>> Announcer: Live, from Silicon Valley, it's the Cube. Covering Google Cloud Next 17. (ambient music) >> Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live in Palo Alto for a special two days of coverage of Google Next 2017 events in San Francisco. Sold out, 10,000 plus people. Yeah, really, an amazing turn of events. Amazon Web Services Reinvent had 36,000, Google's nipping at their heels, although different, we're going to break down the differences with Google versus Amazon because they're really two different things and again, this is Cube coverage here in Palo Alto studio, getting reaction. Sponsored by Intel, thanks, Intel, for allowing us to continue the wall-to-wall coverage of the key events in the tech industry. Our next guest is Val Bercovici who's the boardmember of the Cloud Native Compute Foundation, boardmember. >> That's right. >> Welcome back, you were here last week from Mobile World Congress, great to see you. Silicon contributor, what your reaction to the Google keynote, Google news? Not a lot of news, we saw the SAP, that was the biggest news and the rest were showcasing customers, most of the customers were G Suite customers. >> Yeah, exactly. So, I would say my first reaction is bit of a rough keynote, you know, there's definitely not as quit as much polish as Microsoft had in their heyday and of course, Amazon nowadays in the Cloud era. But what's interesting to me is there's the whole battle around empathy right now. So, the next gen developers and the Clouderati talk about user empathy and that means understanding the workflow of the user and getting the user to consume more of your stuff, you know, Snapchat gets user empathy for the millennial generation but anybody else. Facebook as well. So, you see Google, we emphasize, even the Google Twitter account, it emphasizes developer productivity and they have pretty strong developer empathy. But what AWS has, Amazon with AWS is enterprise empathy, right, they really understand how to package themselves and make themselves more consumable right now for a lot of mainstream enterprises, they've been doing this for three, four years at their Reinvent events now. Whereas Google is just catching up. They've got great developer empathy but they're just catching up on enterprise empathy. Those are the main differences I see. >> Yeah, I think that's an important point, Val, great, great point, I think Amazon certainly has, and I wrote this in my blog post this morning, getting a lot of reaction from that, actually, and some things I want to drill down on the network and security side. Some Google folks DMing me we're going to do that. But really, Amazon's lead is way out front on this. But the rest, you know, call 'em IBM, not in any particular, IBM, Oracle, Google, SAP, others, put Salesforces, we're talking Sass and Adobe, they're all in this kind of pack. It's like a NASCAR, you know, pack and you don't know who's going to slimshot around and get out there. But they all have their own unique use cases, they're using their own products to differentiate. We're hearing Google and again, this is a red flag for me because it kind of smells like they're hiding the ball. G Suite, I get the workplace productivity is a Cloud app, but that's not pure Cloud conversations, if you look at the Gartner, Gartner's recent, last report which I had a chance to get a peek at, there's no mention of Sassifications, Google G Suite's not in there, so the way Cloud is strictly defined doesn't even include Sass. >> Yeah. >> If you're going to include Sass, then you got to include Salesforce in that conversation or Adobe or others. >> Exactly. >> So, this is kind of an optical illusion in my mind. And I think that's something that points to Google's lack of traction on customers in the enterprise. >> This is where behind the scenes, Kubernetes, is so important and why I'm involved with the the CNCF. If anything, the first wave of Clouded option particularly by enterprise was centered around the VM model. And you know, infrastructure's a service based on VMs, Amazon, AWS is the king of that. What we're seeing right now is developers in particular that are developing the next generation of apps, most of them are already on our phones and our tablets and our houses and stuff, which is, you know, all these Echo-style devices. That is a container-based architecture that these next gen applications are based on. And so, Kubernetes, in my mind, is really nothing more than Google's attempt to create as much of a container-based ecosystem at scale so that the natural home for container-based apps will be GCP as opposed to AWS. That's the real long term play in why Google's investing so heavily in Kubernetes. >> Is that counterintuitive? Is that a good thing? I mean, it sounds like they're trying to change the goalpost, if you will, to change the game because we had Joe Arnold on, the founder of Swiftstack and you know, ultimately, you know, Clouds are Clouds and inter-Clouding and multi-Cloud is important. Does Kubernete actually help the industry? Or is that more Google specific in your mind? >> I think it will help the industry but the industry itself is moving so rapidly, we're seeing server-less right now and functions of service, and so, I think the landscape is shifting away from what we would think of as either VM or container-based infrastructure service towards having the right abstractions. What I'm seeing is that, really, even the most innovative enterprises today don't really care about their per minute or per hour cost for a cycle of computer, a byte of, you know, network transferred or stored. They care about big table, big quarry, the natural language processing, visual search, and a whole category of these AI based applications that they want to base their own new revenue-generating products and services based on. So, it's abstraction now as a new battlefield. AWS brings that cult of modularity to it, they're delivering a lot of cool services that are very high level Lambda centered based on really cool modularity, whereas Google's doing it, which is very, very elegant abstraction. It's at the developer level, at the technical level, that's what the landscape is at right now. >> Are you happy with Google's approach because I think Google actually doesn't want to be compared to AWS in a way. I mean, from what I can see from the keynote... >> Only by revenue. (laughs) >> Well, certainly, they're going to win that by throwing G Suite on it but, I mean, this is, again, a philosophy game, right? I mean, Andy Jassy is very customer focused, but they don't have their own Sass app, except for Amazon which they don't count on the Cloud. So, their success is all about customers, building on Amazon. Google actually has its own customer and they actually include that in, as does Microsoft with Office 365. >> Yeah, that's the irony, is if we go back to enterprise empathy I think it's Microsoft has that legacy of understanding the enterprise better than all the others. And they're beginning to leverage that, we're definitely seeing, as you're sliding comfortably to a number two position behind AWS, but it really does come back to, you know, are you going to lead with a propeller head lead in technology which Google clearly has, they've got some of the most superior technology, we were rattling off some the speeds and feeds that one of their product managers shared with you this morning. They've had amazing technology, that's unquestioned. But they do have also is this reputation of almost flying in rarefied air when it comes to enterprises. >> What do you mean by that? >> What I mean by that is that most enterprise IT organizations, even the progressive ones, have a hard time relating to Google technology. It's too far out there, it's too advanced, in some cases, they just can't understand it. They've never been trained in college courses on it or even post-grad courses on it. MBA is older than three years old, don't even reference the Cloud. So, there's a lot of training, a lot of knowledge that has to be, you know, conducted on the enterprise side. AWS is packaged, that technology there is the modularity in such a way that's more consumable. Not perfect, but more consumable than any other Cloud render and that's why, with an early head start, they've got the biggest enterprise traction today. >> Yeah, I mean, and I'm really bullish on Google, I love the company, I've been following them since '98, a lot of friends here at Palo Alto, a lot of Googlers living in my neighborhood, they're all around us. Larry Page, seen him around town. Great, great company and very, always been kind of like an academic, speed of academic. Very strong, technically, and that is, clearly, they're playing that card, "We have the technology." So, I would just say that, to counter that argument would be if Google, I'm Google, I'm on the team, the guy in green and you know, lookit, what I want to do is, we want to be the intel for the Cloud. So, the hard and top is we don't really care if people are trained, should be so easy to use, training doesn't matter. So, I mean, that's really more of an arrogant approach, but I don't think Google's being arrogant in the Cloud. I think that ship has sailed, I think Google has kind of been humbled in the sense, in recognizing that the enterprise is hard, they're checking the boxes. They have a partner program. >> Yeah, you're right, I mean, if you take a look at their customers today, you've got Spotify, and Snap, and Evernote, and you know, Pokemon Go and Niantic, all of the leading edge technology companies that have gone mainstream that are, you know, startup oriented Snap, of course. They're on Google Cloud. But that's not enough, you know, the enterprise, I did a seminar just last week promoting Container World with Jim Forge from ADP. The enterprise is not homogeneous, the enterprise is complicated. The L word legacy is all over, what they have to budget and plan for. So, the enterprise is just a lot more complicated than Google will acknowledge right now. And I believe if they were to humanize some of their advanced technology and package it and price it in such a way that AWS, you know, where they're seeing success, they'll accelerate their inevitable sort of leap to being one of those top three contenders. >> So, I'm just reading some of my, I'm putting together because for the Google folks, I'm going to interview them, just prepping for this, but just networking alone, isolating Cloud resources. That's hard, right? So, you know, virtual network in the Cloud, Google's got the virtual network. You get multiple IP addresses, for instance, ability to move network interfaces and IPs between instances, and AS networking support. Network traffic logging, virtual network peering, manage NAT gateways, subnet level filtering, IP V stick support, use any CIDR including RC 1918. Multiple network interface instances, I mean, this is complicated! (laughs) It's not easy so, you know, I think the strategy's going to be interesting to see how, does Google go into the point to point solution set, or they just say, "This is what we got, take it or leave it," and try to change the game? >> That's where they've been up until now and I don't think it's working because they have very formidable competitors that are not standing still. So, I think they're going to have to keep upping their game, again, not in terms of better technology but in terms of better packaging, better accessibility to their technology. Better trust, if you will, overseas. Cloud is a global game, it's not US only. And trust is so critical, there's a lot of skepticism in Europe today with the latest Wikileaks announcements, or Asia Today around. Any American based Cloud provider truly being able to isolate and protect my citizen's data, you know, within my borders. >> I think Google Cloud has one fatal flaw that I, looking at all the data, is that and the analysis that we've been looking at with Bookie Bontine and our research is that there's one thing that jumps out at me. I mean, the rest are all, I look at as, you know, Google's got such great technologies, they can move up fast, they can scale up to code. But the one thing that's interesting is their architecture, the way they handle their architecture is they can't let customers dictate data where data's stored. That is a huge issue for them. And if, to your point, if a user in Germany is using an app and it's got to stay in Germany. >> This is back to the empathy disconnect, right? As an abstraction layer for a developer, what I want is exactly what Google offers. I don't want to care as a developer where the bits and bytes are stored, I want this consistent, uniform API, I want to do cool stuff with the data. The operation side, particularly within legal parameters, regulatory parameters, you know, all sorts of other costs and quality assurance parameters, they really care about where that data is stored, and that's where having more enterprise empathy, and their thinking, and their offerings, and their pricing, and their packaging will leapfrog Google to where they want to be today. >> Val Bercovici, great analysis, I mean, I would totally agree just to lock that in, their developer empathy is so strong. And their operational one needs to be, they got a blind spot there where they got to work on that. And this is interesting because people who don't know Google are very strong operations, it's not like they don't have any ops chops. (Val laughs) They're absolutely in the five nines, they are awesome operations. But they've been operations for themselves. >> Exactly. >> So, that's the distinction you're getting at, right? >> Absolutely. >> Okay, so the next question I got to ask you is back to the developer empathy, 'cause I think it's a really big opportunity for Google. So, pointing out the fatal flaw in my opinions in the data locality thing. But I think the opportunity for Google to change the game, using the developer community opportunity because you mentioned the Kubernetes. There is a huge, open source, I don't want to say transformation but an evolution to the next generation, you're starting to see machine learning and AI start to tease out the leverage of not just data now. Data's become so massive now, you have data sets. That can be addressable and be treated like software programs. So, data as code becomes a new dynamic with AI. So, with AI, with open source, you're seeing a lot of activity, CNCF, the Cloud Native Compute Foundation, folks should check that out, that's an amazing group, analytics foundation. This is an awesome opportunity for Google to use Kubernetes as saying, "Hey, we will make orchestration of application workloads." >> Absolutely. >> This is something, Amazon's been great with open source, but they don't get a lot of love... >> Amazon has a blind spot on containers, let's not, you know, let's not call, you know, let's call it the speed of speed, let's not, you know, beat around the bush, they do have a blind spot around containers. It is something they strategically have to get a hold of, they've got some really interesting proprietary offerings. But it's not a natural home for a Docker workflow, it's not a natural home for a Kubernetes workflow yet. And it's something they have to work on and AI as a use case could not be more pertinent to business today because it's that quote, you know, "The future is here "but unevenly distributed." That's exactly where AI is today, the businesses that are figuring it out are really leaping ahead of their competitors. >> We're getting some great tweets, my phone's blowing up. Val, you've got great commentary. I want to bring up, so, I've been kind of over the top with the comment that I've been making. It's maybe mischaracterized but I'll say it again. There seems to be a Cold War going on inside the communities between, as Kubernetes have done, we've seen doc, or we've seen Docker Containers be so successful in this service list, server list vision, which is absolutely where Cloud Native needs to be in that notion of, you know, separating out fiscal gear and addressability, making it completely transparent, full dev ops, if you will. To who's going to own the orchestration and where does it sit on the stack? And with Kubernetes, to me, is interesting is that it tugs at some sacred cows in the container world. >> Yes. >> And it opens up the notion of multi-Cloud. I mean, assume latency can be solved at some point, but... >> It's actually core religion, what impressed me about he whole Kubernetes community, and community is its greatest strength, by the way, is the fact that they had a religion on multi-Cloud from day one. It wasn't about, "We'll add it later "'cause we know it's important," it's about portability and you know, even Docker lent that to the community. Portability is just a number one priority and now portability, at scale, across multiple Clouds, dynamically orchestrated, not through, you know, potential for human error, human interventions we saw last week. That the secret sauce there to stay. >> I think not only is, a Cold War is a negative connotation, but I think it's an opportunity to be sitting in the sun, if you will, on the beach with a pina colada because if you take the Kubernetes trend that's got developer empathy with portability, that speaks to what developers want, I want to have the ability to write code, ship it up to the network, and have it integrate in nicely and seamlessly so, you know, things can self-work and do all that. And AI can help in all those things. Connecting with operational challenges. So, what is, in your mind, that intersection? Because let's just say that Kubernetes is going to develop a nice trajectory which it has now and continues to be a nice way to galvanize a community around orchestration, portability, etc. Where does that intersect with some of the challenges and needs for operational effectiveness and efficiency? >> So, the dirtiest secret in that world is data gravity, rigtht? It's all well and fine to have workload portability across, you know, multiple instances and a cluster across multiple Clouds, so to speak. But data has weight, data has mass and gravity, and it's very hard to move particularly at scale. Kubernetes only in the last few releases with a furious pace in evolution, one four, one five, has a notion of provisioning persistent volumes, this thing they affectionately called pet sets that are not a stateful sets, I love that name. >> Cattle. >> Exactly. (laughs) So, Google is waking up and Kubernetes, I should say, in particular is waking up to the whole notion of managing data is really that last mile problem of Cloud portability and operational maturity. And planning around data gravity and overcoming where you can data gravity through meta-operational procedures is where this thing is going to really take off. >> I think that's where Google, I like Google's messaging, I like their posture on machine learning AI, I think that's key. But Amazon has been doing AI, they've got machine learning as a service, they've had Kineses for a while. In fact, Redshift and Kineses were their fastest growing services before Aurora became the big thing that they had. So, I think, you know, they're interested in the jets, with the trucks, and the snowmobile stuff. So I think certainly, Amazon's been doing that data and then rolling in as some sort of AI. >> And they've been humanizing it better, right? I can relate to some of Amazon's offering and sometimes I have it in the house. You know, so, the packaging and just the consumerability of these Amazon services today is ahead of where Google is and Google arguably has the superior technology. >> Yeah, and I think, you know, I was laying out my analysis of Google versus Amazon but I think it's not fair to try to compare them too much because Google is just making their opening moves on the chessboard. Because they had Diane Green, got to give her credit, she's really starting behind. And that's been talked about but they are serious, they're going to get there. The question is what does an enterprise need to do? So, your advice to enterprise would be what? Stick with the use cases that are either Google specific apps or Cloud Native, where do you go, how do you...? >> I would say to remember the lock-in days of the Linux vendors and even Microsoft in their heyday and definitely think multi-Cloud, you know, Cloud first is fine. But think, we need data first in a Cloud before I think a particular Cloud first. Always keep your options open, seek the highest levels of abstraction, particularly as you're innovating early on and fast failing in the Cloud. Don't go low right away, go low later on when you're operationalizing and scaled and looking to squeeze efficiencies out of a new product or service. >> Don't go low, you mean don't go low in the stack? >> Don't go low in the stack, exactly. Start very high in the stack. >> What would be an example? >> Lambda, you know, taking advantage of, if we bring in Kineses, IOT workflows, all sorts of sensor data coming in from the Edge. Don't code that for efficiency day one and switch to Kafka or something else that's more sophisticated, but keep it really high level as events triggering off, whether it's the IOTICK in the sensor inputs or whether it's S3 events, Dynamo, DB events. Write your functions that are very, very high level. >> Yeah. >> Get the workflows right. Pay a bit more money up front, pay premium for the fast... >> Well, there's also Bootstraps and the Training Channel Digimation, so, with Google, pick some things that are known out there. But you mentioned IOT and one of the things I was kind of disappointed in the keynote today, there wasn't much talk about IOT. You're not seeing IOT in the Google story. >> That may come up in tomorrow's keynote, it may come up tomorrow in a more technical context. But you're right, it's an area both Agar and AWS have a monster of a lead right now, as they've had really good SDKs out there to be able to create workflows without even being an expert in some of the devices that you know, you might own and maintain. >> Google's got some differentiation, they've got something, I'll highlight one that I like that I think is really compelling. Tensor flow. Tensor flow as got a lot of great traction and then Intel is writing chips with their Skylake product that actually runs much faster silicon... >> What was that, Nvidia? You know, it's a GPU game as much as a CPU game when it comes to machine learning. And it's just... >> What does that mean for you? I mean, that's exciting, you smile on that, I get geeked out on that because if you think about that, if you can have a relationship between the silicon and software, what does it mean from an impact standpoint? Do you think that's going to be a good accelerant for the game? >> Massive accelerant, you know, and this is where we get into sort of more rarefied air with Elon Musk's quote around the fact we'll need universal income for society. There a lot of static tasks that are automated today. There's more and more dynamic tasks now that these AI algorithms, through machine learning, can be trained to conduct in a very intelligent manner. So, more and more task based work all over the world, including in a robotic context but also call centers, stock brokerage, for example, it's been demonstrated that AI ML algorithms are superior to humans nine times out of ten in terms of recommending stocks. So, there's a lot of white collars, while it's blue collared work that just going to be augmented and then eliminated with these technologies and the fact that you have major players, economies at scales such as Intel and Nvidia and so forth accelerating that, making it affordable, fast, low power in certain edge context. That's, you know, really good for the industry. >> So, day one of two days of coverage here with Google, just thoughts real quick on what Google needs to do to really conquer the enterprise and really be credible, viable, successful, number two, or leader in the enterprise? >> I'm a big fan, you know, I've had personal experiences with fast following as opposed to leading and innovating sometimes in terms of getting market traction. I think they should unabashedly, unashamedly examine what Microsoft or what Amazon are doing right in the Cloud. Because you know, simple things like conducting a bit more of a smooth keynote, Google doesn't seem to have mastered it yet, right now in the Cloud space. And it's not rocket science, but shamelessly copying what works, shamelessly copying the packaging and the humanization that some of the advanced technologies that Amazon and Microsoft have done in particular. And then applying their technical superiority, you know, their uptime availability advantages, their faster networks, their strong consistency which is a big deal for developers across their regions. Emphasizing their strengths after they package and make their technology more consumable. As opposed to leading where the tech specs. >> And you have a lot of experience in the enterprise, table stakes out there that are pretty obvious that they need to check the boxes on, and would be what? >> A very good question, I would say, first and foremost, you really have to focus on more, you know, transparent pricing. Think something that is a whole black art in terms of optimizing your AWS usage in this industry that's formed around that. I think Google has and they enact blogs advertising a lot of advantages they have in the granularity, in the efficiency of their auto scaling up and down. But businesses don't really map that, they don't think of that first even though it can save them millions of dollars as they do move to Cloud first approaches. >> Yeah and I think Google got to shake that academic arrogance, in a way, that they've had a reputation for. Not that that's a bad thing, I'll give you an example, I love the fact that Google leads a lot of price performance on many levels in the Cloud, yet their SLAs are kind of wonky here and there. So, it's like, okay, enterprises like SLAs. You got to nail that. And then maybe keep their price a little high here, it can make more money, but... So, you were saying, is that enterprise might not get the fact that it's such a good deal. >> It's like enterprise sales 101, you talk about, you know, the operational benefits but you also talk about financial benefits and business benefits. Catching into those three contexts in terms of their technical superiority would do them a world of good as they seek more and more enterprise opportunities. >> Alright, Val Bercovici, CTO, also CTO, and also on the board of the Cloud Native Compute Foundation known as CNCF, a newly formed organization, part of the Linux Foundation. Really looking at the orchestration, looking at the containers, looking at Kubernetes, looking at a whole new world of app enablement. Val, thanks for the company, great to see you. Turning out to be guest contributor here on the Cube studio, appreciate his time. This is the Cube, two days of live coverage. Hope to have someone from Google on the security and network side coming in and calling in, we're going to try to set that up, a lot of conversations happening around that. Lot of great stuff happening at Google Next, we've got all the wall-to-wall coverage, reporters on the ground in San Francisco as well as analysts. And of course, in studio reaction here in Palo Alto. We'll be right back. (ambient music)