>> From Seattle, Washington, it's theCUBE! Covering KubeCon and CloudNativeCon North America 2018. Brought to you by Red Hat, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, and it's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back everyone, it's theCUBE's live coverage, day three of three days of coverage here at KubeCon 2018, and CloudNativeCon put on by the Linux Foundation and CNCF. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE with Stu Miniman, breaking down all the action. Our next guest is Hussein Khazaal, who's the Vice President of Marketing and Partners of Nuage Networks. Thanks for coming on, good to see you! >> Thanks, John, good to see you. >> Love that shirt, automation... >> Yeah. >> That's the theme. >> That is! (chuckles) >> Cloud native, cloud operations, thanks for coming on. So take a minute just to talk about what you guys are doing with the show, what's the key value proposition you guys are part of, what conversations you're having. >> Right so, for Nuage we basically deliver a software-based virtual networking solution. And a lot of our customers appreciate the value it brings because they have multi cloud environments, they have workloads in on-prem. Those are mixed, some VM, some bare metal, some containers, they have workloads in public cloud, and what we enable them with our software is to stitch all that together using an API-driven networking model that has policy applied to the workload, and you have that mixed workload environment with network policy and security built into that platform. And that's kind of where we help not really break what Kubernetes brings to developers, but maintain that, giving the IT and infrastructure folks the ability to have visibility control and maintain that. >> We were just talking with a partner from Google, we always talk to the same companies, so some of the senior people at AWS, and all the clouds. Obviously cloud operations is what everyone wants, that's the preferred environment, whether you're on-premises or in the cloud, Edge is now on the horizon. Storage, networking and compute is still the core, it's just a little bit different. But there's new jobs that are emerging around Kubernetes, you see the job board, but it's also revitalizing older roles, the network guy, the storage guy, the server guy, traditional IT enterprises are seeing those roles transform. So I got to ask you, as you guys are in the middle of all the networking side, how do see that person, that role, that piece of the puzzle in an IT enterprise change with Kubernetes? >> Absolutely, I mean, the one thing that we had some of our customers do is that these roles are no longer defined by a specific, you have to have these mixed skills, you have to understand what the developer needs as an infrastructure person, and the developer needs what kind of tools that they need to implement so you can do your job, and that's why Kubernetes, and when you're talking about networking and security, you have to understand Linux, you have to understand programming, to be able to give the developers the tools that they need to develop and understand the requirements and then by the same token, they need to make sure that from an intercom perspective, you need to understand, you still need the visibility, you still need control, right? And that balance can only be achieved if you kind of do the exchange roles, right? You get to work with the developers, and then the developers need to look at infrastructure and that's kind of where you stick at Kubernetes, and with what Red Hat is doing with OpenShift, and a lot of the vendors in terms of integrating with CNI, to be able to plug in and tap in and be able to deliver that security and that relief. >> I get what you're saying. I think you've got a great thread there that I want to pull on a little bit. So, I think back at networking over the last few decades, we used to call it multi-vendor, now we call it multi-cloud, we've been talking about automation forever, but it's different now. So, I think that thread you were going on is part of that answer, but explain why now, multi cloud and automation, what's that's real about that compared to what we were talking about the dominant, hardware-led environment that we lived in for decades? >> Absolutely, I mean just you look at how people develop, look at containers, the lifetime of a container is very short compared to like a monolithic application, things that are more dynamic. Some enterprises need to scale up operations, and then that's where they kind of... So early on it was more like a developer testing things in their lab and when you go into production and the rate and the scale at which you operate, dictates that, you know, look, I need to work in public cloud, I need to work with bare metal, and then that, the amount of the infrastructure guys meet that demand otherwise those enterprises are not going to be able to serve their end customers. And that's why they're kind of working with us, and even the community's coming together to address these, and we're looking with-- for performance with the vendors and then even for networking and that's what's driving that. >> Yeah, I want to get your reaction, I was talking to somebody here at the show and they said "Kubernetes is a reset for SDN." >> Yep, it is! I mean the thing is, Kubernetes as it is is perfect, there's no reason to reinvent the wheel, right? There's a lot of adaption from developers' infrastructure. What we're trying to do is build around it, you'll see orchestration on top, you'll see networking, this is such a good thing that everybody is, and you can see by the level of attendance, the level of interest, and engagement, now what we're trying to do is like grow the operation. What are the problems that are left for an enterprise to solve? And that's the multi-cloud piece, right? How do you do policy, network and security policy in that hybrid environment, right? For example, you look at a retailer, they have users using mobile apps, they have remote stores, they have data centers, they have public cloud, and then they're using containers (mumbles) how do you stitch all that together? And that's for us, the challenge that we're addressing. >> And Kubernetes gives you a lot of policy knobs, how are you guys seeing that opportunity? 'Cause that's where people see that kind of piece. >> The three letters, API, right? This API makes integration such an easy thing to do. And then we have obviously, using a CNI plug-in from a (mumbles) perspective, to be able to work in that eco-system and deliver what we do. We have, obviously you guys know that in OpenStack, they're running Kubernetes inside OpenStack and then you have people running Kubernetes on bare metal, right? But it's still Kubernetes and that's how we're able to serve our customers to kind of stitch between between those different stories. >> Alright, Hussein, let's talk about security. So, you know, when containers first came out it was all this argument of how do I architect it? Do I have to shove the thing in a VM, or now is it a micro VM? How do I make sure I ensure security? What's working well? What do we still have a lot of work to do in the security space? >> I think if you look at the three areas: visibility, protection and then the third one is dynamic further response, right? So you can't protect what you can't see and visibility is kind of the first thing that we as networking, because we move packets around, can deliver to the enterprise. The second one is isolation, is that everything you have in a pod is contained. Now between pods, if you're running in public cloud, as a bank, you may want to encrypt that traffic, right? You need to do some level of protection, whether that's in-flight protection or separation between them. The third one is, as you're moving things around and you see bad things happen, you need to not wait for a person, because you're looking at scale, like thousands of these instances that are moving around. The network is intelligent enough to act based on rules that you give it to, like if there's a threat, we'll just quarantine the source or remove traffic. This combination is what's missing and that's kind of what a lot of... >> I think that's an opportunity that's clear, but most people look at networking and say "oh, let's move it from A to B, point A to point B." It's now so much more than that, it's more headroom. What is the specific headroom on top of that? Because there's a lot of security opportunities, things are moving around, you can see the bad guys and all kinds of different threats, but not just moving packets, it's other things. What's the other key things that people should pay attention to when really designing these architectures? >> So the one thing, obviously, when you're doing things in a lab, you're not really going by scale. You're not looking at throughput, latency, things like that that's part of networking and that's kind of the work we're doing with some of the, like Mellanox, you know? On terms of providing high-throughput, providing low latency for specific applications. The other one is, how do you provide that intelligence? Like all this data has to go somewhere to be processed, to work with other security solutions. Those are the two things that maybe people don't give that much thought early on, but as you scale your operations, they become real bottlenecks for you. >> So I want to get a chance for you to get a plug in for the company, DevOps. This infrastructure, this code has kind of been kicking around since the beginning. It's actually happening, a programmable infrastructure. You know, at the app layer for coding, but now network's programmable. What are you guys doing in that area? How are you guys extending that value proposition to your customers? Why are they going with you guys? Why are you guys winning? What's the one thing that people should know about in order to come to you guys? >> Flexibility and openness, that's the key one. We are hardware agnostic, any switch, any network, any hypervisor, any CMS, content management system, that's our focus is our networking and security. Similar to Kubernertes, you can run Kubernetes anywhere. That's how we provide networking and we have an open eco-system that gives you scale, performance and security without really limiting your options. And the thing is, we have all, going forward, like people can do stuff on premises today, they may move to cloud, we don't lock you in to one architecture. The architecture's fluid and it could be whatever. You may see the future one way today, but in a couple of months as we all know, things change. >> Why would someone call you guys up? What's the paying point? What's the value? When will they know, oh okay I've got to get Nuage involved? >> Scale, multi-cloud, that's basically it. If you're looking for multi-cloud, multiple workloads and you're running things at scale, you need to talk to us because that's basically where we help you solve it. >> Hussein, talk a little bit about how Edge fits into it too. You know when you think back to even before cloud, think back to the XSPs. Networking securities have always been the choke point, physics still rules the day. We know it's only getting more complicated with Edge, more surface area for security, but I have to imagine that applies into what you're doing. >> Absolutely, I mean we've done, so as you decompose these things and you move them apart, your attack services increase, right? So the security is, as you move, those communication channels have to be protected somehow. We have an extension which is basically part of getting into the Edge, adding more intelligence at the Edge, because that traffic is coming from the Edge to the core, it goes to public cloud. And being able, as a networking solution, to steer that traffic securely using encryption or whatever have you in terms of visibility, provides those enterprises with a secure, sound platform to really do their business. >> What's your take on the show? 8,000 people up from 4,000. We were comparing it earlier to Adobe's Reinvent. A rising tide, is it a tsunami? >> Absolutely, I mean I couldn't believe the number when they said it because obviously we saw they'd sold out the tickets, but coming here to see all that many people and there have been earlier shows and the growth is tremendous. >> Well thanks for coming for coming on and sharing your insight and congratulations on the scale, we love it. Data, scale, programmable networks, it's all part of the new evolution of cloud native. It's on premises, it's in the cloud, multiple workloads, multiple clouds. This is the choice everyone has, they're rebuilding. Don't forget networking compute and storage, it's still a Holy Trinity there. Congratulations, thanks for coming on. >> Thank you very much. >> More live coverage here at theCUBE, here in Seattle for KubeCon and CloudNativeCon, day three of three days of coverage, this is theCUBE, we'll be right back after this short break. (upbeat music)

>> from Austin, Texas. It's Theo Cube covering your storage accelerate 2019. Brought to you by pure storage. How >> do you all how to do Dave Great Legal garden with you? Yes, I am Lisa Martin with David Lantana. And can you guess we're in Texas were at pure Accelerate 2019 Day one of our coverage here and the Buzzy Expo Hall. Pleased to welcome one of Pierre's customers to the Q B of Jason Thomas, the CEO of Coal, Scott Hussein or C. S K Legal Jason. Welcome to the program. So talk to us a little bit about si es que legal. You're based out of Florida. You're CEO. Give us a little bit of a picture of the law firm, your I T environment and your role. ISS leader of information >> So cold, Scott is saying, >> has been around >> 20 plus years. I joined about three and 1/2 years ago, Um, and we have now this one. We have 13 officers. We just opened up 13th office. We're the largest law firm in Florida currently, and only in Florida. Interestingly enough, I actually live and work out of Boston, but you know, these days there's no reason why you can't work remote. I go, they're off enoughto needed. >> You can avoid the hurricanes by living in >> a snowstorm over >> hurting any >> day because I've been a >> good pro sports in Boston. Better, better college sports in Florida. >> Yeah, No one cares about college sports. >> Best of both worlds. All right, so we're here Appear. You guys have been appear customer for a while. But give us this This picture of the legal landscape from a data volume perspective, I could imagine tons of documentation. I think you guys have hundreds of attorneys. What were some of the challenges three years ago when you were looking for the ideal long? You know, storage service is that you were really looking to four companies like your help eliminate and allow you to really deliver on the business needs. >> So we're heavy, heavy volume, business tons and tons of documents. Um, And when I came on board 39 years ago, the ever start of iron was basically a lot of physical servers, a lot of local storage which, quite frankly, scared me. I came from my previous company. I was that I came from a nap shop And that was when my first initiatives was bringing in a sand into the firm and centralizing all the storage on also setting up D r a cz. Well, along with that. So it started evaluation process pretty much within a few months, coming on board the firm. >> So you knew Netapp. Sorry, Dave. You knew Net up your pure customer perspective. Of what? For some of those things that you were looking for that when you found pure was, like, checks all the boxes. >> I can tell you what I wasn't looking for. It was I wasn't looking to hire a storage admin. So I want to find something super simple demand something that I could manage or any of the guys could manage any this this admits, could manage. So that was like starting point of the evaluation. >> So you had a bunch of sounds like discreet Dad asked direct access storage, and he said that concern you, presumably because it was hard to manage to get a handle on. So you wanted to consolidate >> way had if we had our sequel No sequel box go down down for a day, and, uh, do you ever stole from backups in previous night. Not really a good set up at the time >> in our most of your attorneys century, located in one location. Are they distributed there? >> They're spread out all across up and down floors. So we have 13 offices. So between there, they're all over the place. But a lot of work remote down, too. So that's becoming a big thing as well. So the >> reason I asked you to get the pendulum swinging right, you had almost ass, and then you went to a sin. And now this. You got the head you get cloud. I don't know if you're taking advantage of cloud, are you? >> Uh, we are actually we a lot of our software now that we've slowly start to move a lot of our main main line products to the cloud or a cloud edition of this product. So I would say we're probably 50 to 60% cloud now. >> Yes. So you were tied up in the keynotes this morning, but one of the things we heard in the key notice you could have the pure management experience. No matter where your data lives, bring the the pure cloud experience to your date on Prim and the public cloud hybrid. Is that something that's appealing to you? Is that resonate? Yeah. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. It makes it. Look, I can I can actually blogging appear one of my phone if I want to, you know, and check the room. Not that I ever do. Quite. I'll say I never really need to look at >> it. Well, your c i o. Right. I mean, you got other things to worry about. Get my I would like >> to be involved with fingers in it. >> It's interesting. So I mean, you know, a lot of time CEOs, they don't they let, but your tech I love your technical. See a lot of that. A lot of technical CEOs as well, but But also, you don't want to hire a storage admin. Correct. So you want general is to be able to deal this stuff. Okay, so you know your question. Why? Why pure? What would you look at? And >> so we looked at, um, way looked at HP street power. Big name. Um, we looked at fewer and we looked at 10 tree and I pretty much especially with three part I knew that would be management heavy so that when I toss that one out pretty quickly, not that it's not a great product. But it just wasn't for me or what I was >> the right fit. >> You're not right for us. So we came down the pier and 10 tree. I had a had a buddy who worked at another law firm, and he's like and he was like, Look, just don't even waste time just go pure And it's a phrase that I use Sometimes I stole from him, but he he's like, Dude, this is like storage crack. You'll love it. >> Storage crack. Wow, They need a T shirt. That first >> first hit's free. Okay, so that was the right fit for you. It was your peer was appear that that enticed you. That's obviously take a bit. I presume you take a lot of hair advice. >> Lot appeared, but we didn't even do a POC. >> Wow, this is this is a good period that you obviously trust. >> All right, how to >> see was the interface yet you showed me the interface on a phone call one time, and he's like, this is it. I'm like, That's it. >> What did you actually bring in. What are you using? >> I'm sorry, >> What products That you're actually using, What? Or with pure >> Oh, so I'm sorry. Um Exchange sequel. Um, that our main line, our bookkeeping time, time and building. All that that that's that's the meaning of >> all the legal absent all the legal dated the data stores. Which product from pure is that? Do you know a fan? Is it? Uh, it's the all flash array. Yeah. >> I'm sorry. Yes, it's the FBI. >> Yeah. Okay. And so, thinking about before and after hell kind of a as is and the to be how would you compare and contrast two when you brought it in the pre in the post >> your environment. >> Oh, for your business. >> That's Ah, good question. I felt more comfortable sleeping at night. You know why? Just the reliability of the ease of management. You know, if we need to bring up a volume or expanded volume, we could do it very quickly. It doesn't. It doesn't take a rocket science to do it. And from everyone I spoke to I mean, I can't I'm not I can't speak to it, but I can't. I don't I don't believe I've ever talked anybody that's had an outage or whether you raise gone down. In fact, it seems that they tell me before we even know if there's, you know, an issue. Andi. They jump on it right away. So we've never had never had now has never had an issue, never had an issue with an upgrade. It's been fantastic. That supports awesome. >> No need for a rocket scientist or a storage admin, >> and you're sleeping better. This is very, very good thing so far this interview. So in terms of the traditional storage model that you're well familiar with, as you said, you know, being very familiar with netapp it a previous role, the whole every three years. Allies like it. We've got to switch things out, disrupting operations here, comes along with the Evergreen model, and we go, How much of that is marketing and how much of that really actually means? And I know you're a big >> you're in my mind. So yeah, I was like, Oh, so I'm pre paying for support or, you know, But you know what? One side. Once I understood what it really waas and the advantages of of it inmate sentence. We didn't. We didn't I didn't think we would upgrade as much as we have already. We've already gone through to storage up, raising two controller upgrades. So that's really where where it really makes sense is when you're doing storage controller upgrade. So if you want to start our small, which we do is start a little bit small in the beginning. And then then our business grew like crazy and our storage needs expanded. So we went through at least two upgrades for years. >> So you you bring in a rare you paying basically perpetual license up front boom. And then and then you're doing the evergreen model. And then now you're on a subscription in perpetuity, is that correct? Okay, so you you essentially go from cap Ex Op X over the life cycle, and then when you add capacity, you're paying for that capacity, and then >> you just like you return the equipment, you get your money back, and then, uh, you get new equipment >> is truly non disruptive. >> We've been through to upgrades and to control operates with your major upgrades and, um, both of them we did at 5 p.m. Just not that the firm close. If I were anything but, you know, just to feel comfortable. I don't know how you do it at five, and it's okay because you know, if anything goes down from five and if no one's working right, so But here, obviously, we're always attorneys are always on and know they're really smooth. No problems. Every I mean, they got a great strategy and method to the upgrades way stayed up the entire time. >> I mean, it is a big issue for practitioners. We we've done some quantification over the years, and it was like the minimum to migrate. Honore was $50,000. When you add it all in people's time, the cost of the array, the complexity and you're saying first of all, sound reasonable, right kind of number, right? I mean, that's probably gonna make room for the conservative right. Is that essentially been eliminated? I mean, it gives you some planning, I guess are >> pretty much. And as far as the planning goes, you know, these these guys take care of all that. So when we're ready to make the switch, they just log in and do their thing, and then it's done, >> and in terms of training for yourself or your team. When you've done these two upgrades that what's that process been like? >> Log in and figure it out. I mean, >> it sounds pretty simple. >> There's not much to it. Yeah. >> So what's on the C I ose mind these days? Obviously, you don't stay awake at night now thinking about story. >> I stay awake for security, for >> talk about that data >> breach security seems like every every week. Now it it seems I'm on my Twitter feed and this is there's a new breech home. It just it's It's almost got to the point where, you know, it's just another thing that happens. >> So what's your challenge there? Is it managing all these tools? Is it knowing what to respond to it? Is it the skill sets all of the above? My >> biggest thing is, I believe in lots of redundancy. So, um, so one. Starting with the pure we have, we have a second array in another data center outside the state, so we replicate the to raise between each other. That's that's what we started with that side. We also running, you know, regular backups. We run rubric for that. And we also now have just oh, establishing cloud strategy for backups. Immutable. Um, long, long retention. So we also send our backup to the cloud as well. So now I'm feeling like I can sleep. Probably can sleep late now. I just gotta wait for somebody for something to happen, I guess, and makes sure, and hopefully your strategy is pretty solid here. >> Okay, so D r and backup are part of that overall data protection and security strategy that extends obviously into the perimeter device, etcetera, etcetera. So you have a SEC ops team. How do you weigh? >> Don't have a dedicated no. See. So, >> Well, you're the C cell. >> I'm exactly exactly so. Sher Sher bulls with a small group of us that are also the security team. And we've got a pretty I think we've got at this point a pretty solid security sack. Always room for improvement. Always looking at the new stuff. What's out there? I mean, there's all kinds of cool tech out there. Sometimes I get a little overboard with the team, gets a little upset with me because, you know, I just want to see I want to do another POC, and they're like we have three running. >> Okay, Like you guys have a pretty solid foundation running on pure that you stone to me, like, kind of appear customer for life. So they should at least give you a T shirt. Um, Adam, >> give me atleast >> a T shirt. >> I'll tell you one what really sold me within the first year was we had a We had a B m that wouldn't wouldn't boot up and we couldn't figure out what was going on. So we thought initially thought was a V m where issue and so we call support and you can really figure out. They said it was a pure issue. We call so decide to call Pure. One night I was 89 o'clock at night and decide to give it a shot, and the guy got on the phone and come to find. Now there was some issue with the data stores of'em where it was crossed, her data stores and one was deleted. Oh, apparently maybe me had deleted a small data store that had nothing on it, but apparently it was linked to the data store. This b m for some unknown reason known. Behold, bmr issue. But the guy on the line actually knew of resource within pure. That was That was a big bm weren't guy and he came in. He actually logged in and help us unlinked to data stores. So totally not appear issue. But, you know, he went the extra mile to help us recover that GM gotta back up the same night. >> You know, we got to go, But I ask you a question. You work. You have a lot of vendors you've experienced. What, Avengers do that really tick you off? That they should stop doing? How's your chance? >> I don't like the term road map. >> Really? >> Any time I hear road map, it means, you know >> we don't have it. You >> don't have >> yet, >> But we're gonna look into that so don't do business with people that have no road. >> Jason, thank you so much for share your candor with David. Me on the key. We appreciate it. Congratulations on all your success. >> Thank you >> for David. Dante. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube at pure accelerate 19. Thanks for watching

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCube. Covering Interconnect 2017. brought to you by IBM. >> Hey welcome back everyone. We're live here in Las Vegas for IBM Interconnect 2017. Siliconangle's theCube's Exclusive coverage of IBM Interconnect 2017, I'm John Furrier. My co-host Dave Vellante. Our next two guests, Eric Herzog, Vice President of Marketing for IBM Storage. Nice to see you again, you were on yesterday. And Mark Godard, Manager of Customer Success and Partnership at Sparkcognition, a customer. Guys, welcome to theCube, good to see you again. Welcome for the first time. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Okay, so we're going to talk about some stories we did yesterday, but you've got the customer here. What's the relationship, why are you guys here? >> We provide the storage platform. They use our flash technology. Spark is a professional software company. It's not a custom house, they are a software company. >> And Spark, not related to Spark OpenSource. Just the name Spark, Sparkcognition. Make sure to get that out of the way. Go ahead, continue. >> So they're a hot startup. They have a number of different use case including cybersecurity, real-time IoT, predictive analytics and a whole bunch of other things that they do. When a customer goes on premise 'cause they deliver either through a service model or on premise, when it's in their service model they use our flash and our power servers. When it's on premise they recommend here's the hardware you should use to optimize the software if the customer buys a non-premised version. They offer it both ways, but part of the reason we thought it would be interesting is they're a professional software company. A lot of the people here as you know are regular developers, in-house developers. In this case these guys are a well-funded VC startup that delivers software to the end user base. >> Tell us more about Sparkcognition. Give us the highlights. >> Yeah, appreciate it. Sparkcognition, we're a cognitive algorithms company. We do data science, machine learning, natural language processing. Kind of the whole gambit there. Working, we have three products. SparkPredict is our predictive analytic, our predictive maintenance product. SparkSecure is our network log security product. And Deep Armor is a machine learning endpoint protection product. In that you kind of hear we're in the IoT, the industrial IoT, the IIoT of things. It also, in cybersecurity we've done use cases, other machine learning use cases as well. But the predictive maintenance and cybersecurity are two most, most advanced use cases, industrial areas. So we've been around about three years. We have around 100 people. Appreciate Eric talking about how well-financed we are and how our success really is budding this far. We're happy to be here. >> John: Where are you guys located? >> We're based out of Austin, Texas. >> John: Another Austin. >> Yeah Austin, Texas. >> Dominant with Austin. >> It's always good to have financing. You can't go out of business if you don't run out of money. Talk about the industrial aspect. One of the things that is hot, it's not a mainstream here, is blockchain is the big announcement. But IoT is the big one. But industrial IoT's interesting because now you have the digitization of business as a big factor. And that data is going to be throwing off massive analog digital data now. So analog to digital, what's going on there? What are you guys doing there to help and where does the storage fit in? >> Yeah, I appreciate that. So IIoT, industrial there's obviously there's big clients there. There's value in this information. For us it's predictive maintenance is the big play. A study I read the other day by a Boston consulting group talks about how its services and applications in the industrial internet of things. There's an $80 billion market in the next five years with predictive maintenance leading the way as the most mature application there. So we're happy to be kind of riding on the front of that wave, really pushing the state of the art there. Predictive maintenance is valuable to clients because the idea is to predict failures, do optimization of resources, so to get more energy out of your wind farm, get more gas out of the ground, you name it. Having the software that can provide those solutions efficiently to clients without a lot of start up, but each new iteration. So having a product that can deliver that intellectual property efficiently is important. The whole goal is to be able to reduce maintenance costs and extend the useful life of assets. So that's what SparkPredict is our product, SparkPredict our product, Sparkcognition has been laboring to do. We have a successful deployment of 1,100 turbines with Invenergy, which is the largest wind production company in the United States. We're doing work with Duke, Nexterra, several other large electrical production companies, oil and gas companies as well. In Austin we're near Houston, we have a lot of energy production opportunity there. So predictive maintenance for us is a big play. >> So you guys did a session this week. You hosted a panel, is that right? So I mean no offense, but what we're talking about now is really even more interesting than storage. But it's a storage panel you were hosting, right? So what was the conversation like? >> The conversation around that was we had three software companies, Sparkcognition and two other software companies. Then we had a federal integrator. All of them are doing cloud delivery. So for example, one of the other software companies Medicat, delivers medical record keeping as a service to hospitals. They're doing predictive analytics and predictive maintenance, and also some cybersecurity out. So there were three professional software companies, and integrator. And in each case the issues were A, we need to be up and going all the time and the user doesn't know what storage we're using. But we can never fail because we're real time. In fact, one of the customers is the IRS. So the federal integrator, the IRS cloud runs on IBM storage. The entire IRS runs under IBM cloud. On our storage, but it's their cloud. It's their private cloud that they put together, that the integrator put together. The idea was we've got a cloud deployment. There's two key things your storage has to do. A, it needs to be resilient as heck because these guys and the other two companies on the software side if they cannot serve it as a service then no one's going to buy the software, right? Because software is the service. So for them it's critical in their own infrastructure that it be resilient. Then the second thing, it needs to be fast. You've got to meet the SLAs, right? So when you're thinking the system's integrator at the IRS, what do you think the SLAs are and they've got like 14 petabytes of all flash. >> You forgot dirt cheap. You got resilient as heck, lightning fast, and it's got to be dirt cheap, too. >> Well of course. >> They want all three, right? >> You have this panelist, so what Jenny, what were Jenny's three? Industrial ready, cloud based, and cognitive to the core. So you guys are, I'm on your website. It's cognitive this, cognitive that. You're cognitive to the core. You're presumably you're using industrial ready infrastructure and it's all cloud based, right? Talk about that a little bit, then I've got a follow up. >> To tie into what Eric is saying about the premium hardware, the cloud opportunity, for us to be able to to AI software, to be able to do machine learning models, these are very intensive applications that require massive amounts of CPU, IO, fast storage. To be able to get the value from that data quickly so that it's useful and actionable takes that premium hardware. So that's why we've done testing with flash system, with our cybersecurity product. One of the most innovative things that we did in the previous year was to move from a traditional architecture using X86, 64 where we had a cluster of eight servers there. Brought that down to one flash system array and we're able to get up to 20 times the performance doing things like analyzing, sorting, and ingesting data with our cybersecurity platform. So in that regard we were very much tied closely to the flash system product. That was a very successful use case. We offered a white paper on that. If anyone wants to read more that's available on the IBM website. >> Where do you find that, search it? >> Yeah, it's on IBM.com and it's basically how they used it to deliver software as a service. >> What do I search? >> If you search Sparkcognition IBM you'll find it on Google. >> My other question, my follow up is you talk about these IoT apps which are distributed by their very nature. Can we talk about the data flow? What are you seeing in terms of where the data flows? Everybody wants to instrument the windmill. You've got to connect it then you've got to instrument it. Where's the data going? You're doing analytics locally, you're sending data back. What are you seeing in the client base? >> Yeah, that's a great question. Those in the field use cases for the wind turbines for example, most of our clients they already have a data storage solution. We're not a data storage provider. The reason, and someone asked me this yesterday in a different conversation. They said why are wind turbines so ripe for the picking? It's because they're relatively modern assets. They were built with the sensors onboard. The data, they have been collecting the data since the invention of the modern wind turbine, they've been collecting this data. Generally it's sent in from the field at 10 minute intervals, usually stored in some sort of large data center. For our purposes though, we collect a feed off that data of the important information, run our models, store a small data set a few months, whatever we think we need to train that machine learning model and to retrain and balance that model. That's sort of an example where we're doing the analysis in a data center or in the cloud sort of out of the field. The other approach is sort of an edge analytics approach, you might have heard that term. That's usually for smaller devices where the value of the asset doesn't justify the infrastructure to relay the information and then deploy this large scale solution. So we actually are developing edge analytic solution, a version of our product as well working with a company called Flowserve, their the world's largest pump manufacturing company. To be able to say how can we add some intelligence the to these pumps that may operate near a pipeline or out in the oil field and be able to make those machines smarter even though they don't necessarily justify the robust IT infrastructure of a full wind turbine fleet. >> Is there a best practice that you guys see in terms of the storage? Because you bring out edge and the network. Great point, lot of diversity at the edge now, from industrial to people. But the data's got to be stored somewhere. I mean, is there a best practice? Is there a pattern to developing that you're seeing in terms of how people are approaching the data problem and applying algorithms to it? Just talk, do I move the data? Do I push to compute to the data? Thoughts on what you guys are seeing in terms of best practices. >> One of the other companies that was on the panel also is doing predictive modeling. They take 600 different feeds in real time then munge it for mostly for industrial markets, but mostly for the goods. So the raw goods that they need to make a machine or make a table or make the paper that is used behind us, or make the lights that are used here, they look at all that commodities and then they feed it out to all these consumers, not consumers but the companies that build these products. So for them, they need it real time so they need storage that's incredibly fast because what they're doing is they're putting out on super powerful CPUs loaded with D-ram, but you can only put so much D-ram in a server. They're building these giant clusters to analyze all this data and everything else is sitting on the flash. Then they push that out to their customers. Slightly different model from what Sparkcognition does, but a slightly similar except their taking it from 600 constant data sources in real time, 24 by seven, 365 and then feeding it back out to these manufacturing companies that are looking to buy all these commodities. >> You have "software defined" in your title. That was kind of the big buzzwords a few years ago. Everybody wanted to replicate the public cloud on prem. We think of it as programmable infrastructure, right? Set it and then you can start making API calls and set SLAs and thresholds, etc. Where are we at with software defined? Do you guys, does it resonate with you or is it just an industry buzzword? I'll start with Eric. >> For us we're the largest provider of software defined storage in the world. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars every year. We don't sell any infrastructure. We just sell the raw software and they use commodity infrastructure, whatever they want: hard drives, flash drives, CPUs, anything they buy from their local reseller and then create basically high-performance arrays using that software. So they create on their own. Everything is built around automation so we automatically can replicate data, snapshot data, migrate data around from box to box, move it from on-premise to a cloud through what we call transparent cloud tiering. All of that in the software defined storage is done based on automation play. So the software defined storage allows them to if you will, build their own version of our flash system by just buying the raw software and buying flash from someone else, which is okay with us because the real value's in the software, obviously as you know. That allows them to then create infrastructure of their own, but they've got the right kind of software. They're not home brewing the software it's all built around automation. That's what we're seeing in the software defined space across a number of different industries, whether it be cloud providers, banks. We have all kinds of banks that used our software defined storage and don't buy the actual underlying storage from us, just the storage software. >> Do you, you may not have visibility in this, but getting kind of geeky on it. Do you guys adopt that sort of software defined mentality in your approach? >> Yeah, so for us software defined storage is something that we've deployed for our proof of concept evaluations. The nature of the work that we do is the solution is innovative to the point where everyone needs to have some sort of proof point for themselves before the company or the client will invest in a large scale. So software defined storage and embracing that perspective has allowed us to deploy a small scale implementation without having our own dedicated hardware, for example, at different clients. That's enabled us to spin up an instance quickly, to provision that small scale deployment, to be able to prove out results at a low cost to our client. That's where we really leverage that approach. We also have used a similar approach in the cloud where we've used multi-tenant environments to be able to support our cybersecurity product, SparkSecure in a multi-tenant cloud hosted environment which brings down delivery costs as well. It allows us to slice up that data and deliver it at a low cost. As far as our large scale physical deployments for the asset monitoring and such, we really, we generally end up with a piece of a flash system or flash storage, bare metal deployment because that speed is critical whether that's the client wants to have instant monitoring of a critical asset or they have a financial services use case where we're looking for anomalies or looking for threats in the cybersecurity landscape. Having that real-time model building and model result is very critical. So having that bare metal flash system type installation is kind of our preferred route. The only other thing I would say on that is you asked earlier about our approach. For us, the security data is very important. Most of our assets are what are called critical assets. So clients are very sensitive to the security of the data. Some are still uncomfortable with a cloud deployment. Another reason why we have an affinity for the hardware deployment with IBM. >> Why IBM? >> Our company has really deep roots with IBM. My founder Amir Hussein, was actually on the board of directors of the original IBM Watson Project as well as Manoj Saxena was the original GM of the IBM Watson program. We have just a long relationship with IBM. We have a lot of mutual interest and respect for the entity. We've also found that the products are superior in many ways. We are hardware agnostic and we're an independent advisor to our clients when it comes to how to deliver our solutions. But our professional opinion based on the testing that we've done is that IBM is a top-tier option. So we continue to prescribe that to our clients. When they feel that's appropriate they make that purchase through IBM. >> Great testimonial. Eric, excited to hear that nice testimonial for you guys? Congratulations. >> He's done several panels with us and again, part of the reason for here was A, all about IoT which they're all into. All about commo which they're all into. And to show that you can do a software as a service model even in-house. They happen to be a professional software company but if you're a giant global enterprise you may actually do software as a service to your remote branch offices which is very similar to what these guys to do other companies. This gives them an example, the other two software companies the same way, to show in-house developers if you're going to have a private cloud, not go public, you can deliver software as a service internally to your own company through the dev model and do it that way. Or you can use someone like Sparkcognition or Medicat or the other companies that we showed, Z-Power, all of which were using us to deliver their software as a service with IBM flash technology. >> Dave: And you're using Watson or Watson analytics? >> Yes, so we have done integrations with Watson for our cybersecurity product. We've also done integrations with Watson rank and retrieve using the NPL capabilities to advise the analysts both in the Predict space and in the Secure space. Sort of an advisor to say what a client user could see something happening on a turbine and say what does this mean? Using a Watson corpus. I was going to add one thing, we were talking about why IBM? IBM really has been a leader in the space of cognitive computing and they've invested in bringing and nurturing small companies and bringing up entrepreneurs in that space to build that out. So we appreciate that. I think it's important to mention that. >> All right Mark, thanks so much for joining in, the great testimonial, the great insight. Good luck with your business. Congratulations on the success startup taking names and kicking butt. Eric, great to see you again, thanks for the insight and congratulations on great, happy customers and see you again. Okay, we're watching theCube live here at Interconnect 2017. More great coverage, stay with us. There will be more after this short break. (upbeat instrumental music)