foreign [Music] my name is Savannah Peterson and I am very excited to be coming to you today from the cube in Palo Alto we're going to be talking about kubecon giving a little preview of the hype and what you might be able to expect in Detroit with the one and only co-founder and CEO of the cube and siliconangle John ferriere John hello how are you today thanks for hosting and doing the preview with me my goodness a pleasure I we got acquainted this time last year how do you think the ecosystem has changed are you excited well first of all I missed kubecon Valencia because I had covid I was so excited to be there this big trip plan and then couldn't make it but so much has gone on I mean we've been at every kubecon the cube was there at the beginning when openstack was still going on kubernetes just started came out of Google we were there having beers with Lou Tucker and a bunch of The Luminaries when it all kind of came together and then watch it year by year progress through and how it's changed the industry and mainly how open source has been really the wave behind it combining with the Linux foundation and then cncf and then open source movement and good kubernetes has been amazing and under it all containers has been the real driver and all this so you know Docker containers Docker was a well-funded company they had to Pivot and were restructured now they're pure open source so containers have gone Supernova on top of that kubernetes and with that's a complete ecosystem of opportunity to create the next operating system in in software development so to me kubecon is at the center of software software 2030 what do you want to call it super cloud it's that it's really action it's not where the old school is it's where the new school is excellent so what has you most excited this year what's the biggest change from this time last year and now well two things I'm looking at this year uh carefully both from an editorial lens and also from a sponsorship lenses where is the funding going on the sponsorships because again a very diverse ecosystem of Builders but also vendors so I'm going to see how that Dynamics going on but also on the software side a lot of white space going on in the stack or in the map if you will you know the run times you've got observability you got a lot of competition maybe projects might be growing some Rising some falling maybe merge together I'm going to see how that but there's a lot of white spaces developing so I'm curious to see what's new on that area and then service meshes is a big deal this year so I'm looking for what's going on so it's been kind of a I won't say cold war but kind of like uh you know where is this going to go and because it's a super important part of of the of the orchestration and managing containers and so be very interested to see how service mesh does istio and other versions out there have been around for a while so that and also the other controversy is the number of stars on GitHub a project may have so sometimes that carries a lot of weight but we're going to look at which ones are rising which ones are falling again um which ones are getting the most votes by the developers vote with their code yeah absolutely well we did definitely miss you down in Los Angeles but it will be great to be in Detroit what has you most excited do you think that we're going to see the number of people in person that we have in the past I know you've seen it since the beginning so I think this year is going to be explosive from that psychology angle because I think it was really weird because La was on they were a bold to make that move we're all there is first conference back it was a lot a lot of like badges don't touch me only handshakes fist pumps but it was at the beginning of the covid second wave right so it was kind of still not yet released where everyone's was not worried about it so I think it's in the past year in the past eight months I mean I've been places with no masks people have no masks Vegas other places so I think it's going to be a year where it will be a lot more people in person because the growth and the opportunities are so big it's going to drive a lot of people in person just like Amazon reinvent those yeah absolutely and as the most important and prominent event in the kubernetes space I think everyone's very excited to to get back together when we think about this space do you think there that anyone's the clear winner yet or do you think it's still a bit of a open territory in terms of the companies and Partnerships I think Red Hat has done a great job and they're you know I think they're going to see how well they can turn this into gold for them because they've positioned themselves very well open shift years ago was kind of waffling I won't say it in a bad way but like but once they got view on containers and kubernetes red has done an exceptional job in how they position their company being bought by ibms can be very interesting to see how that influences change so if Red Hat can stay red hat I think IBM will win I think customers that's one company I like the startups we're seeing companies like platform nine Rafi systems young companies coming out in the kubernetes as a service space because I think whoever can make kubernetes easier because I think that's the hard part right now even though that the show is called kubecon is a lot more than kubernetes I think the container layer what docker's doing has been exceptional that's the real action the question is how does that impact the kubernetes layers so kubernetes is not a done deal yet I think it hasn't really crossed the chasm yet it's certainly popular but not every company is adopting it so we're starting to see that we need to see more adoption of kubernetes seeing that happen it's going to decide who the winners are totally agree with that if you look at the data a lot of companies are and people are excited about kubernetes but they haven't taken the plunge to shifting over their stack or fully embracing it because of that complexity so I'm very curious to see what we learn this week about who those players might be moving forward how does it feel to be in Detroit when was the last time you were here I was there in 2007 was the last time I was in that town so uh we'll see what's like wow yeah but things have changed yeah the lions are good this year they've got great hockey goalies there so you know all right you've heard that sports fans let John know what you're thinking your Sports predictions for this season I love that who do you hope to get to meet while we're at the show I want to meet more end user customers we're gonna have Envoy again on the cube I think Red Hat was going to be a big sponsor this year they've been great um we're looking for end user project most looking for some editorial super cloud like um commentary because the cncf is kind of the developer Tech Community that's powering in my opinion this next wave of software development Cloud native devops is now Cloud native developers devops is kind of going away that's killed I.T in my opinion data and security Ops is the new kind of Ops the new it so it's good to see how devops turns into more of a software engineering meet supercloud so I think you're going to start to see the infrastructure become more programmable it's infrastructure as code so I think if anything I'm more excited to hear more stories about how infrastructure as code is now the new standard so if when that truly happens the super cloud model be kicking into high gear I love that let's you touched on it a little bit right there but I want to dig in a bit since you've been around since the beginning what is it that you appreciate or enjoy so much about the kubernetes community and the people around this I think there are authentic people and I think they're they're building they're also Progressive they're very diverse um they're open and inclusive they try stuff and um they can be critical but they're not jerks about it so when people try something um they're open-minded of a failure so it's a classic startup mentality I think that is embodied throughout the Linux Foundation but CNC in particular has to bridge the entrepreneurial and corporate Vibe so they've done an exceptional job doing that and that's what I like about this money making involved but there's also a lot of development and Innovation that comes out of it so the next big name and startup could come out of this community and that's what I hope to see coming out here is that next brand that no one's heard of that just comes out of nowhere and just takes a big position in the marketplace so that's going to be interesting to see hopefully we have on our stage there yeah that's the goal we're going to interview them all a year from now when we're sitting here again what do you hope to be able to say about this space or this event that we might not be able to say today I think it's going to be more of clarity around um the new modern software development techniques software next gen using AI more faster silicon chips you see Amazon with what they're doing the custom silicon more processing but I think Hardware matters we've been talking a lot about that I think I think it's we're going to shift from what's been innovative and what's changed I think I think if you look at what's been going on in the industry outside of crypto the infrastructure hasn't really changed much except for AWS what they've done so I'm expecting to see more Innovations at the physics level way down in the chips and then that lower end of the stack is going to be dominated by either one of the three clouds probably AWS and then the middle layer is going to be this where the abstraction is around making infrastructure as code really happen I think that's going to be Clarity coming out of this year next year we should have some visibility into the vertical applications and of the AI and machine learning absolutely digging in on that actually even more because I like what you're saying a lot what verticals do you think that kubernetes is going to impact the most looking even further out than say a year I mean I think that hot ones Healthcare fintech are obvious to get the most money they're spending I think they're the ones who are already kind of creating these super cloud models where they're actually changed over their their spending from capex to Opex and they're driving top line revenue as part of that so you're seeing companies that wants customers of the I.T vendors are now becoming the providers that's a big super cloud Trend we see the other verticals are going to be served by a lot of men in Surprise oil and gas you know all the classic versus Healthcare I mentioned that one those are the classic verticals retail is going to I think be massively huge as you get more into the internet of things that's truly internet based you're going to start to see a lot more Edge use cases so Telecom I think it's going to be completely disrupted by new brands so I think once that you see see how that plays out but all verticals are going to be disrupted just a casual statement to say yeah yeah no doubt in my mind that's great I'm personally really excited about the edge applications that are possible here and can't wait to see can't wait to see what happens next I'm curious as to your thoughts how based given your history here and we don't have to say number of years that you've been participating in in Cape Cod but give them your history what's the evolution looked like from that Community perspective when you were all just starting out having that first drink did you anticipate that we would be here with thousands of people in Detroit you know I knew the moment was happening around um 2017-2018 Dan Coney no longer with us he passed away I ran into him randomly in China and it was like what are you doing here he was with a bunch of Docker guys so they were already investing in so I knew that the cncf was a great Steward for this community because they were already doing the work Dan led a great team at that time and then they were they were they were kicking ass and they were just really setting the foundation they dig in they set the architecture perfectly so I knew that that was a moment that was going to be pretty powerful at the early days when we were talking about kubernetes before it even started we were always always talking about if this this could be the tcpip of of cloud then we could have kind of a de facto interoperability and Lou Tucker was working for Cisco at the time and we were called it interclouding inter-networking what that did during the the revolution Cloud yeah the revolution of the client server and PC Revolution was about connectivity and so tcpip was the disruptive enable that created massive amounts of wealth created a lot of companies created a whole generation of companies so I think this next inflection point is kind of happening right now I think kubernetes is one step of this abstraction layer but you start to see companies like snowflake who's built on AWS and then moved to multiple clouds Goldman Sachs Capital One you're going to see insurance companies so we believe that the rise of the super cloud is here that's going to be Cloud 3.0 that's software 3.0 it's software three what do you want to call it it's not yesterday's Cloud lift and shift and run a SAS application it's a true Enterprise digital digital transformation so that's that's kind of the trend that we see riding in now and so you know if you're not on that side of the street you're going to get washed away from that wave so it's going to be interesting to see how how it all plays out so it's fun to watch who's on the wrong side it is very fun I hope you all are listening to this really powerful advice from John he's dropping some serious knowledge bombs on us well holding the back for kubecon because we've got we got all the great guests coming on and that's where all the content comes from I mean the best part of the community is that they're sharing yeah absolutely so just for old time's sake and it's because it's how I met your fabulous team last year Define kubernetes for the audience kubernetes is like what someone said it was a magical Christmas I heard that was a well good explanation with that when I heard that one um you mean the technical definition or like the business definition or maybe both you can give us an interpretive dance if you'd like I mean the simplest way to describe kubernetes is an orchestration layer that orchestrates containers that are containing applications and it's a way to keep things running and runtime assembly of like the of the data so if you've got you're running containers you can containerize applications kubernetes gives you that capability to run applications at scale which feeds into uh the development uh cycle of the pipelining of apps so if you're writing applications and you want to scale up it's a fast way to stand up massive amounts of scale using containers and kubernetes so a variety of other things that are in the in the in the system too so that was pretty good there's a lot more under the hood but that's the oversimplified version I think that's what we were going for I think it's actually I mean it's harder to oversimplify it sometimes in this case it connects it connects well it's the connective tissue between all the container applications yes last question for you John we are here at the cube we're very excited to be headed to Detroit very soon what can people expect from the cube at coupon this year so we'll be broadcasting Wednesday Thursday and Friday we'll be there early I'll be there Monday and Tuesday we'll do our normal kind of hanging around getting some scoop on the on the ground floor you'll see us there Monday and Tuesday probably in the in the lounge too um come up and say hi to us um again we're looking for more stories this year we believe this is the year that you're going to hear a lot more storytelling coming out of this community as people get more proof points so come up to us share your email your your handle give us yours give us your story we'll publish it we think we think this is going to be the year that cloud native developers start showing the signs of the of the rise of the supercloud that's going to come out of this this community so you know if you got something to say you know we're open to share stories so we're here all that speaking of John how can people say hi to you and the team on Twitter at Furrier at siliconangle at thecube thecube.net siliconangle.com LinkedIn Dave vellantis they were open on all channels all right signal Instagram WhatsApp perfect well pick your channel we really hope to hear from you John thank you so much for joining us for this preview session and thank you for tuning in my name is Savannah Peterson here in Palo Alto at thecube Studios looking forward to Detroit we can't wait to hear your thoughts do let us know in the comments and let us know if you're headed to Michigan cheers [Music] thank you

>> Hello and welcome to this special CUBE update conversation, I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE with my partner, Dave Vellante, co-host of theCUBE. Dave, lots of people are asking us what's going on with theCUBE what's happening. Obviously COVID people know that we go out to events to extract the signal from the noise. Number one leading in enterprise tech events, there's been no events. People want to know what's going on with theCUBE, theCUBE virtual. And they want to know when the events are going to come back and when it does what's theCUBE going to look like. >> Well, as you know, for a decade we were on premises at events, tech events, our great sponsors would have us there and let us do our thing. And we'd have editorial there, which is nice and have our own on discussions. But it was always at the host venue, or largely was, we've done some of our own shows but now with the virtual occurring we're driving a lot of our own events, We've got now the time to do that, and here's what I think, John, I really do believe that there's no question that in the second half of the year we're going to start to see some kind of hybrid emerge where you might see VIP's, almost like the Golden Globes, if you saw that, there may be 15, 20 people socially distant, comfortable, maybe a VIP event, 10, 20 CIO's in a room, and I think there's going to be a digital overlay to that, the virtual overlay to get greater reach. And then even in 2022, when physical comes back in a big way, I think virtual is here to stay. People are learning so much. They're learning the value of that long tail, that host event consumption that we've seen in our data and that's going to continue. And people are really learning how to fine tune that playbook. >> You know, I want to get your thoughts on this because I was explaining to someone about our CUBE virtual opportunity and events coming back. And as you know I've been an avid clubhouse user since December 30th and I've been noticing that the engagement is so high in these apps where people are collaborating. So, I want you to explain the dynamics as, as we have these cube virtual, our first event is March 24th, we've got Jerry Chen from Greylock, Michael Liebow from McKinsey, Jeff Barr from AWS, three big names, big individuals in terms of talent and start up power. But the names of the companies, McKinsey, Greylock, AWS, and me and you, you starting to see virtual as a format, Dave, where our community can come together to compliment theCUBE physical events and bring a new venue, a new format to engaging and creating content together. Can you explain what this means for audiences, our community and our sponsors? >> Well, I think a lot of companies are looking at just events in very narrow sense, we do an event, maybe it's a webinar, we're going to do an event, maybe it's small, mid-size, maybe even a large event. And then we're going onto the next one, onto the next one, so it's all about this sort of event cadence. And I think there's a much bigger picture here. And it's really about the content, the arc of content, the community, engaging with that community, over a long period of time, it's not a one-shot deal or they're not disposable, sort of events are kind of disposable in that regard. I think our philosophy is different. We really try to connect, build that community out. And then also bring that community back in, those who want to participate, it's almost like a reward system. If you participate in an event, a community event, the next one you're actually going to be featured, you're going to come on theCUBE, you're going to be participating in the program directly. And I think, John, for sponsors, it really means, we've seen that a lot of the value that the sponsors are getting really has not been replicated from the physical events. And so what we're trying to do here is give those many, many sponsors a platform in order to have their voices heard so that they can engage with broader communities and tap in to other communities. >> Dave, you know, we were just talking the other day about all these event platforms that are out there and we're a media platform and that there's a new dynamic out there where it's not about the number of events that you participated in, it's the audiences that you engage with and create content value together and sponsors that you enable, we enable, can enable to go direct to the consumer. And this is a big trend that we're seeing. Media as a service or direct to the consumer. You seeing companies like Tesla do it, Apple, even venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz going direct to the audience and cutting the middlemen out of being disintermediated. This is an interesting opportunity. Can you share your thoughts, because if a customer, our sponsor, is going to try to do that, they need to have media capabilities, not just event software. An event is a moment in time, media is ongoing for engaging. They're two different things but they have to work together. Can you explain what this means in basic terms to customers and audience? Why is this so important this new trend? >> I think it's really simple. The bottom line is that every company has to be in some way, shape or form a media company they're producing content, and everybody wants to control the narrative, control of the audience, except the way you do that is to produce great authentic content. And I will tell you most companies, certainly most companies in the tech business aren't really that good at it. There are a couple of standouts. You mentioned some big names like Tesla, so you see some VC firms doing it, but people are learning, and they're going to get better and better at it. But our basic premise and I think it's right on is that every company has to be a content company, a content producer. So what we want to do is help them do that. Give them tools, give them platforms, give them methodologies to really be able to in an agile fashion, produce high quality content and distribute it through a workflow and then iterate >> Agile Media, that's our opportunity and that's what we're going to try to do. And I think what I'm most excited about Dave is we can help our sponsors with a product that helps them go direct to their customer while we can at the same time increase our serving our audiences with high quality content so that they can work with us, consume or create with us. And I think that's a power dynamic that is a flywheel of innovation. This is kind of what media should be, and this is what we're trynna do. >> Well, that's a mega trend. And the other thing that I think people forget about sometime is that data, there's a data fabric that connects all these different events, all the different webinars, all the content initiatives, the content programs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, that data fabric flows in a distributed way throughout the year, throughout the network, throughout the community. And it's got to be a two-way street and it's fundamentally you have to put data at the core of those initiatives. >> And Dave, one of the exciting things we're doing that I'll share is on March 24th, 9:00 Pacific, we're doing theCUBE On Cloud Startups, our virtual event in conjunction with AWS, Amazon Web Services, startup showcase. We're going to showcase 10 of the hottest startups in the Amazon cloud ecosystem around data, data ops, and pre-public, the next UNICORE, the next deca-core, And these are the hottest companies that are going to be hitting the enterprise and emerging technology markets in the next year. We're going to showcase them in our format, this is theCUBE virtual, so check it out, join us, be part of our community. If you want to engage with us, definitely get on the roster. We're going to do these four times a year, and again, we do a lot more of them. And then you'll see us back in person, when the events come back, post pandemic. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante, thank you for your time and we'll see you on the 24th, or at our events, thank you.

>>We work with and we cover some of the old guard, older companies like Dell EMC, HPE, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft. And they're doing really good work pivoting and trying to be ready for this new wave. It's not just not a blockchain. It's just how the world works. Cloud, you know, IOT, but decentralized cannot be ignored. Are they ready? Do you think they're ready? Do you think they even understand what's coming and >>No, no, they're not ready. And it's not, to me. It's not even about just blockchain. I mean, blockchain technology they can adopt. The bigger issue is digital disruption and digital disruption is all about the data at the core of the organization and, and business models that are built around data. And if you think about the history of companies, it's human expertise and data is bolted on, and we've seen this time and time again. But if you look at the top five market cap companies, Facebook, Amazon, Google, et cetera, they're data companies. Data is at the center and they take human expertise and wrap it around there. So the future is going to be about innovation with data, with artificial intelligence and cloud economics, and the old guard doesn't have those things. Blockchain fits in there. To me, blockchain is about building out a new distributed web and on top of the old web and rewarding those who are building it. So it's a new form of open source where the builders get paid.

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of Docker Con Live 2020, brought to you by Docker and its ecosystem partners. >> Okay, welcome back to the DockerCon studio headquarters and your hosts, Jenny Burcio and myself John Furrier. @Furrier on Twitter if you want to tweet me anything and @DockerCon as well share what you're thinking. Great keynote there from Scott CEO, Jenny, demo, DockerCon jobs, some highlights there from Scott. Yeah, lovely intro, sorry about to do the keynote. The little green room comes on makes it human. We're all trying to meet >> Its certainly the reality of what we are all dealing with right now. I had to ask my kids to leave though or they would crash the whole stream. But yes, we have you know, we have a great community, large community gathered here today and we do want to take the opportunity for those that are looking for jobs or hiring to share with the #DockerCon jobs. In addition, we want to support direct health care workers. And Brett Fisher and the captains will be running all day charity stream on the captain's channel. Go there and you'll get the link to donate to directRelief.org, which is a California based nonprofit delivering aid and supporting health care workers globally with response to the COVID-19 crisis. >> Okay, if you're jumping into the stream, I'm John Furrier with Jenny, we'll be your hosts all day today, throughout Docker con, it's a packed house of great content, you have a mainstream, theCUBE, which is the mainstream that will be promoting a lot of cube interviews, but check out the 40 plus sessions underneath in the interactive calendar on Dockercon.com site. Check it out, they're going to be live on a clock. So if you want to participate in real time in the chat, jump into your session on the track of your choice and participate with the folks in their chatting. If you miss it, it's going to go right on demand right after sort of all content will be immediately be available. So make sure you check it out. Docker selfie is a hashtag take a selfie, share it. Docker, #Docker jobs. If you're looking for a job or have openings, please share with the community and of course, give us feedback on what you can do. We got James governor of the keynote coming up next. He's with red monk, not afraid to share his opinion on open source on what companies should be doing. And also the evolution of this Cambrian explosion of apps that are going to be coming as we come out of this post pandemic world. A lot of people are thinking about this the crisis and following through so you know, stay with us, for more and more coverage, Jenny favorite sessions on your mind for people to pay attention to that they should they should look >> First I'm going to address a few things that continue to come up in the chat. Sessions are recorded especially breakout sessions after they play live and the speakers in chat with you. Those go on demand they are recorded, you will be able to access them. Also, if the screen is too small, there is the button to expand full screen and different quality levels for the video that you can choose on your end. All the breakout sessions also have closed captioning. So please, if you would like to read along, turn that on, so you can stay with the sessions. We have some great sessions kicking off right at 10:00 a.m. Getting started with Docker. We have a full track really in the how to enhance on that you should check out devs in action, hear what other people are doing. And then of course, our sponsors are delivering great content to you all day long. >> Tons of content, it's all available, they'll always be up always on a large scale. Thanks for watching. Now we got James Governor, the keynote. He's with red McDonald's firm, he's been tracking open source for many generations. He's been doing amazing work, watch his great keynote. I'm going to be interviewing him live right after so stay with us and enjoy the rest of the day. We'll see you back shortly. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from San Jose. It's theCUBE. Presenting big data, Silicon Valley. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media and its ecosystem partners. >> Hello everyone, I'm John Furrier, co-host of theCube. I'm here with Dave Vellante, my co-host. Exclusive conversation around the role of data, data for good and bad. We always cover the role of data. We used to talk about AI and data for good but in this exclusive interview... And we have some exclusive material about data for bad. Dave, we've been talking about weaponizing data a year ago in SiliconEAGLE in theCUBE, around how data is being weaponized, and certainly in the elections. We know the Russians were involved. We know that data, you can buy journalists, you can create fake news. And for every click-bate and fake news is bad content. But also on the other side of this, there's good bate; good news. So the world's changin'. There needs to be a better place, needs to be some action taken, because there's now evidence that the role that the Russians had, using fake news and weaponizing it to sway the election and other things has been out there. So this is somethin' that we've been talkin' about. >> Yeah I mean the signature of the hacks is pretty clear. I think there is a distinct signature when you talk to the experts of when it's China or when it's Russia. Russia, very clever, about the way they target somebody whose maybe a pawn; but they try to make him or her feel like a king, grab their credentials and then work their way in. They've been doing this for decades, right? >> And the thing is to, is that now it's not just state-sponsored, there's new groups out there that they can enable open source tools. We report on theCUBE that terrorist organizations and bad actors, are taking open source tools and threats from state nations, posing as threats to democracy in the U.S. and other countries. This is a huge problem. >> And it's, in a way, it's harder than the nuclear problem. We had weapons pointed at each other, right. This is... The United States has a lot to lose. If we go on the offense, others can attack us and attack our systems, which are pretty mature. So, recently we talked to Garry Kasparov. I had an exclusive interview with him. He's very outspoken. Kasparov is the greatest chess player in history, by most accounts. And he is a political activist, he's an author. And he had a number of things to say about this. Let's listen to him, it's about a couple minute clip, and then we'll come back and talk about it. Watch this. >> Garry: Knowing Vladimir Putin and the mentality of the KGB mentality and the way he has been approaching the global problems; I had no doubt that the question was not if Putin would attack somewhere, but the question is when and where? And the attack on U.S. democracy was a surprise here but it was not surprise for us because we could see how they built these capabilities for more than a decade. Because they have been creating fake news industry in Russia to deal with Russian opposition 2004, 2005. Then they used against neighboring countries like Estonia in 2007. Then they moved to eastern Europe and then through western Europe. So when they ended up attacking the United States, they would've had almost a decade of experience. And it's quite unfortunate that, while there was kind of information about this attacks, the previous administration decided just to take it easy. And the result is that we have this case of interference; I hope there will be more indictments. I hope we'll get to the bottom of that. Because, we know that they are still pretty active in Europe. And they will never seize there-- >> Dave: Germany, France-- >> Garry: Exactly. But it's... I call Putin as: merchant of doubt. Because, unlike Soviet propaganda machine, he's not selling one ideology. All he wants is to spread chaos. So that's why it's not about and, oh this is the only, the right teaching. No, no, no. No, it's wrong, it's wrong, everything... Yeah, maybe there are 10 different ways of saying the truth. Truth is relevant. And that's a very powerful message because it's spreading these doubts. And he's very good in just creating these confusions and actually, bringing people to fight each other. And I have to say he succeeded-- >> Dave: Our president is taken a page out of that. Unfortunately. But I also think the big issue we face as a country, in the United States, is 2020. Is the election in 2020 is going to be about who leverages social media and the weaponization of social media. And the Russian attackers you talk to the black hats, very sophisticated, very intriguing how they come in, they find the credentials-- >> Garry: But look, we know, Jesus, every expert knows that in this industry, if you are trying to defend yourself, if you are on the defense all the time you will lose. It's a losing proposition. So the only way to deter the aggression is to make sure that they won't be counterattacks. So that there will be devastating blows, those who are attacking the United States. And you need the political will because, technology is here; America is still the leading power in the world. But the political will, unfortunately-- >> Dave: However, I would say that, but it's different than with nuclear warheads. Robert Gates was on theCUBE, he said to me, and I asked him about offense versus defense. He said the only thing about the Unite States is we have a lot to lose. So we have to be careful. (laughter) How aggressive we can be. >> Garry: No, exactly. That is just, it's, yes. It's a great error of uncertainty: what can you lose? If you show strength. But I can tell you exactly how you are going to lose everything, if you are not-- >> Dave: Vigilant. >> Garry: If you are not vigilant. If you are not deterrent. If you are not sending the right signal to the Putins of this world that aggression against America will have the price that you cannot bear. >> So John, pretty unequivocal comments from Garry Kasparov. So a lot of people don't believe that you can actually manipulate social media that way. You've been in social for a long time, since the beginning days. Maybe you could explain how one, would a country or a state sponsored terrorism; how would they go about manipulating individuals? >> You know Dave, I've been involved in internet infrastructure from the beginning days of Web 1.0 and through search engines. Student of the data. I've seen the data. I've seen our, the data that we have from our media company. I've seen the data on Facebook and here's the deal: there's bad actors doin' fake news, controlling everything, creating bad outcomes. It's important for everyone to understand that there's an actual opposite spectrum. Which is the exact opposite of the bad; there's a good version. So what we can learn from this is that there's a positive element of this, if we can believe it, which is actually a way to make it work for good. And that is trust, high-quality data, reputation and context. That is a very hard problem. Facebook is tryin' to solve it. You know we're workin' on solving that. But here's the anatomy of the hack. If you control the narrative, you can control the meme. If you can control the meme, you can control the idea. If you can control the idea, you can control the belief system. If you can control the belief system, you can control the population. That is exactly what has happened with the election. That is what's happening now in social networks. That's why so many people are turning off to social networks. Because this is hackable; you can actually hack the brains and outcomes of people. Because, controlling the narrative, controlling the meme, controlling the idea, controlling the belief system: you can impact the population. That has absolutely been done. >> Without firin' a shot. >> Without firing a shot. This is the new cold social network wars that are goin' on. And again, that has been identified, but there's an opposite effect. And the opposite effect is having a trust system, a short cut to trust; there will be a Google in our future, Google, like what Google did to search engines. It will be for social networks. That is, whoever can nail the trust, reputation, context: what is real and what is not. Will ultimately have all the users goin' to their doorstep. This is the opportunity for news organizations, for platforms and it's all going to be driven by new infrastructure, new software. This is something we can learn from. But there is a way to hack, it's been done. I've just laid it out. That's what's happening. >> Well, blockchain solved or play a role in solving this problem of reputation in your opinion. >> Well you know that I believe centralized is bad. 'Cause you can hack a centralized database and the data. Ownership is huge. I personally believe that blockchain and this notion of decentralized data ownership will ultimately go back to the people and that the decentralized applications and cryptocurrency leads a path, it's not yet proven, there's no clear visibility yet. But many believe that the wallet is a new browser and that cryptocurrency can put the power to the people; so that new data can emerge. To vet in a person who says they're something that they're not. News that says they're somethin' that they're not. This is a trust. This is something that is not yet available. That's what I'm sayin'. You can't get it with Google, you can't get it with Facebook. You can't get it in these platforms. So the world has to change at an infrastructure level. That's the opportunity to blockchain. Aside from all the things like who's going to give the power for the miners; a variety of technical issues. But conceptually, there is a path there. That's a new democracy. This is global phenomenon. It's a societal change. This is so cutting edge, but it's yet very promising at the same time. >> This is super important because I can't tell you how many times have you've received an email from one political persuasion or the other that lays out emphatically, that this individual did that or... And you do some research and you find out it's fake news. It happens all the time. >> There's no context for these platforms. Facebook optimizes their data for advertising optimization and you're going to see data being optimized for user control, community control, community curation. More objective not subjective data. This is the new algorithm, this is what machine learning in AI will make a difference. This is the new trust equation that will emerge. This is a phenomenal opportunity for entrepreneurs. If you're in the media business and you're not thinking about this, you will be out of business. That's our opinion. >> Excellent John. Well thanks for your thoughts and sharing with us how these hacks are done. This is real. The midterm elections, 2020 is really going to be won or lost on social media. Appreciate that. >> And Facebook's fumbling and they're going to try to do good. We'll see what they do. >> Alright. >> Alright. >> That's a wrap. Good job. >> Thanks for watching.

(upbeat electronic music) >> Hi, I'm Peter Burress, and welcome to another Wikibon Action Item Quick Take. John Furrier. >> Yes. >> A lot coming up in the next couple weeks around BigData SV. We've talked something about what we expect to see. GDPR, blockchain, what's going on? >> I think the GDPR thing, you've seen a lot of solutions, people covering their butt right now, getting something out of the gate, but the deeper issue is the role of the data around the sovereignty. I think that's a huge deal. I think it's got deeper implications around the role of the database 'cause databases have schemas that have been SPRole over the years. Rolling that up for a quick hit solution is extremely difficult, so I think people are going to fake it 'til they make it to avoid the fines, but the deeper discussion's going to be the technical analysis of how to scale that up throughout the global infrastructure, cloud selection, application development, real critical thing. And then the blockchain impact is also going to be significant. As the role of data becomes more empowered by the user, you're going to see people deploying blockchain-like technology to provide sovereignty, whether that's user sovereignty, power to the users, power to the company, power to the geopolitical landscape with cloud and application development. So we've talked about IoT with David Floyer in the past On Wikibon Action Items about the impact of IoT and blockchain. Huge issue is not just cryptocurrency, which is token economics, which we love, but the blockchain's going to have a fundamental impact to technology. >> Excellent. So this has been John Floyer, Peter Burris with another Wikibon Action Item Quick Take. (upbeat electronic music)

>> Hi, I'm Peter Burris, and welcome to Wikibon Action Item Quick Take. Big Data SV is one of our important shows where we bring thought leadership around big data to the Cube and have great conversations about what's happening in the Big Data universe. John Furrier, what are we looking for in the next couple of weeks? >> Big Data Silicon Valley known as Big Data SV as we have NYC for New York City, two events that we co-produce in conjunction with Strata Conference going on side-by-side where we do the following. We have three days: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, the sixth, seventh, and eighth. We're going to be in San Jose. And we have a great lineup. And it's pretty much sold out, but we added Thursday for more live interviews, where we extract the signal from the noise. So we have more opportunities to interview more people, and also, we're opening up more sponsorship slots. So if you want to get your company's name out there, get above the noise, and get those thought leadership interviews out, we have just released extra sponsorship opportunities for Thursday for live interviews and conversations on the Cube, a new format. As you know, it's proven as a conversational great way to get the word out in an informative, inspirational way. Of course, that's the Cube mission, Peter, as you know. And we love doing what we do. We love the support of our sponsors. So if you want to be a sponsor and have that conversation with us, we'd love to entertain that opportunity on Thursday, March 8th. >> Alright, John Furrier, your Cube host, who actually is going to be hosting Big Data SV. This has been a Wikibon Action Item Quick Take.

(upbeat music) >> Hello everyone, welcome to a special CUBE Conversation here at the SiliconANGLE Media, CUBE and Wikibon studio in Palo Alto. I'm John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media, Inc. I'm here with Peter Burris, head of research, for a special Amazon Web Services re:Invent preview. We just had a great session with Peter's weekly Action Item roundtable meeting with analysts surrounding the trend. So that'll be up on YouTube, check that out. Really in-depth conversation around what to expect at Amazon Web Service's re:Invent coming up in about a week and a half, and great content in there. But I want to go here, Peter, have a conversation with you back and forth, 'cause we've been having a debate, ping-ponging back and forth around what we think might happen. We certainly have some visibility in some of the news that might be happening at re:Invent. But you guys have been doing a great job with the research. I want to get your thoughts and I want to just have a conversation around Amazon Web Services. Continuing to kick ass, they've had a run on their own for many, many years now. But they got competition. The visibility in Wall Street is clear. They know the profitability. The numbers are all taking shape. Microsoft stock's up from 26 to wherever it is now. It's clear the cloud is the game. That's what's going on, and you have, again, the top three: Amazon, Azure, Google. And then, you can argue four through seven, including Alibaba and others, big game going on. This is causing a lot of opportunities, but disruption to business models, technology architectures, and ultimately how customers are going to deploy their IT and/or their digital business. Your thoughts? >> I think one of the most interesting things about this, John, is that in the first 10 years of the cloud, it was implied that it was a cost play. Don't do IT anymore, it's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, do the cloud, do AWS. And I think that because the competition is so real now, and a lot of businesses are starting to realize what actually could be done if you're able to use your data in new and different ways, and dramatically accelerate and transform your businesses, that all this has become a value play. And the minute that it becomes a value play, in other words, new types of work, new types of capabilities, then for Amazon, for AWS, it becomes an ecosystem play. So I think one of the things that's most interesting about this re:Invent, is it's, from my opinion, it's going to be the first one where it's truly a strong ecosystem story. It's about how Amazon is providing services that the rest of the world's going to be able to consume and create new types of value through the Amazon ecosystem. >> Great point, I want to bring up a topic that we've been talking on theCUBE in some of my other CUBE Conversations, as it relates to the ecosystem is, in all these major ways, and we've seen many, you've covered many ways as an analyst over the years, there's always been a gestation period between a disruptive enabler, you could talk about TCP/IP, you could talk about HTTP, there's always a period of gestation. Sometimes it's accelerated now more than ever, but you start to see the impact of that disruptive enabler. Certainly cloud, and what Amazon has done, has been a disruptive enabler. Value's been created, more value's being created, more and more everyday we're seeing it. You're starting to see new things pop up from this gestation period, problems that become opportunities. And competitors that are now partners, partners that are now competitors. So a full changeover is happening in the landscape because of it. So the question for you is, what are you seeing, given your experience in seeing other ways before, what is starting to be clear in terms of visibility that are becoming known points of obvious straight and narrow trends that are happening with this cloud enabling? >> Well, let's talk about perhaps one of the biggest differences between traditional IT and cloud-oriented IT. And to kind of tell that story, I'll do something that a lot of people don't think about when they think about innovation. But if you really think about innovation, you got to break it down into two distinct acts. There's the act of inventing, which is an engineering act. It's, how do I take knowledge of physics, or knowledge of sociology, or knowledge of something, and invent something new that reflects my understanding of the problem and creating a solution? And then there's an innovation act, which is always a social act. It's getting people to change the way they do things. Businesses to change the way they do things. That's a social act. And one of the interesting things about the transition, this transition, this cloud-based transition, is we're moving into a world where the social acts are much more synonymous with the actual engineering act. And by that I mean, when something is positioned as a service, that the customer gets and just acts on it because they're now renting a service, that is truly an innovation process. You are adopting it as a service and embedding it more quickly. What we're seeing now in many respects, going back to your core point, is everything being done as a service, it means that the binding of the inventing and the innovating is much more strong, and much more immediate. And AWS re:Invent's been a forum where we see this. It's not just inventing or putting forward a new product that may get out to market in six months or nine months. It is, here is a service, people are consuming it, we're embedding it in our other AWS stuff. We're putting this AI into how folks are going to manage AWS, and the invention innovation process collapses very quickly. >> That's a good point. I would just give you some validation on that by seeing other trend points that talk about that social piece. You hear about social engineering in cyber security, that that's now a big part of how hackers are getting in, through social engineering. Open-source software is a social engineering act, 'cause it's got a community dynamic. Blockchains, huge social engineering around how these companies are forming. So I would 100% agree, that's a great, great point. The other thing I'd ask you to elaborate on is something that is a trend that's obvious, 'cause everyone talks about the old way, new way. Legacy is being disrupted. New players like Amazon are disrupting the people like Oracle. And Oracle thinks they're winning, Amazon thinks they're winning. The scoreboards aren't the same, but here's the question. Technology used to be built to solve technology problems. You build a box, you ship it, and it works. Software, craft it, ship it. It does work or it doesn't work. Now software and technology we can use to solve non-technology problems. This brings it to a whole nother level when you take your social comment, an invention. This is now a new dynamic that tend to be, I don't want to say minimized in the old days, but the old ways was, load some boxes, rack it up, and you got a PC on your desk. We could work effectively on a network. Now it's completely going non-technology problems, healthcare, verticals. >> Here's the way we look at it, John. >> John: What's your thoughts on that? >> Our simple bromide is that we are in the midst of the transition in computing. And by that I mean, for the first 50 years we talked about known process, unknown technology. By that I mean, for example, have you ever seen a GAAP accounting convention wandering out in the wild? No, it doesn't exist, it's manmade, it's artifice. There's nothing wrong with it. We all agree what an accounting thing is, but it's all highly stylized and extremely well-defined. It's a known process. And the first 50 years were about taking those known processes in accounting, and in HR, and a lot of other domains, and then saying, okay, what's the right technology to automate as much of this as possible? And we did a phenomenal job of it. It started with mainframes, then client/server. And was it this server, or that server? Unix or something else? TCP/IP or some other network? But that was the first 50 years of computing. Now we've got a lot of those things out. In fact, cloud kind of summarizes and puts forward a common set of experiences, still a lot of technology questions are going to be important. I don't want to suggest that that's not important. But increasingly it's, okay, what are the processes that we're going to try to automate? So we're now in a world where the technology's much more known, but the processes are incredibly unknown. So we went from a known-- >> So what is that impact to the cloud players, like Amazon? Because what I'm trying to figure out is, what will be the posture on the keynotes? Is it going to be a speeds and feeds show? Or is it going to be much more holistic, business impact, or societal impact? >> The obvious one is that Amazon increasingly has to be able to render these common building blocks for infrastructure up through to developers, and a new way of thinking about how do you solve problems. And so a lot more of what we're likely to see this year is Amazon continuing to move up the stack and say, here's how you're going to look at a problem, here's how you're going to solve the problem, here's the tooling, and here's the ecosystem that we're going to bring along with us. So it's much more problem-solving at the value level, going back to what we talked about earlier, problem solving that creates new types of business value, as opposed to problem solving to reduce the costs of existing infrastructure. >> Now we have a VIP chat on crowdchat.net/awsreinvent. If you want to participate, we're going to open it. We're going to keep it open for a long time, weigh in on that. We just had a great research meeting that you do weekly called Action Item, which is a format that's designed to flush out the latest and greatest research that's tied to current events or trends. And then unpack the action item for buyers and customers, large businesses in the industry. What's the summary for the meeting we just had here? A lot of stuff being talked about, Unigrid, we're talking about under the hood with data, a lot of good stuff. What's the bottom line? How do you up-level it for the CIO or CXO that's watching or listening, doesn't have time to get in the weeds? >> Well, I think the three fundamental conclusions that we reached this year is that we expect AWS to spend a lot of time talking about AI, both as a generalized way of moving up the stack, as we talked about. Here's the services the developers are going to work with. Here's the tool kits that they're going to utilize, et cetera, to solve more general problems. But also AI being embedded more deeply within AWS and how it runs as a service, and how it integrates and works with other clouds. So AI machine learning for IT operations management through AWS. So AI's going to be a major feature. The second one we think that we're going to hear a lot about is, Amazon's been putting forward this notion that they were going to facilitate migration of Legacy applications into AWS. That's been a slog, but we expect to see a more focused effort by going after specific big software houses, that have large installed bases of on-premise stuff, and see if they can't, with the software house, bring more of that infrastructure, or more of those installations, into AWS. Now, I don't want to call VMware an application house, but not unlike what they did with VMware about a year and a half ago. The last one is that we don't think that Amazon is going to put forward a general purpose IoT Edge solution this year. We think that they're going to reveal further what their approach to those problems are, which is, bigger networks, more PoPs. >> More scale. >> More scale, a lot of additional services for building applications that operate within that framework, but not that kind of, here's what the hybrid cloud by Amazon is going to look like. >> Let's talk about competition in China. Obviously, they kind of go hand in hand. Obviously, Andy Jassy and the Amazon Web Services team are seeing for the first time, massive competition. Obviously Microsoft stocks, I might have mentioned earlier. So you're starting to see the competition wheels cranking. Oracle's certainly been all over Amazon, we know that. Microsoft's just upping their game, trying to catch up, and their numbers are looking good. You got SAP playing the multicloud game. You got Google differentiating on things like TenserFlow and other AI and developer tools. This is interesting. This is the first time Amazon's really had some competition, I won't say nipping at its heels, but putting pressure. It's not the one game in town. People are talking multicloud, kind of talking about lock-in. And then you got the China situation. You got Alibaba, technically the number four cloud by some standards. Some will argue that position. The point is, it's massive. >> Yeah, I think it's by any reasonable standard. They are a big cloud player. >> So let's go through that. China, let's start with China. Amazon just announced, and the news was broken by the Wall Street Journal, who actually got it wrong and didn't correct their story for almost 24 hours. Really kind of screwed up the market, everyone thought that they were selling AWS to China. It was a unique deal. Rob Hof and the team reported and corrected, >> Peter: At SiliconANGLE. >> At siliconangle.com, we got it right, and that is is that it was a $300 million data center deal, not intellectual property, but this is the China playbook. >> They sold their physical assets. They didn't sell their IP. They didn't sell the services or the ability to provide the services. >> Based upon my reporting, and this is again still, the facts on the ground are loose, 'cause China, it's hard to get the data. But from what I can gather, they were already doing business in China. Apple went through this, even though they're hardware, they still have software. Everyone has that standoff, but ultimately getting into China requires a government-owned partner, or a Chinese company. Government-owned is quasi, you could argue that. And then they expand from there. Apple now has, I think, six stores or more in Shanghai and all over China. So this is a growth opportunity for Amazon if they play it right. Thoughts on that? I mean, obviously we cover a lot of the Chinese companies here. >> Well, I don't want to present myself as an expert on this, John. I've been watching, the Silicon Valley ANGLE reporting has been my primary information source. But I think that it's interesting. We talk about hard assets and soft assets. Hard assets are buildings, machines, and in the IT world, it's the hardware, it's the building, et cetera. And when China talks about ownership, they talk about ownership of those assets. And it sounds to me anyway, like AWS has done a very interesting thing, where they said, okay, fine, you want 51% of the hard assets? Have 51% of the hard, have 100% of the hard assets. But we are going to decide what those assets look like, and we are going to continue to own and operate the software that runs on those assets. So it sounds like, through that, they're going to provide a service into China, whatever the underlying hardware assets are running on. Interesting play. >> Well, we get the story right, and the story is, they're going into China, and they had to cut a deal. (laughs) That's the story. >> But for the hard assets. >> For the hard assets, they didn't get intellectual property. I think it's a good deal for Amazon. We'll see, we're going to watch that closely. I'm going to ask Andy Jassy that specific question. Now on the competition. The FUD is off the charts, fear, uncertainty and doubt. You see that in competitive markets, the competition throwing FUD. Sometimes it's really blatantly obvious FUD, sometimes it's just how they report numbers. I've been, not critical, but pointing out that Azure includes Office 365. Well when you start getting down that road, do you bundle in the sales floor as a cloud player? So all these things start to-- >> Peter: Yeah. >> Of course, so what is true cloud? Are people parsing the categories too narrowly, in your opinion? What's the opinion from the research team on, on what is cloud? >> Well, what is cloud? We like to talk about the cloud experience where the data demand's free or business. So the cloud experience is basically, it's self-provisioning, it's a service, it is continuous, and it allows you a range of different options about what assets you do or do not want to own, according to the physical realities, the legal realities, and intellectual property realities of the data that runs your business. So that's kind of what we mean by cloud. So let's talk about a couple of these. First-- >> Hold on, before you get to those, Andy Jassy said a couple years ago, he believes all enterprises will move to the cloud. (laughs) I mean, he was kind of, of course, he's buying 100% Amazon, and Amazon's defined as cloud. But he's kind of referring to that the enterprise on-premise current business model, and the associated technology, will move to cloud. Now, I'm not sure he would agree that the true private cloud is the same as Amazon. But if he cuts a deal with VMware like he did, is that AWS? So will his prediction come true? Ultimately, everyone's saying that will never be full cloud. >> I think this is one of those things where we got to be a little bit careful about trying to read too much into what he said. But here's what we think. Our advice to customers is don't think about moving your enterprise to the cloud, think about moving the cloud to your enterprise. And I think that's the whole basis for the hybrid cloud conversation that we're having. And the reason why we say the cloud experience where your data demands, is that there are physical realities that every enterprise is going to have to deal with, latency, bandwidth. There are legal realities that every enterprise is going to have to deal with. GDPR, what it means to handle privacy and handle data. And then there's finally intellectual property realities that every enterprise is going to have to deal with. Amazon not wanting to sell its IP to a Chinese partner, to comply with Chinese laws. Every business faces these issues. And they're not going to go away. And that's what's going to shape every businesses configuration of how they're using the cloud. >> And by the way, when I did ask him that question, it might have been three years ago. I can't actually remember, I'm losing my mind here. But at that time, cloud was not yet endorsed as the viable way. So he might have been referring to, again, I'm going to ask him this when I see him in my one on one. He might have been referring to old enterprise ways. So I mean-- >> Let's be honest. Amazon has done such an incredible job of making this a real thing. And our opinion is that they're going to continue to grow as fast as the cloud industry, however we define it. What we tend to define, we think that SaaS is going to be a big player, and it's going to be the biggest part of the player. We think Infrastructure as a Service is going to continue to be critically important. We think that the competition for developers is going to heat up in a big way. AI, machine learning, deep learning, all of those things are going to be part of that competition. In our view of things, we're going to see SaaS be much bigger in a few years. We're going to see this notion of true private cloud, which is a cloud experience on-premise with your assets, because you need to control your data in different ways, is going to be bigger than IaaS, but it's all going to be cloud. >> I mean, in all poise, my opinion and what I'm looking for this year, Peter, just to kind of wrap up the segment is, I think, and if you look at Amazon's new ad campaign, the builders, that's a topic that we talked about last year. >> Peter: Developers. >> Developers. We are living in a world where DevOps is now going mainstream. And there are still cultural issues around, what does that actually mean for a business? The personnel, how they operate, and some of the things you guys point out in your true private cloud report, illuminates those things. And that is, whoever can automate and create great tooling for the DevOps culture going forward, whatever that's called, new developers, new normal? Whatever it is, that to me is going to be the competitive landscape. >> Let me parse that slightly, or put it slightly differently. I think everybody put forward this concept of DevOps as, hey, business, redefine yourself around DevOps. And it hasn't gone as well as a lot of people thought it would. I think what's really going to happen, I don't think you're disagreeing with me, John, is that we need to bring more developers into cloud building that cloud experience, building more of the application value, building more of the enterprise value, in cloud. Now that's happening, and they are going to start snapping this DevOps concept into place. But I think it really is going to boil down to, how are developers going to fully embrace the cloud? What's it going to look like? It's going to be multicloud. Let's go back to the competition. Microsoft, you're right, but they're a big SaaS player. Companies are building enormous relations, big contracts, with Microsoft. They're going to be there. Google, last year they couldn't get out of their own way. Diane Greene comes in, we see a much more focused effort. There's some real engineering that's going on for Google Cloud Services, or Platform, that wasn't there before. Google is emerging as a big player. We're having a lot of conversations with users, where they're taking Google very seriously. IBM is still out there, still got some things going on. You've already mentioned Alibaba, Tencent, a whole bunch of other players in the globe. This is going to be a market that's going to be very, very contentious, but Amazon's going to get there first share. >> And I think we pointed out years ago, that DevOps will merge to cloud developers. You nailed it, I think you just said it. Okay, Peter Burris, here for the Amazon Web Service preview. Of course theCUBE will be there with two sets. We're going to have over 75 interviews over the course of 3 days. In the hall, look for theCUBE, if you've watched this video and you want to come by. If you got a ticket, it's sold out. But come by if you have a ticket. We'll be there, in Las Vegas, for Amazon Web Services re:Invent. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching this CUBE Conversation from Palo Alto. (upbeat techno music)

(bright orchestral music) >> Hello everyone, and welcome to theCUBE Conversations here in Palo Alto Studios. For theCUBE, I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media inc. My next guest is Bruce Arthur, who's the Vice President of engineering at Banter.ai. Good friend, we've known each other for years, VP of engineering, developer, formerly at Apple. >> Yes. >> Worked on all the big products; the iPad-- had the the tin foil on your windows back in the day during Steve Jobs' awesome run there. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, it's good to be here. >> Yeah, great, you've got a ton of experience and I want to get your perspective as a developer, VP of engineering, entrepreneur, you're doing a startup around AI. Let's have a little banter. >> Sure. >> Banter.ai is a little bit a chat bot, but the rage is DevOps. Software really models change, infrastructure as code, cloud computing. Really a renaissance of software development going on right now. >> It is, it's changing a lot. >> What's your view on this? >> Well, so, years and years ago you would work really hard on your software. You would package it up in a box and you'd send it over the wall and you hope it works. And that seems very quaint now because now you write your software, you deploy it the first day, and you change it six times that day, and you're A/B-testing it, you're driving it forward, it's so much more interactive. It does require a different skillset. It also doesn't, how do I say this carefully? It used to be very easy to be craft, to have high craft and make a very polished product, but you didn't know if it was going to work. Today you know if it's going to work, but you often don't get to making sure it's high quality, high craft, high value. >> John: So, the iteration >> Exactly, the iteration runs so fast, which is highly valuable, but you sort of just a little bit of you miss the is this really something I am proud of and I can really work with it because you know, now the product definition can change so quickly, which is awesome but it is a big change. >> And that artisan crafting thing is interesting, but now some are saying that the UX side is interesting because, if you get the back end working, and you're iterating, you can still bring that artisan flavor back. We heard that cloud computing vendors like Amazon, and I was just in China for Alibaba, they're trying to bring this whole design artisan culture back. Your thoughts on the whole artisan craft in software, because now you have two stages, you have deploy, iterate, and then ultimately polish. >> Right, so, I think it's interesting, it used to be, engineering is so expensive and time-consuming. You have to design it upfront and you make one version of it and you're done. That has changed now that engineering has gotten easier. You have better tools, we have better things, you can make six versions and that used to be, so back in the day at Apple, you would make six versions, five of which Steve would hate and throw out, and eventually they would get better and better and better and then you would have something you're proud of. Now those are just exposed. Now everybody sees those, it's a very different process. So you, I think, the idea that you. Engineering used to be this scarce resource. It's becoming easier now to have many versions and have more engineers working on stuff, so now it is much more can I have three design teams, can they compete, can they make all good ideas, and then who's going to be the editor? Who evaluates them and decides I like this from this one, I like that, and now let's put this together to make the right product. >> So, at Apple, you mentioned Steve would reject, well, that's well-documented. >> Sure. >> It's publicly out there that he would like, really look at the design-side. Was it Waterfall-based, was it Agile, Scrum, did you guys, was it like, do you lay it all out in front of him and he points at it? What were some of the work flows like with Steve Jobs? >> So, when he was really excited about something he would want to meet with them every week. He'd want to see progress every week. He'd give lots of feedback every week, there'd be new ideas. It was very Steve-focused. I think the more constructive side of it was the design teams were always thinking about What can we build, how do we put it in front of him, and I remember there was a great quote from a designer that said. It's not that Steve designs great things, it's that you show him three things, and if you throw him three bad things, he'll pick the least bad. If you show him three great things, he'll pick the most great, But it's not, it was more about the, you've got to iterate in the process, you've got to try ideas, you take ideas from different people and some of them, like, they sound like a great idea. When we talk, it sounds really good. You build it, and you're like, that's just not, that's just not right. So, you want, how do I say this? You don't want to lock yourself in up front. You want to imagine them, you want to build them, you want to try 'em. >> And that's, I mean, I've gotten to know the family over the years, too, through some of the Palo Alto interactions, and that's the kind of misperception of Steve Jobs, was that he was the guy. He enabled people, he had that ethos that-- >> He was the editor, it's an old school journalism metaphor, which is, he had ideas, he wanted, but he also, he ran the team. He wanted to have people bring their ideas and come in. And then he decided, this is good, this is not. That's better, you can do better, let's try this. Or, sometimes, this whole thing stinks. It's just not going anywhere. So, like, it was much more of that. Now it's applied to software, and he was a marketing genius, about sort of knowing what people were going to go for, but there was a little bit of a myth for it, that there's one man designing everything. That is a very saleable marketing story. >> The mythical man. (laughs) >> Well, it's powerful, but no, there's a lot of people, and getting the best work of all those people. >> I mean, he's said on some of the great videos I've watched on YouTube over the years, Hire the best people, only work with the best, and they'll bring good stuff to the table. Now, I want to bring that kind of metaphor, one step further for this great learning lesson, again it's all well-documented on YouTube. Plenty of Steve videos there, but now when you go to DevOps, you mention the whole quality thing and you got to ship fast, iterate, you know there's a lot of moving fast break stuff as Zuckerberg would say, of Facebook, although he's edited his tune to say move fast and be reliable. (laughing) Welcome to the enterprise, welcome to software and operations. This is now a scale game at the enterprise side 'cause, you know, you start seeing open source software grow so much now, where a lot of the intellectual property might be only 10% of software. >> Right. >> You might be using other pieces. You're packaging it so that when you get it to the market, how do bring that culture? How do you get that innovation of, Okay, I'm iterating fast, how do I maintain the quality. What are some of your thoughts on that? Because you've got machine learning out there, you've got these cool things happening. >> Yup. So, you want, how do I say this? You just, you really need to leave time to schedule it. It needs to be in your list. There's a lot of figuring out what are we going to build and you have to try things, iterate things, see if they resonate with consumers. See if they resonate with people who want to pay. See if they resonate with investors. You have to figure than out fast, but then you have to know that, okay, this is a good prototype. Now I have to make it work better because the first version wouldn't scale well, now it has to scale, now it has to work right for people, now you have to have a review of: here's the bugs, here's the things that are not working. Why does this chatbot stop responding sometimes? What is causing that? Now, the great story is, with good DevOps, you actually have a system that's very good at finding and tracking those problems. In the old world, so the old world with the shrink-wrap software, you'd throw it over the fence. If it misbehaves, you will never know. Today you know. You've got alerts, you've got pagers going off, you've got logs, >> It's instrumented big-time. >> Yeah, exactly, you can find that stuff. So, since you can actually make, you can make very high-quality software because you have so much more data about what's going on with it, it's nice. And actually, chatbot software has this fascinating little side effect, with, because it's all chats and it's all text, there are no irreproducible bugs. You can go back and look at exactly what happened. I have a recording, I know exactly what happened, I know exactly what came in, I know what came out, and then I know that this failure happened. So, it's very reproducible, sort of, it's nice you can, it doesn't always work this way, but it's very easy to track down problems. >> It's event-based, it's really easy to manage. >> Exactly, and it's just text. You can just read it. It's not like I have to debug hacks, it's just these things were said and this thing died. >> No core dumps. (laughs) >> No, there's nothing that requires sophisticated analysis, well the code is one thing, but like, the sequence of events is very human-readable, very understandable. >> Alright, so let's talk about the younger generation. So, we've been around the block, you and I. We've talked, certainly many times around town, about the shifts, and we love these new waves. A lot of great waves coming in, we've seen many waves. What's going on, in your mind, with the younger generation? Because this is a, some exciting things happening. Decentralized internet. >> Bruce: Yup. >> There's blockchain, getting all the attention. Outside of the hype, Alpha VCs, Alpha engineers, Alpha entrepreneurs are really honing in on blockchain because they see the potential. >> Sure. >> Early people are seeing it. Then you've got cloud, obviously unlimited compute potentially, the new, you know, kind of agile market. All these young guys, they never shipped, actually never loaded Linux on a server. (laughing) So, like, what are you seeing for the younger guys? And what do you see as someone who's experienced, looking down at the next, you know, 20 year run we see. >> So, I think what I see that's most exciting is that we now have people solving very non-technical problems with technology. I think it used to be, you could build a computer, you could write code, but then, like, your space was limited to the computer in front of you. Like, I can do input and outputs. I can put things on the screen, I can make a video game, but it's in this box. Now everyone's thinking of much bigger, Solving bigger problems. >> John: Yeah, healthcare, we're seeing verticals. >> Yeah, healthcare's a massive one. You can, operation things, shipping products. I mean, who would've thought Amazon was going to be delivering things, basically. I mean, they're using technology to solve the physical delivery of objects. That is, the space of what people are tackling is massive. It' no longer just about silicon and programming, it's sort of, any problem out there, there's someone trying to apply technology, which is awesome and I think that's because these people these youngsters, they're digital natives. >> Yeah. >> They've come to expect that, of course video conferencing works, of course all these other items work. That I just need to figure out how to solve problems with them, and I'm hopeful we're going to see more human-sized problems solved. I think, you know, we have, technology has maybe exacerbated a few things and dislocated, cost a lot of people jobs. Disconnected some people from other sort of stabilizing forces, >> Fake news. (laughs) >> Fake news, you know, we need-- >> John: It's consequences, side effects. >> I hope we get people solving those problems because fake news should now be hard to solve. They'll figure it out, I think, but, like, the idea is, we need to, technology does have a bit of a responsibility to solve, fix some of the crap that it broke. Actually, there's things that need, old structures, journalism is an old profession. >> Yeah. >> And it used to actually have all these wonderful benefits, but when the classified business went down the tubes, it took all that stuff down. >> Yeah. >> And there needs to be a venue for that. There needs to be new outlets for people to sort of do research, look things up, and hold people to account. >> Yeah, and hopefully some of our tools we'll be >> I hope so. >> pulling out at Silicon Angle you'll be seeing some new stuff. Let's talk about, like just in general, some of the fashionable coolness around engineering. Machine learning, AI obviously tops the list. Something that's not as sexy, or as innovative things. >> Sure. >> Because you have machines and industrial manufacturing plant equipment to people's devices. Obviously you worked at Apple, so you understand that piece, with the watch and everything. >> Yup, >> So you've got, that's an internet, we're things, people are things too. So, machines and people are at the edge of the network. So, you've got this new kind of concept. What gets you excited? Talk about how you feel about those trends. >> So, there's a ton going on there. I think what's amazing is the idea that all these sensors and switches and all the remote pieces can start to have smarts on them. I think the downside of that is some of the early IoT stuff, you know, has a whole open SSL stack in it. And, you know, that can be out of date, and when you have security problems with that now your light switch has access to your tax returns and that's not really what you want. So, I think there's definitely, there's a world coming, I think, at a technical level, we need to make operating systems and tools and networking protocols that aren't general purpose because general purpose tools are hackable. >> John: Yeah. >> I need to have a sensor and a switch that know how to talk to each other, and that's it. They can't rewrite code, they can't rewrite their firmware, they can't, like, I want to be able to know that, you have a nice office here, if somebody came in and tried to hack your switches, would you ever know? And the answer's like, you'd have no idea, but when you have things that are on your network and that serve you, if they're a general, if they're a little general purpose computing device, they're a mess. Like, you know, a switch is simple. A microphone, a microphone is simple. There's an output from it, it needs, I think we, >> So differentiated software for device. >> Well, let's get back to old school. You studied operating systems back in the day. >> Yeah. >> A process can do whatever the hell it wants. It can read from memory, it can write to disk, it can talk to all these buses. It's a very, it can do, it's very general purpose. I don't want that in my switch. I want my switch to be sort of, much more of these old little micro-controller. >> Bounded. >> Yeah, it's in a little box. I mean, so the phone and the Mac have something called Sandbox, which sort of says, you get a smaller view of the world. You get a little piece of the disk, you can't see everything else, and those are parts of it, but I think you need even more. You need, sort of, this really, I don't want a general purpose thing, I want a very specific thing that says I'm allowed to do this and I'm allowed to talk to that server; I don't have access to the internet. I've got access to that server. >> You mentioned operating systems. I mean, obviously I grew up in the computer science genre of the '80s and you did as well. That was a revolution around Unix. >> Yes. >> And then Berkeley, BSD, and all that stuff that happened around the systems world, operating systems, was really the pioneers in computing at that time. It's interesting with cloud, it's almost a throwback now to systems thinking. >> Bruce: It's true, yeah. >> You know, people looking at, and you're discussing it. >> Bruce: Yeah, Yeah. >> It's a systems problem. >> Yeah, it is. >> It's just not in a box. >> Right, and I think we witnessed the, let's get everyone a general purpose computer and see what they can do. And that was amazing, but now you're like I don't want everything to be a general I want very specific, I want very little thing, dedicated things that do this really well. I don't want my thermostat actually tracking when I'm in the house. You know, I want it to know, eh, maybe there's someone in the house, but I don't want it to know it's me. I don't want it reporting to Google what's going on. I want it to track my temperature and manage that. >> Our Wikibon team calls the term Unigrid, I call it hypergrid because essentially it's grid computer; there's no differentiation between on-premise and cloud. >> Right. >> It's one pool of resource of compute and things processes. >> It is, although I think, and that's interesting, you want that, but again you want it, how do I say this? I get a little nervous when all of my data goes to some cloud that I can't control. Like, I would love if, I'll put it this way. If I have a camera in my house, and imagine I put security cameras up, I want that to sort of see what's going on, I don't want it to publish the video to anywhere that's out of my control. If it publishes a summary that says, oh, like, someone came to your door, I'm like, okay, that's a good, reasonable thing to know and I would want to get that. So, Palo Alto recently added, there's traffic cameras that are looking at traffic, and they record video, but everyone's very nervous about that fact. They don't want to be recorded on video. So, the camera, this is actually really good, the camera only reports number of cars, number of bikes, number of pedestrians, just raw numbers. So you're pushing the processing down to the end and you only get these very anonymous statistics out of it and that's the right model. I've got a device, it can do a lot of sophisticated processing, but it gives nice summary data that is very public, I don't think anyone's really >> There's a privacy issue there that they've factored into the design? >> Yes, exactly. It's privacy and it's also the appropriateness of the data, you don't want, yeah, people don't want a camera watching them when they go by, but they're happy and they're like, oh, yeah, that street has a big increase in traffic, And there's a lot of, there were accidents here and there's people running red lights. That's valuable knowledge, not the fact that it's you in your Tesla and you almost hit me. No. (laughs) >> Yeah, or he's speeding, slow down. >> Exactly, yeah, or actually if you recorded speeders the fact that there's a lot of speeding is very interesting. Who's doing it, okay, people get upset if that's recorded. >> Yeah, I'm glad that Palo Alto is solving their traffic problem, Palo Alto problems, as we say. In general, security's been a huge issue. We were talking before we came on, about just the security nightmare. >> Bruce: Yes. >> A lot of companies are out there scratching their heads. There's so much of digital transformation happening, that's the buzzword in the industry. What does that mean from your standpoint? Because engineers are now moving to the front lines. Developers, engineering, because now there's a visibility to not just the software, it's an end goal. They call it outcome. Do you talk to customers a lot around, through your entrepreneurial venture, around trying to back requirements into product and yet deliver value? Do you get any insight from the field of kind of problems, you know, businesses are generally tryna solve with tech? >> So, that's interesting, I think when we try to start tech companies, we usually have ideas and then we go test that premise on customers. Perhaps I'm not as adaptable as I should be. We're not actually going to customers and asking them what they want. We're asking them if this is the kind of thing that would solve their problems. And usually they're happy to talk to us. The tough one, then, is then are they going to become paying customers, there's talking and there's paying, and they're different lines. >> I mean, certainly is validation. >> Exactly, that's when you really know that they care. It is, it's a tough question. I think there's always, there's a category of entrepreneur that's always very knowledgable about a small number of customers and they solve their problems, and those people are successful and they're often, They often are more services-based, but they're solving problems because they know people. They know a lot of people, they know what their paying point are. >> Alright, so here's the real question I want to know is, have you been back to Apple in the new building? >> Have I been to, I have not been in the spaceship. (laughing) I have not been in the spaceship yet. I actually understand that in order to have the event there, they actually had to stop work on the rest of the building because the construction process makes everything so dirty; and they did not want everyone to see dirty windows, so they actually halted the construction, they scrubbed down the trees, they had the event, and now it's, but now it's back. >> Now it's back to, >> So, I'll get there at some point. >> Bruce Arthur it the Vice President of Banter.ai, entrepreneur, formerly of Apple, good friend, Final question for you, just what are you excited about these days and as you look out at the tooling and the computer science and the societal impact that is seen with cloud and all these technologies, and open source, what do you, what are you excited about? >> I'm most excited, I think we actually have now enough computing resources and enough tools at hand that we can actually go back and tackle some harder computer science problems. I think there's things that used to be so big that you're like, well, that's just not, That's too much data, we could never solve that. That's too much, that would take, you know, that would take a hundred computers a hundred years to figure out. Those are problems now that are becoming very tractable, and I think it's been the rise of, yeah, it starts with Google, but some other companies that sort of really made these very large problems are now tractable, and they're now solvable. >> And open source, your opinion on open source these days? >> Open source is great. >> Who doesn't love more code? (laughs) >> Well, I should back this up, Open source is the fastest way to share and to make progress. There are times where you need what's called proprietary, but in other words valuable, when you need valuable engineers to work on something and, you know, not knowing the providence or where something comes from is a little sticky, I think there's going to be space for both. I think open source is big, but there's going to be-- >> If you have a core competency, you really want to code it. >> Exactly, you want to write that up and you-- >> You can still participate in the communities. >> Right, and I think open source is also, it's awesome when it's following. If there's something else in front, it follows very fast, it does a very good job. It's very thorough, sometimes it doesn't know where to go and it sort of meanders, and that's when other people have advantages. >> Collective intelligence. >> Exactly. >> Bruce, thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it, good to see you. This is a Cube Conversation here in the Palo Alto studio, I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (light electronic music)

(light orchestral music) >> Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Cube Conversation here at the Palo Alto studios for theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media. We're here for some news analysis with Peter Smails, the CMO of Datos.IO D-a-t-o-s dot I-O. Hot new start up with some news. Peter was just here for a thought leader segment with Chris Cummings talking about the industry breakdown. But the news is hot, prior to re:Invent which you will be at? >> Absolutely. >> RecoverX is the product. 2.5, it's a release. So, you've got a point release on your core product. >> Correct. >> Welcome to this conversation. >> Thanks for having me. Yeah, we're excited to share the news. Big day for us. >> All right, so let's get into the hard news. You guys are announcing a point release of the latest product which is your core flagship, RecoverX. >> Correct. >> Love the name. Love the branding of the X in there. It reminds me of the iPhone, so makes me wanna buy one. But you know ... >> We can make that happen, John. >> You guys are the X Factor. So, we've been pretty bullish on what you guys are doing. Obviously, like the positioning. It's cloud. You're taking advantage of the growth in the cloud. What is this new product release? Why? What's the big deal? What's in it for the customer? >> So, I'll start with the news, and then we'll take a small step back and sort of talk about why exactly we're doing what we're doing. So, RecoverX 2.5 is the latest in our flagship RecoverX line. It's a cloud data management platform. And the market that we're going after and the market we're disrupting is the traditional data management space. The proliferation of modern applications-- >> John: Which includes which companies? >> So, the Veritas' of the world, the Commvault's of the world, the Dell EMC's of the world. Anybody that was in the traditional-- >> 20-year-old architected data backup and recovery software. >> You stole my fun fact. (laughs) But very fair point which is that the average age approximately of the leading backup and recovery software products is approximately 20 years. So, a lot's changed in the last 20 years, not the least of which has been this proliferation of modern applications, okay? Which are geo-distributed microservices oriented and the rapid proliferation of multicloud. That disrupts that traditional notion of data management specifically backup and recovery. That's what we're going after with RecoverX. RecoverX 2.5 is the most recent version. News on three fronts. One is on our advanced recovery, and we can double-click into those. But it's essentially all about giving you more data awareness, more granularity to what data you wanna recover and where you wanna put it, which becomes very important in the multicloud world. Number two is what we call data center aware backup and recovery. That's all about supporting geo-distributed application environments, which again, is the new normal in the cloud. And then number three is around enterprise hardening, specifically around security. So, it's all about us increased flexibility and new capabilities for the multicloud environment and continue to enterprise-harden the product. >> Okay, so you guys say significant upgrade. >> Peter: Yep. >> I wanna just look at that. I'm also pretty critical, and you know how I feel on this so don't take it personal, multicloud is not a real deal yet. It's in statement of value that customers are saying-- It's coming! But cloud is here today, regular cloud. So, multicloud ... Well, what is multicloud actually mean? I mean, I can have multiple clouds but I'm not actually moving workloads across clouds, yet. >> I disagree. >> Okay. >> I actually disagree. We have multiple customers. >> All right, debunk that. >> I will debunk that. Number one use case for RecoverX is backup and recovery. But with a twist of the fact that it's for these modern applications running these geo-distributed environments. Which means it's not about backing up my data center, it's about, I need to make a copy of my data but I wanna back it up in the cloud. I'm running my application natively in the cloud, so I want a backup in the cloud. I'm running my application in the cloud but I actually wanna backup from the cloud back to my private cloud. So, that in lies a backup and recovery, and operation recovery use case that involves multicloud. That's number one. Number two use case for RecoverX is what we talk about on data mobility. >> So, you have a different definition of multicloud. >> Sorry, what was your-- Our definition of multicloud is fundamentally a customer using multiple clouds, whether it be a private on-prem GCP, AWS, Oracle, any mix and match. >> I buy that. I buy that. Where I was getting critical of was a workload. >> Okay. >> I have a workload and I'm running it on Amazon. It's been architected for Amazon. Then I also wanna run that same workload on Azure and Google. >> Okay. >> Or Oracle or somewhere else. >> Yep. >> I have to re-engineer it (laughs) to move, and I can't share the data. So, to me what multicloud means, I can run it anywhere. My app anywhere. Backup is a little bit different. You're saying the cloud environments can be multiple environments for your solution. >> That is correct. >> So, you're looking at it from the other perspective. >> Correct. The way we define ourselves is application-centric data management. And what that essentially means is we don't care what the underlying infrastructure is. So, if you look at traditional backup and recovery products they're LUN-based. So, I'm going to backup my storage LUN. Or they're VM-based. And a lot of big companies made a lot of money doing that. The problem is they are no LUN's and VM's in hybrid cloud or multicloud environment. The only thing that's consistent across application, across cloud-environments is the data and the applications that are running. Where we focus is we're 100% application-centric. So, we integrate at the database level. The database is the foundation of any application you create. We integrate there, which makes us agnostic to the underlying infrastructure. We run, just as examples, we have customers running next generation applications on-prem. We have customers running next generation applications on AWS in GCP. Any permutation of the above, and to your point about back to the multicloud we've got organizations doing backup with us but then we also have organizations using us to take copies of their backup data and put them on whatever clouds they want for things like test and refresh. Or performance testing or business analytics. Whatever you might wanna do. >> So, you're pretty flexible. I like that. So, we talked before on other segments, and certainly even this morning about modern stacks. >> Yeah. >> Modern applications. This is the big to-do item for all CXOs and CIOs. I need a modern infrastructure. I need modern applications. I need modern developers. I need modern everything. Hyper, micro, ultra. >> Whatever buzz word you use. >> But you guys in this announcement have a couple key things I wanna just get more explanation on. One, advanced recovery, backup anywhere, recover anywhere, and you said enterprise-grade security is the third thing. >> Yep. >> So, let's just break them down one at a time. Advanced recovery for Datos 2.5, RecoverX 2.5. >> Yep. >> What is advanced recovery? >> It's very specifically about providing high levels of granularity for recovering your data, on two fronts. So, the use case is, again, backup. I need to recover data. But I don't wanna necessarily recover everything. I wanna get smarter about the data I wanna recover. Or it could be for non-operational use cases, which is I wanna spin up a copy of data to run test dev or to do performance testing on. What advanced recovery specifically means is number one, we've introduced the notion of queryble recovery. And what that means is that I can say things like star dot John star. And the results returning from that, because we're application-centric, and we integrated the database, we give you visibility to that. I wanna see everything star dot John star. Or I wanna recover data from a very specific row, in a very specific column. Or I want to mask data that I do not wanna be recovered and I don't want people to see. The implications of that are think about that from a performance standpoint. Now, I only recover the data I need. So, I'm very, very high levels of granularity based upon a query. So, I'm fast from an RTO standpoint. The second part of it is for non-operational requirements I only move the data that is select to that data set. And number three is it helps you with things like GDPR compliance and PII compliance because you can mask data. So, that's query-based recovery. That's number one. The second piece of advanced recovery is what we call incremental recovery. That is granular recovery based upon a time stamp. So, you can get within individual points in time. So, you can get to a very high level of granularity based upon time. So, it's all about visibility. It's your data and getting very granular in a smart way to what you wanna recover. So, if I kind of hear what you're saying, what you're saying is essentially you built in the operational effectiveness of being effective operationally. You know, time to backup recovery, all that good RTO stuff. Restoring stuff operationally >> Peter: Very quickly. >> very fast. >> Peter: In a smart way. >> So, there's a speed game there which is table stakes. But you're real value here is all these compliance nightmares that are coming down the pike, GDPR and others. There's gonna be more. >> Peter: Absolutely. I mean, it could be HIPPA, it could be GDPR, anything that involves-- >> Policy. >> Policies. Anything that requires, we're completely policy-driven. And you can create a policy to mask certain data based upon the criteria you wanna put in. So, it's all about-- >> So you're the best of performance, and you got some tunability. >> And it's all about being data aware. It's all about being data aware. So, that's what advanced recovery is. >> Okay, backup anywhere, recover anywhere. What does that mean? >> So, what that means is the old world of backup and recovery was I had a database running in my data center. And I would say database please take a snapshot of yourself so I can make a copy. The new world of cloud is that these microservices-based modern applications typically run, they're by definition distributed, And in many cases they run distributed across they're geo-distributed. So, what data center aware backup and recovery is, use a perfect example. We have a customer. They're running their eCommerce. So, leading online restaurant reservations company. They're running their eCommerce application on-prem, interestingly enough, but it's based on Cassandra distributed database. Excuse me, MongoDB. Sorry. They're running geo-distributed, sharded MongoDB clusters. Anybody in the traditional backup and recovery their head would explode when you say that. In the modern application world, that's a completely normal use case. They have a data center in the U.S. They have a data center in the U.K. What they want is they wanna be able to do local backup and recovery while maintaining complete global consistency of their data. So again, it's about recovery time ultimately but it's also being data aware and focusing only on the data that you need to backup and recovery. So, it's about performance but then it's also about compliance. It's about governance. That's what data center aware backup is. >> And that's a global phenomenon people are having with the GO. >> Absolutely. Yeah, you could be within country. It could be any number of different things that drive that. We can do it because we're data aware-- >> And that creates complexity for the customer. You guys can take that complexity away >> Correct. >> From the whole global, regional where the data can sit. >> Correct. I'd say two things actually. To give the customers credit, the customers building these apps or actually getting a lot smarter about what they're data is and where they're data is. >> So they expect this feature? >> Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I wouldn't call it table stakes cause we're the only kids on the block that can do it. But this is in direct response to our customers that are building these new apps. I wanna get into some of the environmental and customer drivers in a second. I wanna nail the last segment down. Cause I wanna unpack the whole why is this trend happening? What's the gestation period? What's the main enabler for you? But okay, final point on the significant announcements. My favorite topic enterprise-grade security. What the hell does that mean? First of all, from your standpoint the industry's trying to solve the same thing. Enterprise-grade security, what are you guys providing in this? >> Number one, it's basically security protocol. So, TLS and SSL. This is weed stuff. TLS, SSL, so secure protocol support. It's integration with LDAP. So, if organizations are running, primarily if they're running on-prem and they're running in an LDAP environment, we're support there. And then we've got Kerberos support for Kerberos authentication. So, it's all about just checking the boxes around the different security >> So, this is like in between >> and transport protocol. >> the toes, the details around compliance, identity management. >> Peter: Bingo. >> I mean we just had Centrify's CyberConnect conference, and you're seeing a lot of focus on identity. >> Absolutely. And the reason that that's sort of from a market standpoint the reason that these are very important now is because the applications that we're supporting these are not science experiments. These are eCommerce applications. These are core business applications that mainstream enterprises are running, and they need to be protected and they're bringing the true, classic enterprise security, authentication, authorization requirements to the table. >> Are you guys aligning with those features? Or is there anything significant in that section? >> From an enterprise security standpoint? It's primarily about we provide the support, so we integrate with all of those environments and we can check the boxes. Oh, absolutely TLS. Absolutely, we've got that box checked because-- >> So, you're not competing with other cybersecurity? >> No, this is purely we need to do this. This is part of our enterprise-- >> This is where you partner. >> Peter: Well, no. For these things it's literally just us providing the protocol support. So, LDAP's a good example. We support LDAP. So, we show up and if somebody's using my data management-- >> But you look at the other security solutions as a way to integrate with? >> Yeah. >> Not so much-- >> Absolutely, no. This has nothing to do with the competition. It's just supporting ... I mean Google has their own protocol, you know, security protocols, so we support those. So, does Amazon. >> I really don't want to go into the customer benefits. We'll let the folks go to the Datos website, d-a-t-o-s dot i-o is the website, if you wanna check out all their customer references. I don't wanna kind of drill on that. I kind of wanna really end this segment on the real core issue for me is reading the tea leaves. You guys are different. You're now kind of seeing some traction and some growth. You're a new kind of animal in the zoo, if you will. (Peter laughs) You've got a relevant product. Why is it happening now? And I'm trying to get to understanding Cloud Oss is enabling a lot of stuff. You guys are an effect of that, a data point of what the cloud is enabled as a venture. Everything that you're doing, the value you create is the function of the cloud. >> Yes. >> And how data is moving. Where's this coming from? Is it just recently? Is it a gestation period of a few years? Where did this come from? You mentioned some comparisons like Oracle. >> So, I'll answer that in sort of, we like to use history as our guide. So, I'll answer that both in macro terms, and then I'll answer it in micro terms. From a macro term standpoint, this is being driven by the proliferation of new data sources. It's the easiest way to look at it. So, if you let history be your guide. There was about a seven to eight year proliferation or gap between proliferation of Oracle as the primary traditional relational database data source and the advent of Veritas who really defined themselves as the defacto standard for traditional on-prem data center relational data management. You look at that same model, you'll look at the proliferation of VMware. In the late 90s, about a seven to eight year gestation with the rapid adoption of Veeam. You know the early days a lot of folks laughed at Veeam, like, "Who's gonna backup VMs? People aren't gonna use VMs in the enterprise. Now, you looked at Veeam, great company. They've done some really tremendous things carving out much more than a niche providing backup and recovery and availability in a VM-based environment. The exact same thing is happening now. If you go back six to seven years from now, you had the early adoption of the MongoDBs, the Cassandras, the Couches. More recently you've got a much faster acceleration around the DynamoDBs and the cloud databases. We're riding that same wave to support that. >> This is a side effect of the enabling of the growth of cloud. >> Yes. >> So, similar to what you did in VMware with VMs and database for Oracle you guys are taking it to the next level. >> These new data sources are completely driven by the fact that the cloud is enabling this completely distributed, far more agile, far more dynamic, far less expensive application deployment model, and a new way of providing data management is required. That's what we do. >> Yeah, I mean it's a function of maturity, one. As Jeff Rickard, General Manager of theCube, always says, when the industry moves to it's next point of failure, in this case failure is problem and you solve. So, the headaches that come from the awesomeness of the growth. >> Absolutely. And to answer that micro-wise briefly. So, that was the macro. The micro is the proliferation of, the movement from monolithic apps to microservices-based app, it's happening. And the cloud is what's enabling them. The move from traditional on-prem to hybrid cloud is absolutely happening. That's by definition the cloud. The third piece which is cloud-centric is the world's moving from a scale up world to an elastic-compute, elastic storage model. We call that the modern IT stack. Traditional backup and recovery, traditional data management doesn't work in the new modern IT stack. That's the market we're planning. That's the market we're disrupting is all that traditional stuff moving to the modern IT stack. >> Okay, Datos IO announcing a 2.5 release of RecoverX, their flagship product, their start up growing out of Los Gatos. Peter Smails here, the CMO. Where ya gonna be next? What's going on-- I know we're gonna see you re:Invent in a week in a half. >> Absolutely. So, we've got two stops. Well, actually the next stop on the tour is re:Invent. So, absolutely looking forward to being back on theCUBE at re:Invent. >> And the company feels good about those things are good. You've got good money in the bank. You're growing. >> We feel fantastic. It's fascinating to watch as things develop. The conversations we have now versus even six months ago. It's sort of the tipping point of people get it. You sort of explain, "Oh, yeah it's data management from modern applications. Are you deploying modern applications?" Absolutely. >> Share one example to end this segment on what you hear over and over again from customers that illuminates what you guys are about as a company, the DNA, the value preposition, and their impact on results and value for customers. >> So, I'll use a case study as an example. You know, we're the world's largest home improvement retailers. Old way, was they ran their multi-billion dollar eCommerce infrastructure. Running on IBM Db2 database. Running in their on-prem data center. They've moved their world. They're now running, they've re-architected their application. It's now completely microservices-based running on Cassandra, deployed 100% in Google cloud platform. And they did that because they wanted to be more agile. They wanted to be more flexible. It's a far more cost effective deployment model. They are all in on the cloud. And they needed a next generation backup and recovery data protection, data management solution which is exactly what we do. So, that's the value. Backup's not a new problem. People need to protect data and they need to be able to take better advantage of the data. >> All right, so here's the final, final question. I'm a customer watching this video. Bottom line maybe, I'm kind of hearing all this stuff. When do I call you? What are the signals? What are the little smoke signals I see in my organization burning? When do I need to call you guys, Datos? >> You should call Datos IO anytime, if you're doing anything with development of modern applications, number one. If you're doing anything with hybrid cloud you should call us. Because you're gonna need to reevaluate your overall data management strategy it's that simple. >> All right, Peter Smails, the CMO of Datos, one of the hot companies here in Silicon Valley, out of Los Gatos, California. Of course, we're in Palo Alto at theCube Studios. I'm John Furrier. This is theCUBE conversation. Thanks for watching. (upbeat techno music)

(motivating electronic music) >> Hello everyone, welcome to theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, the co-host and co-founder of Silicon Angle Media. We're here for a CUBE Conversation in our studios in Palo Alto, California. Here with two great guests inside the industry, to help illuminate the cloud computing conversation, really around what's coming up with Amazon re:Invent. But more importantly, the major advances happening in the digital transformation around IT and around developers and around cloud, and how that's impacting business. Our guests are Chris Comings, who's with the Chasm Group, consult and they help people, and former industry executive at NetApp, and (mumbles) the storage company. Peter Smails, the CMO of Datos.io data, and then he's the CMO there. Now, new progressive solutions. So guys, great solution. And Peter, I know you got news. We're gonna do another segment on your big news coming out, so we're gonna hold that off. >> Cool. >> The game has changed, right? >> Mm-hmm (affirmative). >> And we talked, with Chris and I had a one on one about this. But the industry conversation, there's people that are in the know, and people who are trying to figure out what's happening and how it impacts their business. CIO, CEOs, CDOs, chief data officers, chief security officers. There's a lot of things on the plate of businesses. >> Right. >> Big time. >> Right. >> So let's unpack this, and let's illuminate what it means. So cloud computing, Peter, what's your take on this, because Datos just takes a unique approach? I love your solution. A lot of people are liking this solution, but it's nuanced, because it's cloud-- >> Yeah. >> That's driving you. >> Yeah. >> What's the big driver? >> So the big driver, you said at the top of the discussion, the big driver is digital transformation. Digital transformation. Organizations are trying to be more data-driven. Okay, this is completely throwing, throwing traditional IT amok, because we're not living in the traditional world anymore of all my data sits within a single data center, I run my traditional monolithic applications. That's changed. The world is no longer running in a traditional four wall data center, and the world's moved away from the traditional view of scale-up architectures to elastic compute, shared nothing, elastic storage environment. So what's happening is, you've got the challenge of trying to essentially support traditional transformation initiatives, and it's just throwing all the underlying infrastructure foundations that an entire generation of IT professionals has known (laughs) into disarray. So everything's a little bit caddywhompus right now. >> Mm-hmm (affirmative), Chris? >> Well, and like you said, those people all have gone from being implementers to, they're moving to being developers. >> Right. >> And it completely changes their, it has to be a big change in their mindset. And it changes the management folks, the CIOs, the CDOs, the people that you interact with on a daily basis, right? >> Absolutely. >> Because these people are all trying to kind of come up to the next generation and get there. >> So you talked about, we got re:Invent coming up in a couple of weeks and, I think reinvent's a perfect term for this entire conversation, because everybody is reinventing themselves. The customer's reinventing themselves, the IT organizations are reinventing themselves, the individual roles within organizations are changing, and the whole evolution of dev ops versus traditional roles, so it is really-- >> And the vendors are all trying to reinvent themselves, too. >> Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. >> Well there's a lot of noise, so the customer's being bombarded with pitches. And if I here one more digital transformation pitch, without substance, I still don't understand. So in the spirit of trying to understand, first of all, I believe in digital transformation, but you can't just say the word, you gotta to prove it. But there's hard to prove a new approach or they've never seen it before. It's kind of like Steve Jobs would say, "If you want a Blackberry, that's a phone, "but the iPhone's not what you've seen before." But everyone loved it, changed the industry. That dynamic's happening in the cloud where for instance, your solution, some might not have seen before, but it's highly relevant to the user behavior expectations of the new environment. Okay, so this is the issue. What is the new environment specifically around digital transformation? Because I have an investment in storage. If I'm a customer, I bought a zillion drives from NetApp and EMC. I got data domain backup and, I got a perimeter, I have all this stuff, and now I've got this cloud thing bursting, and I got some analytics running there, and then I got the hot shot young developers banging out apps, and they want to put it in the cloud and... and security, I mean, what's going on? >> You wanna take that one first? And then I'll jump in. >> Can't I just buy more storage? >> Yeah. (Men laugh) Hey, just, no John, you don't just buy more storage, you upgrade from spinning to flash. I mean, that's really, >> There you go. >> That's really, really cutting edge right there. No I think what a lot of you see what they're doing is basically saying listen, for all this secondary, tertiary, quaternary, I mean, I didn't even know what that word was. But your second, your third, your fourth cuts of that data, move that all to the cloud, get that out of my environment. I'm not gonna be submersed in dealing with all of that anymore. Then maybe I can clear out some of my headaches, so I can actually focus on that primary cut, and what do I do about that primary cut? And that's where these completely new approaches come into play, and I, Peter I don't know if you call that hybrid, or multi-aire or what? But it is basically just trying to get some of that noise out of their system, so they can focus on the thing that's most valuable. >> So the way I would make that tangible John, is sort of, to us it all rolls down to the notion of the modern IT stack, okay? So essentially, the way you respond to digital transformation which, is all about being more agile, and some of the buzzwords you hear, but they're trying to be more, customers are trying to be, vendors are trying to be, or excuse me, customers or organizations are trying to be more customer-centric. They're trying to be more business driven, more data driven, okay great. If that's their initiative-- >> That's a mission. That's a mission. >> That's a mission. >> Yep. >> What that means for IT specifically is a fundamental rearchitecture of the underlying stack, okay, along a couple vectors, which is, organizations are building these new applications. They're fundamentally rearchitecting applications. What used to be a monolithic-oriented, traditional, relational, on-prem database is now running in a microservices, highly distributed configuration. That's vector number one, implication. Implication number two is we're absolutely in the mainstream of hybrid cloud, okay? You may be running all your apps on-prem, but you're still connected in some way to the cloud, for archiving, for BI, for TASDAV, whatever the case may be. And number three is the world just moved completely to an elastic, compute, shared nothing world. So we call that the modern IT stack. So the modern IT stack, modern infrastructure today-- >> Share nothing, you said? >> Shared nothing, the cloud is-- >> Oh, shared nothing. >> Yeah, shared nothing, shared nothing storage, shared nothing compute, that's that's, those are the foundations of a cloud based architecture. >> Is that called serverless? >> You could call it serverless as well. >> Okay. >> But, if you look at the modern IT stack, so to your point, the modern IT stack, modern infrastructure today is EC2. >> Mm-hmm (affirmative). >> Modern storage is S3. It could be object prem, object storage sitting on-prem. You know, modern applications are IOT. Modern, or our customer 360, IOT. Modern databases are dynamo DB. It's MongoDB, it's the number two-- >> Right. >> database in the cloud. So to answer your question very specifically, to make it tangible, that's to us the fundamental indication is, that new modern IT stack, throws storage into disarray, it throws data management into disarray-- >> It's an operational disruption. >> It's an operational disruption. >> All right, so let's backup for a second, because I think you nailed the thread I was trying to connect on. So let's take MongoDB, your reference to that being, where'd that come from? We all know why, the LAMP stack, it was one of the drivers. But developers drove that. >> That's right. >> So it wasn't the IT department recommending Mango. >> Right (laughs). >> so the developers were driving that because of ease of use. Now there's some scalability with Mango, we all know about, but what that means is, no one gives a crap if it can scale, because you already hit your product market fit. Then you could rearchitect, so you're seeing this use case of developers driving some of the behavior. >> Yes. >> Yes. >> Mm-hmm (affirmative). >> Hence containers, docker containers, and the role of Kubernetes. >> Kubernetes, yep. >> So if that's the case, how does an enterprise customer deal with that vector? Because now the developers are dictating the stacks. >> Mm-hmm (affirmative). >> Well, I-- >> Is it a free-for-all right now? I mean, this is... >> I think both of those guys are, think of it as they used to be warring factions, dev and ops, and the fact that we say the word dev ops right now is kind of a, it's kind of an oxymoron, right? Because they don't actually know each other and actually don't naturally talk to one another, and they go, "That's the other guy who's holding me back." >> Yeah, it's the old-- >> They look at, yeah, yeah. >> Goes over the fence. >> And so now, you've got folks that are really trying to, trying to bring it together a little bit more on that front and I think that, we're starting to see some technologies where people can say, "Not only can I use that "to accelerate my developments," so meets the dev criteria, but also the ops people say, "You know what, that stuff's not so bad. "I could actually work with that." >> Right, and then there's IT going, "Uh-oh," because they're basically sitting there on the catcher's side, so to your point it's, the dev ops, it is very much of an application-led environment. The tip of the spear for the new IT stack is absolutely application-led. And IT is challenged with essentially aligning to that, collaborating with that, and keeping up with that pace of change. >> And John, on this point, I think this is where, back to re:Invent, and really the role of AWS. This all started because of that. When a developer can just say, "I don't even know who those IT people are over there, "But I can spin up my S3 instance, "and I can start working against it." They start moving down the path, they show it to somebody, someone says, "Wow, that's great stuff, I want that." >> John: Yeah, right. >> Guess what? We need to make sure that that's enterprise class and scalable and then that's where that whole thing starts, and then it becomes that pull-ya-apart, "Oh God, what did these developer people do? "I'm gonna inherit this? "What the heck am I gonna do with it?" Now it's, we've gotta move that to be more symbiotic up front. >> I remember talking to both Pat Gelsinger and Andy Jassy years ago, I think maybe five years ago, and I asked the question, "What enables developers?" What is enabling point? Does infrastructure dictate developer behavior? Or do developers dictate infrastructure behavior? This was years ago, when the dev ops was an early-on movement. Clearly the vote is there. Developers are driving infrastructure. Hence the dev ops infrastructure, >> Absolutely. >> Yeah. >> as code model, that's proven. Jassy was interesting because he looked at it that way and said, "Yeah, we saw the same thing," and they've never wavered, Amazon's stayed on the course, and they've just been running like a machine, like a, just pounding it out. I asked Pat Gelsinger, he once positioned the AWS as the developer cloud. Kinda in, I wouldn't say depositioning them, but he was basically pointing out, they have a developer cloud. Now Amazon's the enterprise cloud. >> Mm-hmm (affirmative). >> Because they've developers are now a big driver of that, and the scale with data is actually turning out to be a better security environment. >> Right. >> For cyber. >> Right, it might just-- >> So it's cloud's winning. >> Cloud is winning and just sort of just take that one step further. It's always ultimately, the winner's going to, it's Darwinism, it's like the winner's gonna be the one with the richest ecosystem. And AWS is becoming that enterprise eco. And you could argue, I mean, GCP's fighting to be in there, Oracle's not going to go quietly into that dark night. You've got multiple public cloud vendors. >> That's right. >> Yeah. >> But the reality is that he who has the biggest, he or she who has the biggest ecosystem is gonna win, and that's right now is AWS driving that bus. >> All right, so I need to see those glasses for a second, and then want to go into another line of question here. (men laugh) >> You may use those. >> Oh who's, oh you put them on, all right good, as long as he's wearing them. >> He that wear-- >> You know, on that front too, on that front too, I would think we started back where VM was the big new thing, and here we go with VM's, and then all of a sudden we're coming up and we're saying, "Yeah, now there's containers." And so now we're gonna see this move to, we want to micro-package these services, and be able to aggregate them. Well you know the average IT shop that I would be talking to out there is just still trying to figure out, how do they put together their on-prem and their AWS instance? So this notion of hybrid is where most of these large enterprises are. We see a lot of terminology out there and a lot of vendors talking about multi-cloud. But multi-cloud is really just taking an option on the future and saying, "I'm not locked into you, AWS, "even though I am locked into you 100% right now. "I don't want to be forever in the future." >> It's a value statement that they're gesturing. >> That's right. >> Good segue. >> Chris: But it's not a practical implementation piece. >> I got my nerd glasses on so-- >> Peter: Strap in for something, here we go. I got my nerd glasses, so next question, we'll go a little nerdy, because this is important one. I put out at my crowd chat for Amazon, so to crowdchat.net/awsreinvent it's open, I have a lot of questions on there. Feel free to weigh in, it's an influencer-only chat, so no consumers, so I asked the question, and this is to the value statement, because multi-cloud is basically telegraphing lock-in. We don't want lock-in. >> Right. >> But we want love choice. If you have good choice and good value, we'll go there so it's a value equation. So the question I said is, where do you, this is a question I put on crowd-chat, I'll ask you guys. Where do you see the value that cloud creates for customers in the next 24 months? #cloud So the first response was from Subbu Allamaraju, who's the CIO at Expedia. He writes, "Agility from the service "ecosystem and rapid second-order architecture "architectural changes thereby clearing technical debt." And the second one from Grant Chase, "Born on the cloud apps already here. "Next wave migrating of existing apps." And then Maddoux Tsukahara said, "Legacy SASS applications will be disrupted "by cloud microservices, serverless, "and AI and machine learning." So we start to see the pattern. Your thoughts? Value creation, in the cloud, is gonna be what? >> So I think they're hitting on the right trends. I would go back to the first one which is "How do I get this on-prem stuff "that's driving me crazy, consuming all of my resources "in terms of maintenance and upgrades? "And then optimizing my environment for that." Which ones of those are core? And which ones of those are really kind of ancillary? I've gotta have them, but I really don't want them. If I didn't have to use them, I'd get rid of them. Take all, just do that homework. Separate the two cleanly. Move ancillary to the cloud, and move on. >> Peter: Yeah, yeah. >> So service ecosystem he nailed, I love, by the way, I agree with you, that was my favorite answer. And rapid second-order architecture changes. This speaks to what datos.io is doing. Because you guys, what you're in, the tornado that you're in, kind of just a play on the Chasm group here. You guys have a solution that has got visibility into some of the real dynamics of the environmental environment. >> Check. >> People, tech, stack, et cetera. >> Yeah, yeah. >> So what are some of the things that you're seeing that point to these second or level architectural changes? >> Well you mentioned, a couple different things, which is, you mentioned the notion of technical debt, which is indirectly what you were just talking about, the ability to get rid of my technical debt. It's an easy way, it eliminates my barrier to answering to creating net new applications. So without having to sort of, I avoid the innovator's dilemma if you will, because I can build these net new applications, which are the things I have to to drive my digital transformation, et cetera. I can do that in a very cost-effective and agile way. Meanwhile, sort of ignoring the old world. Then what I'll do is I'll go back, and I'll worry about the old stuff, and I'll start migrating some of that old stuff to the cloud. So in the context of, yeah, so what we see from a Datos IO perspective, in the context of data management, is that one, applications drive the stack, like you said earlier, it's absolutely, the application's at the tip of the spear, driving the stack. Organizations are building net new applications that are cloud native, okay? And they're built on the new modern IT stack, and at the same time, they're also taking their legacy application, so I like that second answer as well which is, modern cloud applications are here. The interesting thing is, you say modern cloud apps, modern cloud apps don't have to run in the cloud. >> That's right. >> We've got customers that are running their next gen app-- >> It's an operating model. >> It's an operating model. We've got customers running 100% on-prem. Their econ number stuff runs on-prem, then you have people that run in the cloud. So it's a mindset, it's an operating model. So you've got folks absolutely deploying these cloud-native apps. >> Well, it's an architectural model too, it's how they are deploying and servicing apps. >> And ultimately, it comes down to the architectural model. That's what shifted, and that world is very infrastructure. The other thing I would add to the cloud thing is if you do it right, the cloud actually can give you architectural independence and cloud independence, but you can't be focused on the infrastructure level. You've gotta focus at the application level, because then you can be agnostic, until they're online. >> So Peter you, you guys are disrupting a very large space, backup and recovery in the cloud which you guys are doing. >> Check. >> And the application database layer is a very progressive solution. So I love your approach, but you're talking about disrupting the data domains of the world. We're talking about big whales. >> Yeah. >> Big incumbents that are built around four walls in the data center. >> Check. >> Mm-hmm (affirmative), yep. >> What are you seeing? What's the makeup? What's the personnel of the customers look like? If dev ops is happening, which we agree it is, and the the evidence is there clearly, they're not 50 year old backup and recovery guys. They're young guns, they're probably not thinking about waking up every day with their coffee, say, "Hmm, what am I gonna do with backup today?" >> Yeah. >> Mm-hmm (affirmative). >> They're waking up saying, "Hey, I'm gonna drive some more machine learning "and AI in my apps." >> Yep. >> "And I'm gonna provide workflow movement to--" >> And you said breakfast was some, you said that. >> Adopt this microservice. >> I had the craziest dream last night. It was microservices, what? >> Yeah. >> Yeah, so I can answer that two ways. There's the technology side of it. Fun little tidbit, average age of the traditional backup and recovery software architecture, about 20 years. >> Hmm. >> Architected well before the mainstream advent of the cloud or certainly modern applications. >> Hold on, the person's 20 years old? Or it's 20 years of architecture? >> No, the architecture of the software. >> Okay. >> The solutions, or come up, the point is they've been around for awhile. >> It's old. It's old. >> It's old, fair enough. >> Yeah, and 20 years-- >> So on the technology side, that's a dilemma. On the persona side, you're absolutely right as well. These are, it's the application folks that are driving the conversation, that our applications dictate the IT stack. They're building these new architectures, which have all these implications on the infrastructure. >> All right, so I'm gonna play devil's advocate, just because I want to connect the dots. And again, illuminate what I think the problem is that you have. One is, okay I'm a CIO. Hey, he's my storage guy. Who the hell are you, young gun? Complaining about your backup and recovery. He recommends all flash arrays in the data center provisioned in a VSAN environment, whatever that's going on. Who are you? You're just nothing to me. You don't make that decision. >> I'm the guy that can give you all the visibility to your data to make you smarter and more agile as a company. I can save you money. I can make this company more market-- >> So what do I need to do differently? If I'm the CIO, I don't want to make these, or these architectural calls based upon old dogma or old reporting lines. This is an example. I go to him, he's my storage guy. Who are you? I already built you the dev ops environment. He runs storage and so, you're impacted as a developer. So how do you guys talk to that guy? What does the CXO have to do differently to adapt to the new environment? >> I'll take that and then you can-- >> Please. >> You know, jump in. So I think what you see is, you see the proliferation of new personas. Like you see chief transformation officers, you see chief digital officers. You see system architects and DBAs getting a more prominent role in the conversation. So the successful CIOs and technology officers are the ones that are essentially gonna get the cowboys and the Indians to collaborate more closely, because they have to, because the folks that were over in the corner that used to get laughed at, building these, oh mangos and these new applications and such, they're the ones holding the keys to the future. So the successful technologists are gonna be the ones that marry those personas from the application side of the house with the traditional storage, infrastructure folks as well. You successfully do that, then you can be more, then you can move more quickly forward. >> Yeah, that's right. >> What do you think? >> Well I think some of it's gonna come back down to economics, too. And I agree with that move which is, I talked to over a hundred CIOs and their staff in the last year. I had one conversation where the person said, "You know what? "The chief complaint about me as CIO "is I'm not spending enough money." And I thought to myself, "Sounds like a company that I should put some bucks into, "because they must be doing really, really well." Everybody else is looking at it saying, "You know what? "I'm under pressure to adopt the cloud, "because there's a belief out there "that the cloud is gonna be so much less expensive "than what they've done in the past." And then I think they find that it's not, that it's not just the one size fits all answer to that. >> Right. >> And so as a consequence, you're gonna have people say, Listen, this money printing operation, or this funnel out the door to, whether it's EMC or NetApp 4, or whatever it may be, whatever storage vendor for backup architecture, they've got to stop that funnel. Because they've got to take what they were spending there and move it to the things that are going to make money for them, not just gonna hold on to it, and de-risk their enterprise. >> I'm here with two industry leaders, Chris Comings and Peter Smails, talking about the impact of infrastructure technologies, and app development in the cloud for businesses. It's a great conversation, and our final point, I wanna just get to, I know we're running on some time here but we wanna go a little further. I think this is awesome. That's for taking the time to share it out. >> It's great. >> One of my other questions I put on my crowd chat was, a true or false and comment question. Here's the statement: Serverless computing will become mainstream, will come to mainstream private cloud, true or false, comment. Subbu said, "False, adoption and success "of serverless patterns depend almost entirely "on the strength of the ecosystem "that the data center lacks." Interesting comment. I was kinda leaning, I go, "I was leaning towards true." But I don't have enough insight on this, because I'm waffling between true or false. I love serverless, I love the idea of, notion of resources that are just programmable. But what is the state of serverless? I mean, is he right? Is that that there's not enough ecosystem in the data center areas or... >> You wanna go first? >> Well, I'd just say that I would, I would just call out two things on that front. One is, I think you need a lot more germination of microservices that are out there in order to be able to put that all together. That's one aspect. We're seeing that growth come rapidly. The other thing is, now your security is beholden to the lowest common denominator. The security of that individual microservice. So I think you're gonna have some fits and starts here as we move down that path because, boy oh boy, the last thing I wanna do is get all modern but at the same time, put myself at a greater amount of risk. >> I thought the comment at the end was, I think it's true. I thought it was interesting what he said at the end. He said, "The ecosystem that the data center lacks." I would contend that potentially, the ecosystem that the cloud has would support that. >> Yeah. >> Because the cloud, by definition is, it's a shared-nothing world. >> Right. >> You know? >> So, he also comments, someone said, Lambda, "My Expedia is that Lambda's growth "is almost entirely due to the power "of the ecosystem of services, "which is one of the key points," and he points to his blog post. Stu Miniman, our Wikibon analyst weighed in, because Stu's on this big time. "Service will definitely be used for edge applications. "Currently don't see use case for general data center usage." >> Mm-hmm (affirmative). >> So edge of the network. Again, good point? This edge of the network thing helps you, because most people are using cloud for edge. >> Peter: Right. >> So this IOT, which is, an iterative things, is an edge of the network. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Whether it's devices, sensors, industrial equipment, or people's devices on their bodies. >> Yeah. >> It's a huge data source. >> Absolutely. >> Cloud's rolling that up. Or a cloud-like infrastructure. >> Well but it's not necessarily rolling it up. It's just connecting all the dots as to where you can put storage and you can put compute where the data is. Or you can move the data to where the storage and the compute is. So it's not, I mean, yes there's core and edge, that's absolutely true, but the notion of rollup isn't necessarily true. It's not necessarily the cloud enables me to do all this colossal aggregation. It's I basically distribute my compute, I distribute my storage. >> Well, when I say rollup, I'm assuming there's some sort of architectural thing. >> Okay, fair. >> But this fits into your wheelhouse, I think. But I just connecting the dots. That's why it's a question for you is, it would make sense for a solution like DATOS to be there because, That's a application so you-- >> Absolutely. >> You back up IOT? >> Oh absolutely. We backup IOT, but we basically backup any modern cloud application. And by definition, what does that mean? >> So IOT's and app for you. >> IOT, absolutely IOT's-- >> Not necessarily a-- >> So the technically where we plug in is, we plugin at the database level. And the databases basically, are the underlying infrastructure that support the applications. So in the case of IOT, those are typically very highly distributed across GIOS, absolutely we protect them. >> So we were just talking earlier about the words flexibility, manageability, agility. That's kind of vanilla words that everyone uses these days. But in essence, you're actually really doing it. Right, so. >> Thanks for that setup. Yes, we actually do all those buzz words. >> So Chris recommends, I recommend that you call it, hyper flexibility. >> Yeah. >> Or microflexibility. >> Or ultra. >> Or ultra flexibility. >> Or go mega. Just go mega right now. Or uber and steal a little of that, although that's kind of out of favor right now. >> Not, uber is-- >> Uber we wanna let that one kind of fly by. >> But remember we also talked before, we thought we were spot on with our product being branded RecoverX. We thought we were really in the spot with the whole, you know. >> Your name is awesome. RecoverX is a great brand. >> So we're gonna stick with that for now before we-- >> Good branding, RecoverX, Data IOS. Chris, thanks for coming on. Final comment, any words on the storage industry as it evolved? You mentioned earlier, just call it flash. Certainly, all flash arrays are doing well. Pure Storage went public. Flash is a standard. >> Yeah. >> It has benefits. Where does the flash storage go with all this cloud value coming over the top? >> Well I think, you know, there's gonna be a couple. I have one comment on that which is, we see what flash is doing at the array level, and now we're gonna see what NVME does at the cash layer, for allowing this access to information. You think about, I want to run a singular query, but some of that data is here, there, everywhere, but I've gotta have a level of performance that allows me to actually run it, and get an answer from it. And so that's where that comes into play. I think we're gonna see a whole host of folks flooding into that space, to try and improve performance, but not only improve performance, but enable that whole distribution model. >> Yeah, and I would just pick up on more persona-centric thing which is, the message to the traditional IT shops is it is all about collaboration. The folks over in the corner, the application folks, it is absolutely all about getting more closely aligned, because cloud is here. >> Yeah. >> Multicloud, hybrid cloud, call it whatever you want, is here. The traditional IT stack is absolutely being disrupted, and it's all about embracing this application-centric, data-driven view of the world. That's the future, traditional IT's got to align with that, and collaborate and drive that whole thing forward. >> That's a great, I agree 100% what you guys just said, great comment. I would just say Wikibon calls it unigrid, which is, I'll rename it hypergrid, meaning it's just one system, to your point. Private, public, it's all cloud-like. >> Absolutely. >> Yeah, it doesn't matter where it goes. Okay guys, thanks for the thought leadership. Peter Smails and Chris Cummings here, breaking down the industry landscape on storage infrastructure, application developers, in context the cloud. This is theCUBE conversation. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (motivating electronic music)

(techy music playing) >> Hello, everyone, welcome to theCUBE Studios here in Palo Alto, California. I'm John Furrier, the cofounder of SiliconANGLE Media Inc., also cohost of theCUBE. We're here for a CUBE Conversation on Thought Leader Thursday and I'm here with Chris Cummings, who's a senior manager, advisor, big-time industry legend, but he's also the Chasm Group, right now, doer, Crossing the Chasm, famous books and it's all about the future. Formerly an exec at Netapp, been in the storage and infrastructure cloud tech business, also friends of Stanford. Season tickets together to go to the tailgates, but big Cal game coming up of course, but more importantly a big-time influence in the industry and we're going to do some drill down on what's going on with cloud computing, all the buzzword bingo going on in the industry. Also, AWS, Amazon Web Services re:Invent is coming up, do a little preview there, but really kind of share our views on what's happening in the industry, because there's a lot of noise out there. We're going to try to get the signal from the noise, thanks for watching. Chris, thanks for coming in. >> Thank you so much for having me, glad to be here. >> Great to see you, so you know, you have seen a lot of waves of innovation and right now you're working with a lot of companies trying to figure out the future. >> That's right. >> And you're seeing a lot of significant industry shifts. We talk about it on theCUBE all the time. Blockchain from decentralization all the way up to massive consolidation with hyper-convergence in the enterprise. >> Mm-hmm. >> So a lot of action, and because of the day the people out in the marketplace, whether it's a developer or a CXO, CIO, CDO, whatever enterprise leader's doing the transformations. >> Chris Collins: We got all of them. >> They're trying to essentially not go out of business. A lot of great things are happening, but at the same time a lot of pressure on the business is happening. So, let's discuss that, I mean, you are doing this for work at the Chasm Group. Talk about your role, you were formerly at Netapp, so I know you know the storage business. >> Right. >> So we're going to have a great conversation about storage and impact infrastructure, but at the Chasm Group how are you guys framing the conversation? >> Yeah, Chasm Group is really all about helping these companies process their thinking, think about if they're going to get to be a platform out in the industry. You can't just go and become a platform in the industry, you got to go knock down problem, problem, problem, solution, solution, solution. So we help them prioritize that and think about best practices for achieving that. >> You know, Dave Alante, my co-CEO, copartner, co-founder at SiliconANGLE Media and I always talk about this all the time, and the expression we use is if you don't know what check mate looks like you shouldn't be playing chess, and a lot of the IT folks and CIOs are in that mode now where the game has changed so much that sometimes they don't even know what they're playing. You know, they've been leaning on this Magic Quadrant from Gartner and all these other analyst firms and it's been kind of a slow game, a batch kind of game, now it's real time. Whatever metaphor you want to use, the game has changed so the chessboard has changed. >> Chris: Mm-hmm. >> So I got to get your take on this because you've been involved in strategy, been on product, you worked at growth companies, big companies, start-ups, and now looking at the bigger picture, what is the game? I mean, right now if you could lay out the chessboard, what are people looking at, what is the game? >> So, we deal a lot with customer conversations and that's where it all kind of begins, and I think what we found is this era of pushing product and just throwing stuff out there. It worked for a while but those days are over. These folks are so overwhelmed. The titles you mentioned, CIO, CDO, all the dev ops people, they're so overwhelmed with what's going on out there. What they want is people to come in and tell them about what's happening out there, what are their peers doing and what problems are they trying to solve in order and drive it that way. >> And there's a lot of disruption on the product side. >> Yes. >> So tech's changing, obviously the business models are changing, that's a different issue. Let's consider the tech things, you have-- >> Mm-hmm. >> A tech perspective, let's get into the tech conversation. You got cloud, you got private cloud, hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, micro-machine learning, hyper-machine learning, hyper-cloud, all these buzzwords are out there. It's buzzwords bingo. >> Chris: Right. >> But also the reality is you got Amazon Web Services absolutely crushing it, no doubt about it. I mean, I've been looking at Oracle, I've been looking at Google, I've been looking at SAP, looking at IBM, looking at Alibaba, looking at Microsoft, the game is really kind of a cloak and dagger situation going on here. >> That's right. >> A lot of things shifting on the provider side, but no doubt scale is the big issue. >> Chris: That's right. >> So how does a customer squint through all this? >> The conversations that I've had, especially with the larger enterprises, is they know that they've got to be able to adopt and utilize the public cloud capabilities, but they also want to retain that degree of control, so they want to maintain, whether it's their apps, their dev ops, some pieces of their infrastructure on prem, and as you talked about that transition it used to be okay, well we thought about cloud was equal to private cloud, then it became public cloud. Hybrid cloud, people are hanging on to hybrid cloud, sometimes for the right reasons and sometimes for the wrong reasons. Right reasons are because it's critical for their business. You look at somebody, for instance, in media and entertainment. They can't just push everything out there. They've got to retain control and really have their hands around that content because they've got to be able to distribute it, right? But then you look at some others that are hanging on for the wrong reasons, and the wrong reasons are they want to have their control and they want to have their salary and they want to have their staff, so boy, hybrid sounds like a mix that works. >> So I'm going to be having a one-on-one with Andy Jassy next week, exclusive. I do that every year as part of theCUBE. He's a great guy, good friend, become a good friend, because we've been a fan of him when no one loved Amazon. We saw the early, obviously at SiliconANGLE, now he's the king of the industry, but he's a great manager, great executive, and has done a great job on his ethos of Bezos and Amazon. Ship stuff faster, lower prices, the flywheel that Amazon uses. Everything's kind of on that-- And they own Twitch, which we stream, too, and we love. But if you could ask Andy any questions what questions would you ask him if you get to have that one-on-one? >> Yeah, well, it stems from conversations I've had with customers, which was probably once a week I would be talking to a CIO or somebody on that person's staff, and they'd slide the piece of paper across and say this is my bill. I had no idea that this was what AWS was going to drive me from a billing perspective, and I think we've seen... You know, we've had all kinds of commentary out there about ingress fees, egress fees, all of that sort of stuff. I think the question for Andy, when you look at the amount of revenue and operating margin that they are generating in that business, how are they going to start diversifying that pricing strategy so that they can keep those customers on without having them rethink their strategy in the future. >> So are you saying that when they slide that piece of paper over that the fees are higher than expected or not... Or low and happy, they're happy with the prices. >> Oh, they're-- I think they're-- I think it's the first time they've ever thought that it could be as expensive as on-premise infrastructure because they just didn't understand when they went into this how much it was going to cost to access that data over time, and when you're talking about data that is high volume and high frequency data, they are accessing it quite a bit, as opposed to just stale, cold, dead stuff that they want to put off somewhere else and not have to maintain. >> Yeah, and one of the things we're seeing that we pointed at the Wikibon team is a lot of these pricings are... The clients don't know that they're being billed for something that they may not be using, so AI or machine learning could come in potentially. So this is kind of what you're getting at. >> Exactly. >> The operational things that Amazon's doing to keep prices low for the customer, not get bill shock. >> Chris: That's right. >> Okay, so that's cool. What else would you ask him about culture or is there anything you would ask him about his plans... What else would you ask him? >> I think another big thing would be just more plans on what's going to be done around data analytics and big data. We can call it whatever we want, but they've been so good at the semi-structured or unstructured content, you know, when we think about AWS and where AWS was going with S3, but now there's a whole new phenomenon going on around this and companies are as every bit as scared about that transition as they were about the prior cloud transition, so what really are their plans there when they think about that, and for instance, things like how does GPU processing come into play versus CPU processing. There's going to be a really interesting discussion I think you're going to have with him on that front. >> Awesome, let's talk about IT. IT and information technology departments formerly known as DP, data processing, information-- All that stuff's changed, but there were still guys that were buying hardware, buying Netapp tries that you used to work for, buying EMC, doing data domain, doing a lot of stuff. These guys are essentially looking at potentially a role where-- I mean, for instance, we use Amazon. We're a big customer, happy customer. >> Chris: Mm-hmm. >> We don't have those guys. >> Chris: Right. >> So if I'm an IT guy I might be thinking shit, I could be out of a job, Amazon's doing my job, so I'm not saying that's the case but that's certainly a fear. >> Chris: Absolutely. >> But the business models have to shift from old IT to new IT. >> Chris: Mm-hmm. >> What does that game look like? What is this new IT game? Is it more, not a department view, is it more of a holistic view, and what's the sentiment around the buyers and your customers that you talk to around how do they message to the IT guys, like, look, there's higher valued jobs you could go to. >> Right. >> You mention analytics... >> That's right. >> What's the conversation? Certainly some guys won't make the transition and might not make it, but what's the narrative? >> Well, I think that's where it just starts with what segment are you talking about, so if you look at it and say just break it down between the large enterprise, the uber enterprise that we've seen for so long, mid-size and smaller, the mid-size and smaller are gone, okay. Outside of just specific industries where they really need that control, media and entertainment might be an example. That mid-size business is gone for those vendors, right? So those vendors are now having to grab on and say I'm part of that cloud phenomenon, my hyper-cloud of the future. I'm part of that phenomenon, and that becomes really the game that they have to play, but when you look at those IT shops I think they really need to figure out where are they adding value and where are they just enabling value that's being driven by cloud providers, and really that's all they are is a facilitator, and they've got to shift their energy towards where am I adding value, and that becomes more that-- >> That's differentiation, that's where differentiation is, so non-differentiated labor is the term that Wikibon analysts use. >> Oh, okay. >> That's going down, the differentiated labor is either revenue generating or something operationally more efficient, right? >> That's right, and it's all going to be revenue generating now. I mean, I used to be out there talking about things like archiving, and archiving's a great idea. It's something where I'm going to save money, okay, but I got this many projects on my list if I'm a CIO of where I can save money. I'm being under pressure about how am I going to go generate money, and that's where I think people are really shifting their eyeballs and their attention, is more towards that. >> And you got IOT coming down the pike. I mean, we're hearing is from what I hear from CIOs when we have a few in-depth conversations is look, I got to get my development team ramped up and being more cloud native, more microservice and I got to get more app development going that drives revenue for my business, more efficiency. >> Chris: Right. >> I have a digital transformation across the company in terms of hiring culture and talent. >> Chris: Mm-hmm. >> And then I got pressure to do IOT. >> Chris: Right. >> And I got security, so of those five things, IOT tends to fall out, security takes preference because of the security challenges, and then that's already putting their plate full right there. >> That's right, that's real time and those people are-- >> Those are core issues. >> Putting too much pressure on that right now and then you're thinking about IT and in the meantime, by the way, most of these places don't have the dev ops shop that's operating on a flywheel, right? So you're not... What's it, Goldman Sachs has 5,000 developers, right? That's bigger than most tech companies, so as a consequence you start thinking about well, not everybody looks like that. What the heck are they going to do in the future. They're going to have to be thinking about new ways of accessing that type of capability. >> This is where the cloud really shines in my mind. I think in the cloud, too, it's starting to fragment the conversations. People will try to pigeonhole Amazon. I see Microsoft-- I've been very critical of Microsoft in their cloud because-- First of all, I love the move that they're making. I think it's a smart move business-wise, but they bundle in 365 Office, that's not really cloud, it's just SAS, so then you start getting into the splitting of the hairs of well, SAS is not included in cloud. But come on, SAS is cloud. >> Chris: Mm-hmm. >> Well, maybe Amazon should include their ecosystem that would be a trillion dollar revenue number, so all companies don't look the same. >> That's right. >> And so from an enterprise that's a challenge. >> Chris: Mm-hmm. >> Do I got to hire developers for Asger, do I got to hire developers for Amazon, do I got to hire developers for Google. >> Chris: Mm-hmm. >> There's no stack consistency across private enterprises to cloud. >> Chris: So I have-- >> Because I'm a storage guy, I've got Netapp drives and now I've got an Amazon thing. I like Amazon, but now I got to go Asger, what the hell do I do? >> I got EMCs here and I got Nimbles there and HP and I've still got tape from IBM from five decades ago, so, John, I got a great term for you that's going to be a key one, I think, in the ability. It's called histocompatibility, and this is really about... >> Oh, here we go. Let's get nerdy with the tape glasses on. >> It's really about the ability to be able to inter-operate with all this system and some of these systems are live systems, they're current systems. Some of it's garbage that should've been thrown out a long time ago and actually recycled. So I think histocompatibility is going to be a really, really big deal. >> Well, keep the glasses on. Let's get down in the weeds here. >> Okay. >> I like the-- With the pocket protector, if you had the pocket protector we'd be in good shape. >> Yep. >> So, vendors got to compete with these buzzwords, become buzzword bingo, but there are trends that you're seeing. You've done some analysis of how the positionings and you're also a positioning guru as well. There's ways to do it and that's a challenge is for suppliers, vendors who want to serve customers. They got to rise above the noise. >> Chris: That's right. >> That's a huge problem. What are you seeing in terms of buzzword bingo-- >> Oh, my goodness. >> Because like I said, I used to work for HP in the old days and they used to have an expression, you know, don't call it what it is because that's boring and make it exciting, so the analogy they used was sushi is basically cold, dead fish. (laughing) So, sushi is a name for cold, dead fish. >> Chris: Yeah. >> So you don't call your product cold, dead fish, you call it sushi. >> Chris: Right. >> That was the analogy, so in our world-- >> Chris: That was HP-UX. >> That was HP-UX, you know, HP was very engineering. >> Yes. >> That's not-- Sushi doesn't mean anything. It's cold, dead fish, that's what it is. >> Right. >> That's what it does. >> That's right. >> So a lot of vendors can error in that they're accurate and their engineers, they call it what it is, but there's more sex appeal with some better naming. >> Totally. >> What are you seeing in terms of the fashion, if you will, in terms of the naming conventions. Which ones are standing out, what's the analysis. >> Well, I think the analysis is this, you start with your adjectives with STEM words, John, and what I mean by that is things like histocompatibility. It could start with things like agility, flexibility, manageability, simplicity, all those sorts of things, and they've got to line those terms up and go out there, but I think the thing that right now-- >> But those are boring, I saw a press release saying we're more agile, we're the most effective software platform with agility and dev ops, like what the hell does that mean? >> Yeah, I think you also have to combine it with a heavy degree of hyperbole, right? So hyperbole, an off-the-cuff statement that is so extreme that you'd never really want to be tested on it, so an easy way to do that is to add hyper in front of all that. So it's hyper-manageability, right, and so I think we're going to see a whole new class of words. There are 361 great adjectives with STEMs, but-- >> Go through the list. >> Honestly. >> Go through the list that you have. >> I mean, there's so many, John, it's... >> So hyper is an easy one, right? >> Hyper is easy, I think that's a very simple one. I think now we also see that micro is so big, right, because we're talking about microservices and that's really the big buzzword in the industry right now. So everything's going to be about micro-segmenting your apps and then allowing those apps to be manifest and consumed by an uber app, and ultimately that uber app is an ultra app, so I think ultra is going to be another term that we see heading into the spectrum as well. >> And so histocompatibility is a word you mentioned, just here in my notes. >> Yep. >> You mentioned, so histo means historical. >> Exactly. >> So it means legacy. >> Chris: That's right. >> So basically backwards compatible would be the boring kind of word. >> Chris: That's right. >> And histocompatibility means we got you covered from legacy to cloud, right. >> Uh-huh. >> Or whatever. >> You bet. >> Micro-segmentility really talks to the granularity of data-driven things, right? >> That's right, another one would be macro API ability, it's kind of a mouthful, but everyone needs an API. I think we've seen that and because they're consuming so many different pieces and trying to assemble those they've got to have something that sits above. So macro API ability, I think, is another big one, and then lastly is this notion of mobility, right. We talk about-- As you said earlier, we talked about clouds and going from-- It's not just good enough to talk about hybrid cloud now, it's about multi-cloud. Well, multi-cloud means we're thinking about how we can place these apps and the data in all kinds of different spaces, but I've got to be able to have those be mobile, so hyper-mobility becomes a key for these applications as well. >> So hyper-scale we've seen, we've seen hyper-convergence. Hyper is the most popular-- >> Chris: Absolutely. >> Adjective with STEM, right? >> Chris: It's big. >> STEM words, okay, micro makes sense because, you know, micro-targeting, micro-segmentation, microservices, it speaks to the level of detail. >> Chris: Right. >> I love that one. >> Chris: Right. >> Which ones aren't working in your mind? We see anything that's so dead on arrival... >> Sure, I think there's a few that aren't working anymore. You got your agility, you got your flexibility, you got your manageability, and you got your simplicity. Okay, I could take all four of those and toss those over there in the trash because every vendor will say that they have those capabilities for you, so how does that help you distinguish yourself from anyone else. >> So that's old hat. >> It's just gone. >> Yeah, never fight fashion, as Jeremy Burton at EMC, now at Dell Technologies, said on theCUBE. I love that, so these are popular words. This is a way to stand out and be relevant. >> That's right. >> This is the challenge for vendors. Be cool and relevant but not be offensive. >> Yeah. >> All right, so what's your take on the current landscape for things like how do companies market themselves. Let's say they get the hyper in all the naming and the STEM words down. They have something compelling. >> Chris: Right. >> Something that's differentiated, something unique, how do companies stand out above the crowd, because the current way is advertising's not working. We're seeing fake news, you're seeing the analyst firms kind of becoming more old, slower, not relevant. I mean, does the Magic Quadrant really solve that problem or are they just putting that out there? If I'm a marketer, I'm a B2B marketer. >> Yeah. >> Obviously besides working with theCUBE and our team, so obviously great benefits. Plug there, but seriously, what do you advise? >> Yeah, I think the biggest thing is, you know, you think about marketing as not only reaching your target market, but also enabling your sales force and your channel partners, and frankly, the best thing that I've found in doing that, John, is starting every single piece that we would come up with with a number. How much value are we generating, whether it's zero clicks to get this thing installed. It's 90% efficiency, and then prove it. Don't just throw it out there and say isn't that good enough, but numbers matter because they're meaningful and they stimulate the conversation, and that's ultimately what all of this is. It's a conversation about is this going to be relevant for you, so that's the thing that I start with. >> So you're say being in the conversation matters. >> Absolutely. >> Yeah. >> Absolutely. >> What's the thought leadership view, what's your vision on how a company should be looking at thought leadership. Obviously you're seeing more of a real-time-- I call it the old world was batch marketing. >> Chris: Mm-hmm. >> E-mail marketing, do the normal things, get the white papers, do those things. You know, go to events, have a booth, and then the new way is real-time. >> Chris: Mm-hmm. >> Things are happening very fast-- >> That's right. >> In the market, people are connected now. It's a global, basically, message group. >> That's right. >> Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and all this stuff. >> It's really an unfulfilled need that you guys are really looking to fill, which is to provide that sort of real-time piece of it, but I think vendors trip over themselves and they think about I need a 50 page vision. They don't need a 50 page vision. What they need is here are a couple of dimensions on which this industry is going to change, and then commit to them. I think the biggest problem that many vendors have is they won't commit, they hedge, as opposed to they go all in behind those and one thing we talk about at Chasm Institute is if you're going to fail, fail fast, and that really means that you commit full time behind what you're pushing. >> Yeah, and of course what the Chasm, what it's based upon, you got to get to mainstream, get to early pioneers, cross the chasm. The other paradigm that I always loved from Jeffrey Moore was inside the tornado. Get inside the tornado because if you don't get in you're going to be spun out, so you've got to kind of get in the game, if you will. >> Chris: That's right. >> Don't overthink it, and this is where the iteration mindset comes in, "agile" start-up or "agile" venture. Okay, cool, so let's take a step back and reset to end the segment here. >> Mm-hmm. >> Re:Invent's coming up, obviously that's the big show of the year. VMworld, someone was commenting on Facebook VMworld 2008 was the big moment where they're comparing Amazon now to VMworld in 2008. >> Chris: Right. >> But you know, Pat Gelsinger essentially cut a great deal with Andy Jassy on Vmware. >> Chris: Right. >> And everything's clean, everything's growing, they're kicking ass. >> Chris: Mm-hmm. >> They got a private cloud and they got the hybrid cloud with Amazon. >> Yeah, it's that VMcloud on Amazon, that really seems to be the thing that's really driving their move into the future, and I think we're going to see from both of those folks, you are going to see so much on containers. Containerization, ultra-containers, hyper-containers, whatever it may be. If you're not speaking container language, then you are yesterday's news, right? >> And Kubernetes' certainly the orchestration piece right underneath it to kind of manage it. Okay, final point, what's in store for the legacy, because you're seeing a few major trends that we're pointing out and we're watching very closely, which really I put into two buckets. I know Wikibon's a more disciplined approach, I'm more simple about that. The decentralization trend we're seeing with Blockchain, which is kind of crazy and bubbly but very infrastructure relevant, this decentralized, disrupting, non-decentralized incumbence, so that's one trend and the other one is what cloud's doing to legacy IT vendors, Oracle, you know, these traditional manufacturers like that HP and Dell and all these guys, and Netapp which is transforming. So you've got disruption on both sides, cloud and like a decentralized model, apps, what's the position, view, from your standpoint, for these legacy guys? >> It's going to be quite an interesting one. I think they have to ride the wave, and I'll steal this from Peter Levine, from Andreessen, right? He talks about the end of cloud computing, and really what that is is just basically saying everything is going to be moving to the edge and there's going to be so much more compute at the edge with IOT and you can think about autonomous vehicles as the ultimate example of that, where you're talking about more powerful computers, certainly, than this that are sitting in cars all over the place, so that's going to be a big change, and those vendors that have been selling into the core data center for so long are going to have to figure out their way of being relevant in that universe and move towards that. And like we were talking about before, commit to that. >> Yeah. >> Right, don't just hedge, but commit to it and move. >> What's interesting is that I was talking with some executives at Alibaba when I was in China for part of the Alibaba Cloud Conference and Amazon had multiple conversations with Andy Jassy and his team over the years. It's interesting, a lot of people don't understand the nuances of kind of what's going on in cloud, and what I'm seeing is it's essentially, to your point, it's a compute game. >> Chris: Yeah. >> Right, so if you look at Intel for instance, Alibaba told me on my interview, they don't view Intel as a chip company anymore, they're a compute company, right, and CJ Bruno, one of the executives there, reaffirmed that. So Intel's looking at the big picture saying the cloud's a computer. Intel Inside is a series of compute, and you mentioned that the edge, Jassy is building a set of services with his team around core compute, which has storage, so this is essentially hyper-converged cloud. >> That's right. >> This is a pretty big thing. What's the one thing that people might not understand about this. If you could kind of illuminate this trend. I mean, the old Intel now turned into the new Intel, which is a monster franchise continuing to grow. >> Mm-hmm. >> Amazon, people see the numbers, they go oh, my god, they're a leader, but they have so much more headroom. >> Chris: Right, right. >> And they've got everyone else playing catch up. >> Yeah. >> What's the real phenomenon going on here? >> I think you're going to see more of this aggregation phenomenon where one vendor can't solve this entire problem. I mean, look at most recently, in the last two weeks, Intel and AMD getting together. Who would've thought that would happen? But they're just basically admitting we got a real big piece of the equation, Intel, and then AMD can fulfill this niche because they're getting killed by NVIDIA, but you're going to see just more of these industry conglomerations getting together to try and solve the problem. >> Just to end the segment, this is a great point. NVIDIA had a niche segment, graphics, now competing head to head with Intel. >> Chris: That's right. >> So essentially what's happening is the landscape is completely changing. Once competitors no longer-- New entrants, new competitors coming in. >> Chris: Mm-hmm. >> So this is a massive shift. >> Chris: It is. >> Okay, Chris Cummings here inside theCUBE. I'm John Furrier of CUBE Conversation. There's a massive shift happening, the game has changed and it's incumbent upon start-ups, venture capital, you know, Blockchain, ICOs or whatever's going on. Look at the new chessboard, look at the game and figure it out. Of course, we'll be broadcasting live at AWS re:Invent in a couple weeks. Stay tuned, more coverage, thanks for watching. (techy music playing)

(upbeat dramatic music) >> Hello, everyone, welcome to the Cube Conversation, here in Palo Alto Studios, for The Cube. I'm John Furrier, the cohost of The Cube, co-founder of Silicon Angle Media. We are here for Thought Leader Thursday, with Mitzi Chang. She's a securities attorney and partner at Goodwin. Formerly Goodwin Proctor, Goodwin Proctor's the name. Again, great to have you on. Thanks for coming in and talking about some of the securities around Blockchain ICO's. You guys doing a lot of work, thanks for coming in. >> Thanks for having me. >> So, obviously, Blockchain is the hottest thing we're seeing. AI, obviously, is hot as well, IOT, all of this about a new, decentralized internet. And it's the wild west. And we know because we're looking at doing our Blockchain and tokens for The Cube and all that good stuff. So we're totally love the new environment. Everyone, all the light tier one entrepreneurs are licking their chops and going, ah, man, good action. And a lot of the thought leaders are saying this is a fundamental shift. So it's cool, we get that. But now, okay, is the technology ahead of the law? And, just today, the news is breaking that the SEC is now putting a clampdown on a new thing, celebrity endorsements, into ICO's initial coin offering. So, yeah, you're a securities attorney. You have to sit back there and, like, wire these deals together. >> Right. >> What's going on, I mean, is the law behind the tech? How are you guys managing it, what's the flow look like for you? >> Yeah, I mean, I think that the law is almost always behind the technology, right. That's just how it works. I mean, from our perspective, you know, we represent tons of companies on normal securities law, or securities issuances. And this can be similar, depending on how the token is structured. So, you know, the SEC said in its July guidance that tokens can be securities, depending on the facts. A part of what we do, as lawyers, is review the facts of the token, right. What does the token do, how do you treat the token, how are you issuing the token, how are you marketing the token? Are there securities-like features of the token? So, for example. Does it have profit sharing features? Does it have voting features? Those are pretty obviously more security-like features. But, also, you know, in the token ecosystem, are you treating it like you would equity? So, for example, you know, are you putting vesting conditions on there? Are you marketing it to VC's who may never use your network? Those are some factors that make it look like more security. Versus a utility. >> You guys also, I mean, I've been in Silicon Valley now 18 years, and been an entrepreneur for longer, and entrepreneurs are always three feet in a cloud of dust, breaking things in the bowl in the China shop, as they say, and have to get the lawyers to kind of clean things up or set things straight. Securities is a known practice, but now there's some kind of bumps in the road but still people are moving forward. So I got to ask you, what's the test? I mean, we hear things like the Howey Test. >> Mm hmm. >> What are some of the things that entrepreneurs should know around where to pay attention? Kind of where to put their head down and drive because there are known practices, on the security site you mentioned, a few of them, but where's the test? What's the one thing, is it the Howey Test? What is this Howey Test concept? And what other things should entrepreneurs know about? >> Right, so I think, you know, the Howey Test is a test that was in CaseLab that basically explains what is an investment contract. And an investment contract is what is considered a security. So, basically, the payment of money, you know, based on the efforts of others, where you kind of have the reasonable expectation of obtaining profits, right, from those efforts of others, versus yourself. So that's the general gist of it. So I think, from a securities law perspective, that's really important. Because there has been so much focus from the SEC. But there's also other regulatory agencies who are focused on this. Some of those are, you know, money transmitter laws. You know, there's potential commodities law issues. So there's definitely other regulatory regimes that could implicate the token. Or the token could be implicated in that regime. But I think the securities law one is one that I focus on. >> Yeah. >> And it's important to look at. >> Alright, so the first test is, okay, obviously, new internet infrastructure, different conversation, but the real law test is, is this token going to be an investment making money. >> Right. >> Or is it going to be a utility. One that provides values to the participants. Did I get that right? >> Yes, I would say, generally speaking, right. Is the token, you know, is it a use case? Or is it an investment? Am I expecting profits from that token? Or am I using it like an access fee or a membership? Or to obtain services. >> An arcade game, as Grant Fonda would say. >> Exactly. An arcade game is probably your best example. >> Yeah. Okay, so then the next test is I've heard of some things I'd like to get you to explain. What anti-money laundering or AML is. And KYC, Know Your Customer. And, obviously, Bitcoin has been kind of, you know, we've heard Silk Road stories, underbelly, a lot of bad things are happening, but anonymous is good. But here, financially, Know Your Customer is a specific thing that means something and then AML, anti-money laundering, how does that factor into this whole thing? >> Yeah, so I think for, you know, when you open a bank account, for example, right, your bank wants to know who you are. They'll obtain certain information from you. Whether it's your drivers license or passport. Where you obtained your funds. I mean, that's part of the Know Your Customer, anti-money laundering activity, right. >> And identity behind the, before you sign the thing. >> Right. So part of it is because cryptocurrency can be very anonymous, right. There are anonymous wallets that you're sending cryptocurrency to and from, you don't know who these people are. So part of it is making sure that you understand who your purchasers are. You don't want to run afoul of, you know, an anti-terrorist type, you know, regulations. The US government has several lists that they have online that you can search for names of folks that you don't need to be doing business with. So there's a lot of structures already in place. And part of that is just understanding who your purchasers are. >> And these are requirements on certain things, and the anti-money laundering exposes just audit trailing and certain things that you got to have as compliance things. >> Correct, correct. And so I think, in America, we don't normally, I would say if you were kind of outside of the US, this is probably a little bit more normal, right. People are used to doing it. I think, in America, maybe we're not as used to it. But these are not kind of new guidelines. This has always existed. >> Alright, so sometimes entrepreneurs are fast and loose with their, ah, screw the anti-money laundering thing. Or they get, I don't understand, that's too much work, I don't understand it. >> Yeah. >> So they blow it off. When do they have to not blow it off? When do you have to worry about, like, all these anti-money laundering things? Cause you have to, obviously, do more work. >> Right. >> Got to make sure you're checking the boxes, complying. That probably has overhead, costs money, or maybe write some new software. So we've been recommending that all of our clients who are in the token space and kind of obtaining, you know, digital currency, go through KYC and AML. Some of the digital currency exchanges, right. So in order, when you're receiving your digital currency and you need an account, >> Mm hmm. >> in order to exchange the digital currency into US dollars, for example, it's essentially like opening a bank account. So they're going to ask for all of the information with respect to how did you receive your digital currency. So part of that is you need to have that in place prior to actually launching your token sale so that you can kind of follow the flow of funds. >> So I was trying to find this image I would put up but I can't find it cause I'm on this computer, but I saw a thing on a conference, might have been Block Con, that you guys were at. I think you guys sponsored that event. Where the cost of doing an ICO can range from, they said, on the cheap end, they use the word cheap, not inexpensive, cheap, probably implying not get a good lawyer, a hundred K up to 750 thousand dollars. So, range of cost between hundred thousand and 750 thousand. From cheap to done right. >> Right. Right. >> Or expensive. Is that right or is that, what's the cost ranges? >> Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of players in the ecosystem, right. So there's the lawyers. And typically lawyers bill by the hour, so that's kind of how much time, you know, we're kind of looking at documents and things and helping you structure. There's the tax accountants. So part of that is also, you know, how much time they're spending. But some of it can be very complicated from a tax structuring perspective. Then there's the technical people, right. Unless you have that in house. To actually build your Blockchain network. Kind of help you with all of that, you know, the technical aspects of it. So software engineers, for example. Then there's the ICO consultants. Someone to kind of help you manage, quarterback the process, maybe help you with marketing the tokens to certain different websites, or help you with that. So, all of those together, I mean, yes, it can be very expensive, it kind of depends on how much of that you want to outsource. And how much of that you can do yourself. Obviously, you can't really do all that stuff yourself. >> So it's in the ranges. It could be in the ranges. >> Yeah. I mean, tax alone could kill you if you're looking at all kinds of complicated schemes or licensing agreements. >> Right. >> I mean. >> So all that, you want to make sure you're structuring the entity appropriately before you start it. >> Okay, so where do you get involved? So let's just say that, let's just walk through the day and day operations of, say, Goodwin. Okay, I've got to client. >> Yep. >> And, okay, you come in for the securities component. What does that mean? You just make sure they're incorporated properly? All the laws on the stock and then the tokens treatment? What specific things do you do? >> Sure, so, you know, once we kind of have brought the client in, after our conflicts procedures, and we've agreed to the engagement, part of depends on where they are. If they don't have a company, we'll help you form the company, right. And make sure that all of those startup documents have been appropriately done. Sometimes people have already, they're, you know, an actual company, right. We don't need to form them, they're already in existence. So then we look at pass the formation items and we look at the token issuance. So we'll look at your white paper. The white paper typically describes how the token works in the ecosystem and kind of what the company. >> You get involved in that, just to kind of check if it sounds. >> From a structuring perspective, right. Do we think this is a security? Or do we think it is leaning towards utility? And the SEC obviously has not said, what is a utility and what is a security. >> So that's the gray area? >> Yes. >> So the gray area is watch the language, be careful what you say. >> But also what you do, right. It's not just what you say, it's also what you do. So part of it is talking to the clients about what are you thinking, how are you envisioning this? Where can we help you kind of restructure or decrease your risks? >> And you guys become a safety net and help defend that too, obviously, as attorneys. But the clients still own, >> Correct. I mean, part of it is we give you advice. And the clients can take or not take our advice. But that's what we're here for. >> Do you guys offer a legal opinions behind these? I'm sure you don't. (laughs) >> We don't offer legal opinions. You know, we do do research memos on kind of where we think your token lies. But we don't do legal opinions. >> So have you guys talked to the SEC at Goodwin? I mean, do you guys have conversations? I don't know what goes on behind the curtain of the big law firms but I'm assuming that you guys are up to speed on all the notes and everything, but do you guys actually talk to people at the SEC? Is that how it works? Cause this is a cutting edge area, I'm sure you guys have to be on the cutting edge. >> Yeah, I mean we haven't had any clients, knock on wood, that have had to go through any of the SEC investigations on this. So, you know, we have not had, on behalf of our clients, had to talk to them about it. >> So that's good news, you guys doing good. >> Yeah. >> I know you guys doing over close to 30 plus ICO's, so congratulations. Is there a pattern that you've seen, from a legal standpoint, that you've seen emerging? Obviously, it's pretty clear, out in the market place, certainly the celebrity endorsement, Paris Hilton to the boxer dude and all kinds of stuff was going on where people were endorsing >> Right. >> things, so. Kind of, I don't want to say pump and dump, but that's a word that's been used in the dot com bubble, but people are saying a lot of these things are scams. And the majority of them aren't going to work out. So we've said, editorially here on The Cube and Silicon Angle, that failure doesn't mean scams. We had some failures, but certainly there are some scams. So has that caused people to pull back a little bit? And say, whoa, we're not going to go forward fast enough? Or is nothing stopping this, what's the pattern? >> Yeah, I would say, compared to a year ago, where there was no SEC guidance, right, there was no guidance from other regulator agencies, people were definitely going very quickly. I think now what we're seeing are more sophisticated clients. Clients who really want to make sure that they're following all of the legal requirements to the best that they can, given the grayness in the securities laws and other regimes. And a lot more of a thoughtfulness about, well, let's make sure that this works, right, we're not going to get into trouble. >> Have you seen any co-mingling between some of the traditional VC, venture capital investors or hedge funds, they're emerging, who want to come in and participate on the pure equity side, or the preferred stock or, more common, mostly prefer we see them. But, also, play in the tokens. Is there co-existence between participation? Or is it mostly they line up on the preferred and then let the tokens go here? Is there a pattern there that you see around how those securities are playing out? >> Yeah, I think a lot of people see value in the token ecosystem and they want to participate in that. And a lot of our venture capital clients, or our token clients who have VC investors, they want to participate. So we are definitely seeing people are very excited about it and want to kind of be a part of it. >> What about the presale concept? We're seeing a lot of people jump on the presale bandwagon because it allows them to, you know. It's not an inexpensive process. You guys, obviously, don't work for free. You guys have deals where, obviously, startups can come in. And you guys have a great startup program, I could testify that. You guys do have a good community participation there. But, at the end of the day, this is a legitimate process now. >> Mm Hmm. >> It costs money. You guys have to get paid. And service provides, like the tax attorneys got to get paid. So there's a lot, we see a lot of entrepreneurs doing that's presale. Where they try to offer this kind of discount. How is that working out and has that been going well? >> Yeah, I mean I think, you know, while the SEC has not commented on this, the practitioners and kind of the ecosystem, most people, I think, are considering that presale agreement prior to a network actually being live as a security. And, so, people are going out to accredited investors, sometimes that's VC, sometimes that's high net worth individuals. That's usually done through a SAFT, which is, it stands for Simple Agreement for Future Tokens, or a presale contribution agreement. So part of that is it's like a, you can liken it to a preferred stock financing. >> It's a known process. >> But it's not preferred stock. >> But it's a known vehicle for financing. >> Correct. >> It's not like it's tied to the ICO in a new vehicle. It's just like, okay, we're going to do something down the road, there's risks associated, all that stuff. >> Right, it's an investment contract. I'm giving you a million dollars to invest, to build up the platform. At the end of, when the platform launches, and, hopefully, when the network has utility and your token has utility, then you'll receive tokens. >> And this is good for innovation, because it gets everyone rolling a little bit. Is that, that kind of seems to be the pattern that I'm seeing. It's like, you know. >> It's basically like a seed round, alright. That's probably a really good example, is it's a seed round to get something started. That thing is not your company, it is your network. >> And it also sets the community. I've noticed on the Blockchain, these ICO communities are a very bit part of it. Goodwin's got a great reputation, certainly here in Silicon Valley, and around the world, as a law firm. This is a big part of it. So the presale's also kind of a gesture of credibility for the opportunity and I think, I mean, you know, people I talk to are like, hey, I look at what's going on in the presale, kind of as an indicator of who's involved, judged by the company that you keep kind of thing. So that's interesting. Have you seen that presale dominating more than just going right to the ICO, given the market conditions of all the ICO's? >> Yeah, I mean I think it depends, right. Some of our clients have existing businesses, right. Where this is very complimentary. The Blockchain network is complimentary to their existing business and, so, they may not need to have this big presale, right. Part of the presale could be two weeks before your general crowd sale. You have folks who kind of get in early. To me, that is not necessarily, I mean, it really depends, obviously, fact-specific, but that's a little big different that doing a, quote, presale agreement. Like a year before or six months before your token launch. That's a little bit different. >> Yeah, so also you brought up a good point. Existing businesses versus kind of like people who just need the cash to get going. >> Right. >> We're seeing a lot of companies that either have a successful business, like Kik and then Kik Kin Token was once example, we talk about all the time. The other one is pivots. We're seeing a lot of entrepreneurs take companies that were pivots, AKA, going out of business, where the token timing of a token in decentralized Blockchain actually is great for their business model. And they have to, essentially, go recap or do some securities, you know, resetting. That's your world, right? You got to get involved in those areas. >> Yeah, I mean, I think anything that has to do with kind of changing your capital structure, right, you should have your securities lawyer or your corporate lawyer involved. Because that'll obviously impact your securities law. You know, exemptions that you're taking, you know, typically from a private placement exemption, for most of our private company clients. >> Is there any new trends that are popping out of that kind of pivot or, wow, this is really, you know, I was out there, I got some funding from Y Combinator, or some sort of venture, and we're kind of just barely staying alive. This Blockchain could really accelerate, there's now momentum. Is there any trends that you see, from your work standpoint, where you have, that are happen, that are obvious new things that are coming out of this? Or is it a standard recap to cap table, normal corporate work? >> I think there is a tension, right, between doing a normal stock finance, preferred stock, or common stock financing that, you know, whatever you would typically do. Whether that's a convertible security or a convertible note. And then raising funds through a token sale. And so, from my perspective, it's obviously cleaner to do it the traditional way. Because you're not dealing with unclear SEC rules, right. It's very clear how you do a preferred stock financing. We do that every day. So to the extent that companies are in that position where they can choose, it's certainly cleaner to do it the traditional way. >> If you pull off an ICO, god bless you. It's certainly equity-free, tokens. There's no equity to token, if you're a utility token. >> Right. >> Okay, so I was reading about the Delaware, Delaware was allowing companies to use Blockchain. >> Mm hmm. >> This is right up your alley. So, they're not doing ICO's. So can you clarity the Delaware situation relative to Blockchain, cause they're using a Blockchain from a ledger standpoint, but it's not an ICO haven yet. So talk about the Delaware situation. >> Correct, so the Delaware amendments, which I believe are now approved, as of a couple of months ago, over the summer, essentially allow the cap table ledger to be on the Blockchain. So they're kind of ahead of everything, right. Because, you know. So, for like, for example, a few years ago, no one had uncertificated stock certificates. Everybody wanted the physical stock certificates. And now most companies, that we represent, >> They want digital. >> Exactly, digital, uncertificated stock certificates. But there is a ledger and there is a record of it. You just don't have the fancy paper with the pretty legend on it. So I think technology is moving and the law needs to as well. So part of that is Delaware kind of getting onboard. >> Delaware's got a great opportunity, they can nail the ICO's. Well, Mitzi, thanks for coming, I really appreciate it. Any other observations that you'd like, that you see in the market that you'd like to share? Take a minute to talk about what you're doing at Goodwin, as well. What's going on, what's happening? >> Yeah, I mean I think it's a really exciting time, we're really excited to be a part of it. It's cutting edge work. I think that there's a lot of, I guess, what I would call kind of your more traditional clients that we have, that we take calls from every day. Whether that's investment banks, or VC funds, private equity funds, or just our venture backed companies that are curious as to what is this all about. >> Yeah. >> So I think it's really exciting and I'm glad to be a part of it. I don't think that it is going to stop. I think that certainly there's likely to be more regulation about how you do one of these ICO's, one of these token generation events, you know, within the confines of the law. But I don't see it stopping. >> You don't see it stopping at all? >> No, I mean I think once there's more regulation, there'll be more clarity about how to do it. And how to do it within the confines of the law, which we try to do, obviously, you know, given that there's not a ton of clear guidance. But I think that, I think the ship has sailed. >> Yeah, well this is a great conversation here with Goodwin, formerly Goodwin Proctor, Mitzi Chang, partner, she's a securities attorney. We should call this show Billable Hours. Because we're getting some free legal opinions and conversations, thanks for coming on, appreciate it. >> Thanks for having me. >> Blockchain is hot, entrepreneurs are using it. All the top tier one entrepreneurs are looking at this. Great opportunity, similar with the Web One dato, the TC IP era of the internet, Blockchain. It's fundamental infrastructure for the future of decentralization, so. Great opportunities, causing lots of innovation. Check with your attorneys, obviously Goodwin, and a few others all doing great ICO's. Great potential fundraising, but also great business opportunities. Thanks again, appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> So Cube Conversations here, in Palo Alto, I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (electronic music)

(light adventurous music) >> Hello everyone, welcome to theCUBE Studios here in Palo Alto. I'm John Furrier, the co-host of theCUBE, co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media. This is our CUBE Conversation Thought Leader Thursday and I'm here with Val Bercovici, who's the founder and CEO of a new startup called PencilDATA. Val, CUBE alumni, been on many times with NetApp and then a variety of other great startups, but now you're doing your own thing around cryptocurrency, blockchain, enterprise-like technical infrastructure. You've been a CTO, now entrepreneur, founder and CEO of PencilDATA. Congratulations, you're on the crypto wave, this wave is coming. >> I believe it's here. >> It's here. >> Timing couldn't be better. >> So, I interviewed Dr. Jian Wang who's the chairman of Alibaba's technology steering committee, also the founder of Alibaba Cloud, just recently in China. Presented by Intel, plug for Intel there, thanks Intel for supporting theCUBE. He said to me, and I put the clip out on Twitter, natively on the video clip, which was, I asked him about blockchain, you know China, they blocked the ICOs, he said, "Blockchain is fundamental, part of the Internet. "It's as fundamental as TCP/IP was." This is the nuance that is attracting a lot of tier one entrepreneurs. Obviously the money side is hyped up beyond all recognition right now. As Don Klein on our team was saying, "It's melting up in terms of hype." But this really speaks to the transformation of the web, and the Internet now, the web is the Internet, from distributed and decentralized. This is a big sea change. Kind of building on the fundamentals of the internet, formerly called the information superhighway, before the web came along, but the web was designed to withstand nuclear disaster, be resilient, be decentralized. >> It reminds me of Back to the Future in many, many ways, because if you're as old as we are, you remember those DARPA origins of the Internet and exactly that decentralized nature, and we've gone away from that, right? As Tim Berners-Lee brought on the HTTP protocol, we've had web protocols, and as major, the FANG vendors have really dominated their usage of that existing layer of technology we've gone away, we've gone to a very, very centralized approach, which as we're seeing with the tech hearings this week, carries all sorts of risks, it's not just business and legal and political. >> And you're referring to the senate hearings, where Facebook, Google, or Alphabet, and Twitter were in front of the senate committee, you're going to tell them about the Russians, the Russian political thing, but they're bringing up the issue of the role of these mega platforms that have all this data and the problem is that this is not what the users bargained for. I mean, I use Facebook as a free app, I love Facebook, Facebook, we love you, WhatsApp here and there, and Instagram, but you know, my bargain was simple. I'll use your free app and I'll let you use some of my data but now you're making billions, $10 billion quarter, fake news has infiltrated the country, I have a poor user experience every day, it's getting worse and worse, a lot of hate and division. This is not what I bargained for. >> Val: Exactly. >> So the world's kind of revolting against these mega-siloed platforms. >> That's the risk of having such centralized control of the technology. If you remember in the old days when Microsoft's dominance was rising, all you had to do was target Windows as a virus platform and you're able to impact thousands of businesses, even in the early Internet days, within hours. And it's the same thing happening right now, there's a weaponization of these social media platforms and Google's search engine technology and so forth. It's the same side effect now, the centralization of that control is the problem. One of the reasons I love the blockstack technology, and blockchain in general is the ability to decentralize these things right now, and the most passionate thing I care about nowadays is being driven out of Europe, where they have a lot more maturity in terms of handling these new scenarios. >> You mean the tech being driven out of Europe. >> The laws. >> The laws, okay. >> Being driven out of Europe. >> Be specific, we'd like an example. >> The major deadline that's coming up in May 25th of 2018 is GDPR, General Data Protection Regulation, where European citizens now in any company, American or otherwise, catering to European citizens, has to respond to things like the right to be forgotten request. You've got 24 hours, as a global corporation with European operations, to respond to European citizens', EU citizens', right to be forgotten request, where all the personally identifiable information, the PII, has to be removed and an audit trail, proving it's been removed, has to be gone from two, three hundred internal systems within 24 hours. And this has teeth by the way, it's not like the $2.7 billion fine that Google just flipped away casually, this has up to 4% of your global profits per incident where you don't meet that requirement. >> Well you bring up a good point, the GDPR is a good one, it has teeth and it's kind of in the weeds with the folks who might not know that regulation, but really it's about the privacy and the rights of the individual. But coming back to Facebook, to connect another dot is, what we're seeing with Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet with the senate hearings is, and this is why the industry and the media is crumbling, publications are dying, the newspapers, the media's changing, is because knowing your customer is a really important thing. The people who want to be served need to have a closed loop with the publication, and these platforms are bogarting all the data, and so the right of the customer, the users are suffering, and that's what people are generally talking about. You know, personally, a guy can rent a truck and go mow people down in Manhattan, we should know who these people are, like the neighbors, so I think there's going to be a trend towards knowing who your neighbor is, knowing who the customers are, at a level that's not scary privacy violation, but we're going to know who the crazies are, we're going to know what's going on and then that's kind of out there, that's kind of my general feeling. But now, getting back to the impact. GDPR, these big mega platforms where the users are at the center of the value proposition, really comes down to the shift in user expectations around a decentralized Internet. That means agile goes to a whole other level. If I'm a user and I say, "Hey Facebook, "delete my digital exhaust or digital footprints "from Facebook over the past 10 years." I mean, that's hard to do. >> That's hard for them. >> That's not, technically is a really serious problem. >> And it's actually not just a technology challenge, I always love to go back to Conway's Law in these discussions, the org chart, you know, how information, infrastructure is budgeted for, and managed through various different departments within any large enterprise, data-savvy or not, is a challenge, as is coordinating these efforts, actually going beyond the talking phase, towards implementing a master data model. Those are the main challenges right now, and it's a movement that I believe now has political strength to actually migrate across the pond. Over here as well there's a groundswell movement called Digital Sovereignty as a response to GDPR in Europe, where people are realizing that they have the right to be sovereign over their data, their digital exhaust, their digital footprints online and that's a two-way street. You want and demand control over your data, but on the other hand your identity, which you control, has to be authentic as opposed to a fake identity, and your reputation has to be out there as well. >> These signals and these trends you were just referring to, to me are just like little tremors of the tectonic plates that are going to be changing, because if you look at the major shift in technology, let's take blockchain for instance, and look at the impact of a decentralized internet, now global, immutability with the ability now for more agile capability and not just permanent, "I want to erase things" that you're talking about, but three, the younger generation, if we look at what the young kids are doing, I have four kids, my oldest is 22, it's a gaming culture, right? It's a gaming culture, they're online all the time. They're not old like us, my son's like, "Dad, Google Search is for old people." I mean, that's a general sentiment, over-categorizing, but a combination of the new user experience, this younger generation, entrepreneurs and users, and these tremors we're seeing in the marketplace, signaling that, "hey Facebook, you might be too big for your britches," or, "hey Twitter, you got a bot problem, "hey all you gamers using Twitch," this is now a signal, where is it leading to? And where does blockchain in particular impact it? Because this is kind of where everything's converging to. >> So what I'd like to say right now is, you've got Marc Andreessen's premise that software is eating the world. If you extend that, data is feeding it, blockchain is valuing it, and it's AI that's automating it. So in my mind, particularly in my experience earlier this year in the AI industry, you realize that AI today really boils down to machine learning, which in itself boils down to deep learning, which boils down to data, your access to data. Professor Andrew Wang did this at the recent O'Reilly conference up in the city, he got up and lectured as the keynote instead of sharing slides and his number one, two, and three advice to everyone in the audience was, get the right datasets to train your model. If you don't have that you don't have a differentiated business, and that's what inspired PencilDATA, is my encountering of the cold start AI problem where the IP's in a public domain, public datasets are ubiquitous which is fantastic for academics, but as a business you can't differentiate unless you have access to the right datasets to train your models more specifically. >> Okay, as the founder and CEO of PencilDATA, that's your new startup, let's get into some of the reasons why you're starting it. What problem are you attacking? Obviously a pencil, I can see pencil and you erase things, it's got data... >> The internet is no longer written in ink, that's the premise. Now with Pencil you can erase some data. >> Well blockchain is immutable, so this is conflicting in my mind. Help me kind of rationalize this. The benefit of blockchain is everything's permanent, if you're on-chain as they say. >> Exactly. >> If you're off-chain, you could do some things. Is that kind of what we're getting at? >> We're mixing the best of both. So our premise is that again, whether you're an organization or an individual, you need to have, to survive in a new digital economy, control over your data. The blockchain part of it is the visibility side. If you don't know who's doing what to your data, you're far less likely to share it. And once you know who's doing what to your data, in an immutable blockchain, with a detailed audit trail, with strong authentication, of literally who's doing what to your data, gives you that visibility. Then you do what modern asset managers do. You can't really value an asset until you fully control it. And our premise is, you can't control something until you can take it back. So the notion of PencilDATA is the ability to go on-chain for the visibility and off-chain for managing data in encrypted containers, and if a data owner or publisher doesn't like how the subscriber's consuming their data, they have the power to revoke all downloaded copies. >> So is this kind of like a shadow blockchain model? I'm trying to find a mental model because I remember the old days back, I was breaking into the industry in the late '80s, early '90s, WORM drives, write once, read many. And you write it once, it's a laser, it was optical drives at the time. Also, demilitarized zones in networking was an area where there was a safe harbor kind of thing, where people could play around. What metaphor, what mental model can people take away from some of the things that you're trying to solve? Is it like a DMZ, is it like a-- >> The implementation's a lot like a DMZ and the business challenge and opportunity is that there's a lot of tension between protecting data, because we have an epidemic of data breaches right now, I think you're foolish if you're assuming that you haven't been breached yet but you might be, because everyone has been breached, personally and organizationally, so we have to deal with the rising need to protect data more and more. But at the same time, you can't stay in business if you don't optimize the monetization of the data you have. And so PencilDATA walks that fine line between letting you do both, letting you not just protect infrastructure, that's a whole other industry that we're not involved in, but literally protect data at the data level. If you look up terms like crypto anchor you'll see some of the technologies we're taking advantage of there. But being able to monetize data by unlocking all that latent value of data hidden behind firewalls. If you use a physics analogy of potential and kinetic energy, applied to data behind firewalls, there's hundreds of billions of dollars of value in latent data basically, potential data hiding behind firewalls, and when you can safely share it, give the owners control they've never had before, then you expose the value of that data for the first time. >> Alright, so let's take us through where you're at. Obviously super exciting, you're leveraging the blockchain and you've got an ICO, initial coin offering coming up but you're not just doing that for the sake of doing, there's a lot of scams out there, you're taking a little bit more of a pragmatic approach. Give us the status because you're the founder and CEO, what's the makeup of the team, how big are you guys, what are you guys looking for, obviously you're looking for team members most likely. >> We're looking for developers obviously. >> Where in the process are you? >> We are a two-month-old company. We're at the seed stage. And we've actually assembled a world-class team. You hear that a lot, but I'm really, really proud of the team members we have right now. >> World-class, are they from around the world and then they have class? Define world-class. >> They're worldly, like myself, I travel a lot. (laughter) An example, my chief privacy officer is Sheila Fitzpatrick, she's a worldwide recognized leader in data privacy, she's on many, many privacy boards in the US and EU and so forth, and she now is traveling nonstop lecturing on GDPR, itself specifically. She's one of those recognized-- >> Should you see yourself as a solution for GDPR, because that's, again, it does have teeth, I'll just say that we've been reporting on this through Wikibon, our research team as well as theCUBE, it comes up all the time and there's heavy fines associated with it, so it's not like- >> GDPR is the perfect use case because on the one hand, we have that audit trail that proves what you're doing with data. On the other hand we have a kill switch, that revocable use clause for data where you can literally comply with GDPR in minutes or seconds, as opposed to take a full 24 hours to scour database and delete selected records. >> Alright, so what about the product? Give us an example of the product. Will you be, first of all that's right around the corner, it's next year. >> Val: Yeah. >> I think it was a March or April's timeframe, I don't have the exact date but it's pretty soon. >> Public beta before the end of this year, version 1.0 first of second quarter next year. >> For you guys, PencilDATA. >> Yes. >> Clients, are you working with anyone right now, you have a handful? >> So we've actually got really interesting distribution partnerships that we're not in a position to announce right now but the top-tier brand name enterprise cloud vendors, both on the SaaS and infrastructure and database side, they're lining up to work with us. Because we're enabling amazing use cases in healthcare and life sciences, the ability to selectively share patient data with insurers, with healthcare providers, clinical trials now to share more information through differential privacy and collectively have more data to be processed and analyzed. Use cases are just off the charts. >> Well you know we go to all the big data shows, we're horizontally scaled on the event site circuit, but this is the number one thing that comes up, I want to move from batch marketing, batch process, batch business to real-time business, speed is essential, but it's always been a conflict between, how do I enable data to move really fast and be available for applications but protecting the privacy. >> Yeah. >> Do you solve that problem, is that something that you see yourselves solving? >> We aren't necessarily innovating on speed, of data movement, it's going to be a SaaS service. >> So it's availability model. >> It's availability of data that's really never been shared before and I think that's the key here, is we know there's a lot of value locked up behind corporate firewalls. The irony is, we don't even have to sell this outside firewalls initially, when you go to any medium-to-large size enterprise that has more than one site or more than one department, Sales doesn't trust Marketing and vice versa, Engineering doesn't trust Customer Support, neither of the four of them trust each other, so we're actually going to enable more data shared within an enterprise at first. >> So that's a starting point for you guys. >> That's a starting point, that's the easiest low-hanging fruit sale we have. >> Well PencilDATA, it's great stuff, Val, congratulations on that startup. I mean, you've got a world-class management team, and this kind of brings up a point that I've been banging on theCUBE pretty much every time I go out I'll talk about blockchain and ICO because you know, theCUBE is a very decentralized audience and that's a value that we're looking at as well with blockchain. I've got to ask you the personal question, from your own personal perspective, experience, executive and CTO, why is blockchain attracting so many A players? Because you're seeing a lot of what I call A players, entrepreneurs, technical geeks, really jumping into this because they can see it, they can smell the opportunity, and also, it also attracts the scammers as well, but specifically, why are these A players coming in? Is it, what are you hearing, what's the general vibe, what's the anecdotal reason? >> So as you said earlier on, it's a fundamental evolution of the core internet as a technology, as fundamental as HTTP and web was on top of TCP/IP back 20 years ago, but it's got that rare combination of not only being a technical innovation that empowers new use cases on the web, on the internet, it's also got immediate, amazing business applications as a store of value initially, as an actual valuation of various business processes, or datasets in my case, as an ability to exchange that value so transparently, so, in such a friction-less liquid manner, those are some of the amazing innovations it brings to the table and I think the most important thing is not to think of this as being able to do digital transformation or faster analog, it's about completely reimagining the exchange of value, measurement of value, and new kinds of businesses that just weren't possible before. >> And at all points of the stack, not the low levels and at the application level, the business logic, and to the geek side, right? >> Absolutely. >> You agree. I mean, that's great and as you know, theCUBE is looking at a blockchain ICO on down the horizon so keep an eye out for that, CUBEcoins could be in everyone's future, so we're super excited like you. >> I'm looking forward to your presale, just like I'm looking forward to mine. (laughing) >> Well, we'll see. But the bottom line is that this is what the reality is, you know, reimagining the applications is what people are thinking and I think people should beware of the scams out there, and then final question I want to ask you is, obviously we're both in the community together, with our teams. Share your perspective on the ecosystem, because obviously decentralization will change the nature of traditional ecosystems. >> Very much so. >> What's your vision on how the ecosystem will evolve, and how big is it now relative to these early markets? >> We're actually starting to enter the middle innings of the cloud game, if you will, we're seeing a very good maturity, a good diversification of profitable earnings and outcomes for the major cloud players, so I think we've gone well down the cloud path so far. But the decentralized world is in its infancy. It's embryonic right now. And I've always been a proponent of the multi-cloud environment and a multi-cloud world, and decentralization fundamentally is based on and depends on a multi-cloud, not just multi-region, but multi-data-center-in-a-closet scenario as well, to be able to actually have a democratic model for determining where the value is, where the value isn't, blockchain node style. And that is incredibly exciting to me, because that really cements this rebalancing of the pendulum between core and edge in terms of where processing and value happens. >> Yeah, and value exchange obviously now, markup links are becoming the du jour way to exchange value, users are in control, infrastructure equilibrium is interesting. Great stuff. And I'll say, perfect storm for innovation. The waves are coming. (laughing) >> You know, one thing I've learned over the years is, the innovation, change never stops. There's always an opportunity to innovate, and that's what I love about this movement. >> Blockchain, ICO, PencilDATA, check 'em out, Val Bercovici, founder and CEO, great friend of theCUBE, also really strong CTO, check these guys out. This wave of innovation around blockchain ICOs and infrastructure, reimagining, the future is here upon us at theCUBE, be right back with more, thanks for watching. (electronic music)

(upbeat music) >> Hello, everyone and welcome to this special CUBE conversation here in our studios in Palo Alto, California. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media and cohost of theCUBE, with a special preview of CyberConnect 2017, a global security conference presented by Centrify, it's an industry-independent event. I'm here with the CEO and Founder of Centrify, Tom Kemp. Tom, thanks for joining me on this preview of CyberConnect 2017. >> It's great to be here again. >> So, you guys, obviously, as a company are no longer struggling, you're clearly clearing the runway on growth. Congratulations on the success. This event will be broadcasting live on theCUBE as folks should know on the site. CyberConnect 2017 is a different kind of event, it's really the first of its kind where it's an industry gathering, not just a Black Hat, I mean, RSA's got Black Hat and they try to weave a little business in. This is all about leadership in the industry. Is that right? >> Yeah, absolutely. You know, there's really a dearth of business-focused discussions with C-Level people discussing the issues around security. And so, what we found was, was that most of the conversations were about the hackers, you know, the methodology of goin' in and hacking in. And, that doesn't really help the business people, they have to understand what are the higher level strategies that should be deployed to make their organizations more secure. So, we kind of wanted to up-level the conversation regarding security and help C-Level people, board people, figure out what they should be doing. >> And, we've obviously been reporting at SiliconANGLE, obviously, the latest and greatest on hacks. You know, you've seen everything from cyber threats, where are real hacking, to nuanced things like the rushing dissidents campaign on Facebook around voter impressions. And we saw that in the hearings in the senate where Facebook got really grilled by, you know, "Is it a real threat," no, but it is a threat in the sense that they're putting opinion-shaping. So, there's a broad range of business issues, some are highly-nuanced, some are very specific business values, you're out of business if you get hacked. So, how do you see that, because is that the discussion point? Is it more policy, all of the above, what is the overall conversations going to be like at CyberConnect 2017? >> Yeah, I think it's, look, the reality is, is that breaches before were about potentially stealing your data. But, now it's an impact on your brand. Like, what if the Russians were doing that to Pepsi or Coca-Cola, et cetera? They could just completely setup a lot of negative sentiment about you, so there's a lot of different ways to impact organizations as well. And so, what we're doing at CyberConnect is, putting forth CIOs of Aetna, US Bank, and having them describe what they do. I mean, think about a major healthcare company, Aetna, US Bank, the list goes on, you know, Blue Cross Blue Shield. And we're having the major CSOs of these large organizations tell their peers what they're doing to protect their company, their brands, et cetera. >> Well, I want to get back to the business impact in a second, but some notable key notes here. Securing a Nation Amid Change, A Roadmap to Freedom, from Retired General Keith Alexander, Former Director of the NSA and Chief of the U.S. Cyber Command. Why is he there, what's the focus for his talk? >> Well, you can't ignore the government aspect. Well, first of all, government is a huge target and we obviously saw that with the election, we saw that with the hack of the Office of Personnel Management, et cetera. And so, you know, nation states are going after governments as well as criminal organizations, so General Alexander can talk about what he did to protect us as citizens and our government. But, he also has a great insight in terms of what hackers are doing to go after critical infrastructure. >> John: He's got some experience thinking about it, so he's going to bring that thinking in? >> Absolutely, and he's going to give us an update on the latest vectors of attacks that are happening, and give us some insight on what he experienced trying to protect the United States but also trying to protect our businesses and infrastructure. So, we wanted to have him kick things off to give, you know, what more, the NSA, the ex-NSA head telling us what's going on. >> And you got amazing guests here, again the CSO from Aetna, the Chief Security Officer from Cisco, The Global Value Chain, you got US Bank. You got Amazon Web Services here talking about the Best Practice of Running Workloads on an Amazon Service Cloud. So, you got the gamut of industry, as well as some government people who have experienced dealing with this from a practitioners standpoint? What's the convoluence of that, what's the trends that are coming out of those? What can people expect to hear and look forward to watching the videos for? >> You know, I think it's going to be some of the trends that you guys talk about. It's like, how can you leverage AI and machine learning to help better protect your organization as well? So, that's going to be one huge trend. I think the other trend, and that's why we have the folks from Amazon, is in a world in which we're increasingly using mobile and Cloud and leaving the perimeter, you know, in a world where there's no perimeter, how can you secure your users, your data, et cetera? So, I think the focus of the conference is going to be very much on leveraging modern and new technologies, AI, machine learning, discussing concepts like Zero Trust. And then, also, figuring out and helping people really get some good ideas as they make the move to Cloud, how can they secure themselves, make themselves, more secure than when they had the traditional perimeter set up? >> I mean, given the security landscape, you and I discussed this in and around the industry, go back seven years, "Oh, Cloud's un-secure," now Cloud seems to be more secure then on perim because of the work that Amazon, for instance, they upped their game significantly in security, haven't they? >> Absolutely, and you know, it's interesting, it's, I mean, you see it first hand, Google comes out with announcements, Microsoft, Oracle, et cetera, and security is a key issue. And they're trying to provide a more secure platform to get people comfortable moving with the Cloud. At the same time, there's vendors such as Centrify, that's there's value-add that we can provide and one area that we specifically provide is in the area of identity and controlling who can access what, as well. So, yeah, it completely reshapes how you do security, and the vendors are contributing. What's so important that the solutions that we had before are being completely disruptive and they need to be completely adopted for the new Cloud world. >> I know it's your first event, you guys are underwriting this, it's presented by Centrify, it's not sponsored by, it's not your show. Although you're doing a lot of heavy lifting in supporting this, but your vision for this CyberConnect is really more of a gathering amongst industry folks. We're certainly glad to be a part of it, thanks for inviting us, we're glad to be there. But, this is not a Centrify-only thing, explain the presented by Centrify vis-a-vis CyberConnect. >> So, and we've also put forth another organization that we've worked with. It's an organization called ICIT, the Institute for Critical Information Technology. And, what they are, is they're a think tank. And they are very much about how can we support and secure the infrastructure of the United States, as well? We didn't want this to be a vendor fest, we wanted to be able to have all parties, no matter what technologies they use, to be able to come together and get value of this. It benefits Centrify because it raises awareness and visibility for us, but even more important, that we wanted to give back to the community and offer something unique and different. That this is not just another vendor fest show, et cetera, this is something where it's a bringing together of really smart people that are on the front-lines of securing their organizations. And we just felt that so much value could be driven from it. Because, all the other shows are always about how you can hack and ATM and all that stuff, and that's great, that's great for a hacker but that doesn't really help business people. >> Or vendors trying to sell something, right? >> Exactly. >> Another platform to measure something? >> Yeah, exactly. >> This is more of a laid-back approach. Well, I think that's great leadership, I want to give you some props for that. Knowing that you guys are very, as you say, community-centric. Now you mentioned community, this is about giving back and that's certainly going to be helpful. But, security has always been kind of a community thing, but now you're starting to see the business and industry community coming together. What's your vision for the security community at this CSO level? What's needed, what's your vision? >> I think what's needed is better sharing of best practices, and really, more collaboration because the same attacks that are going to happen for, say one healthcare organization, the hackers are going to use the same means and methods, as well. And so, if you get the CSOs in the room together and hear what the others are experiencing, it's just going to make them more better. So, the first thing, is to open up the communication. The second thing is, is that could we figure out a way, from a platform or a technology perspective, to share that information and share that knowledge? But, the first step is to get the people in the room to hear from their peers of what's going on. And, frankly, government at one point was supposed to be doing it, it's not really doing it, so, I think an event like this could really help in that regard. >> Well, and also, I would just point out the growth in GovCloud and following some of the stuff going on at Amazon, as an example, had been skyrocketing. So, you're starting to see industry and government coming together? >> Yeah. >> And now you got a global landscape, you know, this is interesting times and I want to get your reaction to some of the things that have been said here on theCUBE but also, out in the marketplace where, you know, it used to be state-actor game, not state on state. And then, if they revealed their cards, then they're out in the open. But now, the states are sponsoring, through open source, and also, in these public domains, whether it's a WikiLeaks or whatever, you're starting to see actors being subsidized or sponsored. And so that opens up the democratization capability for people to organize and attack the United States. And companies. >> Oh, absolutely, and you could right now, they have a help desk, and it's like ordering a service. "Oh, you want 500 bots going after this?" >> John: Smear a journalist for $10k. >> (laughing) Exactly, it's like as a service. Hacking as a service, they have help desk, et cetera. And, the interesting thing is. >> It's a business model. >> It's a business model, you're absolutely right. The people, it's all pay to play, right? And, just the number of resources being devoted and dedicated, and we're talking about thousands of people in Russia, thousands of people in North Korea, and thousands of people in China. And, what came out just recently, is now that they're shifting their target to individuals, and so, now you may have an individual that there may be a person just dedicated to them in China, or Russia or North Korea, trying to hack into them as well. So, it's getting really scary. >> It's almost too hard for one company with brute force, this is where the collective intelligence of the community really plays a big difference on the best practices because when you thought you had one model nailed, not just tech, but business model, it might shift. So, it seems like a moving train. >> Yeah, and we're having Mist show up, and so we're getting the government. But, I really think that there does need to be, kind of, more of an open-sourcing of knowledge and information to help better fine tune the machine learning that's needed and required to prevent these type of breaches. >> So, what can we expect? Obviously, this is a preview to the show, we'll be there Monday broadcasting live all day. What can people expect of the event, content-wise, what are your favorites? >> Well, I mean, first of all, just the people that we have there. We're going to get the two CCOs from two of the biggest healthcare companies, we're going to get the former head of the NSA, we're going to get the CSO of US Bank, I mean, we're talking the biggest financial services organizations. We're going to have the biggest healthcare organizations. We're going to have the people doing cyber. >> John: MasterCard's there. >> Yeah, MasterCard, we have the German government there as well, so we've got government, both U.S. as well as European. We've got all the big people in terms of, that have to secure the largest banks, the largest healthcare, et cetera. And then, we also have, as you talked about, obviously Centrify's going to be there, but we're going to have AWS, and we're going to have some other folks from some of the top vendors in the industry as well. So, it's going to be a great mixture of government, business, as well as vendors. Participating and contributing and talking about these problems. >> So, it's an inaugural event? >> Yes. >> So, you're looking for some success, we'll see how it goes, we'll be there. What can you expect, are you going to do this every year? Twice a year, what's the thoughts on the even itself? >> It's been amazing, the response. So, we just thought we were going to have 400 people, we sold out, we're getting close to 600 people. And now, we're going to have over 1,000 people that are going to be doing the live streaming. There's just a huge, pent-up demand for this, as well. So, we actually had to shut down registration and said sold out a week or two ago. And, so far, it looks really good, let's see how it goes. It looks like we can easily double this. We're already thinking about next year, we'll see how the event goes. If you just look at the line-up, look at the interest, or whatever, there's a pent-up demand to better secure government and enterprises. >> And leadership, like you guys are taking this as an issue, plus, others coming together. We're certainly super glad to be a part of the community, and we look forward to the coverage. This is really, kind of, what the industry needs. >> Absolutely. >> All right, Tom Kemp, the CEO and Founder of Centrify, really fast growing start up, doing an event for the community. Very strong approach, I love the posture, I think that's the way to go than these vendor shows. You know how I feel about that. It's all about the community, this is a community. I mean, look at the Bitcoin, the Blockchain, know you're customer isn't into money laundering. It's an identity game. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Now, by the way, quick, is there going to be any Blockchain action there? >> Oh, I don't know about that, I don't think so. >> Next year. (laughing) >> Next year, exactly. >> It's certainly coming, Blockchain security, as well as a lot of great topics. Check out CyberConnect 2017. If you can't make it to New York, they're sold out, theCUBE.net is where you can watch it live. And, of course, we'll have all the video coverage on demand, on theCUBE.net, as well. So, we'll have all the sessions and some great stuff. Tom Kemp, CEO. I'm John Furrier from theCUBE, here in Palo Alto, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(music) >> Hello and welcome to theCUBE, here in our studio in Palo Alto, California. This is a CUBEConversation; I'm John Furrier, the co-founder and co-CEO of SiliconANGLE Media, and co-host of theCUBE. Our next guest here is Surya Varanasi, who's the co-founder and CTO of Vexata, a hot startup here in Silicon Valley, also exhibiting this week at Oracle Open World in San Francisco. It's our 8th year of coverage at Oracle Open World, we will not be there on the ground with theCUBE; not a lot of room as they're doing a lot of reconstruction up there, among other events happening. Great, great conversations happening around the world of cloud, and certainly Big Data, now called 'data' generally because it's so hot. Sorry, welcome to the CUBEConversation. >> Thank you. >> So, first of all you guys are a hot new startup, really coming out of stealth, but not really stealth I mean stealth technically, not with general availability. You've been in business for a few years, building up great comprehensive storage-slash-data solution, I call it, with this "data fabric" concept. Congratulations. >> Thank you. >> Well-funded team, super technical. Tell us about the company, tell us about the launch, you guys are out public at Oracle Open World this week. What is Vexata? >> Vexata, we started in 2014, as you mentioned, a few years in development. We've been in trials for over a year and a half, shipping actually for a good eight or nine months. And what we're about is, we really wanted to design against three basic pillars. The first one being, there's digital businesses, they're all under pressure. "How do we survive, and how do we handle the transactions that are coming in?" And we wanted to build the highest performance storage system that we could build that really accelerates your apps, makes them super fast. The second thing we want to do is, the demanding enterprises, these are the ones that have the requirements, we wanted to be super enterprise-resilient. How do we deploy seamlessly? That was the third pillar we stood on, meaning no changes to your application or your, how do we plugin and just simply work? So we simply work, we're enterprise-resilient, and we have the highest-performance system that accelerates your apps with no changes. We built around Flash, and Intel's latest 3D Optane, and that's a big deal. >> Well you guys are well-funded, looking at the management team of the company, it's a start-up that began a couple years now, but you're now out in the wild, now launching. Just a couple of stats here, over 50 million dollars in funding, well-funded, great with a lot of work on the front end with the product, but the venture capitalists are interesting. Lightspeed has been very, very successful in the enterprise, just look at the list of successful day value, even if they have Snapchat too, so they know a little bit about data. Mayfield, Intel Capital, and Redline, and International One. Really really good pedigree there, and they know storage too, they see you telling us, they know what it looks like, they understand converge investors they now get the data play. I have to ask you, in the market everyone's kind of scratching their heads right now because real time data is super important. What problem are you guys solving because certainly the performance >> Yeah >> Is looking good. What's the problem you solve for customers? >> So, the specific problem is when you have digital businesses, what happens is that you don't have a little bit of data that's hot and the rest that's cold, everything is hot, so how do you serve all your data in real time? That's what we're about, and that's what we've built a transformative solution for. >> Well the thing that's coming out, some of the feedback we've been getting and seeing online is, besides the new logo, looks great by the way >> Thank you >> Is you guys are winning on the speeds and feeds. Now the market's going beyond speeds and feeds, which we'll get to in a second, so one: talk about the performance goals, you guys are saying exponential performance, but you're saying you're 10x the performance of anything else. But two, the challenge with data is these silos, right, and you're seeing a confluence of injection of open-source coding, real-time performance data in the application level as app developers start to come on board with open source. At the same time, data traditionally has not been open and free, democratized, if you will, that it's stuck in silos. So it's been a big challenge for architects and CXOs to say, "How do we deploy a solution that gets us to value quickly, not do these science projects." So talk about the performance and then the market model around "How do you free the data?". >> Yeah, so I think for us the simplest of value props is when you plug into your existing infrastructure, we show up to any OS just like a disc. We show up very simply like a disc, so any application that runs with Vexata powering the disc, the virtual disc, if you will, runs enormously fast. That's the very simple value prop, we've done something very basic. >> So on the integration site, like deploying it's easy. >> Not only is it easy, there's no change to the OS. So you talk about democratization, what are you looking for? Can I simply plug and play, will this just work? So that's the biggest thing of all, it just works. The second piece, and the most important thing is, it's not just out here our numbers that really work well, when you plug in Oracle and run OLTP or OLAP, you see this dramatic performance that if you didn't know better, you'd think this was an engineered system from Oracle, you know it's really just amazing performance. We maximize the utilization of your server, so any app that just plugs into an OS and looks at it as a disc will run great. >> Well when you say that, not to trivialize this, because I know it's probably complicated, I'm going to dig into the tech in a second, but when I plug in a thumb drive or an external hard drive into my Mac, it's just "Boom there it is!" >> Yeah. >> Similar, is that the kind of concept you guys are thinking? >> Pretty much, that's what we, really if you build a very complicated product that's complicated to use, nobody'd use it. So we want it really simple to consume. Complicated to build maybe, but really simple to consume. >> Alright so I'm going to play the naysayer, I don't believe you guys, it's smoke and mirrors in there, Cause no one can do that, you're going to give me 10x performance? Okay, that's marketing, I'm skeptical, but I have a problem. I have I/O bottlenecks, at the end of the day I have all these bottlenecks, how do you do it? >> You know, I think a few core principles, the first of them being we use solid state media. How we read and write to that solid state media is actually under patent, it's very specific to keep the performance very high all the time. The second piece of course is our system itself is designed to avoid, to separate control and data paths, so we keep them isolated, and we've invested a lot in our software to keep it and use the space and so on, a lot of jargon for we keep our latencies extremely low on the system, so your applications don't have to worry about anything and change anything. >> So are you lower in the stack in terms of, well a stack isn't perfectly speaking but, I start thinking about free data moving around, which by the way, people want, they want their data available at any given time, at any moment, cause you don't know what's going on in real time. All the data has got to be ready. But then it brings up the governance thing. Are you below the governance or is that a separate challenge on top, how do you deal with that dynamic? >> I'd say we're in the governance of it, so you know for example we provide the full standard based encryption so should anybody say, "Hey are you secure?" Yes, absolutely we are. It's a big deal, it's data, it's your active data, and so we protect it as well. >> One of the things that's coming out of Oracle Open World we're seeing obviously is they're comparing themselves to Amazon. And I was commenting last night on Twitter, I've been covering Oracle since 1994, watching and comparing them against SAP back then, the ERP days, and all the software mini computer days. But now they're comparing themselves not to SAP or IBM anymore, it's Amazon. What does that tell you, because that's also translating into the customer conversations because cloud has become mainstage, Oracle says "We have the cloud, it's Oracle on Oracle." They're not really winning the Cloud Native battles, they kind of own IT, Oracle does, so there's really no debate that IT, information technology CIOs know all about Oracle, but people who are doing Cloud-Native or DevOps might not be interested in Oracle, so how do you balance those two markets that, Oracle's trying to be more Cloud-Native and we're still evaluating their progress there, but you guys, are you impacted by those trends at all? >> You know, as you mentioned, everybody talks about the cloud, a lot of apps do go to the Native Cloud, if you will, the data that's very critical to your business, be it your intensive transaction processing, your OLAP, your machine learning, those seem to remain on premise. That's what our experience has been, and that's where we want to play first. Now, Oracle for Oracle Cloud, Oracle Cloud for Oracle may be a great thing, but-- >> Oracle on Oracle runs well, but I mean they're still playing catch up to Amazon, clearly number one. Okay let's get, you bring up the on-prem thing, this is important, business model. So you guys are out there, share the business model for you guys. What's on premise, is it hardware, software, both? Is there license, how do people engage with you, what's your business? >> So today we sell an appliance, that's the product we have today, and so we sell the appliance all included, software and hardware, and we offer the services to plug it in, and show you the transformative results on your applications. We don't stop at "Hey we plugged it in and you got your hero numbers," we show you. >> So I'm, I just want to buy it, how do I engage? I buy a license? A box? >> You buy the system. >> System, so it's hardware. >> Yeah >> And all the software and the intellectual property that you have >> All in. >> Is inside the box. And how do I, just connect to the network? >> Pretty much. >> Like, all interfaces? >> Pretty much; so today we have fiber channel, and we have NVMe over Fabric, so both ethernet and fabric channel, this is typically where you're on your highest performance of your data. So for us, very simple, it's very seamless to plug it in, and it'll be recognized in your servers, and off you go. >> Okay, so I'm an architect at a large enterprise, take me through the conversation you'd have with those geeks because they're going to want to (Surya laughs) have the conversation be, I want it, I need dashboarding, we're going to be moving high value applications so I need analytics, I want to kill the memory bottlenecks, but I also want the future, I don't want to foreclose anything so, you know, you guys are a startup so you've got my attention, I like what your story is. How do we move forward in the future, how do you talk through the, we've got your back covered, you've got the head room available, how does an IT or tech guy say, "You guys are solid."? >> Yeah. So here's how I start the conversation: I typically start the conversation by telling them, "Hey, you've got the highest performance servers, the latest servers, the Broadwells, the Prolines, what have you. The fastest networks are the 100 GigE, 50 GigE, you know whatever your ethernet network looks like, and then typically you have a SAN and it's really fast- 1630 to a gig. And you run your application, let's pretend it's Oracle RAC, you run that application. And when you run it, what you notice in your servers is eventually you see I/O wait times that slow down your application, and your servers, your really fast servers are under utilized because they're just not moving. >> Because you have bottlenecks. >> That's right. Well we say, it's very simple, if you plug us into your network and run your application on us, we will eliminate your I/O bottlenecks on your server, so your server is maximally utilized. So with no changes for you, you get 10x, and that's how easy we want to make it. That's really our value. >> So you guys are coming in and basically saying 10x performance right out of the gate. >> Yeah. >> Okay so what are some of the challenges on the dynamics, because you got my attention again, now I say, "How do I know I need you? Is there certain things, smoke before the thing blows up?" What are some of the tell signs for the customers to call you guys, cause they just started hearing about you guys as you start marketing. Why should customers work with you, what's the indicators on their side where they go, "I got to call them." >> The classic indicator is, for us, for one is, you're running an Oracle RAC. You're running an Oracle RAC for resiliency and for performance and you need both, right? The moment we see that we say, okay, we have a clean in. The second tell-tale sign, is when you have in-memory databases running. When you're in-memory, what you're trying to do is not write to your storage because that's your bottleneck, so you keep throwing memory at it, it's really expensive. And we know that's a classic sign. >> Okay, talk about Oracle Open World, you're going to be here this week, up in the city. What are you guys showing, what's the pitch, obviously you've got the new logo. >> Oh yeah. >> @VexataCorp is the Twitter handle so people can watch and can check out your updates on Twitter, but what's the value proposition, what are people in the booth talking about, what's the demos, what's the thing? >> You know, it's Oracle Open World, so we're going to do a whole lot of Oracle demos, so we have a RAC demo set up, and we show, with a four node, dual socket server, our system seamlessly plug in, and you get, the last I looked, it was 4,000,000+ OLTP transactions. It's phenomenal for a four socket, dual socket server. We're going to show our optane base array, the first of its kind in the industry, and show the same kind of results we have with optane. So it's all about Oracle and accelerating those apps. >> Alright so for Oracle customers out there, you know who you are, they're always evaluating stuff but it's always hard to kind of get out on the branch and be exposed if you try to go off Oracle, so people might be a little bit nervous. What's your conversation to the Oracle customers that's saying there's no risk in looking at Vexata. They're like, hey why not just buy a lot more Exadata, or the ZDLRA stuff, or other things that they have. >> And all those are entirely possible, I think that's the easiest way to get comfort. It's those trials, even in your research and development, and get used to us, because you'll be shocked at the performance you get. And eventually yeah, you can go to Exadata, but we're just so much more cost-effective than any solution out there. Try us, get comfortable with us, and then deploy when you're ready. >> And what's the price point? What's the price, or is it different by deployment? >> You know, honestly, it does differ by deployment, but really we use standard NVMe flash, and that's driven by the HyperScale guys, so we ride the curve of flash, we don't make our own. >> Yeah, you're not a sales guy, you're a CTO, co-founder, >> Thank you. >> So I don't want to put you on the spot there. Affordability relative to Oracle, let's talk about the customer conversation, so I don't want to put you on the spot on the pricing, we'll hit the CEO and some of your other guys on that. So, I'm a customer, I'll roleplay. Hey, I love this opportunity, but what's wrong with Oracle storage, why not just go with those guys? >> You can use us, not just for Oracle, but all your application workloads that are demanding, like your machine learning, like your SQL server, if you're running SAS analytics, so you have a general purpose platform, you're not silo'd. That's the biggest deal with us. >> So you give them scope outside of Oracle. >> That's right. Any app, really, I mean, just the simplest of all. >> Alright so I got to ask you the secret sauce question. You've got some patents, so your friend says, "Hey, what's going on, you guys are awesome, how did you get the 10x?" What's the bottom line, how did you guys do it? How do you get all that performance? >> I think the really, the investment in the software, to reduce the storage stack latencies, to the absolute minimum, that's what really gives us the biggest bang for the buck. >> So a lot of low-level engineering. >> Pretty much. >> Alright, so benefits to customers? What are the benefits, how do you guys see the benefits unfolding, take us through some of the anecdotal data you've seen in the trials you've done with customers, what are some of the benefits they've told you they've seen? >> You know, the simplest of them all, it's a very simple one, when we do a PoC with a customer, the customer usually says, "Hey this PoC's going to take two months." And afterward we find out it's two months because it takes three weeks to tune the system, and then the remainder of the weeks to do the PoC. For us, those first three weeks collapsed to one day. There's no tuning, you just plug it in and you all of a sudden get the performance and your PoC has just shrunken massively. That's really our value. Don't try hard, just right to your data, embrace it and it'll run for you. >> So you guys are a potential bridge to the future with the data. >> Yeah. >> You have this thing called Active Data Fabric, is that it? >> Yes. >> What is that about? >> It's really about how you actually scale your data over a very large amount. Today, yes we have an appliance, and it scales on size, ours scales to 150 terabytes and so on, but as data keeps growing and everything becomes hot, you really need to get into the many hundreds of terabytes, petabytes of active data. So how do we actually design that using external, open hardware, that's really what the principle is about. So this is the first realization and then we continue going with other implementation. >> Surya, great to have you on theCUBE, you guys have done a great job, so I got to ask the bigger question outside of Vexata, you know, data's been a challenge, and as an industry participant and a technologist, what's been the big thing, if you could summarize it down from your perspective, data obviously needs to be free, because applications never know when a piece of data will be needed in context to other things. You see things like metadata, active data's clearly the benefit there, but everyone's got these data lakes out there. We just came back from our Big Data NYC event, and the whole Hadoop thing has been very batch. >> Yeah. >> Store everything in a data lake, but you never know, at any given time, if a piece of data is going to be valuable, until you put it to work. So you really can't put a valuation on data. What has been an inhibitor, the bottlenecks. Has it been the silos, has it been data architecture, has it been the software, or now that the cloud's got compute power, all of the above, what's your thoughts? >> I think you netted out, really data, you look at it as hot data or cold data, and you decide data lake or active data, and I hold it in memory. The biggest problem I see is how do you call something hot or cold, it's hard to tell, and I think the biggest challenge for us is how do you make it all at least warm, so you can get to it when you need to. And that's the hardest challenge for the industry, I think. >> Yeah and I think that people look at self-driving cars to bring up that, because Larry Ellison said onstage, "Autonomous database", which I kind of roll my eyes cause Larry's so good at taking trends and making it look like Oracle has it. Autonomous cars being self-driving, it's the concept. >> Yeah. >> The data's really critical, cause if car's going to have telemetry data, real time is real time, it's not milliseconds, it's nanoseconds. You can't say one week, ten days, and a lot of time people say realtime queries can come back, but the data's a week old, so there's huge issues in what real time means. >> Yeah, and the second issue, you bring up self-driving cars, so the way self-driving cars, the test drives happen today, you plug in a lot of drives into the car, send it out for two weeks, and when it comes back to base you have 200 terabytes in the car that you want to learn with. How long does it take to transfer 200 terabytes? In a regular system? A few days? >> Yeah. >> So until that data's off, this car doesn't move. With us, it takes a few hours, so you can get your car back on the road. So we actually, we not only do great on the transactions, we do great with this, your basic data mobility problems, and we fix it. >> Yeah, you guys are fixing the data mobility problems. Okay, great connotation, one last final point I want to get your thoughts and color on, the internet of things. Cause now you're seeing industrial really being the low hanging fruit right now on IOT, and IOT certainly is hot, it will always be hot, but it also increases the surface area for cyber attacks. So people are kind of taking baby steps there, first one is industrial: plant equipment, could be manufacturing, it could be edge of the network sensor, something along those lines, hacking into the IP network. That's certainly going to create the need for active data. >> Absolutely. >> Your thoughts on that? >> Very much so. You know, IOT is really the classic future growth model, look at the amount of data you're trying to ingest and process. Everything is active, and you have to act on it in real time. >> Does IOT help you guys? >> You know, it does, it quite doesn't show up as IOT, it shows up as machine learning, you get another signature off it, you get all this data, you're trying to learn and figure out anomalies, and you need to process your data and that's us. >> You know I always said that a good business model is reducing steps it takes to do something, making it easy to use, and being high performance. You guys seem to do all three, congratulations. >> We do, thank you. >> Surya Varanasi, CTO and co-founder of Vexata, hot new startup, check them out, @VexataCorp is the Twitter handle, check out their updates, they're at Oracle Open World this week. I'm John Furrier, you're watching CUBEConversation here live in our Palo Alto Studios, thanks for watching. (music)

(uptempo orchestral music) >> Welcome to theCubeConversations here in Palo Alto, California. theCube Studios, I'm John Furrier. The co-host of theCube, and co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media. Junaid Islam is the present CTO of Vidder that supports the public sector as well as the defense community as well as other criminalist oriented security paradigms. Expert in the field. Also part of coming Vidder that's doing a lot of work in the area. Thanks for sharing your time here with us. >> Well thanks for having me. >> We had a segment earlier on cybersecurity and the government. So that was phenomenal and also, we talked on the impact of hacking on business. So the number one issue on the boardroom agenda is security. Data, security, it's a big data problem. It's an AI opportunity, some things that are coming out. Embryonic, it's an early shift. Security is a challenge. The old model, the firewall, a moot, doors, access, you get in then you're done. It's over, it's a criminalist world. People can get access to these networks. Security is screwed right now. And we generally feels that. So the question for you is the Enterprise and in business as we're looking to show up security. Isn't it a do-over? >> Yeah, yeah, I think like other industries. Whether you talk about the PBS. Yes, yes, where you talk about computers shifting to the data center and then the cloud. I think last year or this year, Gartner said 100 billion will be spent on security. I cannot believe anybody who was involved in that 100 billion dollar expenditure is happy. In fact we have something interesting. Security expenditure has risen consistently over the past five or six years, and cyber attacks have also risen consistently. So that's not the kind of correlation you want. >> And they're buying anything that moves basically, they're desperate so it seems like they're like drunken sailors. Just like give me something. They're thirsty for solutions. So they're groping for something. >> Yeah and what we're seeing is a couple of things. One is the attackers have gotten much more sophisticated. And they basically can bypass all of the existing security appliances. So what we need is a new approach or a new security stack that really fits both the architectural environment of American companies where they use Clouds and data centers, and they have employees and contractors. But also cyber attacks which have gone much more sophisticated. The classic cyber attack used to be connecting to the Server remotely or stealing a password. We still have the classics but we have some new ones where we have malware that can actually go from the user's device to inside the network. And you find that existing security products just don't work well in this environment. >> What are some of the do over ideas? >> Absolutely malware, we see it ransomware, super hot, the HBO example recently. They didn't given, who knows what they actually did. They weren't public about it but actually they maybe get a little bit in but these are organized businesses. They're targeting with the Sony hacks well documented but again businesses, I'm not always funded this. And then you got the move to the clouds. Couple dynamics. Cloud computing. Amazon has done extremely well, they're leading. Now getting a lot more of the Enterprise. They won the CIA deal a few years ago over IBM. And you see a lot of government Cloud rocking and rolling, and then you've got the on premise data center challenges. That's the situation of the customer then now you have potentially an understaffed security force. >> Well actually so, I think let's start with that point. In terms of our theme of a do over. Talk about that first and then let's talk the techno part. I think one do over that America needs is security has to move out of the IT department, and become a stand alone department reporting ideally to the executive staff and not being on it. I think one of the unfortunate things is because security is a cost center within IT, it competes with other IT expenditures such as new applications, which are revenue generating. It's very hard to be a cost center asking for money when there's a guy sitting next to you who's doing something to make money. But unfortunately, unless security is properly funded and staffed, it never happens. And this unfortunately is a chronic issue through all US companies. One of the things we've seen that has worked for example in the financial world is most financial institutions, probably all now security is a pure organization to IT, that helps a lot. This is actually not a new idea, this was something the intelligence community probably started-- >> Cost structures, it's just the cost structures. Reduce the cost is the optimization behavior. What you're saying is just like applications are tied to top line in revenue, which gives them top line mojo. You got to think of security as a money saving table stake. >> That's right. >> People are losing money. The cost are now becoming obvious, in some cases crippling. >> Yeah so I think people need to think of security as fundamental to the life of a company, number one. I think the other thing that needs to happen from a security perspective. Now that we've broken off this entity is it security needs to become a threat based or risk based. Too much of security in the United States is based on compliance models. Unfortunately cyber attackers do not follow that model when they want to attack us. They basically work outside the model and come up with creative ways to get inside of organizations. >> Basically blindside. >> That's right. >> The company. >> I can't tell you how many meetings probably all where I meet the security team and they're totally busy just going through the list of 20 or 50 things that they're are supposed to do. So when you talk about attack vectors. They say you know that's really great and I know it's important but we can't get to it. So this is another important shift organizationally. First you break it out. Second, get focus on something that's important. once we have that we get to the next part which is technologies. And right now what happens is people buy a security point product for different networks. One for data center or one for Cloud. And this doesn't work so I think we have to move to security solutions that can work across hybrid environments, and can also work across different roles. I think that is critical and unless we get that in technically. >> Yeah, this is the thing with Cloud and (indistinct talking). I want to bring this up. I had multiple change to sit down with Andy Jassy. The CEO of Amazon web services. Fantastic executive, built a great business there. On his mind, what's been important for him for many years has been security, and Amazon has done an amazing job with security. But that's in the Cloud. Now Andy Jassy and Amazon thinks everyone should be in the public Cloud. Now they have a deal with VMware but they're just powering VMware's on prem in their Cloud. It's not really a VMware issue but Amazon's world is raising the public Cloud. But they've done really, really good on security, but yet most of the buyers would say hey, the Cloud is unsecure I can't trust it. So you have the dynamic between the data center on premise resource. So people default to the behavior of and leaving here with the on premise. Or I'll put a little bit in the cloud, a little bit of workloads here. A little bit in the Microsoft. Google's got some, I'll keep the tire on Google. But they never really leaving the home base of the data center. But yet some are arguing and Dave Vellante, my co-host on theCube talks about this all the time. There's actually more scale in the Cloud. More data sharing going in the cloud and that the cloud actually got better security. So how do you see that resolving because this is a key architectural opportunity and challenge for Enterprise. >> Actually I think there's an optimal model which is if you think about what the data center gives you. It gives you a lot of visibility and physical control as in with your hands. The problem is when you put everything in the data center. You don't have enough people to manage it all properly. The Cloud on the other hand gives you a lot of scale but you can't actually touch the Cloud. So the optimal mix is imagine your encryption and access control solutions live in your data center. But what they control access to is to Cloud resources. So you can actually, if you're just open your mind conceptually. >> So it's like saying, it's like segmenting a network. You're segmenting feasibility. >> That's right, so now you don't need a gigantic data center because what's in your data center which can be a lot smaller now are things like your identity-based access management solutions. You can keep your cryptographic elements. You can have your HSM, things that generate random numbers and search there. But now this is actually can be very tiny. It can just be a rack of gear. But through that rack of gear, you can have very fine control of people accessing Cloud resources. And I think this idea of building, it's not so much a hybrid network, but it's a notion that a small physically locked down asset can control a lot of virtual assets. It's gaining mind share in the banking world. In fact, just this summer, there was bank that implemented such an architecture where the control elements were the Cloud were their FFIC data center. And it include, it basically managed access to Amazon VPC and it worked well. >> So interlocking is a strategy. I can see that, by the way I see that playing out pretty well. So I got to ask the next question which comes to mind is that sounds great on paper. Or actually in certain situations it might perfect. But what about the geo-political landscape? because Amazon has people that develop on the Cloud that aren't US citizens. So the government might say wait a minute, you got to only employ Americans so they got to carve out and do some whatever weird doings with the numbers to get that certification. But they need data centers in Germany because the German government wants certain things. So you have geo-political issues now on the companies. How does that affect security? Because now a Cloud like Amazon or a multinational company has two things going on. I have multiple offices and I'm operating in multiple geo-political landscapes with these regional centers. The regional clouds, or at Amazon they're called regions. >> So actually Amazon has actually done a great job. They basically have their global market, but they also have data centers now which are only opened to US persons in US companies like Globe Cloud. As well as well as they support the C2S which is the intelligence communities Black Cloud, which is basically off net so I think now-- >> John: So they're doing a good job? >> Yeah, they're doing a good job but the key thing is how you use that resource is really still up to the enterprise. And that's where enterprises have to get good at creating the architecture and policies to be able to harness Amazon's compute capacity. Amazon, is the foundation but you really have to finish off the solution and the other thing going back full circle to your first question. Unless the security team has their freedom and the mandate to do that, they'll actually never get there. >> So it's staffing and architecture. >> That's right. >> Well they both architecture. It's one's organizational architecture. Debt funding and one is more of a hardcore virtual and physical touching. >> And you know what I put in the middle? I'd say know your risks and develop counter measures to them. because if you go to that security team and you say you have to build a counter measure for every attack. That's not going to work either. A company has to be realistic is what is really important? Maybe it's the data of our customers. >> So the answer to the first question then obviously is yes a security do over is needed. But there is no silver bullet and you can't buy an application, it's an architectural framework holistically >> Junaid: That's right. >> That everyone has to do, okay cool. So the question I have on the Amazon, I want to get your thoughts 'cause it's a debate we have all the time on theCube is. And certainly Amazon has competitors that say, Amazon is really not winning in the enterprise. They've got thousand of Enterprise customers. They are winning in the Enterprise so Oracle is catching up, barely in fourth place. But trying to get there and they're actually making that transformation. Looking pretty good, what more now assume that Oracle will (indistinct talking). But Amazon has one great gov Cloud deals. So they're convinced the government that they could do it. >> Junaid: Yeah. >> So to me that's, my argument is if the government is winning with Amazon. It should be a no brainer for the Enterprises so this comes back down to the number one question that's been holding back Cloud growth. Whoa, security, I don't want to put it in the Cloud. How real is that objection now? 'Cause the knee jerk reaction is you know what, I got an on prem, I don't trust the Cloud. But it seems like the Cloud is getting more trust. What's your thoughts on that objection? >> So one of the things as even though when we use the word Cloud, generically or Amazon generically. Amazon has evolved a lot in the last three to four years that I've been working on it. The number of embedded tools in Amazon is vast now. If we were having this conversation two years ago. The notion that granular encryption modules would be there and Amazon is apart of an offering. It would have been science fiction or the fact that-- >> More that S3 and AC2, what else could there be? >> That's right or they have things like virtual HSM. They have embedded identity and access control tools all there so I think first of all. All of the building blocks that you would want are there. Now unfortunately there's no short cuts. Amazon is not going to do the work for you, you still need a staff that knows how to use digital certificates. You still need your own identity based access control system to manage access of your employees and contractors and people in India to these assets in the Cloud. But having said that, we now actually have a model that is much cheaper than the classic data center model. That's basically usable. >> I'm smirking some people think I'm an Amazon web services fan boy but besides the fact that I love the company. They've done well and there's so many new services, and they literally have been skating rings around the competition. If you look at the complexity that they have been dealing with and the innovations. So the outputs put that out there. I'm a little biased 'cause I think they're doing a great job. But now, the game start to shift as Amazon continues to add more services. Welcome to the big leagues called the Enterprise and government, which they're doing some business in now. So the question is besides Amazon, those other guys. Verizon, the Telecos have really trying to figure out what to do with over the top for years. Now they're also powering a lot of multi tenet workloads as well, including their own stuff. So telecos and service providers out there, what are they doing because they're still critical infrastructure around the world. >> Actually, I think if we just use Amazon as a reference point or example. Amazon initially didn't worry about security but then over the last few years, worked hard to integrate security into their offering. We're now in the early stages of seeing that from for example carriers like Verizon. Where in the past Verizon was saying first secure yourself then in the last two years. Version okay, here's some products and services you can buy. But now where we're heading is they're trying to make the network inherently secure. A lot of the basic components like device matching to identity matching basically making that apart of the underlying fabric. So I think the good news is as-- >> So they're making advances there. They have networks. They know networking. >> So the good news is as bleak as it all seems as we are making significant progress as an industry and as a country. Having said that, my only and warning is you still need an executive team. A security team that knows how to leverage all of these components and pull them together. And that goes back to having a risk based approach and protecting the most important things. I think you can do that, I think the tool set that's come out now is actually pretty sophisticated. >> So final question, I want to get your thoughts and we can end the segment and then we'll take a little bit about Vidder, your company. But I asked Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware at VM World just recently about the security duo 'cause Dave Vellante asked him years ago. He said absolutely it's going to be (indistinct talking) so Pat Gelsinger has it right again. The guy is like Nostradamus when it comes to tech trend. He's a wave guy from Intel, so he gets the waves. But I asked him about that question again this year and I'll send the tip out on Twitter. I'll put it out on Twitter, I'll make a link to it. He said that 5G is going to be the big kahuna of the next 30 years. He thinks that as 5G starts to get out, it's going to develop 10X number of antennas, 100X of bandwidth, new spectrum allocations, 100X new devices, they're all going to be connected as well. As you mentioned we're a connected world. This brings up the edges of the network where he says, "Next thirty years is going to be massive build out." So okay, 5G is coming. Industrial IoT, IoT internet of things is happening. How is this going to change a security game because now you have networking and you see VMware. We're doing NSX and Cisco has been trying to the Enterprise figuring out the virtualization of network level. Everything comes back down to the network. Is that where the action is because it seems to me that the network guys have to figure this out. And that seems to be the point of reference in terms of opportunity. Or is it a challenge or is it moving up the stack. How does all the networking changes happen? >> So for IoT, we really need two things to happen. I think one is we actually don't have a security standard for IoT devices. And specifically the issue is malware. IoT devices and softwares made worldwide and I think one of the biggest policy weaknesses we have right now is there's no minimum standard. This needs to be solved, otherwise we're in a lot of problem but in parallel to that. There is a lot of technical development. One of the things that's happening in the networking world is for the past 20 years. We were driven by what's called a network VPN of Layer 3 VPN, it's your classic VPN, that connects a device to a server. The problem with that is if you have malware on the device it gets through. So there's this new kind of VPN which is an application VPN or we call it a Layer 4, which is basically a softer process in the device tool. A softer process in a server. So that's the new model, which is-- >> They're making them as dumb as possible and go up the stat. >> Not so much-- >> There were guys that are going to roll-- >> I could have used different terms. I could have say make the app network application aware so that it only lets the applications get through. Not any kind of connection, so I think that is something. >> Well the networks have to smarter and enable the smartness. >> So smarter networks are happening and it's an area that I worked in. It's very excited. >> John: I don't mean to offend you by saying dumb network-- >> But the application but to be clear though that's just one piece of the puzzle. The other piece of the puzzle which unfortunately is a little bit lacking is there's no standards for IoT software today. And unless we have concepts like secure boot, that is the software can't be tampered with. I think I've unfortunately there's a bit of risk but I'm hopeful-- >> And then IoT for folks watching, there might be any inside baseball. It's a surface area problem. There's more points of attack vectors, so we talk about the compliance thing. >> Not only are there more attacks, by and large IoT devices are made outside of the United States. Physically they are made in China and a lot of the software comes from India. And there's nothing wrong with that, but the global supply chain provides plenty of opportunities for cyber attackers to inject in their code. And this is something we need to watch very carefully and then like I said-- >> So this is actually one of those weird derivative results of outsourcing that American companies have realized that's a problem. >> Yeah so. >> Is that right? >> Yeah so it's something we need to watch carefully. >> Okay, thanks for coming on the theCube. Really appreciate you sharing your perspectives. Talk about Vidder, you're the president and CTO. You guys in the security business. Obviously you're an expert with (indistinct talking). We'll have you back and multiple times. I'd love to get your company as we follow all the security trends. We have a cyber connect conference with Centrified coming up in New York. We're covering gov Cloud AWS and other players out there. What's Vidder doing? What's the company do for products? How do you guys sell? Who's your customers and what are the cool things you're doing? >> We've developed a access control solution based on a new standard called software defined parameter. And there's two things that are unique about it. First with technology like software defined parameter. We work in the Cloud in the data center, but more importantly, we're able to stop existing attacks and emerging attacks. So things like password theft, credential theft of server exploitation we stop because we don't want to allow connections from unknown devices or people. The other thing is say you're known, and you connect with server. We basically look inside your laptop and only allow the authorized process to connect to the server. So if there's malware on the device, it can't actually make it through. >> John: So it shuts down the malware. >> That's right. >> John: So you're trying sneak through. >> That's right, the malware. We can't stop the malware from getting on the device, but we can make sure it doesn't get to the other side. >> So it doesn't cross pollinate. It doesn't go viral. >> That right so a lot of the stuff we do is very important. We work with a range of-- >> You have government, obviously contracts. I'm sure you have that can't talk about but you do right? >> Yeah we do a little bit of work with the government and we're just start working with Verizon, which is public. Where they wish to create services where malware actually can't go through the connections. So we're doing exciting stuff and we're-- >> Enterprise customers at all? >> Yeah, yeah we have banks. >> Who are on high alert. >> That's right. >> You guys do tier one or it's the houses are burning down, you're there. So we do banks and we're just started doing some work in a hospital were again it's (indistinct talking) compliant, and they need to make sure that data doesn't leave the hospital. >> So what's the number one thing that you guys have as ransomware something that you solve. What areas do you guys being called in? What's the big fire bell, if you will? They ring the bell when do you come in? What the thing, just in general? >> Our number one reason for existing is stopping attacks on application servers or service that old data. That's our focus. So if you have data or an application that someone is after. We will make sure nobody gets to that data. In fact, we'll even make sure if there's a spy, or insider attack, who comes into your organization. They'll only be able to what their allowed to do and won't be able to do anything else. >> So on the weekly Fox that was big. Would you guys have helped there is they were a customer or is that just different thing? >> I know we could have helped because one of the things that happened is they used their server exploit to basically propagate through their data center. So we probably wouldn't have done much on the initial exploit, but we would have kept it from going deeper into the system. >> And they hid for four months and they were poking around so you would have detected. >> Yeah and we certainly would have stopped all the poking around. Because we basically, you can think of us as an identity based access control mechanism. So based on your identity, you can only do very specific things. And in their case, they had the identity of the user. We wouldn't have let them do anything except maybe just go to one website. >> Yeah you would have shut them down. They should have been doing business with Vidder. Jay thank you for coming on theCube here for theCubeConversation in Palo Alto, California. I'm Jon Furrier with theCubeConversation. Thanks for watching. (slow orchestral music)

(light orchestral music) >> Hello, everyone. Welcome to special CUBEConversation here in theCUBE studio in Palo Alto, California. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media and also the co-host of theCUBE. We're here with Junaid Islam, who is the President and CTO of a company called Vidder. Also supports the public sector and the defense community. Teaches a class on cyber intelligence and cyber warfare. Junaid, thank you for coming in. >> Well, thanks for having me, it's great to be here. >> Now, you see, we've been doing a lot of coverage of cyber in context to one, the global landscape, obviously >> Yeah >> And in our area of enterprise and emerging tech you see the enterprises are all shaking in their boots. But you now have new tools like IoT which increases the service area of attacks. You're seeing AI being weaponized for bad actors. But in general, it's just that it's really a mess right now. >> Yeah >> And security is changing. So, I'd like to get your thoughts on it and also talk about some of the implications around the cyber warfare that's going on. Certainly the election's on everyone's mind, you see fake news. But really, it's a complete new generational shift that's happening. With all the good stuff going on, block chain and everything else, and AI, there's also bad actors. Fake news is not just fake content. There's an underlying infrastructure, a critical infrastructure, involved. >> Yeah, you're 100% right. And I think what you have hinted on is something that is only, now, people are getting awareness of. That is, as America becomes a more connected society, we become more vulnerable to cyber attacks. For the past few years, really, cyber attacks were driven by people looking to make twenty bucks, or whatever, but now you really have state actors moving into the cyber attack business. And actually subsidizing attackers with free information. And hoping to make them more lethal attackers against the United States. And this really is completely new territory. When we think about cyber threats almost all of the existing models, don't capture the risks involved here. And it affects every American. Everybody should be worried about what's going on. >> And, certainly, the landscape has changed in security and tech with cloud computing, but more importantly, we have Trump in the office and all this brouhaha over just that in itself. But in concern to that, you're seeing the Russians, we're seeing them involved in the election, you're seeing China putting blocks and everything, and changing how the rules, again. It's a whole global economy. So I got to ask you the question that's on everyone's mind is cyber war is real. We do not have a West Point, Navy SEALs for cyber yet. There's some stuff at Berkeley that's pretty interesting to me. That Michael Grimes at Morgan Stanley is involved with. A bunch of other folks as well. Where a new generation of attacks is happening. >> Junaid: Yeah. >> In the US of A right now. Could you comment and share your thoughts and reactions to what's happening now that's different in the US from a cyber attack standpoint and why the government is trying to move quickly why companies are moving quickly. What's different now? Why is the attacks so rampant? What's changed? >> I think the biggest difference we have now is what I would call direct state sponsorship of cyber attack tools. A great example of that is the Vault 7 disclosure on WikiLeaks. Typically, when you've had intelligence agencies steal one thing from another country, they would keep it a secret. And, basically, use those vulnerabilities during a time of an attack or a different operation. In this case, we saw something completely different. We think the Russians might have stolen, but we don't know. But whoever stole it, immediately puts it back into the public domain. And why do they do that? They want those vulnerabilities to be known by as many attackers as possible, who then, in turn, will attack the United States at across not only public sector organizations, but as private. And one of the interesting outcomes that you've seen is the malware attacks or cyber attacks we saw this year were much more lethal than ever before. If you look at the WannaCry attack and then the NotPetya attack. NotPetya attack started with the Russians attacking the Ukraine. But because of the way that they did the attack, they basically created malware that moved by itself. Within three days, computers in China that were 20 companies away from the original target were losing their data. And this level of lethality we've never seen. And it is a direct result of these state actors moving into the cyber warfare domain. Creating weapons that basically spread through the internet at very high velocity. And the reason this is so concerning for the United States is we are a truly connected society. All American companies have supply chain partners. All American companies have people working in Asia. So we can't undo this and what we've got to do, very quickly, is develop counter measures against this. Otherwise, the impacts will just get worse and worse. >> So in the old days, if I get this right, hey I attack you, I get to see a backdoor to the US. And spy on spy kind of thing. >> Junaid: Yeah. >> Right, so now, you're saying is, there's a force multiplier >> That's right out there with the crowd. So they're essentially democratizing the tools. We used to call it kiddie scripts. Now they're not kiddie scripts anymore, they're real weapons of cyber weaponry that's open to people who want to attack or motivated to attack the US. Is that kind of, am I getting that right? >> That's right. I mean, if you look at what happened in WannaCry, you had people looking for $200 payout, but they were using tools that could have easily wiped out a country. Now, the reason this works for America's enemies, as it were, or adversaries, is in the short run, they get to test out weapons. In the long run, they're really learning about how these attacks propagated. And make no mistake, if there's a political event and it's in their interest to be able to shut down US computers. It's just something we need to worry about and be very conscious of. Of specifically, these new type of attack vectors. >> Now to put my fear mongering hat on because as a computer scientist, myself, back in the day, I could only imagine how interesting this is to attack the United States. What is the government doing? What is the conversations that you're hearing? What are some of the things going on in the industry around? OK, we're seeing so sophisticated, so orchestrated. At many levels, state actors, democratizing the tools for the bad guys, if you will, but we've seen fraud and cyber theft be highly mafia driven or sophisticated groups of organized, black market companies. Forms, I mean, really well funded, well staffed. I mean, so the HBO hack just a couple weeks ago. I mean, it's shaking them down with ransomware. Again, many, many different things. This has got to scare the cyber security forces of the United States. What are they doing? >> So I think, one thing I think Americans should feel happy about is within the defense and intelligence community, this has become one of the top priorities. So they are implementing a huge set of resources and programs to mitigate this. Unfortunately, they will, they need to take care of themselves first. I think it's still still up to enterprises to secure their own systems against these new types of attacks. I think we can certainly get direction from the US government. And they've already begun outreach programs. For example, the FBI actually has a cyber security branch, and they actually assign officers to American companies who are targets. And typically that's actually, I think, started last year. >> John: Yeah. But they'll actually come meet you ahead of the attack and introduce themselves. So that's actually pretty good. And that's a fantastic program. I know some of the people there. But you still have to become aware. You still have to look at the big risks in your company and figure out how to protect them. That is something that no law enforcement person can help you at. Because that has to be pro-active. >> You know we everyone who watches my Silicon Valley podcast knows that I've been very much, talk a lot about Trump, and no one knows if I voted for him or not or actually, didn't vote for him, but that's a different point. We've been critical of Trump. But also at the same time, the whole wall thing is kind of funny, in itself, building wall is ridiculous, but that's take that to the firewall problem. >> Junaid: Yeah. >> Let's talk about tech. The old days, you have a firewall. Right? The United States really has no firewall because the perimeters or the borders, if you will, are not clear. So in the industry they call it "perimeter-less". There's no more moat, there's no more front door. There's a lot of access points into networks in companies. This is changing the security paradigm. Not only at the government level, but the companies who are creating value but also losing money on these attacks. >> Junaid: Yeah. >> So what is the security paradigm today? Is it people putting their head in the sand? Are there new approaches? >> Junaid: Well, yeah. >> Is there a do over, is there a reset? Security is the number one thing. >> So I >> What are companies and governments doing? >> So I think, well first of all, there's a lot of thinking going on but I think there's two things that need to happen. I think one, we certainly need new policies and laws. I think just on the legal side, whether you look at the most recent Equifax breach we need to update laws on people holding assets that they need to become liable. We also need more policies that people need to lock down national critical infrastructure. Like power systems. And then the third thing is the technical aspect. I'd bring it. We actually in the United States actually do have technologies that are counter measures to all of these attacks and we need to bring those online. And I think as daunting as it looks like protecting the country, actually, it's a solvable problem. For example, there's been a lot of press that you know foreign governments are scanning US power infrastructure. And, you know, from my perspective as a humble networking person, I've always wondered why do we allow basically connectivity from outside the United States to power plants which are inside the United States. I mean, you could easily filter those at the peering points. And I know some people might say that's controversial, you know, are we going to spy on >> John: And ports too. >> Yeah. >> Like, you know, ports of New Orleans. I was talking to the CTO there. He's saying maritimes are accessing the core network. >> Yeah, so from my perspective as a technical, I'm not a politician, but I >> (laughs) That's good, thank God! We need more of you out there. >> I would and I've worked on this problem a little bit I would certainly block in-bound flows from outside the United States to critical infrastructure. There is no value or reason, logical reason, you would give a why someone from an external country should be allowed to scan a US asset. And that is technically quite simple for us to do. It is something that I and others have talked about you know, publically and privately. I think that's a very simple step we could do. Another very simple step we could do across the board is basically authenticated access. That is, if you are accessing a US government website, you need to sign in and there will be an MFA step-up. And I think that makes >> What's an MFA step-up. >> Well like some kind of secondary >> OK. >> Say your accessing the IRS portal and you just want to check on something you know, that you're going to sign in and we're going to send a message to your phone to make sure you are you. I know a lot of people will feel, hey, this is an invasion of privacy. But you know, I'll tell you what's an invasion of privacy. Someone stealing 140 million IDs or your backgrounds, and having everything. >> John: That just happened. >> That's a bigger >> John: That's multifactor authentication. >> So I think that >> Unless they hack your cell phone which the bitcoin guys have already done. >> Yeah >> So, it's easy for hackers to hack one system. It's harder for hackers to hack multiple systems. So I think at the national security level, there are a number of simple things we can do that are actually not expensive. That I think we as a society have to really think about doing. Because having a really governments which are very anti-American destabilizing us by taking all of our data out doesn't really help anyone. So that's the biggest loss. >> And there's no risk for destabilizing America enemies out there. They what's the disincentive. Are they going to get put in jail? There's no real enforcement. >> Junaid: Yeah. I mean, cyber is a great leverage. >> So one of the things that I think that most people don't understand is the international laws on cyber attacks just don't exist anymore. They have a long way to catch up. Let me give a counter-example, which is drugs. There are already multilateral agreements on chasing drug traffickers as they go from country to country. And there's a number of institutions that monitor and enforce that. That actually works quite well. We also have new groups focusing on human trafficking. You know, it's slowly happening but in the area of cyber we haven't even started a legal framework on what would constitute a cyber attack. And, sadly, one of the reasons that it's not happening, is America's enemies don't want it to happen. But this is where I think, as a nation, first you have to take care of yourself. And then on a multi-lateral perspective the US should start pushing a cyber security framework world wide, so that if you start getting emails from that friendly prince, who's actually a friend of mine How about you know about putting in some we can actually go back to that country and say hey, you know, we don't want to send you any more money anymore. >> John: Yeah, yeah exactly. Everyone's going to make 18 million dollars if they give them their username, password and social security number. Alright, final question on this segment, around the cyber security piece. What's the action, going forward? I would say it's early days and hardcore days right now. It's really the underbelly of the internet. Globally is attacking, we see that. The government doesn't have enough legal framework yet in place. They need to do that. But there's a lot of momentum around creating a Navy SEALs. You need a version of land, air and sea. Or multidisciplinary combat. >> Junaid: Yeah. >> Efforts out there there's been conversations certainly in some of our networks that we talk about. What's the young generation. I mean, you've got a lot of gamers out there that would love to be part of a new game if you will called cyber defense. What's going on? Is there any vision around how to train young people. Is there an armed forces concept? Is there something like this happening? What's the next what do we need to do as a government? >> So you've actually touched on a very difficult issue. Because if you think about security in the United States it's really been driven by a compliance model. Which is here's these set of things to memorize and this is what you do to become secure. And all of our cyber security training courses are based on models. If there's one thing we learned about cyber attackers is that these people are creative and do something new every time. And go around the model. So, I think one of the most difficult things is actually to develop training courses that almost don't have any boundaries. Because the attackers don't confine themselves to a set of attack vectors. Yet we, in our training do, we say, this is what you need to do. And time and time again people just do something that's completely different. So that's one thing we have to understand. The other thing we have to understand, which is related to that, is that all of US's cyber security plans are public and conferences. All of our universities are open. So we actually have. >> John: The playbook is out there. >> We actually, so one of the things that does happen is if you go to any large security conference you see a lot of people from the countries that are attacking us showing up everywhere. Actually going to universities and learning the course. I think there are two things. One we really need to think deeper about just how attacks are being done which are unbounded. And, two, which is going to be a bit more difficult we have to rethink how we share information on a worldwide basis of our solutions. >> John: Mmm-hmm. >> So probably not the easy answer you wanted. But I think >> Well, it's complex and required unstructured thinking that's not tied up. It's like the classic frog in boiling water dies and you put a frog in boiling water and it jumps out. We're in this false sense of security with these rules. >> Junaid: Yeah. >> Thinking we're secure And we're, people are killing us with this security >> Yeah >> It's scary >> And like I say, it's even worse when we figure out a solution the first thing we do is we tell everybody including our enemies, giving them all a lot of chance to figure out how to attack us. So I think >> So don't telegraph, don't be so open Be somewhat secretive in a ways, is actually helpful. >> I think, sadly, I think we've come to the very unfortunate position now where I think we need to, especially in the area of cyber rethink our strategies because as an open society we just love telling everybody what we do. >> John: So the final question. Final, final question. Is just, again, to end this segment. So cyber security is real or not real. How real is this? Can you just share some color for the folks watching who might say hey, you know I think it's all smoke and mirrors. I don't believe the New York Times. I don't believe this. Trump's saying this. And is this real problem? And how big is it? >> I think it is real. I think we have this calendar year, twenty seventeen, we have moved from the classic, you know, kind of like cyber, attack you know like someone's being fished to really a, the beginning of a cyber warfare. And unlike kinetic warfare where someone blows something up this is a new face that's long and drawn out. And I think one of the things that makes us very vulnerable as a society is we are an open society, we're interlinked with every other global economy. And I think we have to think about this seriously because unfortunately there's a lot of people who don't want to see America succeed. They're just like that. Even though we're nice people >> John: Yeah >> But, it's pretty important. >> It requires some harmony, it requires some data sharing. Junaid Islam, President and CTO of Vidder. Talking about the cyber security cyber warfare dynamic that's happening. It's real. It's dangerous. And our countries and other countries need to get their act together. Certainly, I think, a digital West Point, a digital Navy SEALs needs to happen. And I think this is a great opportunity for us to kind of do some good here and keep an open society while maintaining security. Junaid, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, here in Palo Alto. Thanks for watching. (dramatic orchestral music)