you know, being able to understand, you know, clusters and virtual machines and other things that are deployed across different environments and manage them with a common set of policies, for example. >>Um, and then in addition to multicloud management, um, I, for it, operations is another really important topic in, in multi-cloud being able to respond to incidents, understand and analyze and leverage AI, um, for what's going on for understanding what's going on across those environments, um, is another really core topic. And then as you said, you know, distributed cloud is a means of getting that consistency, having a common, you know, control and deployment plane across those different environments, um, can help it not just be sort of accidental usage of multiple cloud environments, but very intentional deployment based on the needs of particular workloads to the environment that they're best suited to. Um, and, and that's really what you want to aim for. Um, not that multi-cloud is necessarily, um, you know, uh, uh, I guess I would say is, is it is a, um, it is a complexity that is manageable, um, through these, you know, new types of technologies and multicloud management and such like that, and cloud >>Well, uh, Hillary TIS, the season for predictions is January, uh, everyone's prognostic table of what the future will look like. What do you think are going to be the main trend lines in cloud this year? Yeah, >>You know, I, I sort of sprinkled a few in there as we were talking, but I really do think that, um, the conversation around hybrid cloud number one, how to have an open innovation ecosystem for cloud, where, um, you have a consistency across environments, you know, not just random acts of cloud usage, but intentional and holistic architecture. Um, I really see that as the transition to sort of the second wave of, of cloud adoption. Um, and then secondly, as we were talking earlier about security, right, everyone is wondering about data policy and data privacy. Um, we've always taken a strong stance that, you know, our client's data is, is, is their data. We are not going to be using their data to, you know, further develop our, um, you know, AI services on our cloud or something. Um, we have deployed technologies and confidential computing that enabled them to keep full control over their keys so that, you know, even our caught operators center have access to data, um, competing in secure enclaves, where they have a strong degree of isolation and full privacy and authority over their workload. >>I really think, you know, these two topics open and secure hybrid computing and with consistency across environments, but distributed cloud technology. Um, and secondly, security, I think these are really important topics for 2021, and they may seem a little bit obvious, but I think it's important as people look at this to look for technologies that are multiple generations into this journey, right. Um, you know, partner with, um, folks who, um, are, you know, committed, uh, very clearly to an open ecosystem and open source innovation on the one hand. Um, and secondly, you know, um, when we talk about security and data protection, you want to know that that provider is several generations into that journey. Um, you know, so you really know that that technology has been vetted out is that production scale and has the stable basis. And so I think this is the year when folks are transitioning from cloud adoption, uh, to consistency in cloud and security and privacy in cloud >>Final question. And it has nothing to do with cloud. You're an IBM fellow. And I see that term, uh, turn up occasionally with other other people I've spoken to from IBM, what is it? IBM fellow, how do you become one and what right. Privileges and responsibilities as an entail. >>Yeah. You know, it's an exciting opportunity to be an IBM fellow. There's about a hundred active IBM fellows, um, right now. Um, so there aren't too many of us, but there is a small community of us. Um, IBM fellow is IBM's highest technical designation within our technical population. Um, so I do have a role within our cloud business. Um, but as one of our technical leaders, um, get to interact with the other fellows, um, you know, work on strategy for IBM in technology overall as a company. Um, and I also get to sort of be a trusted advisor to many of our clients. And so, um, I get to with CTOs and CEOs and VP of application development, um, you know, kind of, kind of profiles and VP of, of it and things like that, um, in our different clients and really help them wrestle through those struggles, um, of, you know, future it transformation. >>And so, um, you know, part of what I enjoy most about sort of the role and, and the fellow role is, is being able to kind of be that trusted advisor to many of our clients. There's been so much change in this last year for everyone. Um, and being able to, you know, also, you know, help our technical population through that, you know, in various means and then help our clients, um, through all of that change and really being able to take and grasp onto the opportunities, um, that this last year has had in the way that we work has changed. And the way that companies are looking to deliver capabilities has changed. Um, so that's, for me, the exciting part of, of the role, >>Or you're wondering a hundred then, and you do a great job of articulating the IBM strategy and also the, uh, the cloud landscape, Hillary Hunter, VP and CTO, excuse me, CTO of IBM cloud. Thank you so much for joining us today on Cuban cloud. >>Thanks so much for having me. It was a pleasure. >>I'm Paul Gillan stick with us.

>> Announcer: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE Conversation. >> Hi everybody, this is Dave Vellante, and back in 2013, when it was becoming pretty obvious that the cloud was going to have a major impact on our industry, the IT industry, I wrote at the time that the way incumbents were going to have to compete was to really go into vertical markets and build ecosystems for their own clouds, and that's exactly what IBM did late last year, when it announced a major partnership with Bank of America in the financial services cloud, and guess what, Hillery Hunter is back in the house, she's the vice president and CTO of the IBM cloud, and an IBM fellow, Hillery, great to see you again, thanks for coming back on. >> Thanks so much for having me again, always a pleasure to be here. >> So we had an awesome conversation, I think we got into the FS cloud a little bit, but as I was saying, you guys announced last year, Bank of America, but let me start here. Why does the industry need a financial services cloud? >> Yeah, you know, it's key that we ground ourselves in that question of why a financial services cloud, and I think it really goes back to the sensitivity of the workloads and the data that that industry stewards. The financial services industry stewards the data of millions and millions of customers, and they are heavily regulated because of that, and they handle very high value transactions, and being able to take that context and translate that into what does it mean to do high value transactions, sensitive data, consumer data computing, also with all those benefits of elasticity and the value proposition of different deployment locations, is really what financial cloud is about. And those needs of that industry are a little bit different, the regulations are higher, the bar and data protection is higher, and the need to interlock across workload characteristics and the cloud deployment is a bit different. And so, we are bringing what we know about that industry to bear in the context also of cloud computing. >> Okay, so you're making some new announcements, there's some hard news here, but I want to know, if you're an executive, or business leader in the financial services industry, what's in it for me in these announcements? >> Yeah, what's in it for you is that we are moving into the next phase of financial services cloud in making the policy framework that has been developed through an enormous amount of work available to additional industry participants, and we're also moving into a phase of global expansion, and so being able to take this value proposition of an end to end considered secure and confine environment for financial services, out to more players in the industry, out to additional geographies and deployment locations, it's an exciting moment because everyone's really not looking just for a cloud, but they're looking for a choice of deployment locations, they're looking to move more workload to the cloud, and this is really about providing a cloud solution that more workload can move to, not just the first couple phases of analytics and things like that, but also moving into more transformation of the core of banking and the core of banking business, so it is about getting more workload to the cloud, getting that done faster, and getting it done at a net improved security and compliance posture. >> Got it, so I want to ask you about some learnings, now you're the double whammy of learnings here. When you announced the collaboration with B of A, obviously one of the top banks of the world, you've obviously made some progress since then, but the other part of that whammy was COVID. So what did you learn from the collaboration with B of A, and have you guys, how have you expanded your thinking BC, from before COVID, versus AC, after COVID? >> Yeah, you know, the initial motivation for this program was about having trust and transparency in public cloud, and having a public cloud suited also to sensitive and even core banking workloads. We have seen this conversation and the need for it and the urgency for it only pick up since COVID. A lot of things in the world kind of took a pause, but cloud computing really accelerated. We're seeing that businesses need to digitally transform their banking, so core banking transformation is a very hot topic. They need to deal with elasticity, we worked with banks during COVID that were having to suddenly stand up their national equivalent of the Payroll Protection Program. Banks that had to suddenly have three times the elasticity, because all of a sudden consumers were interacting with them purely digitally. And cloud can enable all of those kind of things, and so COVID has really accelerated the motivation toward banking in the cloud, and also toward core banking transformation, which is at the heart of setting a very high security bar in public cloud, to be able to also enable those kind of workloads. >> Yeah, so many changes as a result of COVID, I mean the volume of loans, like you said, everything was digital. I know a lot of older people that always still like to go into the bank, that like to see people, and they knew people and people knew them, well they had no choice but to go digital, so that's huge, if you didn't have a digital solution, and cloud is fundamental in that equation. But let's get into it a little bit more. We talked a little about this at IBM Think, but what are the key attributes that make the IBM financial services cloud suitable for financial services, is it the certifications, I wonder if you could add some color there. >> Yeah, so the key elements of the financial services cloud program are number one, a policy framework, which is a set of controls that are customized to the financial services industry, so this isn't about some existing standard, this is a customization of controls and security for the financial services industry, and that's a major element of what we're announcing right now. In addition to the policy framework is also the way that the different elements of the industry and of regulatory expertise are coming together, so this cloud, and these public cloud offerings, were co-developed and co-designed with IBM Promontory, with IBM Security Services that work with banks, with our anchor partner, and moving forward, we'll be advised by an advisory council of CSOs who have that day to day experience with security and with regulations. And so that is also a very unique context for not this being just a point in time with a policy framework, but being an ongoing initiative that will stay up to date, as security concerns and as regulatory concerns change. And the third aspect is a really unique set of technologies that make all of that possible, so you have to define how the cloud is going to be secure, and then you have to actually do it, and the unique capabilities that we have in IBM public cloud that have enabled this program include a number of things, but amongst them, the industry's highest standard for data protection, with our FIPS-140-2 Level 4 based key protect service, it includes capabilities that we'll be releasing through our acquisition of Spanugo around cloud security and compliance posture management, mapped back to that context of financial services. And so it's really three things, it's a policy framework custom and optimized for the financial services industry, the forward evolution of that through industry expertise, and participation of multi parties in that, and then core technologies that enable folks to accomplish that security posture through data protection, through cloud security posture management, et cetera. >> I forgot about the Promontory, you guys made that acquisition several years ago, that's a nice little feature of the FS cloud. But I want to ask, how hard is it to get these certifications? I mean it's obviously not a layup. Lot of work, lot of time, my reason of my question, is this a moat for you, as you guys start to scale? How difficult is it? >> Yeah, so we have been putting in the time and effort, and so that's why this is an exciting moment for us with the initial work product of this effort. And so our intention really is not for that to be a moat, but for us having traversed the moat, to now have a bridge there through the methodology that we built, through the control framework that we built, for others to now get across that moat. And so this is really about taking what is an extensive amount of work, and an extensive amount of expertise, IBM Promontory, you just mentioned, but they monitor over 70 regulatory obligations in over 20 jurisdictions globally, right? I mean this is a tremendous depth of expertise, and so having crossed the moat, and having built the bridge across it, this is where we can then help others to save time in this process of adopting public cloud for further workloads. >> You've mentioned workloads, you've talked about core financial workloads, but maybe give us a little insight on what type of workloads are the most suitable for the financial services cloud, because let's face it, most of the hardcore mission-critical workloads haven't moved, actually probably none of 'em have moved to the cloud, you kind of referenced that before. Ginni Rometty talks about that all the time. But what are the right workload strategic fits for your cloud? >> Yeah, you know you mentioned Ginni Rometty, and so I'll take a quick note there from some of the language that you'll hear her use, she talks about, there was chapter one of the cloud journey, and stuff that was on less sensitive data, analytics, some things on public information, were certainly done, also in finance and also in regulated industries in the cloud. And she talks about chapter two, chapter two being mission-critical workloads. And this program really is the definition of chapter two for the financial services industry. It is the enabling expertise, the enabling control set, the enabling security technologies, the enabling cloud services, for that chapter two, right, for that next layer of adoption of things that had been kept behind the firewall, had been kept in a private cloud context, can now be considered also for public cloud. And so easing that adoption, streamlining that process, et cetera, is really what we're looking to accomplish. >> I mean obviously IBM, huge presence in the banking community, is this really for just big banks? What about the ecosystem, what do you got in there for ISVs and SaaS providers? >> Yeah, you know, you asked me a question at the beginning here about COVID and what's happened, and I think, the transformation of ISV providers to become SaaS providers, the expansion of their capabilities being needed in payments and digital client experiences and such, also for regionals and second and third tier banking institutions and such, is as much of what is happening right now as anything else, amongst the first tiers, because there's just as much pressure for transformation and digital consumer experience, and other things like that, also in the regionals and second and third tiers. So part of our announcement is around the ecosystem of partners that we have now for the financial services cloud program. And that includes ISVs and SaaS providers that are servicing many different types of needs of institutions large and small, so we're seeing those that are servicing core banking, and payments, those that are servicing analytics use cases for this industry, and even HR function, just because of that concern about stewarding data well for these industries and those first tier banks, and so that transition to digital, that drive to infuse AI capabilities, the need to transform core banking, is something that's very much also happening within the ISV and SaaS providers, and we're thrilled with the wide variety of partner base that we're seeing develop there within our ecosystem for this program. >> I was talking to a CIO friend of mine several years ago, and he said to me, "You know, this idea of lifting and shifting, "it's fine, you get little cost savings, maybe, "but unless you change your operating model "and you drive an innovation agenda, "you really aren't going to get the type "of telephone number returns from cloud "that you would want or expect." So my question is around innovation, and we've said many times in theCUBE that the new innovation cocktail, it's not Moore's law anymore, it's the combination of data applying machine intelligence and then the cloud, and the reason why the cloud is important is scale, okay, there's maybe a little bit of cost as well, but it's also innovation. It's the ability to attract people into an ecosystem, and that resonates with line of business. If your cloud is just about making IT's life better, well that's nice, but what's in this announcement and in this initiative for the line of business? >> Yeah, it is all about the workloads. I always say that to me the cloud journey is about, number one your platform, which is the thing onto which you modernize. It is what are you going to get out of moving to containers, what are you going to get out of moving to microservices, how does that help all of those cloud metrics that you mentioned? But number two, it's about the workload, right, which workloads are we talking about, how will they deliver, how will those workloads be able to because of cloud deliver not just TCO but improvement in customer experience, how will those workloads be able to meet elasticity, resiliency, cybersecurity concerns, changes in the way the workforce is working these days, et cetera. And from the line of business perspective, there is a tremendous need to consume, for example, fintech-based innovation. But a lot of folks have struggled to move past POCs because of concerns about security and compliance, for those deployment scenarios, and so being able to bring the ISVs and SaaS providers, and then also fintechs into an ecosystem with a prescriptive and proactive security and compliance context is really what we're all about here. And that will enable a flourishing of adoption of innovation. >> You know, I always love to talk about the competition on these episodes. But I want to ask differentiation, how different is this, can I just go to any cloud supplier and get this, will I eventually be able to, what's IBM's differentiation, Hillery? >> Yeah, so you want to think of it that, in financial services, you are concerned, and you have to be concerned about everything. You have to be concerned about things into the details of the cloud itself, you have to be concerned about things that are related to the behavior and the permissions of your developers in that environment. Financial services cloud really has to be an end to end, soup to nuts conversation, and so this is a program of our public cloud, where end to end, we can stand behind and provide trust and resiliency and this policy framework, end to end within an environment that can be trusted for mission-critical workload. And so when we look at differentiation, our investments are in bringing together IBM's expertise all the way going back to regulations and security consulting that we've been doing for decades in this industry, applying that to that cloud context, taking capabilities that are developed all the way down into the transistors, investments we've made even into the silicon around how cryptography is done, bringing that into the cloud context. And so having brought those things together into our public cloud context, that's how we're able to solution this in a different way, because it really is end to end about the expertise, from all of that regulatory advising, that security context, all the way down into the silicon and the transistors, and I think that's a very unique value proposition, as a cloud provider, it's a tremendous opportunity for us to bring together those pieces. And to continue to be a trusted partner to these companies that we have long been a trusted partner of. >> Now of course you guys have a relationship with VMware, you were the first, actually, to announce a VMware cloud relationship. And so let's say, okay, I got some VMware workloads, I move 'em into your FS cloud. Make sure that I've got the security and compliance checked. Six months down the road, so I've done that sort of first step, what's next for me, is that the end, or are there other things on my journey? >> Yeah, so absolutely, I mean VMware is part of what we are solution financial services clients to, but also cloud-native, and OpenShift, containerization, that modernization journey, is an ongoing journey for everyone, and so to your point of what's next, we're seeing a continual conversation of balancing lift and shift and modernization across workloads, and there are different reasons at different points in time, for people to consider that. I think the key is that they trust where they are taking that data, and whatever the form is that the workload goes, it needs to be in the context of that trust around the data in a security context, and so we're absolutely seeing everything, honestly, from financial services institutions looking to engage with us, also in our new research innovation lab, where we're engaging directly with financial services clients that are trying to work through this differentiation, is it virtualization, is it containerization, is it even serverless? What is the right and most effective balance of how workloads are programmed and run for the next generation of banking. >> You know, Hillery, I've been doing a lot of interviews in the last decade, and it's been interesting to see the ascendancy of cloud, of course, but also the change in perception, particularly in financial services, in the early days of cloud, cloud was an evil word. The C that should not be named. And so I want to understand if I'm, and of course COVID has also changed the perception, because if you weren't digital and you didn't have cloud, you couldn't really transact businesses as well, you didn't have that business resiliency. So, what if I'm a financial services person now, okay, I'm through the knothole, I want to get started, where do I start? >> Yeah, well call us first, but past that, I think that the conversations, the first conversations that we're having with our clients are, number one, do you have an architecture? So is cloud not just a place, like I like to say, but is cloud a plan, is there an architectural plan to enable you to have consistency, for example, in your developer experience between your private cloud environment and your public cloud environment? Architecturally are there those foundational choices around common services about being able to deploy capabilities in one location, and develop them in another, et cetera. All those value propositions of what we have been creating around OpenShift and Cloud Paks in our public cloud, and consistency across different environments and such, I think that's the first thing to start with is architecting a cloud, not accidental usage of multiple environments, but architecting use of multiple environments. And then I think the second conversation is to make a security and compliance plan that is going to be robust enough to withstand even the intense scrutiny of a regulated industry CCO and risk team, and so that's the other foundational conversation that we're having with our clients, and helping them with, so we can provide services and reference architectures, and all that other kind of thing, to enable them to stabilize planning on both fronts, both architecturally for what cloud means in its entirety, not just a cloud, but in its entirety, all clouds, multicloud, hybrid cloud, et cetera. And then secondly, then, a comprehensive security plan for that public cloud choice, and that's what we're really locking down with this policy framework, is bringing standardization on that for public cloud. >> Well, lot of innovation for the financial services community, which is again your wheelhouse. I wrote a piece right around Think that IBM's future rests on its innovation agenda, and I'm glad you brought up the notion of private, public, and then the whole hybrid thing, because I see OpenShift as a key, and RedHat as a key enabler of that across whether it's cloud, on-prem, edge, across multiple clouds. That's an ambitious agenda, as somebody who's responsible for cloud. That is something that is real innovation, and really differentiable I think, in the marketplace, and probably pretty expensive to build out across all those different platforms. >> Yeah, it is, but I think on the word innovation, my mind, as an IBMer, goes to the IBM research division. Thousands of researchers globally, and they've very much been a part of this journey with us. The journey with us on containerization, the journey on workload modernization from monolith to microservices, the journey of our public cloud, and now also very much a part of our work in financial services, so our research division is this incredible gift and asset that we have, that is working with us also on our cloud security and compliance posture management, that security and compliance control center that we're talking about in this announcement, et cetera, and so them being a part of this innovation stream for us is a really exciting part, again, of bringing together all these different pieces that IBM has to offer in this space to make it all stack up, to be a cloud for financial services. >> I got a couple of little housekeeping items before we close here. This is announced for the US first, right? What about other regions, first of all, is that correct, and what about other regions? >> That's correct, and we are also announcing additional participation of global banking partners as well in this announcement. And so this is also again our initial public statement of our expansion past the US. >> Last question, so just give us a glimpse of the future, where do you want to be in a few years, thinking about let's say three years down the road, what's that outcome look like? >> Yeah, you know I think that three years from now, we would love to see that people are able to make a decision, going back to your question about the line of business owners, make a decision about what they're trying to accomplish with a workload, and not be held back by security and compliance concerns in terms of putting that workload where it needs to be, where it will be most efficient, and where it can be embraced by a set of cloud capabilities that enable it to move in a competitive pace forward, infusing AI into everything that is done. Leveraging the latest in technologies, and serverless computing and all these other kind of things that can facilitate a line of business delivering more value so that cloud really continues, but also realizes its promises in that chapter two version of the story, also for regulated industries and also for their mission-critical workloads. >> Well Hillery, good luck with this, I mean congratulations on the progress that you've made, really since you guys announced this late last year, and really excited to see this start to take off, and you're a great guest, love having you on, thank you so much. >> Thanks so much for having me, pleasure talking to you as always. >> All right, cheers. And thank you everybody for watching, this is Dave Vellante for theCUBE, and we'll see you next time. (calm music)

>>From the cube studios in Palo Alto and Boston gets the Q covering IBM thing brought to you by IBM. >>Welcome back to our coverage of IBM think 2020 the digital version of IBM. Thank, my name is Dave Vellante and you're watching the cube. Hillary Hunter is here. She's the vice president and CTO of IBM cloud and also an IBM fellow. Hillary, thanks for coming on. Good to see you. >>Thanks so much for having me today. >>All right, let's get really, let's get into it. We want to focus on security and compliance. It's a key, obviously a key aspect and consideration for customers. But I have to start by asking you, there's this sort of the age old conflict between being secure and then having the flexibility and agility and speed that business people need. How does IBM clouds sort of square that circle? >>Yeah, you know, it's, it's really interesting because cloud itself is detained, um, designed to deliver agility, um, and speed. And that's everything from the release cadence to being able to consume things as APIs. And so when we say cloud and security, it's about the things that we implement as a cloud provider and the services that we stand up. And all of that is API driven. Um, all of that is intended to enable, you know, data protection through API APIs intended to enable security monitoring through PIs and dashboards and other things like that. And so actually when delivered as cloud services, security functions can actually even go more quickly and can facilitate that speed and agility in and of themselves. So it's really interesting that the means of delivering cloud capabilities actually can facilitate that agility in the security area. >>Yeah, I mean I think it's, especially in these times with COBIT 19 a lot of why is that? We're talking, you were saying, Hey, yeah, we're really going harder, uh, for the cloud because the downturns have been actually pretty good for them. For the cloud. I presume you're sort of seeing the same thing, but if you think about the cost of a breach, it's millions of millions of dollars on average. And think about the time it takes for an organization to identify when there's been an infiltration. Mmm. I know small companies like ours, we feel good that we can tap into, you know, cloud infrastructure. what are your thoughts? Oh, on sort of that whole notion cloud essentially maybe even having better security in a way, but however you define better. >>Yeah. You know, I, I actually agree with those statements and I think it's played out in many of our client engagements. Um, because when you are talking about cloud and you're talking about security, we have the opportunity to present to you a proactive approach, right? Where we're saying, okay, leverage this type of technology in order to do your key management or data encryption. It is up by us already fully as a service. You consume it API driven. Um, and so we are able to say that this will enable you to have end to end data encryption or corruption according to some standard or key management, um, where the keys remained in your hands or you know, use these things that are security services so that there isn't, um, there doesn't have to be, um, as detailed of a conversation. Um, as you often have to have in your solution, in your own it. >>You can say, okay, what's the objective we're trying to get to what is the net security and compliance posture? And we as a cloud provider can be proactive and telling you, Hey, therefore then use this combination of services and use them in this following way and that will enable you to reach those outcomes. And so moving past, um, you know, being fully self service where you have to configure hundreds and hundreds of things yourselves. To me being more prescriptive and proactive and goal oriented and outcome oriented, um, is an opportunity that we have in cloud where we're standing up Janning up capabilities. And so we really tried to talk to clients about, okay, what's the, what are you trying to accomplish? Are you concerned about control over your it? Are you concerned about meeting particular documentation on particular regulatory compliance? What's the point? And then how does that relate into a conversation about data compute, networking, et cetera, and then what does that matter too in terms of how you should then use certain cloud capabilities. >>I want to follow up on that, Hillary, because I want to see it. If I can discern, maybe there's some difference in the way IBM approaches this. I've often said in the cube that bad user behavior trumps good security every time. And of course you've got multiple layers, you've got IBM securing, you know it's infrastructure and it's cloud. You've got it in whatever role there and you've got the end user now. Yeah. Somebody fishes the end user or end user admin. Okay. There are things you can do fine. Hmm. But there's also the, it kind of in the middle you mentioned managed services is IBM's approach, you know, somewhat different >>no >>cloud suppliers. Maybe you could elaborate on that. >>Yeah. So, you know, we really look to protect the services that we're standing up, whether it's infrastructure services, where it's yeah, networking, whether or not it's container service or you know, other services that we're providing. We're looking to protect it, those, you know, down to the core of what that service is and how it works and, and how it provides security and then the technologies that that service integrates into. Right? So services seamlessly integrating into bring your own key and our, um, FIPs one 40 dash two level four baths, um, keep your own key, et cetera. So, so we take other things for our clients and then in doing so, we enable end to end the client to understand both what the status of the service itself is as well as, um, you know, how they use it in order to take into account other security considerations. >>And, and I think it is a fundamentally different, um, approach then one takes for, you know, your own it, you're responsible end to end for everything. In this case, you know, we a secure what we're doing. And then we enable through things like our security advisor, um, to do configurations in such that, that governed the developer behavior and ensure that overall together between us and the client, the posture, even of what the developers and such is understood and can be monitored and ensured that it is secure and compliant. Okay. So I just want to take an example of that. So you are responsible for let's say, securing the object store as an example, but yet at the same time the clients it organization policies that map to the edict of their organization. So they've got flexibility sort of a partnership. Okay. Am I understanding that correctly? >>Yeah, absolutely. And the question is then that it organization that's taken policies, um, we then enable our clients to use tools, everything from things that can be integrated into the dev sec ops pipeline of red hat, you know, and initiatives that are going on. We had CNCF and NIST and other places like that. Yeah. So how can they translate their risk, insecurity, postures into concrete tools? That's that we deliver, right? Everything from dev, sec ops and OpenShift. So then tools and dashboards that we have, like security advisor, um, so that they can then most effectively implement the entirety of what constitutes security on in public cloud environment with confidence. Yeah. So security in compliance slash privacy or sort of two sides of the same coin. So I want to understand, Oh, IBM cloud is approaching, Oh, compliance, obviously GDPR, yeah, yeah. Whatever. They may have, I guess 2018 in terms of the fines. >>Oh, the, the California consumer privacy act. Everybody sort of has their own little GDPR now States and regions and countries, et cetera. How is IBM supporting clients in regard to Oh, compliance such initiatives? Yeah. You know, and this is an area where, you know, again, we are working to make it as easy as possible for our clients to not only see our status on certain compliance areas, which is visible through our website on compliance, but also to achieve compliance is where there is some joint or shared responsibility. So for example, in Europe with the European banking 30, we have kind of an industry unique position and enabling clients you achieve, um, what is needed. And so we provide proactive, you know, guidance. I'm on European banking authority or a PCI DSS or other things like that. So we really are trying to take a very proactive approach to Mmm, uh, providing the guidance that clients need and meeting them in that journey over all. >>We, in addition have a specific program for financial services, um, where we announced our partnership back in November with the bank of America for financial services for a very significant control setting compliance, um, that is not just a of a bunch of little existing things, but it really is a tailored control set for the financial services industry. Um, that acknowledges the fact that, you know, getting compliance in that space can be particularly, ah, particularly challenging. So we are, are taking a very proactive approach, do helping our clients across different doctors, um, deal with those changing, you know, postures and internally as a cloud organization. Um, we are advised also by IBM Promitory, which, um, it has extensive background over 70 jurisdictions globally, changes in all these postures and in compliance and rules and such like that, that they consistently and continuously monitor. Um, and help us design the right cloud moving forward. Cause is compliance as you said is it's very much a dynamic and changing landscape. >>You know, when you talk to chief information security officers and ask them what their biggest challenges, they'll tell you. Yeah. The lack of skills. Uh, and so they're looking to automation. It really helped close that gap. And clearly cloud is sort of all about automation. So I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about what you're seeing with regard to automation generally, but specifically how it's helping, you know, close that skills gap. >>Yeah, you know, it, the, the, the topic of automation is so interesting when it intersects security because I really view this, um, transition to cloud and the use of cloud native and the use of containers and such actually is an opportunity again, yet again to improve security and compliance posture. Um, because cloud, um, and uh, the dev ops and CICB pipelines, um, and all of that of, of a cloud native build and a containerized build give you a certain opportunity both to prevent a bunch of behaviors as well as to collect certain information that may become useful later on. Um, I think actually called modernization because of the automation it brings, um, is a really, really topic for both CSOs and risk officers right now because it can not just improve the agility that you started with as a motivation to go to cloud, but it can also improve visibility into what's going on with all your workloads. >>You know, to know that a developer used a particular library and then you see, oops, maybe there's a concern about that library and you instantly know where across the entirety of your IOT that that's been deployed. That's a tremendous amount of knowledge. Um, and you can take either, you know, immediate action on that or you can through automation push out changes and things like that. Um, we use internally as a cloud provider the best of SRE and automation practices to keep our estate patched and other things like that. And that can also then translate into people's own workloads, which I think is a really exciting opportunity of cloud. >>You know, we're out of time, but I want to close and asking you sort of what we should look at 42, we had a great conversation earlier, well with Jamie Thomas about, about quantum and she talked about ideas. You get that on the IBM what what should we look forward to sort of in the coming months and even years in IBM cloud. >>Yeah. You know, we're really excited about that agility, that cloud itself for us as a company and provides, right? Like you said with quantum, it is the place that we can bring out the latest and greatest things, um, in, you know, uh, for our clients to use and experiment with and adopt their algorithms and such juice. So you're going to continue to see us taking a very aggressive posture in turning the latest and open source and technologies into cloud delivered fully managed services. Um, and so, you know, everything from what we've done already with, um, Istio is a service and can native as a server, a service and quantum as a service, et cetera. Um, you'll continue to see us take that approach that, um, you know, we want to be a fresh and vital environment for developers to consume the latest and greatest that's out there. Um, but yet as an enterprise focused company and a company, you know, very much focused on security and compliance, you'll continue to see us back those things with our own efforts to secure and then enable security, um, on our environment. >>Well, Hillary, thanks so much for coming on the cube. It's always great to have experts like yourself, uh, share with, uh, with our community. Appreciate it. >>Great. Thank you so much for having me. >>And so we're seeing cloud acceleration as a result of covert 19, but it's always been a, a real wave for the last 10 years. We're just seeing it again, accelerate even faster. This is Dave Volante for the cube. You're watching the cubes, continuous coverage of IBM thing, digital thing, 2020 people right there, but right back, right after this short, >>right.

(technological music) >> From Yorktown Heights, New York, it's theCUBE covering IBM Cloud Innovation Day, brought to you by IBM. >> Hi, I'm Peter Burris and we are broadcasting theCUBE from IBM Innovation Day at the Thomas J. Watson Research Lab in Yorktown, New York. We've got a great number of guests to talk about. We're going to start with Hillery Hunter, who's the CTO and vice-president of cloud infrastructure at IBM. Hillery, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here. >> So, you're relatively new in your role. Tell us about some of the things that you're focusing on as the CTO of cloud infrastructure here at IBM. >> As CTO for cloud infrastructure, I'm focused on making our cloud the best possible place that it can be for people to bring their data, bring their applications, and overall, come into that modernization journey with us, the process of transforming to become a digital enterprise. >> So, one of the things that people talk about all the time is how fast data's being generated. Nobody seems to be talking about how fast software is being generated, and yet, that seems to be one of the advantages and potentially the liabilities of doing cloud wrong. Talk to us a little bit about how IBM sees the world of software changing as we move forward with the cloud. >> [Hillery] There are parts that are consistent with what we've seen for about the past 20 years in open source, and there are parts that certainly, we feel like are accelerating and changing. With regard to the pace of software and its change today, open source is clearly this innovation space. It's this playground where lots of people can go and can contribute. We can take... We're here at the IBM research facility. We can take the latest in innovations and math that helps us accomplish great AI and AI insights. We can take that into open source. We can take microservice integration capabilities and take it into open source and work there collaboratively with people across the industry. What we see, therefore, is a tremendous rate and pace in change of software and the capability of software and its ability to analyze data and bring insights to data and realize the promises of big data, of getting insight out of that data, is just really on a tremendous growth rate. When you move to cloud, you're not just doing what they used to say of converting capital expense on premises into opex and renting a server in the cloud. You're bringing your overall workload and modernizing it and bringing it into this era where you're able to apply through microservices and cloud-based programming methodology, you're able to bring the latest of software capability to your data and get more insights out of it. >> You're really able to alter the operating model of how not only your technology group works, but also how your business works. >> Absolutely. >> How does Red Hat play a role in this? >> We have shared principles with Red Hat. We both have been active in the open source communities. IBM famously had billion dollars of investment in LINUX going back 20 years ago, and Red Hat is a prominent name in open source. We have a shared understanding of the value of open source and the value of rate and pace of innovation that's commensurate with what open source provides. We have a shared value around what enterprises need and a shared client-centric view that you need support on your software, that you need certifications, that you expect security, those kind of things. There's tremendous amount of shared value proposition in what we see as the rate and pace of innovation as well as then moving that into an enterprise context. Enterprises make these choices very carefully. As consumers of enterprise capabilities, we expect them to guard our data, we expect them to do things on our data in a secure way, and there are many foundational elements in philosophy that are similar between the two of us. >> You mentioned that cloud started out as this notion of capex to opex, move all your data to a single place, let somebody else deal with it. Increasingly, enterprise is starting to recognize that their data may sometimes have to remain in place. We start talking about innovation, open source, these new classes of services. What is it going to mean to bring the cloud experience to the data from IBM's perspective? >> We really see that the data today exists in multiple places, that largely because of that, people are partway through their journey to overall modernization. They're partway through their journey to the cloud. We really think that the world is going to be hybrid, meaning that... Or, the world is hybrid, I guess I would say, meaning that there is data and there is cloud function needed on premises and in public clouds. There's a need for private, dedicated environments in the public cloud as well. There's a significant amount of IT that is currently traditional in that people are in the process of modernizing, and that may initially be through a private cloud context on the journey to overall workload modernization. We also see that the world is multi-cloud. People are using upwards of 9 clouds or more in many cases, and that, in a lot of cases, has to do with this intersection of function and data residency and being able to bring together all of those pieces of where the data needs to be or where the data currently is, and then bring software function to the data is something that we see as critically important. >> Without being too specific in the use of the word binding, today, the idea is you bring your data to a cloud supplier and then, you can run the services of that cloud supplier supplies on that data. Do you and IBM foresee a world in which the customer's going to be able to control their own data and then acquire the services from the cloud and bring it to their data? Is that the direction you think it's going to go? >> Not only do we see that it will be possible, we think that it is possible and we're putting things in market already today that enable people to bring cloud function to their data. The IBM Cloud private offerings and IBM Cloud private for data enable people to, in their environment, where their data resides, bring sophisticated data, warehousing data analytics and AI capabilities. Fundamentally, that process of workload modernization is a set of steps and it starts with data and it starts with modernization of that environment and it matures then into being able to get deep insights through the power of AI on that data. >> Let me ask you one more question. In February, IBM's going to host 30,000+ people in San Francisco. Unbelievable opportunity for networking, learning, and IBM Think. What kind of conversations do you expect that you're going to be having in Think in 2019? >> I think you hit at the heart of the conversations that we're going to be having at Think and our positioning of the hybrid multi-cloud environment. Our other core tenets there are open and open source and keeping up with the rate and pace of open source as an innovation stream, providing choice in how folks are deploying cloud and deploying systems. We also are going to be having conversations around security. That's a core enterprise value proposition and ultimately, management. You want to not just declare that the world is hybrid and multi-cloud, but provide solutions to that and we believe we have strong answers to how to bring these pieces together and enable people to successfully move at the rate and pace of innovation that they need, yet in a secure context, and leverage the ability to deploy cloud capabilities where their data currently is, be that on private or public context. >> Hillery Hunter, CTO and vice president of cloud infrastructure at IBM, thanks for talking to theCUBE here today at the IBM Innovation Day. >> Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure. >> And, we will be back momentarily with more conversations at IBM Innovation Day.

>> From York Town Heights, New York, it's theCUBE covering IBM Cloud Analyst Summit, brought to you by IBM. (techy music) >> Hi, welcome back, I'm Peter Burris of theCUBE, and we're having conversations here at the IBM Innovation Day at the Thomas J. Watson Research Lab in York Town Heights, New York. We've got a great conversation. Don Bolia is the general manager of cloud developer services at IBM, welcome to theCUBE, Don. >> Thank you very much. >> Or should I say welcome back to theCUBE? >> (chuckling) Yes, thank you. >> So, Don, we were talking with one of your colleagues, Hillery Hunter, who's the CTO-- >> Mm-hm. >> Of here at the cloud infrastructure team, and about the fact that everybody's talking about the rate of growth of data, and nobody's really discussing the rate of growth of software, which is perhaps even more important, ultimately, to business. What is that rate of growth look like, and how is it related to the role of cloud? >> Yeah, so it's a great question. I mean, with my role as kind of owner of our platform services from the cloud perspective, one of the things we've noticed over the last probably five or 10 years is just a massive rate and pace change with respect to iteration on the software development cycle. So, they started with mobile, I would say, and then has moved to cloud since then, where you know, the expectation is everything is updating all the time, you know, everyday, all times of the day. Within our own Kubernetes and container service, as an example, we push over 500 updates a week to that software stack on behalf of our customers, and so I think there's a rate and pace of how things are changing from that perspective, but then there's also the fact that everybody's leveraging those services to then build the next generation of software. So, in our case we have a set of base services that I provide for things like containers that then the Watson team, for example, uses to build their microservices, which are then, you know, realized as machine learning and other types of services that they provide. So, you see the stacking of software, if you will, from you know, the high iteration rate at the bottom all the way to the next level and the next level, and the ability to unlock value now is something that happens in, you know, hours in some cases, or a couple of days, whereas before just provisioning the software would've taken months, and so we're really seeing just a whole change in the way people can develop things and how quickly they can get to the end result. >> Now, we're here at the Thomas J. Watson Research Lab, and downstairs is this wall of all IBM fellows, and one of them E.F. Codd, the famous originator of database and the role that SQL played, et cetera-- >> Mm-hm. >> In relational database technology. He wrote a seminal paper back in the early 1970s about how the notion of developer was going to evolve over time, and he might've been a little aggressive in thinking that we were going to end up with these citizens developers than we actually happened, but we are seeing the role of developer changing, and we are seeing new classes of professionals become more developer-like. >> Mm-hm. >> How is that relationship changing the way that we think of developer services that you serve? >> Yeah, it's a great question. I think, first of all, software is sort of invading almost every single industry, and so, you know, people have got to have some amount of those skills to be able to function in kind of the optimal way for whatever industry they're in. So, what we're seeing is that as we've built more and more foundational services, the act of actually creating something new is more about stitching together, composing, orchestrating a set of things, as opposed to really building from scratch everything from the ground up, and you know, things like our Watson services are a great example, right? The ability to tap into something like that with a couple lines of code in an hour, as opposed to what would've taken, you know, months, years, whatever, and even really, frankly, been out of the reach of most developers to begin with is now something you can have somebody come in and do, you know, with a fairly low level of skill and get a good result on the outside. >> So, we've got more demand for code as we move to digital business, more people participating in that process, cloud also enables paths, a lot of new classes of tools that are going to increase the productivity-- >> Yep. >> Including automated code generation. How is the process, how is that tool set evolving, especially as it pertains to the cloud? >> Yeah, so I think one of the mantras of cloud is automation, and in order to standardize and automate, that's really how you get to the kind of scale that we would see in, say, a public cloud like the IBM cloud. So, it really is kind of a fundamental premise of anything you do has to be something that you automate, and so we've seen a whole class of tools, to your points, really start to emerge, which allow people to get that kind of, you know, automated capability. So, nobody thinks of, for example, creating a, you know, a build pipeline these days without using a set of tools. You know, often they're opensource tools, and there's a lot of choice within that whole spectrum of tools, and we support a bunch of different varieties, but you would never think today of having a build process that isn't totally automated, right, that can't be instantly recreated. Even the whole process of how you deploy code in a cloud these days is sort of an assumption that you can destroy that and restart at any point, and in order to do that, you really need the automation behind that, so I think it's a base premise now. I don't think you can really be at the velocity that people are expecting out of software without having a totally automated process to go through that. >> So, any digital business strategy presumes that data's an asset, and things that are related to data are assets, including software in many... Well, software is data when you come right down to it. >> Mm-hm. >> And we want to exploit that data and generate new sources of value out of that data, and that's one of the predicates of digital business, but at the same time we also want to protect those attributes of data-- >> Mm-hm. >> That are our IP, our enterprise's distinction. As we move forward with software, how do we reconcile that tension between more openness and generating a community that's capable of improving things, while at the same time ensuring that we've got good control over our IP where it actually does create a business differentiation? >> Now, that's right, and you're right, data's king. So, you know, the software can do, you know, a set of things, but most of the time it's operating on a set of that data, and that data's where the true value that you can unlock comes from. Our policy, from an IBM perspective, has always been that, you know, your data is yours, and to your point, this IP that you may want to protect, and we try to give you the tools to do that, and so a lot of our philosophy, within the cloud in particular, is around things like Bring Your Own Key, where you have control of the keys that encrypt that data that's in the cloud. In fact, we would like to be totally out of that loop, quite frankly, and have it be something that is controlled by our clients, and that they can, you know, get the value they're looking for, and so we'll never have a situation where one of our services is, you know, using or acting on data that is really, you know, not ours to use, and so that's been a fundamental premise of the cloud as we go forward, and again, we continue to provide a set of tools that really let you manage that, and to your point, you know, not everything gets managed at the same level. Some things are highly protected, and therefore have, you know, layers and layers of security policy around them, and there's other examples where, you know, you're relatively able to make that open through a set of APIs, for example, and let everybody have access it. From our perspective, though, that's really a client choice, and so for us it's about giving the right tools so that they can do the job they need to do. >> February 2019, San Francisco, IBM's taking over San Francisco with the IBM THINK show. What types of conversations are you looking forward to having with customers? What excites you about the 2019 version? >> Yeah, so I mean it's a great venue. It is absolutely, you know, something that I look forward to every year. I know my team looks forward to it, as well. I mean, the amount of interaction we get with clients... I mean, it's really all about the client stories, so you know, what are they able to do, in my case, with our cloud services. What can I learn about what they've done, and how, you know, can we then leverage that to make our services better, and so, you know, to me it's all about, you know, what you can learn from others, and it's a great form to be able to do that and there's a lot of great things that, you know, you can dive deep on. You get access to a lot of the IBM technical experts, so I have all of my, you know, fellows and distinguished engineers there, you know, on hand, and just great conversations. There's always great insights that you get from it, highly recommend it. >> Don Bolia, IBM general manager of cloud developer services, thanks very much for being on theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> Once again, we'll be back from IBM Innovation Day here at Thomas J. Watson Research Center in York Town Heights, talk to you soon. (techy music)