(orchestral music) >> Hi, I'm Peter Burris, and welcome to another Cube conversation, from our awesome studios in beautiful Palo Alto, California. With every Cube conversation, we pick a topic, find someone to talk about. The topic today is hybrid cloud. A lot of conversation. AWS introduced Outposts, we've got Microsoft Azure talking about centralize, as well as distributed cloud offerings. Oracle is doing the same thing. A lot of conversation about hybrid cloud and what it means. To have that conversation, we've got David Floyer with us. David is the CTO of Wikibon. David, welcome back to theCUBE. >> Thank you very much, Peter. >> David, let's start by saying, that there has to be a way of representing different options when we think about hybrid cloud. You've done a lot of research in this domain. How are you representing the continuum, the taxonomy of hybrid cloud for customers? >> On the slide, it shows that there are essentially, five different multiple clouds or hybrid clouds. From left to right, it's multi-cloud, and at the bottom of the slide, it says that this essentially a set of clouds, with an integrated network. And then the next is loosely-coupled hybrid cloud, and that adds in the data plane, where we look after storage, and data protection, data management, et cetera. The middle one is tightly-coupled hybrid cloud, and that's where the control plane, is now tightly integrated along with everything else. The next one is "true" distributed hybrid cloud, and those are the ones that you were talking about. Those are the AWS Outposts, the Azure Stack, the Oracle Cloud at Customer-type environments. Also, you could put IBM, some of IBM's recent announcements into that as well. Last but not least, and certainly one of the most interesting and different, is the autonomous stand-alone clouds, are going to be at the edge. They have to be autonomous, because they can't guarantee network availability to them. >> So, five classes of cloud, each distinguished by the degree, to which they share different types of resources, including state, integration, automation, and the degree to which the application is going to be common across each of these cloud types. >> That's correct. >> Have I got that right? >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Obviously, while this is theoretical. >> Yeah. >> In a sense that we're trying to create some way, so understanding about how to represent these things. It's based on some practical observations, about where we are within the industry. >> Yeah. >> Let's start talking about multicloud. Who do you place into that bucket, of multicloud hybrid cloud styles? >> If we talk first of all about the cloud themselves, there would be clouds from AWS or Azure, or IBM or Google. Those are the clouds that you start with, you might have one on premise, but the connection between them is just on a network basis. The people who are doing that would be clearly, Cisco is one of the leading people in that area, where they already have a lot of enterprise equipment, and experience of dealing with clouds, across the whole of the area. They would be the people, that are going to be a foremost vendor, in connecting those different clouds together, on a network plane. >> Okay, let's move to the right, and talk about the loosely-coupled hybrid clouds. Now here we're having more than network, common network. We're having a common data plane, which really boils down to a common set of data services, that are rendered commonly. >> Right, yeah. >> Across different cloud instances. >> Right. >> Who's there? >> To do that, you've got to be able to have your data services, actually on each of the clouds. You have to have it in software on AWS, or Azure, or IBM, or whatever it is. Two of the people that's probably leading the charge in that area are IBM themselves. They've gone completely software, with all of their spectrum line of software in that area, and Pure. Pure Storage have been very aggressive again, in putting things up, so that they can be reflected in each of the clouds. >> And there's other vendors, that are coming in from a data protection standpoint. >> Sure. >> Data security standpoint, and they may-- Some people like Veeam. >> -not have the full set of services. >> Yes. But they are looking at how they can apply their services. >> Correct. >> Across multiple cloud instances. >> And there's a lot of vendors there. People like Veeam or Rubric, or Cohesity. DellEMC. >> Et cetera, yes. >> Okay, so let's move to the right. Now we've moved from loosely-coupled, to tightly-coupled hybrid clouds, where we're starting to share a common automation framework, more control, sharing control data so that we can start to understand, the state of applications in multiple different locations. >> Yes. >> Who's leading there? >> Some of the leads in this area, are some of the traditional ones, like IBM for example. IBM Sysplex, which came out what, 20 years ago. >> We're not. >> That is where you have state being, time and state being shared, across a whole number of different instances, or notion within that Sysplex. >> Yeah, let's talk about that specifically. So, we're talking about a global shared memory notion. >> Yes. >> More than just a name space, but actually-- >> Correct. >> -a control plane, that has global incite into where resources are, has names for them. >> Yeah. >> They may be multiple name spaces, but it's bringing a common set of controls to that global set of resources. >> Yes, and time is obviously a key aspect to help stay-- >> Well, it's got to be synchronized. >> Yes. >> Exactly. >> That's right. >> If we move to the right to true distributed hybrid cloud, in the tightly-coupled, we have a common control plane, but not necessarily common software. >> Correct. >> Common code. >> Correct. >> At the compile level. We're still utilizing distribution formats, maybe specific, et cetera. But now in a true hybrid, or true distributor hybrid cloud, it's common-common. >> Yes. >> Who's there? >> Yes, it's common code. It can run on any node without having to be recompiled, or retested. You know it's going to work. The people in there, are the people that we were talking about earlier. It's people like AWS with Outposts, Microsoft with Azure Stack, Cloud at Customer from Oracle. Three large vendors, who are using this to use a cloud first-type model, in which they can grow, the central cloud, as quickly as possible, add things to it, and push that down into the Cloud at Customer, or the Outposts, or the Stacks. >> To be clear, we're not talking about a common cloud experience, we're talking about absolute common cloud services. >> Correct. >> All the way down to the executables, so that the same software can run wherever it needs to run. >> Yes. >> Finally, let's move one step further to the right. This is the autonomous stand-alone clouds. >> Yes, this is at the edge. >> Who's there? >> This is the most different of all of these. It has to be autonomous. If you think about mobile vehicles or planes, or even think about a factory or a nuclear power plant. You have to be able to run that, assuming that the network is not going to get through. It's on the edge, so it's the most vulnerable to network. It has to be autonomous, therefore it has to be able to run by itself. That sort of cloud is mainly concerned with the state, the state of that edge. All of the devices in that edge, the windmills in that edge, or the factory robotics in that edge. In military terms, the automated units in that edge, or the drones. Whatever it is, you're concerned about the state of that. >> But specifically, sustaining local control of state. >> Correct. >> Against a common understanding. >> Yes. >> Of how these things interact with each other. >> Right. >> It brings almost a network realtime of flavor to it. >> It is realtime. It has to be realtime so it's a shared state across. For example, across the city, in terms of the traffic lights. You would see multiple of these small clouds, in different parts of a large city, for example. Which need to communicate with each other. So, you have devices, which have an inference code running on them, and they're dealing with the device, on to which it's attached. And then you have connecting all of those devices together, to make this overall system representation of the sate. >> Okay, so we've got five classes of hybrid cloud. How is a CIO going to use this taxonomy, to make better decisions? >> Clearly by making this decision, what we're doing from a taxonomy point of view, is making each one individual, and different from the others. There's no sharing between them. That means that from a description point of view, we can describe the whole of this industry. We can say how much is going on in each one, who are winners and losers in each one. >> We'll use this to size different classifications. >> Right, and give that-- >> Talk about leader, describe competition and all that stuff. >> Yes. >> But if I'm a CIO, do I think, oh, I got a business problem that's associated with applications, on various levels of common data sharing, control sharing, et cetera. Do I use this to help me chose the specific architecture that I use? >> The best way that I think that CIO's are going to use this to say, "Where am I aiming to be? What is most important to me and my business? If it is the edge, then how am I going to go through these? Because I'm not going to get to the edge on day one. How am I going to chose my vendors and my protocols, and my standards, and my data planes, and my control planes, such that I can get to that particular end point?" Within each one, you'd want to look at them individually, because you're going to put together a, first of all, in a multi-cloud environment. But you should be looking into the future, as to how you want to traverse across this, and who your major partners and vendors will be. Or, strategic partners and vendors. >> And we'll use this as you said, we'll use this specifically to size the market, describe the competitive factors, et cetera. >> Correct, yeah. All right. David Floyer, thanks very much for being on theCUBE. >> Thanks very much, indeed. >> Once again, I'm Peter Burris, and we have been talking about Cube conversations, related to true hybrid cloud taxonomies. Wikibon research. Thanks very much for watching, and until our next Cube conversation. (orchestral music)