>> Announcer: From New York, it's theCube covering Blockchain Week. Now here's John Furrier. (uptempo techno music) >> Hello everyone, welcome back. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCube. We're here in New York City for Blockchain Week New York as well as Consensus 2018. You're watching theCube. We've got two great guests here. Cube alumni Al Burgio has been on many times. Hot start ups, Digitalbits. He's got a great project, and it's really getting a lot of traction. Been there before, fellow entrepreneur. He's got big news and he's with Jaime Leverton, general manager, VP in Canada and APAC for Cogeco Peer 1. Saw the press release, congratulations Al. >> Thank you, thank you John. >> Jaime, welcome to New York. >> Thank you very much. >> So Al, talk about the deal that you did with these guys. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> News went out so what's significant about it? >> I think it's very significant to the Blockchain space. In a lot of respect it's very powerful technology that a lot of people speak of when it comes to distributed ledger technology. But in some respects with regards to let's say certain industry it's still just starting to work its way into the space. We basically are trying to drive innovation at multiple levels, and we can achieve that with the support of great partners like Cogeco Peer 1. I'll let Jaime explain what they do, but from a partnership perspective. You can think of what we've created at Digitalbits really is this open source technology that we want many people to consume, not just consumers but the enterprises, SaaS companies and so forth. So a lot of those companies live in Cogeco data centers worldwide. And so they're a natural partner for us. They are a company we always see in the forefront of innovation, and they're doing it with Blockchain. So really excited to have them as a partner. >> Jaime, I want you to take a minute to explain what you guys do, and how that fits into Blockchain. >> I think it fits in incredibly well. So for those of you not familiar with Cogeco Peer 1. We own and operate a global network, so we have our own connectivity, as well as 16 data centers globally. We have our own private cloud. We partner with the hyperscale public clouds. We have managed hosting, co-location. We work with 6500 enterprise customers around the world who live in our data centers or on our networks. And we really believe that Blockchain is the future, and there is no better place for it to live than an infrastructure like ours. >> Cloud computing was always poo-poo. Oh cloud computing, no one will ever give up their data centers and hosting and cloud came together. But that drove a lot of growth. The same thing is happening now with these networks. You're seeing Blockchain needs to run on something. Just like the old argument was cloud is going to kill the server business. Well servers still need to be bought. So blockchain needs to run somewhere. >> Absolutely. >> On servers. >> Yeah. >> So some decentralized servers but some big ones too. >> Right. >> Is that how you see it? Is it actually what I'm seeing happening out here? >> That is exactly how we see it, and I feel very blessed for the infrastructure that we built. The reputation that we have in this industry which is literally perfectly poised to support web 3.0 and everything that is coming. Starting with partnerships like this. >> Al, I want to get your thoughts about. You know the networking business. You've done a couple start ups in the area and trends. You've done all that stuff. You guys just did some news out there where they're spinning up. Something we saw what happen with Stellar. >> Yeah. >> Okay, can you explain this nuance point 'cause it's an inside baseball geeky thing. >> Yeah. >> But it's really significant for the industry. >> Well at the end of the day, everyone is talking about enterprise adoption, enterprise adoption. But as we've just discussed. The enterprise today, the hardware is not their possession anymore. And so, they don't need to be the only organization to be able to support what the enterprise wants us to do or even a SaaS company. Many, in fact the majority SaaS companies don't manage their own hardware either. And they're relying on cog dividers to provide that compute storage and so forth. So there needs to be that proficiency. And almost like a standard, and not necessarily one. Let's say Linux is a standard. Windows is, there's different flavors of Linux. There's database technologies and so on. But whichever they're choosing to use. It needs to be supported at every layer of that digital supply chain. And we are basically, we see that. >> John: Yeah. >> And we're working with partners at every level there. The ones that we know get it. Really understand compute and network. 'Cause it's very important. >> We're in the hallway here. We're in the middle of the floor here at Consensus. So we've been hearing a lot of hallway chatter. And I always like to eavesdrop, being the journalist reporter guy that I try to be, as you know. But I hear a lot of things. One thing I heard all week consistently is that I'm going to spin up some Blockchain nodes. So it reminds me of the old days of spinning up clusters. Like storage clusters. So this notion of spinning up a Blockchain cluster I've heard or I've heard provisioning clusters or what does that mean? To spin up a Blockchain. Is it that trend that we're seeing? >> If it is a primitive Blockchain. Bitcoin for example, it's the grandfather of all let's say blockchains that we're familiar with or this era is familiar with. It does a few things. Processes transactions, anybody could spin up one and what have you, but if you want to take something and make it enterprise great. There needs to be APIs. You need to be able to know how to integrate. Consume those APIs and so forth. And so not every company is going to know how to do this. There's a gap. There's a shortage of Blockchain engineers. There's a shortage of engineers period that understand this stuff. So it has to be supported. It has to be supported. There needs to be companies that can support the enterprise to consume those. So spinning up is easy for an engineer that's efficient in Blockchain to say. Yeah, we're spinning up nodes. We're going to take our work really hard. Purchase hardware, deploy it, ship it many, many, many months. Maybe they'll use Amazon if that's well suited for them or some other platform provider like Cogeco or what have you. But the challenge is what's everyone else going to do? If they're not proficient at technology, they need partners that get it. And that's where managed cloud comes in, and that's where we're very focused. >> So what does this mean for Digitalbits and your project? I'm just trying to squint through it. It's nerdy, geeky stuff but I like it. It's networking but now you got a project called Digitalbits. You got some horsepower with the Cogeco deal, so you spin up Blockchain I can imagine. What does it mean for the Digitalbits project and the impact of what you're trying to do? >> It's an open source project, and from our perspective, we want to see many, many enterprises, and many, many SaaS and other organizations use this technology. It's not going to just happen. You don't just build it and they will come. So you need strategic partners that see the value in it. Whether directly or through lines of business that they have. And co-evangelizing this technology and supporting the enterprise and their consumption. And so again, partners like Cogeco really help us create that new standard of technology that they can consume and it becomes mainstream this way. >> Jaime, what's your take on this? Obviously you did a deal with these guys. What was the benefit of you doing it? Also your customers moving in the direction of having a decentralized application set of infrastructure to provide power the next generation. Why this deal? Why these guys? >> I think when we look at who we partner with and build out our ecosystem. It's really about the relationship with the individuals behind it. We're very much about trust. We've worked with Al before. We believe in his vision. We know that he goes at projects with passion and integrity. And ultimately the reason we did this with Digitalbits is because we believe in what Al's doing, and his track record. >> Well he knows technology. He's also been a successful entrepreneur. >> And he understands networks, sorry to jump in, but really understanding that the power of the cloud is only as good as the power of the network. And the closer you can bring those things together that's where the magic really happens, and no one understands that better than Al. And when you look to build that Blockchain going forward, that's what you need. That's the power that you have to be able to harness, and we don't have to educate him. Jaime, you've been doing a lot of innovative things. We were just talking before we came on camera. You got an innovation award last night in Ottawa. You couldn't make it down for the big party we had last night. >> I'm sorry I missed that party. >> With Jeff Besos' brother. It's really, really cool. What are you doing at innovative that you can share. I love what you're doing. It's great work. What are some of the innovation things that you're proud of that you can take a moment to share? >> We've partnered a lot with the incubators in Canada. So really working with start ups, next generations technology, supporting the people that we think are going to build the future. So that's where we put all of our attention as oppose to on a traditional large enterprise focus. Our focus is NextGen emerging incubators. We've had a lot of success in the gaming industry with artificial intelligence, which is really booming in Canada. Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto are creating incredible new companies focused on AI. A lot of them are partnered with us in our data centers and using our technologies. So really I just see us continuing to push further and further as the industry moves. We want to be there moving with it. >> Are you going to be on the Canadian boat tonight I call it the Canadian--? >> Yes, I'm going to be on the Canadian boat tonight. >> The Do-rio yacht. >> That's right, yes. Hopefully the rain subsides, but yeah I'll be on the boat. >> Great, thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. Al, congratulations on the news. Big news from Digitalbits open source project. Gaining steam, really disrupting the old loyalty platforms as one of its used cases. Check it out at Digitalbits. Any URL you want to share Al for the project? Digitalbits.io. You're watching theCube. I'm John Furrier, your host here in New York all week for Blockchain Week. Thanks for watching. (uptempo techno music)