>> Narrator: TheCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies, creating technologies that drive human progress. (upbeat music) (logo background tingles) >> Hey everyone, it's so good to see you, welcome back to theCube's day two coverage of MWC 23. We are live in Barcelona, Lisa Martin with Dave Nicholson, Dave we have had no signage of people dropping out, this conference is absolutely jam packed. There's so much interest in the industry, you've had a lot of interviews this morning, before we introduce our guests and have a great conversation about the industry and challenges and how they're being solved, what are some of the things that stuck out to you in conversations today? >> Well, I think the interesting, kind of umbrella conversation, that seems to be overlapping you know, overlying everything is this question about Open RAN and open standards in radio access network technology and where the operators of networks and the providers of technology come together to chart a better path forward. A lot of discussion of private 5G networks, it's very interesting, I think I've said this a few times, from a consumer's perspective, we feel like 5G has been with us for a long time- >> We do. >> But it's very clear that this, that we're really at the beginning of stages of this and I'm super excited for our guests that we have here because we're going to be able to talk to an actual operator- >> Yes. >> And hear what they have to say, we've heard a lot of people talking about the cool stuff they build, but we're going to get to hear from someone who actually works with this stuff, so- >> Who actually built it, absolutely. Please welcome our two guests, we have Ihab Tarazi CTO and SVP at Dell Technologies, and Juan Carlos Garcia SVP Technology Innovation and Ecosystems at Telephonica, it's great to have you guys on the program. >> So, thank you very much. >> So the buzz around this conference is incredible, 80,000 plus people, 2000 exhibitors, it's standing room only. Lot of opportunity in the industry, a lot of challenges though, Juan Carlos we'd love to get your perspective on, what are some of the industry challenges that Telephonica has faced that your peers are probably facing as well? >> Well we have two kinds of challenges, one is a business challenge, I would say that we may find in other industries, like profitability and growth and I will talk about it. And the second challenge is our technology challenge, we need the network to be ready to embrace a new wave of technologies and applications that are, you know, very demanding in terms of network characteristics and features. On the efficiency and profitability and growth, the solution comes as a challenge from changing the way networks are built and operated, from the traditional way to make them become software platforms. And this is not just at the knowledge challenge, it's also changing the mindset of network operators from a network and service provider to a digital service provider, okay? And this means several things, your network needs to become software-based so that you can manage it digitally and on top of it, you need to be able to deliver detail services digitally, okay? So there are three aspects, making your network so (indistinct) and cloud and cloud waste and then be able to sell in a different way to our customers. >> So some pretty significant challenges, but to your point, Juan Carlos, you share some of those challenges with other industries so there's some commonality there. I wanted to bring Ihab into the conversation, from Dell's perspective, we're seeing, you know, the explosion of data. Every company has to be a data company, we expect to have access to data in real time, if it's a new app, whatever it is. What are some of the challenges that you're seeing from your seat at Dell? >> Yeah, I think Juan Carlos explained that really well, what all the operators are talking about here between new applications, think metaverse, think video streaming, going all the way to the edge, think all the automation of factories and everything that's happening. It's not only requiring a whole new model for delivery and for building networks, but it's throwing out enormous amount of data and the data needs to be acted on to get the value of it. So the challenge is how do I collect the data? How do I catalog it? How do I make it usable? And then how do I make it persistent? So you know, it's high performance data storage and then after that, how do I move it to where I want to and be able to use it. And for many applications that has to happen in milliseconds for the value to come out. So now we've seen this before with enterprise but now I would say this digital transformation is happening at very large scale for all the telcos and starting to deal with very familiar themes we've seen before. >> So Juan Carlos, Telephonica, you hear from partners, vendors that they've done this before, don't worry, you're in good hands. >> Juan Carlos: Yeah, yeah. >> But as a practical matter, when you look at the challenges that you have and you think about the things you'll do to address them as you move forward, what are the immediate short term priorities? >> Okay. >> Versus the longer term priorities? What's realistic? You have a network to operate- >> Yeah. >> You're not just building something out of nothing, so you have to keep the lights on. >> Yeah. >> And you have to innovate, we call that by the way, in the CTO trade, ambidextrous, management using both hands, so what's your order of priorities? >> Well, the first thing, new technologies you are getting into the network need to come with a detail shape, so being cloud native, working by software. On the legacies that you need to keep alive, you need to go for a program to switch (indistinct) off progressively, okay? In fact, in Spain we are going to switch up the copper network in two years, so in 2024, Telephonica will celebrate 100 years and the celebration will be switching up the copper network and we'll have on the fixed access only fiber, okay. So more than likely, the network is necessary, all this digitalization may happen only on the new technologies because the new technologies are cloud-based, cloud native, become already ready for this digitalization process. And not only that, so you need also to build new things, we need an abstraction layer on top of the physical infrastructure to be able to manage the network by software, okay. This is something that happened in the computing world, okay, where the servers, you know, were covered with a cloud stack layer and we are doing the same thing in the network. We are trained to abstract the network services and capabilities and be able to offer them digitally to our customers. And this is a process that we are ongoing with many initiatives in the market, so one was the CAMARA community that was opened in Linux Foundation and the other one was the announcement we made yesterday of the open gateway initiative here at Mobile World Congress where all telecom operators have agreed to launch in this year a set of service APIs that are common worldwide, okay. This is a similar thing to what we did with 2G 35 years ago, to agree on a standard way of delivering a service and in this case is digital services based on APIs. >> What's the net result of? What are the benefits of having those open standards? Is it a benefit that myself as a consumer would enjoy? It seems, I mean, I've been, I'm old enough to remember, you know, a time before cellular telephones and I remember a time when it was very, very difficult to travel from North America to Europe with a cell phone. Now I land and my provider says, "Hey, welcome-" >> Juan Carlos: Yes. >> "Welcome, we're going to charge you a little extra money." And I say, "Hallelujah, awesome." So is part of that interoperability a benefit to consumers or, how, what? >> Yeah, you touch the right point. So in the same way you travel anywhere and you want to still make a call and send an SMS and connect to the internet, you will like your applications in your smartphone to work being them edge applications, okay, and these applications, each application will have to work to be executed very close to where you are, in a way that if you travel abroad the visitor network is serving you, okay. So this means that we are somehow extending the current interconnection and roaming agreements between operators to be able also to deliver edge applications wherever you are, in whatever network, with whatever technology. >> We have that expectation on the consumer side, that it's just going to work no matter where we are, we want apps to be updated, whether I'm banking or I'm shopping for groceries, I want to make sure that they know who I am, the data's got to be there, it's got to be real time, it's got to be right, it's got to serve me personally, but it just has to work. You guys talked about some of the big challenges, but also the opportunities in terms of the future of networking, the data turning companies in the data companies. Walk us through the future of networking from Telephonica's lens, you talked about some of the big initiatives that you have by 2024. >> Yes. >> But if you had a crystal ball and you could look in there and go it looks like this for operators, what would you say? And I'd love to get your feedback too. >> Yeah, I liked how Juan Carlos talked about how the future is, I think I want to add one thing to it, to say, a lot of times the user is no longer a consumer, it's an automated thing, you know, AI think robots, so a lot of times, more and more the usage is happening by some autonomous thing and it needs to always connect. And more and more these things are extending to places where even cellular coverage doesn't exist today, so you have edge compute show up. So, and when you think about it, the things we have to solve as a community here and this is all the discussions is, number one, how you make it a fully open standard model, so everything plugs and play, more and more, there's so many pieces coming, software, hardware, from different components and the integration of all of that is probably one of the biggest challenges people want solved. You know, how it's no longer one box, you buy from one person and put it away, now you have a complex combination of hardware and software. Also the operational model is very important and that is one of the areas we're focused on at Dell, is that while the operational model works inside the data centers for certain application, for telcos, it looks different when you're out at the cell tower and you're going to have these extended temperature changes. And sometimes this may not be inside a cabinet, maybe outside and the person servicing it is not an IT technician. This is somebody that needs to know exactly how to plug it, to be able to place equipment quickly and add capacity, those are just two of the areas, the cloud, making it work like a cloud, where it's intuitive, automated and you can easily add capacity, you can, you know, get a lot of monitoring, a lot of metrics, those are some of the things that we're all solving in this community. >> Let's talk about exactly how you're achieving this, Telephonica and Dell have been working together for a couple of years, you said before we went live. Talk about, you're doing this, you talked about the challenges, the opportunities how are you solving them and why with Dell? >> Okay, well you need to go with the right partners, not to this kind of process of transforming your network into a digital platform. There are big challenges on creating the cloud infrastructure that you need to support the complex, functionality and network requires. And I think you need to have with you, companies that know about the processors, that know about the hardware, the server, that know about how to make an abstraction of that hardware layer so that you can manage that digitally and this is not something any company can do, so you need companies that are very specialized. Telecom operators are changing the way to work, we work in the past with traditionally, with network equipment vendors, now we need to start working with technology providers, hardware (indistinct) providers with cloud providers with an ecosystem that is probably wider than what we had in the past. >> Yes. >> So I come from a background, I call myself a "knuckle dragging hardware engineer" sort of guy, so I'm almost fascinated by the physical part of this. You have a network, part of that network includes towers that have transmitters, receivers, at the base of those towers and like you mentioned, they're not all necessarily in urban areas or easy to access. There's equipment there, let's say that, that tower has been there for 5 years, 10 years, in the traditional world of IT, we have this this concept of the "refresh cycle" >> Juan Carlos: Yeah. >> Where a server may have a useful life of 36 months before it's consuming more power than it should based on the technology. How do you move from, kind of a legacy more proprietary, all-inclusive stack to an open system? I mean, is this a, "Okay, we're planning for an outage for the tower and you're wheeling out old equipment and wheeling in new equipment?" >> Juan Carlos: Yeah. >> I mean that's not, that's what we say as a non-trivial exercise, it's something that isn't, it's not something that's just easy to do, but is that what progress looks like? Sort of, methodically one site at a time? >> Yeah, well, I mean, you have touched an important point. In the technology renewal cycles, we were taking an appliance and replacing that by another one. Now with the current technology, you have the couple, the hardware from the software and the hardware, you need to replace it only when you run out of processing capacity to do what you want, okay? So then we'll be there 2, 3, 4, 5 years, whatever, when you need additional capacity, you replace it, but on the software side you can make the replacement every hour, every week. And this is something that the new technologies are bringing, a flexibility for the telecom operator to introduce a new feature without having to be physically there in the place, okay, by software remotely and this is the kind of software network we want to build. >> Lisa Martin: You know- >> Yeah, I want to add to that if I can- >> Please. >> Yeah. >> I think this is one of the biggest benefits of the open model. If the stack is all integrated as one appliance, when a new technology, we all know how quickly selecon technology comes out and now we have GPU's coming out for AI more increasingly, in an appliance model it may take you two years to take advantage of some new selecon that just came out. In this new open model, as Juan Carlos was saying, you just swap out, you know, you have time to market CPUs launched, it can be put out there at the cell tower and it could double capacity instantly and we're going to need that in that world, that easily going to be AI enabled- >> Lisa Martin: Right. >> So- >> So my last question to you, we only got a minute left or so, is given everything that we've talked about, the challenges, the opportunities, what you're doing together, how would you Juan Carlos summarize how the business is benefiting from the Dell partnership and the technologies that you're enabling with this new future network? >> Well, as I said before, we will need to be able to cover all the characteristics and performance of our network. We will need the right kind of processing capacity, the right kind of hardware solutions. We know that the functionality of the network is a very demanding one, we need hardware acceleration, we need a synchronization, we need time-sensitive solutions and all these can only done by hardware, so you need a good hardware partner, that ensures that you have the processing capacity you need to be able then to run your software, you know, with the confidence that it will work and with the performance that you need. >> That confidence is key. Well it sounds like what Telephonica and Dell have achieved together has been quite successful. Congratulations on the first couple of years, sounds like it's really helping Telephonica's business move in the strategic direction that it wants. We appreciate you joining us on the program today, describing all this, thank you both so much for your time. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you, this was fun. >> A pleasure. >> Good, our pleasure. For our guests and for Dave Nicholson, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE live day two from Barcelona, MWC 23. Don't go anywhere, Dave and I will be right back with our next guests. (cheerful bouncy music)

>>Yes. >>Welcome to this cube conversation. I'm Lisa Martin, and I'm joined by two Cube alumni. Please welcome Tarazi, senior vice president and CEO, networking at Dell Technologies. Welcome back. And welcome to the Virtual >>Cube. Thank you. I'm excited about this. Thank you. >>We're gonna have a good conversation, because VJ Ramachandran is also here. VP of product management at VM Ware VJ Welcome back. >>Thank you, Lisa. And happy to be here again. >>So have a lot to unpack. We're on the cusp of the emerald 2021. You guys are making an announcement We want to talk about in the Emmy. Why? It's important will break down the announcement. Go ahead and start. Uh, we'll start with you. Envy me. Why is it important? What is it? All that good stuff? >>Yeah, this is excellent topic, and this is really an important component of infrastructure these days. Um, modern applications are changing how they consume infrastructure. That's because the workloads are evolving. Some of them are ai type machine learning workloads that need very high performance. There's also a continued to end by our customers to put work clothes in public cloud and on um and create a hybrid multi cloud model. Um, and also the new exciting stuff is all have to do with the edge applications and distributing applications everywhere with automation and connectivity to where they need to be operating with, you know, on premise. Uh, so long Storey short, These trends, these new applications, how the deployment models work is really diving the need for envy me becoming the key technology for getting your data and storage and with envy me of a fabric and connectivity is starting to become a very important topic. >>How do you have those discussions with customers in terms of their next steps, especially in the last year and a half will stay with you that we've seen such acceleration of digital transformation. What have those customer conversations? How have they changed? >>Uh, they the conversations have changed in two big ways. One, they really want to discuss outcomes. They know that we can bring, you know, industry leading infrastructure and tools and automation and software. But they really want to discuss outcomes, you know? How do you How do I automate my you know, operations? How do I get to unpack the value of my data? no matter what the data is eyes and where it's coming. So so that's the first big changes. People have shifted completely to outcomes. And the second change is that now there is a really good discussion about performance and sustainability. How do I make sure that I'm meeting my sustainability goals? I'm meeting my performance goals instead of just discussing one piece of the solution. >>Got a BJ wanna bring you into the conversation? Now talk to me about BME Front and its evolution from VM Ware's perspective and some of the changes that you've seen in the last dynamic 18 months in the market. >>Yeah, thanks. Thanks for being, You know, I think that we are living in interesting times now. What we're seeing from the standpoint is that applications are evolving rapidly, demanding more performance, local agencies, higher throughput. And these are modern applications and NBA me. What we're seeing is that NBN me as a protocol is becoming the de facto sort of connected with protocol police applications at the same time. What we're also seeing is that the infrastructure team at scale and then deploy these applications at scale They are moving towards a disaggregated architecture in the data centre, and all the employees are going towards this because they want to emulate, you know, the public club. And so you know what's exciting about this announcement and sort of the, you know, the you know, what we are delivering together the bell is that the combination of Indian P plus T c p I P provides in sort of brings both these worlds together. It provides performance and legacies that these new applications these these new modern applications need at the same time provides a way that is disaggregated. And so the combination of these two is You know, it's, uh, industries changing, in my opinion, and and we'll see that this will become sort of the the fact that we can deploy infrastructure in our data centres. And that's what we're seeing in December. >>Got it? Thank you. Let's go ahead and unpack that announcement. That VJ alluded to telling them or have announced an end to end envy. Any TCP ecosystem solution back over to you. You have talked to me about this. What is it? What are some of the core components and we'll get into >>benefits. Perfect. So So we both see envy any of D c P I p as this new future storage connectivity. And it is a pivotal moment for the industry. There's always been debate about what protocols you use for connecting storage for performance speed. But the time has come for envy any of the TCP IP to become the defect of future protocol. Uh, what we're announcing is, first of all, we're announcing a new, uh, software product called S S s from Dell. And that software product will automate the discovery provisioning and automate the setup of all the storage networking How you connect all the hosts to the storage targets in a fully automated way. This is something that has been very complex, very hard to do manually in a one by one. So that's a whole new software product. Number two announcing the availability of envy me over TCP I pee on our key Dell products, which is power store power edge, which is our server product, and also power switch, which is our networking product. So the combination of the new software tool S. S s and all the availability of envy. Emile, that TCP ip on our compute storage and networking that gives customers the ecosystem to be able to use it along with the capabilities that are essential for it. >>Yeah, And DJ head was going to add to what you have just said. You know, of course, being there is fully committed to bringing this, uh, option of NBA me, You know, along with the partnership, Del, um you know, to the market and has been our partnership has been instrumental in bringing this to the market. Now, you know, the cool thing about this particular announcement and, you know, and what to bring to the market is that the smart fabric, uh, services manager is actually built into the centre. So, you know, from the understand point of this fear administrator being the administrator can so stay with them. They're the centre, um, you know, console and be able to manage provision, manage and monitor, Um, you know, in the in your fabric, uh, me or the PCP, uh, connexions. And so it's sort of bridges the gap between storage and, uh, world with you will >>and also the V sphere. The launch of, uh, envy any of the TCP I p and V. Sphere seven you see is the last component of this announcement between putting S S s inside the Centre V sphere enhancements and the Dell products. The end result is the customers get this bump and new capability. However, they can continue to use all the management tools that they have today. So this is an easy automated lift and they get this new capability >>an easy automated lift. Though that sounds like magic to I'm sure a lot of folks ears sticking with you talk to me about this is a new direction for Dell and talk to me a little bit about that and the impact. >>I think the new direction is that we have supported multiple protocols for connectivity fibre channel R d m A. But I think now, as we go to this next evolution and the fact that the world is going to multi cloud and edge and distribution, the new direction here is we're putting a lot of investment and energy, both of us into making envy me over TCP IP automated and high performance. As VJ said, we've been collaborating for over two years on this project jointly that included new standards, new innovation, new software capabilities, new divers on all our products. So although we make it sounds simple. This is a company wide on both sides. Innovation effort to make this possible. >>Absolutely a big innovation effort. DJ, Go >>ahead. And I was gonna say, you know, just to second what we have said, we work as one team you know, begin to companies. But we work as one team and really brought some innovative features and functionality out of the market and, you know, too excited to see this come to fruition. We're working on it for two years now. >>So two years before the pandemic started, I'm curious to get both of your perspectives on how the tunnels of the economy and the market of the last 18 months have influenced. We've seen so much acceleration in digital. How has this interesting time affected or accelerated what you're announcing? Or has it? >>I will start on V say, you know, whatever you'd like to add is that I think what we have seen during the pandemic is acceleration of adopting of a cloud operating model by using more of public cloud but also using automation that we have built into our products, both vm ware and L. And so this kind of automated type software tools falls completely in line with that. You know, customers more and more want the infrastructure automated and they wanted cloud light with as a service, usage based type models. And we're both invested into that area. >>Yeah, And you know, Lisa, if anything at all in the last, uh, two years since the Pandemic, what we're what we're refining is that it's no longer a decision between on Prem or Public Club, But it's actually and and decision, you know, it's on from and public clothes is truly becoming a multicultural world. And so to make this multi cloud, and then customers deploy the right applications and write workload in the right place, depending on the needs. And so, in this multiple world, having this automation and having a consistent way too, uh, to manage infrastructure, uh, in an automated fashion across these multi coloured deployments is becoming key. And so this is a key component of that. What we did, what pronouncing is a key component of that kind of a model, that customers are moving to >>it. Let's talk about the customer benefits you both mentioned performance sustainability, low latency, high throughput. Give me examples of each of those of how this technology will deliver that for customers across industries. >>This is where we've really enjoyed working together and with VJ and his team did fantastic work to test the value of having this partnership is the end to end. Customer sees the performance and benefit from the eyes of using both the software stack from Dell and VM Ware as well as the infrastructure below it. And we've been able to jointly test what the customer will see and what we have seen, which I have to say was a surprise to us. We expected benefits, but even it was one of those Aha moment. Oh my God, this is We thought it was good, but it turned out to be even better. So on the performance side, it's about 2.5 to 3 times the performance of ice crazy, which is the other technology we would compare this to on the Latin Seaside is 70% less latency and uses even less capacity in terms of CPU. We have not seen that kind of performance improvement from a protocol for a very long time. Changing networking protocols usually gives you some little benefit, but not this kind of a step functional performance. So I think the customers will be very excited about this. >>These are some numbers, PJ go ahead and extend onto that. >>No, I You know, I have nothing more to add because, you know, we having extremely encouraged by the performance numbers that you know, that we saw and, you know, and and and here, this red we actually exceeded expected our expectations, right? And if you, the enemy, was the was the right way to sort of, you know, delivered performance. But, uh, you know, to see this kind of results in real world as, uh is very encouraging. >>You guys said there are several sessions at BM world that are covering this topic. I'd like to get both of your perspectives on some of the sessions that you're presenting in and some of the key takeaways that the audience can learn. I have. We'll start with you. >>Yeah. I mean, we're starting with a session to explain the overall strategy, and we're gonna show demos. Exactly how would you use VM Ware software and L s F s s to configure Implement. How does that compare to the customer experience today? That's going to be an exciting session between myself and Paul Turner, who is the VP of product. Also at the end, where I think that that kind of with these visual demos, people will see how fast automated that is, which is really the message here. Then we have multiple sessions from our key technical experts. We're gonna go through a deep technology review of the stack and how to do it. And the functionality. >>Yeah, and Lisa on on the other side of obviously you have a number of sessions on various topics. Uh, on storage. The one that I want to call out is there's a session that I'm doing with Mark flashing who's a city or for storage and for club platform. Really. And we are discussing VMS vision and strategy for storage and availability, and NBA me is certainly a key part of that. But as we just talked earlier, the whole automation and the multiplayer aspect of, uh of the parameters it's critical. So you know. So we're sharing what? How we are approaching this whole multiple world. Um, in this, you know, with storeys and availability innovation. So I'm really excited about that. >>So a lot of news coming out on the nbn me over TCP ip front talked about the collaboration acceleration of that, the directional shift in terms of go to market and availability. When where can existing customers go to learn more information? What's the joint gtm that Del. And then we have, >>uh I think you wanna start on V sphere and I'll add or >>Okay, >>so all the products we talked about today from V sphere seven dot you the power store power edge All of them will be available starting immediately after VM World And between October and November, everything we talked about will be available And during the, um, world, we will announce how customers can use it downloaded by it. As we said before, because they are a s s s is implemented into the centre. This will be a familiar way for customers to use it downloaded and implemented, and a new lease of these fears something customers are used to. We have many customers on power store, so they will be getting a new software at least an update with the new functionality. We we do plan to care developer experience, modules, sandboxes for people to play with will make more announcements on that in the future. >>Yeah, And this, You know, as you have said, this functionality is built into, you know, the spear and recenter as well. And so the next really next release of the sphere will have this functionality. And you'll see a lot of noise about this at the world. That sort of our coming out party. Mm. >>Excellent. Well, it sounds like it's going to be a good coming out party with a lot of information to come around. The emerald timeframe, some great education and deep technical dive is that you guys and your teams will be providing to customers in all industries, which I'm sure they will be very much appreciative of. I appreciate both of you coming on sharing with me the news. What's exciting about this? The impact that's going to make and we look forward to hearing some of the news as it gets rolled out. >>Thank you. >>Thank you so much. >>Lisa. Thank >>you. Great to have you guys for Ihab Tarazi and VJ Ramachandran. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching a cube >>conversation? Mm.

>> live from San Francisco, celebrating 10 years of high tech coverage. It's the Cube covering Veum World 2019 brought to you by VM Wear and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back here on the Cube, we continue our coverage. We're live in San Francisco. Mosconi, North Day to wrapping up Day two of our three days of coverage here, Veum. World 2019 day Volante. John Wall's glad to have you with us here on the Cube. And we're now joined by Kevin Schatz. Camera. Who's the Vice president of service provider Strategy and solutions. A deli. Um, See, Kevin. Good to see this afternoon. Thank you. You as well. And, uh, yeah, Tarazi, Who is the S v p and chief technical officer at Dell Technologies in the heart. Good to see you. Thanks for taking the time to be with us. A couple of telco guys and we've had a lot of telco on and talking about it in terms of progress that you made. This was an area that you got into with a major commitment, some probably three years ago. Kind of bitch market for me then for where you were there on on day one to where you are now today and the progress you've made and maybe the service is that you're about to provide. Yeah, >> sure. So I think if we look over the last three years, our opportunity that we defined early on telecommunications space was the virtual ization, and software to find everything was leaving the data center. And we would see the software to find architecture extend all the way from radio through the core network through the cloud over a period of time. And it started with technologies like network function virtualization. So if we flash back three years ago, where our entire strategy was built on the premise that relationships with the network equipment providers like Nokia and Ericsson, where our primary path to market our primary opportunity, I think what we've realized is we've emerged in this space to a greater detail is that our expertise, our expertise and experience in building I T Networks and Building Cloud has led to the first wave of conversations in the telecommunications industry directly not through the network equipment providers, but that carriers want to engage directly with Delhi emcee for the lessons learned and how did to play. I tr detectors. And now, as we extend towards the edge that they want to engage directly with Del Technologies in terms of how we build cloud architectures. We've had a number of big announcements. Over the last several years. We've announced partnerships and engagements with NTT. We've announced partnerships and engagements with China Unicom. Just in the last three months, we've announced partnerships with our rounds around network EJ out of France and then most recently with 18 C on the automation of EJ infrastructure related to their airship project. I think from a benchmark perspective, it's just been a continued growth opportunity for us and recognition that the more we engaged in, the more we contribute as a productive member of what is a very complex and changing and transforming industry, the more success in relationships that will build, and the more it will translate into opportunity to sell to >> when you think about you have the the modernization of N F. E. For example, as a former technologist inside a large telco, Um, what were some of the challenges? Is it? It's taken a long time. Obviously, when you talk to some of the telcos, they say, Well, you know it affects our infrastructure, but we still get this application mass. I mean, maybe you could add some color and describe for our audience why it's been so challenging. >> Yeah, I think that's an excellent question. Um, going back to my days at Telco on data centers, even S d n and the software defined tools were just beginning to show up. So the biggest challenges where you were basically having toe work with predefined operating system. But he defined hardware. The hardware was not exposed for for GAM ability, the ability to take advantage of it. And then you had to interrogate multiple players of technology in a way where it took significant time, too, not only for software development, but for product development and user experience. Since then, many of those walls have come down, and some of them have come down very hard. When you look at what we're doing, Adele here and we lead for the open networking. Not only do you have the choice of operating system were also pushing hard. Don't new open operating systems for networking like Sonic with Microsoft and bade calm. And then we're taking industry leading steps to expose the silicon chips themselves for four GAM ability. These are all the components that are critical. When you talk about five G, for example, do you really have to have those capabilities? I also would say that the software evolution have made it to infrastructure. The Dev ops and the modern applications we talk about here is also available for infrastructure, which means you really can develop a capability in weeks instead of years and months. Five people can do in amazing parkas. All of this was not possible before, >> so we talked to Shekhar about this in the earlier segment challenges in the telco business. I mean, the one hand you got these quasi monopolies in some cases real monopolies that just chug along and do pretty well. But the same time you got the cost for a bit dramatically coming down, you've got the data growth doing this. You got over the top providers taking advantage of the those those networks, and so new infrastructure allows them to be more more agile. But there's a workforce component to that, and there's a skill set, and that's how they got to transform. I wonder if you could maybe talk about that a little bit. Kevin. >> Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think when we work within this industry, it's not just a technology conversation. It's the ability to consume an operationalized technology. And I think that comes down to a number of different things, comes down to the processes that exist when it comes down to the skill sets that exists to be able to build these new processes around. And I think if we flash back several years ago, the model of how we build networks was that the team that operated it needed to understand networking. Right now, if you look at the team that needs to operate it, they need to understand networking. They need to understand, compute. They need to understand virtualization. They need to understand AP eyes. They need to be able to script and program. They need to understand some level of data science that they can close a loop in the operational models eventually with a I and machine learning technologies. So I think that the teams that are getting built look very different than the single soul capabilities that they've had in the past, right? These air smaller teams they're more agile teams that can develop and have their own more unique processes in each part of the network. Right? And even if we think about the organizational structures, we've always built vertical organizations. Right? When I had an appliance, that was an e p. C. I had an operations team that was focused on an e p. C. And I even broke that into an S gateway P Gateway and Emma, me et cetera. If we look at the world now, that s Gateway P Gateway. Mm E consists of a server consists of the networking that connects at server consists of a virtual ization layer. It consists of a stack of a software application, and all of those need to be automated, orchestrated program toe work as any PC does. So I think that the skill sets have just really expanded in terms of what's expected, >> and this is really important because the process is used to be pretty well known and hardened, so the infrastructure could be hard, and now it's of every every months, the more the market changes right. What kind of what kind of challenges is that bring to the telco provider? But also to the infrastructure provider. >> Yeah, I actually I have a really good way to describe what I think is happening. We heard it from a lot of our customers and not just tell cause but enterprises. I would say the last 5 to 10 years everybody's been dealing with Hybrid Cloud. The Move to Cloud Waas. The Big Challenge. While this remains a key challenge, a new challenge showed up, which is how to succeed in this new modern software development model. You know, are you able to do to move at that speed, which means you have full stack engineers? Can you develop the app beginning to end? It's not a nightie model anymore. Also, you no longer have an operations team. You really have to have saris who, able with software and also the customer service, changed to a softwood Devyn. So we're starting to hear from a lot of our customers. That's the next journey they really need help with. If you think of infrastructure, those challenges are even bigger, and this is where it's important to lean on technology partners who can help you with that, >> and you hit on five G a little bit ago. You have in your initial statement and we've kind of touched on the impact that it can have in terms of you understanding there. They're going to a transformative time, right? I mean, telcos are with new capabilities, and new opportunities in this whole edge is gonna be crazy. So you've got to you've got I would say some learning to do, but you have. You've got to get up to speed on what their new fundamentals are going to be, right? Yeah, I think that's >> true. I think where you know, we we've understood >> their fundamentals because it's the same transition that the IittIe world's gone through. And to a large degree, that cloud world has gone through. I think that the challenge we've we've been working to break through collectively as an industry is the paralysis at the rate of adoption of new technologies because they're so much change so quickly because we talk about virtualization. And then we're talking about kubernetes. We're talking about cloud native we're talking about Ah, bare Metal Service's. We continue to talk about Micro Micro Service's architectures. We see this progression of technology that's happening so fast in various segments of the industry. I think that the telecommunications industry has been somewhat paralyzed in terms of where do they jump in and which do they adopt and how fast they migrate between them. And which of them can be capable of being hardened to be telco grade and fit into their requirements. That they have for being able to offer regulated service >> is paralyzed because it's just too fast. It's too fast for a big amazed, a big decision to make for big. But but things are evolving too quickly. That's that's It's evolving >> too quickly. And they also sometimes have a concern that they get stuck on a dead end path, right, Because things change so quickly it's Do I jump here? Then here, then here, then here, Then here. Where do I follow a logical path and what we tend to find when we work with the telecommunications industry is that, yes, del technologies can define a strategy. Certainly VM wear and L E. M. C can define our individual strategies. Are operators can define their strategies. But there's just not one strategy for this industry. Reality is, is that when you get when you get together with an ecosystem of partners, and you work at a particular telecommunications company. That is a strategy, and you start from scratch when you go to the next right because they're their ability to consume technology. It's just so different the end game, maybe the same across the board. But the path to get there will look different, >> so every customer's different Get that. But clearly some patterns must be emerging. So my question is, where do you start your sitting down with What are you seeing in terms of common starting points and advice you'd give Thio? >> I think that to Maine has everybody starting with First of all, the physical infrastructure. Compute storage Networking is moving to X 86 model of some sort, which means many, many parts of their infrastructure today that is not based on X 86 needs to transition. So what? Seeing big art piece significant discussions of how you take compute and this new programmable networking and put it everywhere like in thousands of locations. So infrastructure wise, that is a known specific thing to be solved at early stages and given you know, that capability he's we've delivered toward enterprises. We have a lot of tools and capabilities to give them, and the 2nd 1 is that a lot of people are approaching this as a network issue. In reality, it's a cloud decision, not a network. You hurt Shaker, talk about it so the tools capabilities you need to build a cloud is completely different. This cloud may not be genetic cloud it needs to be. It needs to support the defense specific platforms under for they want Cloud, and they needed to support the specific capabilities. So that's the two. A year ago, nobody even could articulate. That was the challenge they were facing. But I would say that's what we are today. >> I would add to that that as we kind of think about the infrastructure and then that cloud decision that there's abstractions that exist between those right at the infrastructure layer, there is the need tohave, an automation system that has the ability to support multiple different cloud platforms that sit on top of it. And that's work that we're doing in the deli in seaside and then secondary to that at the cloud layer. It's the ability to support a multi virtualization environment. Virtual machines do exist and will continue to exist. Kubernetes and cloud native containerized applications do exist and will continue to exist. And the challenge becomes. How do I orchestrate an environment that allows those two exist simultaneously and be layered on top of a common building block of infrastructure? And I think that's really the power that the broader Del Technologies has is that we have all of these entities and capabilities in house. >> How long does this take? A telco toe transform is this decade. Is it? Is it Maur can Obviously certain parts can happen faster. But when when you sit down with with customers and they put together their plans, I mean, what what what's their time horizon? >> So I would argue that we define the first NFI standards and 2012. And if we look globally and even within the vast majority of the Indus story and carriers were somewhere in the 10 to 15% range, yeah, >> yeah, that too compelling. Uh, hey, is that enough? Maybe be a forcing function for making some of those decisions. Are the economics on moving toe X 86 are very compelling. It's 10 times the speed to deploy, and it's a massive order of magnitude and costs. Therefore, it's not something that you could wait on as you continue to build capacity. So that's is forcing the infrastructure decision. The second forcing function is that what five G's starting to look like is not network and wireless, independent from enterprise solutions, you really have to collapse. The single infrastructure you know to offer service is and why it lists embedded on That's another forcing function in terms of enterprises is starting to ask for those capabilities. >> You know, you mentioned X 86 couple times and when you think about the Telco Cloud generically what we're talking about here in the in the commercial cloud not to tell ghost no commercial but the mainstream cloud you're getting a lot of offload, you know, hardware offload alternative processing arm uh, GP use F p g a Z even, you know, custom, a six coming back. You've seen the same thing in the Telco club >> for sure, I think I think if if you look at what we've done over the last several years, we've seen this dramatic shift in almost a pendulum swing away from a six and proprietary hardware towards everything on X 86 I think what we've learned over the last several years at X 86 is a platform that has its value. But it's just not for every work with So we've seen things like network slicing and control, user plane separation and technologies that her first moving user playing very high Io applications back onto smart nicks and F PJs and eventually onto merchant silicon with programmable silicate in the network switches. But I think that even if you look at what's happening in in Public Cloud with things like GPU virtualization, they're still largely virtualized in the time domain, which means that they're used by a particular application for a period of time and then the next application scheduled it in the next application schedule. Is it that doesn't work for network workloads? So I think that what we're finding is we go to this Toko Cloud model, especially with offload in the virtual ization of Acceleration Technologies, is that it's an entire set of problems that just aren't solved in public cloud yet. >> Yeah, I would say, based on experience, the vast majority of network workloads have to be x 86 I definitely think arm cores and GPO offloads will play all at some point in the future. But they that's not the heavy duty that you need to offload those functions because most of these network applications were it. And for custom, a sick. That's very high performance that you know, it has high throughput. Security, built in ability to build service is directly into the silicon. So that kind of transition over time you'll feed. You see a lot of distributed applications, it and container formats all the way at the edge. But that transition to that kind of distributed model from what we are today is probably not possible. And I would argue you'll always have their mics off high performance, high throughput. I mean, think about it. If you're trying to activate 20,000 I ot devices instantly, you really need a high core density, you know, x 86 chip with significant memory. You really worry about the data plane and how much data you can put. So it's better >> we didn't even hit I ot dead. Wait, wait Another day, Another conversation. Hey, thanks for the time. We certainly appreciate it. Been a good show I for you all to write for, sir? Good. Good energy. Good vibes and good business. Thanks for the time We appreciate it. >> Thank you, guys. Thank >> you very much for your time. >> Watching the Cube live coverage Here it Veum World 2019 in San Francisco. Thank you.

>> Narrator: Live from Santa Clara, California it's theCUBE. Covering Open Networking Summit 2017. Brought to you by the Linux Foundation. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Santa Clara at the Open Networking Summit 2017. We haven't been here for a couple years. Obviously Open is everywhere. It's in hardware, it's in compute, it's in store, and it's certainly in networking as well. And we're excited to be joined first off by Scott Raynovich who will be co-hosting for the next couple of days. Good to see you again Scott. >> Good to see you. >> And our next guest is Ihab Tarazi. He's the EVP and CTO of Equinix. Last time we saw Ihab was at Open Compute Project last year, so great to see you again. >> Yeah, thank you very much, good to be here. I really enjoyed the interview last year so thanks for having me again. >> Now you set it at the high bar, so hopefully we can pull it off again. >> We can do it. >> So first off for folks that aren't familiar with Equinix, give them kind of an overview. Because you don't have quite the profile of Amazon and Google and the other cloud providers, but you're a pretty important piece of the infrastructure. >> Ihab: Yeah absolutely. While we're nowhere close to the size of those players, the place we play in the universe is very significant. We are the edge of the cloud, I would say. We enable all these players, they're all our biggest customers. As well all the networks are our biggest customers. We have over 2,000 clouds in our data centers and over 1,400 networks. We have one of the largest global data center networks. We have 150 data centers and four eMarkets around the world. And that number is going to get a little bigger. Now we announce the acquisition of Verizon data center assets. So we'll have more data centers and a few more markets. >> I heard about the Verizon acquisition, so congratulations, just adding more infrastructure. But let's unpack it a little bit. Two things I want to dig into. One is you said you have clouds in your data centers. So what do you mean by that? >> Yeah the way the cloud architecture is deployed is that the big cloud providers will have these big data centers where they build them themselves and it hosts the applications. And then they work with an edge for the cloud. Either a caching edge or compute edge, or even a network edge in data centers like ours where they connect to all their enterprise customers and all the networks. So we have a significant number of edges, we have 21 markets around the world. We have just about the big list of names, edges, that you can connect to automatically. From AWS, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce.com, Oracle, anybody else you think of. >> So this is kind of an extension of what we heard back a long time ago with you guys and like Amazon specifically on this direct connect. So you are the edge between somebody else's data center and these giant cloud providers. >> Absolutely. And since the last time we talked, we've added a lot more density. More edge nodes and more markets and more new cloud providers. Everywhere from the assess to the infrastructure as a service provider. >> And why should customers care? What's the benefit to your customers for that? >> Yeah the benefit is really significant. These guys want direct access to the cloud for high performance and security. So everybody wants to build the hybrid cloud. Now it's very clear the hybrid cloud is the architecture of choice. You want to build a hybrid cloud, then you want to deploy in a data center and connect to the cloud. And the second thing that's happening, nobody's using just one cloud. Everybody's doing a multi-cloud. So if you want 40, 50 clouds like most companies do, most CIOs, then you're going to want to be in a data center that has as many as possible. If you're going to go global, connect to multi-cloud and have that proximity, you're going to have a hard time finding somebody like Equinix out there. >> Yeah but I've got a question. You mentioned the Verizon deal. There was a trend for a while where all these big service providers were buying data centers, including AT&T, CenturyLink, and now the trend appears to have reversed. Now they're selling the data centers that they bought. I'd love your insight on that. Why that just wasn't their core competency? Why are the selling them back to people like Equinix. >> Yeah that's a good question. What's happened over time as the cloud materialized, is the data canters are much more valuable if they're neutral. If you can come in and connect to all the clouds and all the networks, customers are much more likely to come in. And therefore if a data center is owned by a single network, customers are not as likely to want to use it because they want to use all the networks and all the clouds. And our model of neutrality and how we set up exchanges, and how we provide interconnection, and the whole way we do customer service, is the kind of things people are looking for. >> So you're the Switzerland of the cloud. >> And so the same assets become much more valuable in this new model. >> And I don't know if people understand quite how much direct connection and peer-to-peer, and how much of that's going on, especially in a business-to-business context to provide a much better experience. Versus you know the wild wooly internet of days of old where you're hopping all over the place, Lord knows how many hops you're taking. A lot of that's really been locked down. >> I think the most important step people can think about is by 2020 90% of all the internet, or at least 80 to 90, will be home to the top 10 clouds. Therefore the days of the wild internet, while that continues to be significant, the cloud access and interconnection is very critical, and continues to be even bigger. >> Go ahead. >> So tell us what the logistics are of managing the growth, like you opening how many data centers a year, and how much equipment are you moving into these data centers. We spend over a billion dollars a year on upgrading, adding capacity, and building new data centers. We usually announce five, six, new ones a year. We usually have 20 plus projects, if not more, active at any time. So we have a very focused process and people across the globe manage this thing. We don't want to go dark in any of our key matters like Washington DC, the D.C. market, or let's say the San Jose, Silicon Valley, etc. Because customers want to come in and continue to add and continue to bring people. And that means not only expanding the existing data centers, but buying land and building more data centers beside it, and continue to expand where we need to. And then every year or so we go into one or two more emerging markets. We went into Dubai a while ago and we continue to develop it. And those become long term investments to continue to build our global infrastructure. The last few years we've made massive acquisitions between Telecity in Europe, Bit-isle in Japan, and now the Verizon assents that expanded our footprint significantly into new markets, Eastern Europe, give us bigger markets in places like Tokyo which helped us get to where we are today. >> One of the themes in networking and cloud in general is that the speed of light is just too damn slow. At the end of the day, stuff's got to travel and it actually takes longer than you would think. So does having all these, increased presence, increased egos, increased physical locations, help you address some of that? Because you've got so many more points kind of into this private network if you will. >> Oh yeah absolutely. The content has become more and more localized by market. And the more you have things like IOT and devices pulling in more data, not all the data needs to go all over the globe. And also there is now jurisdiction and laws that require some of the content to stay. So the market approach that we have is becoming the center of mass for where the data resides. And once the data gets into our data center, the value of the data is how you exchange it with other pieces of information, and increasingly how you make immediate decisions on it, you know with automation and machine learning. So when you go to that environment you need massive capacity, very low latency, to many data warehouses or data lakes, and you want to connect that to the software that can make decisions. So that's how we see the world is evolving now. One thing we see though is that complementing that will be a new edge that will form. A lot of people in this conference were talking about that. A lot of the discussion about the open networks here is how we support the 5G, all the explosion of devices, and what we see that connecting to that dense market approach that we have where the data is housed. >> That's interesting you just mentioned all the devices which was going to be my next question. So the internet of things, how will this change the data center edge, as you refer to it? >> Yeah that's the biggest question in the industry, especially for networks. And the same discussion happened at Mobile Work Congress here a little while ago. People now believe that there'll be this compute edge, that the network will be a compute edge. Because you want to be able to put compute, keep pushing it out all the way to the edge. And that edge needs to support today's technologies but also all the open wireless spectrum, all the low powered networks, open R which is one of the frequencies for the millimeter frequencies, and also the 5G as you know. So when you add all that up you're going to need this edge to support. So all the different wireless options plus some amount of compute, and that problem is very hard to solve without an open source model, which is where a lot of people are here looking for solutions. >> It's interesting because your definition of the edge feels like it's kind of closer to the cloud where's there's a lot of converstion, we do a lot of stuff with GE about the edge, which is you know right out there on the device and the sensor. Because as you said depending on the application, depending on the optimization, depending on what you're trying to do, the device is some level of compute and store that's going to be done locally, and some of it will go upstream and get processed and come downstream. But you're talking about a different edge. Or you know of see you guys extending all the way down to that edge. >> We don't see ourselves extending at this time but definitely it's something we're spending a lot of time analyzing to see what happens. I would say a couple of big stats is that today our edge is maybe 100 milliseconds from devices in a market or a lot less in some cases. The new technology will make that even shorter. So with the new technology like you said, you can't beat the speed of light, but with more direct connections you'll get to 40, 50 milliseconds, which is fantastic for the vast majority of applications people want. There'll be very few applications that need much slower latency all the way down to the sub-10 millisecond. For those somebody like a network would need to put compute at the edge to do some of it. So that world of both types will continue. But even the ones that need the very low latency, for some of the data it still needs to compare it to other sources of data and connect to clouds and networks but some of the data will still come back to our data centers. So I think this is how we see the world evolving but it's early days and a lot of brain power will be spent on that. >> So as you look forward to 2017, what are some of the big items on your plate that you're trying to take down for this calendar year? >> The biggest thing I want on our list is that we have an explosion of software model. Everybody who was a software now has a software platform. When we were at OCP for example you saw NetApp, they showed their software as an open source. Every single company from security to storage, even networking, are now creating their platform available as a software. Well those platforms have no place to go today. They have no deployment model. So one of the things we are working on is how we create a deployment model for this as a service model. And most of them is open source, so it needs decoupling of software and hardware. So we are really actively working with all these to create an open source software and just software in general, ecosystem plus this whole open source hardware. >> So do you guys have a pretty aggressive software division inside Equinix, especially in these open source projects? Or how do you kind of interact with them? >> Our model is to enable the industry. So we have some of our tools but mostly for enabling customers and customer service, as well as some of the basic interconnection we do. The vast majority of all the stuff is our partners, and these are our customers. So our model is to enable them and to connect them to everybody else they need at ecosystem to succeed and help them set up as a service model. And as the enterprise customers come to our data center, how to they connect to them. So I would say that's one of the most sought after missions when we go to conferences like this. Everybody who announced today is talking to us about how they enable the announcements they make and given our place in the universe, we would be a very key player in enabling that ecosystem. >> Do you have like a special lab where you test these new technologies? Or how do you do that? >> Yeah that's the plan. And we connect this effort to also what we're doing with OCP and Telecom Infrastructure Project where we have a leadership position and highly engaged. We are creating a lab environment where people can come in and test not only the hardware from TIP and OCP, but also the software from open network, but many other open source software in general under the Linux Foundation or others. In our situation not only can they test it against each other, but they can test the performance against the entire world. How does this work with the internet, the cloud? And that leading us to deployment and go to market models that people are looking for. >> Alright sounds pretty exciting. Equinix, a company that probably handles more of your internet traffic than you ever thought. >> Ihab: That's very true. >> Well thanks again for stopping by. We'll look for you at our next open source show. >> Thank you very much. >> Ihab Tarazi from Equinix. He's Scott Raynovich, I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCube from Open Networking Summit 2017, see you next time after this short break. (techno music)

>> You don't know me, I watch theCUBE. I queue up your videos, I listen to 'em while I'm on the treadmill. It helps me learn. It expands my knowledge, thank you. So it's really an honor to be part of that community. This is Dave Vellante, thanks for watching theCUBE, and for more information, just click here. (gentle techno music) >> Announcer: Live from Santa Clara, California, it's theCUBE, covering Open Networking Summit 2017. Brought to you by the Linux Foundation. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE, we are winding down at Open Networking Summit 2017, it's quite a conference. A lot of buzz about open-source as it goes into the networking space and continues to find traction. A lot of big companies donating projects to open-source, and then of course 5G and IoT, and the innovation never stops. So, Scott, really enjoying having Scott Raynovich cohost with us for these last couple days. Scott, what'd you think? >> Thanks again, Jeff. It's been a great show, lots of activity, some good news flow, actually announcements, and people opening up to us about open-source. As you said, lots of good stuff. >> Right. So I should've checked the tape from 2014, 'cus I think you actually co-hosted theCUBE at ONS in 2014, a long time ago. But clearly the narratives are changing quite significantly from there. >> Totally different world. >> You've been following this thing forever. So, before we get into some of the specifics, just kind of your general impressions of direction, and speed in that direction, as we continue to evolve. >> Sure, sure. Well, we talked a little bit about it with Martin, and that Martin kind of talked about in his keynote, how when he started Nicira, which for those of you who don't follow the SDN world, was kind of one of the first big open-networking startups, you know, let's have our code base be based on open-source, and have commodity hardware, run the software so anybody can swap in any hardware and run the software. That's the concept of open-networking and SDN. As Martin pointed out, when he started, it was like a speculative academic project. And he had no idea what it would become, and he pointed out it's now, after it was acquired by VMware, it's now a billion dollar business. And then we have other people, like AT&T, talking about in the keynote, John Donovan talking about how they're moving from 30% SDN open-networking last year, to more than 50%. So they're going to cross over, so that the majority of their network will be based on homegrown open-networking technology. Leveraging a lot of this open-source, that is the main topic of this show, which is run by the Linux foundation, which has become kind of the giant mega aggregator of networking open-source technologies. So, the main message is, we've gone from the academic speculative phase, to the actual let's get this stuff into production, let's run networks on it, and let's deliver your YouTube videos faster. >> Right, right. And as you look at the sponsor sheet behind us, right, a lot of startups, a lot of innovation, that comes with open-source. But you've still got Cisco, and Juniper, and the incumbents, and we had Dave Ward on from Cisco. So as you look at kind of the incumbent positionings, that benefited from a non open-source world, and dedicated, integrated boxes. >> Absolutely. >> How do you see them reacting and shifting in this new kind of market paradigm? >> Well, the first thing is, they all like to talk about software more than the hardware, right? 'Cause you notice that the discussion tends to focus on software these days. So they know that these hardware platforms are being commoditized, and you have these third-party manufacturers, that are coming out with these so-called "white boxes", which is the generic third-party hardware, that can run all the software. So, Juniper and Cisco are obviously, they have lots of software products, but you see from their acquisition strategies, they're focusing on buying software companies now, and they want to become known as software companies. And, I think, you know, they have a shot. They certainly haven't, lets not, say that Cisco hasn't stopped selling network gear, they're still a huge power in the space. >> Jeff Frick: There's a lot of it (laughs) >> And it's not like everybody is running out to buy commodity hardware, they're still looking for people to help them integrate, people to help provide service and support. The so-called, "throat to choke." >> One throat to choke, right, right. >> Yeah so, you know, that's kind of where they're moving. But obviously some of these companies are big oil tankers and you don't turn them around in a day. >> Right. And then we had Intel on, interesting conversation about 5G. Basically, the message being, 5G is now, you're saying, coming back from Mobile World Congress, it's not quite now. But really, the point was, we're preparing for it coming, which is why the preparation is now. So again, your prospective on 5G, interesting keynote this morning, you're talking about orders of magnitude of change, in the mobile network data capacity, over all these various iterations, and how it's really moving to, from, you know, voice to data, but now, not only from data, from people, but obviously things, internet of things. So, as you look at that kind of evolution, it's coming, right? It's coming in a big, big, big, way. >> Totally, totally. Yeah, I mean 5G is a, I mean, we could talk about 5G all day long. There's so many questions and debates about it. You know, Sandra Rivera, who we had on, from Intel, had some really good points, which is, if you're providing the fundamental technology like Intel, that the chips for the NFE Box, is the chips for the radio. The end to end solution in the semi-conductor space, you obviously have to invest now, and prepare for 5G. The standard won't be ratified or complete 'til, at least, well, they're saying possibly late 2018, but everybody really thinks it's 2019, 2020. But, the biq question is the applications, to your point. There's kind of this explosion of these new wireless WAN technologies, if you will, and internet of things is driving a lot of that. You know, you hear about the self-driving cars,right? >> Right, right. >> The trucks that are going to communicate back to HQ, and tell the boss where they are all the time, and how much fuel they're consuming, and how fast they're going, what their average. This Internet of Things market, self-driving cars, that's going to drive the need for more sophisticated mobile networks. But in industrial space, there's a different need, for very low power, low bandwidth, there's a WAN technology called LoRa, LoRa WAN, which is different from 5G. So, what people are trying to figure out with 5G, is the applications. Where does it fit in? What is, actually, 5G? Verizon has announced a point to point 5G pilot project. It's really "pre 5G", you know 'cause 5G isn't here, but they're kind of experimenting with, as a fiber replacement. Jeff needs faster broadband, he doesn't want to wait for the truck to come in and install. >> Jeff Frick: And dig the cable. >> The cable maybe will have 5G, as a new last mile solution, point to point, or point to point for businesses, you know, the big oil derrick, that needs a big pipe. There's many different applications that are being discussed. You know, for 5G. >> And is the timing of the standard, is it just kind of going through its natural stages? Or are there a couple of, you know, kind of key items that are still being hashed out, that they can't come to agreement, or is just kind of working its way. >> Oh, there's many, many items. I mean, I'm not technically sophisticated enough to dive into all the different. They'll argue about, you know, the protocols for authentication. Exactly how much bandwidth do we need? Are there different flavors of it? A lower bandwidth flavor versus a gigabit flavor. What are the chip sets going to look like? It's a very complex standard. But more importantly, on the business side, the carriers are asking, "How much money are we going to have to spend, to deliver 5G? "And we just spent all this money on LTE "and all the licenses." (Jeff chuckles) >> And does LTE go away, when 5G comes, or they run those in parallel? >> It'll definitely co-exist. >> Jeff Frick: It'll still be there, right? >> Well, that's what I'm saying, that's the question. Like you, Jeff Frick, do you really need 5G now? And what are you going to pay for it? You need to pay so your kids can watch YouTube faster? >> No, but I definitely want my autonomous vehicle to hit the brakes on time, before I hit the pedestrian, so. There's definitely application. >> I didn't realize you had an autonomous vehicle. >> Not yet, but, you know, I'm hoping. If more people watch theCUBE, I'll get one faster. >> So next year, when you acquire your autonomous Tesla. >> Jeff Frick: Right, right, my autonomous, which they just sent the software download, which is amazing. That's a whole different story. Shifting gears, edge, lot of conversation about edge. We do a lot of stuff with G, and IoT, and as you like to say IIoT, the Industrial Internet of Things, and kind of, this whole concept of, you can't get everything back to the cloud, 'cause the speed of light is just too damn slow. >> Scott Raynovich: That's right, that's right. >> And we talked to Ihab Tarazi, from Equinix, and we talk about the edge at the devices, as you said, low power, nasty conditions, yes, we're alive, they're banging plates over there. But then he really talked about the edge of all the clouds, and really the edge in the data center side. Because most of this stuff is traveling peer to peer, direct connect, and having that edge between your organization and then back into all these various clouds. >> That's right, that's right. >> Pretty interesting take, as that kind of back end sophistication and interconnectivity, just gets tighter and tighter and tighter. >> Totally, totally. Google also talked about that, building a new B2, they call it the B2 peering network. If people don't realize, how sophisticated theses networks have to be, right? You think that you, you know, you download a video, and it's just out there, right? It's actually going through a private network possibly, you know, a Netflix, has their own network, then it's peering with your local ISP, it's peering somewhere with your last mile provider, or if you're on a mobile network, it might be getting to you a different way, and so the discussion of where the edge goes is very important because as you pointed out, with IoT computing processing, it takes a long time, as we see with Siri all the time. Have you ever had that problem where Siri's not there? >> Google's always there. >> Yeah (laughs) >> Ok Google, no it works seemlessly, perfectly all the time. >> Okay, you're an Android guy, so yeah. >> Not quite. (laughs) >> So when you ask that question, to Siri or Google, it's going back all the way to the cloud and making that computation, back somewhere in the cloud. So the question is, where should that computation happen? When Jeff Frick needs his breaks, to avoid knocking over the (laughs) >> Unless it's a criminal, that's a different piece of software, you actually want to hit the criminal. >> You don't want that computation getting hung up in the cloud, right? So that's what the debate about the edge is. >> It's fascinating, it's why I love being in this business, it just continues to evolve and change over time. So last thing really, we are at the Open Networking Summit, it's a Linux Foundation show, Linux took this over a litle while ago, and as you said earlier, this huge move to move a lot of these open-source projects to the Linux Foundation, for them to really provide a home, if you will, and a set of resources, and a set of, everything from the 501(c)(3), and everything else you need. AT&T talked about delivering their project open-sourced, today. We heard earlier from Dell EMC, making a contribution. So as you look at the evolution of open-source, and Linux Foundation, as a subset, and how it impacts this networking and software-defined networking catching up to, software-defined compute and software-defined storage. How significant is that, as a driver of this adoption? >> Well, it's a big move. Most of the folks here at ONS are really, more in a telecom world, if you think of networking. What's happened to networking over the last decade, it's moved from enterprise, more to cloud and telecom, right? If you're in enterprise, you don't have to worry about building your network as much anymore, because most of your applications are heading to the cloud, right, with your service provider. So they are emulating what the cloud leaders did. The cloud leaders, such as, Google, were very aggressive with open-source. And the telecom players saw how fast they moved, by sharing code, and having more of a grassroots approach to building the code base. So that's, the reason why it's a big move, is that's a huge shift for telecom, right? 'Cause telecom has, for decades, built their proprietary network so. You want an LTE? Okay, we're going to do it our way, and we're going to work with a vendor, and take years to build this very specific proprietary network. And they've looked at cloud, and they want the speed. They want it to be able to move faster. So AT&T talked about how, when they deployed this new white box network, in production, they did it in three months. Which is, incredible. From the chip coming out of the foundry, to developing the box and the software and the service, it took them three to four months. Which is just an incredible change from the way these networks used to be built, it use to take years. >> Right, well the other really interesting plan, you teased it out, with the announcement with AT&T and this little company SnapRoute, some little startup, and we also heard it from Drew at Dell EMC, that, because of the open-source connection via the Linux Foundation, it exposes them and creates an ecosystem that they can now leverage all the smarts, and ingenuity, and innovation, coming out of a sea of startups, that they may or may not, have ever had a direct relationship with, and to leverage that internally. Pretty cool factor there. >> Exactly, it can all happen a lot faster, 'cause if its all based on open standards, you can, just plug it in, doesn't work the first day, but three months is a big change from, you know, two years. >> Donkey ears. Alright, so last word, you're launching a new thing. >> Oh, great! >> The new Scott Raynovich, so give us, what's the new name, where can people get information, and when do you actually launch? I know that's a little preview, but that's okay. >> It's called Futuriom. That's R-I-O-M. You know, 'cause, the names are running out on the internet, I don't know if you noticed that. (Jeff chuckles) And it launches in two weeks, and it's my hybrid blog research platform. So I'll have contributed information, we'll have big reports on industrial IoT. It's a premium service, but we'll also have free reports. So you can download free stuff, you can download premium reports you want to understand about all of these emerging technologies, and IoT, SD-WAN, cloud infrastructure, where it's going, Futuriom is really-- >> If you can't figure out the spelling, just tweet to Scott, and ask him, he'll send you a link. Yeah, it's at the lower third, so. Well very exciting. >> Thanks a lot. >> And we look forward to watching it grow. And thanks for sitting in with me, here at ONS. >> Thanks, I always love doing theCUBE, so I hope to be back here soon. >> Absolutely, alright, so he's Scott Raynovich, I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE. We are at ONS 2017 in Santa Clara. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. There's a busy schedule. Check SiliconANGLE.tv to see all the shows we're covering over the next several weeks. We'll be pretty much everywhere. So, we're out for now. Thanks, we'll catch you next time. Bye bye. (gentle techno)