(light music) >> Announcer: TheCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies. Creating technologies that drive human progress. (upbeat music) >> Welcome back to the Fira in Barcelona. Dave Vellante with Dave Nicholson. Lisa Martin's been here all week. John Furrier is in our Palo Alto studio, banging out all the news. Don't forget to check out siliconangle.com, thecube.net. This is day four, our last segment, winding down. MWC23, super excited to be here. Wayne Duso, friend of theCUBE, VP of engineering from products at AWS is here with Iyad Tarazi, who's the CEO of Federated Wireless. Gents, welcome. >> Good to be here. >> Nice to see you. >> I'm so stoked, Wayne, that we connected before the show. We texted, I'm like, "You're going to be there. I'm going to be there. You got to come on theCUBE." So thank you so much for making time, and thank you for bringing a customer partner, Federated Wireless. Everybody knows AWS. Iyad, tell us about Federated Wireless. >> We're a software and services company out of Arlington, Virginia, right outside of Washington, DC, and we're really focused on this new technology called Shared Spectrum and private wireless for 5G. Think of it as enterprises consuming 5G, the way they used to consume WiFi. >> Is that unrestricted spectrum, or? >> It is managed, organized, interference free, all through cloud platforms. That's how we got to know AWS. We went and got maybe about 300 products from AWS to make it work. Quite sophisticated, highly available, and pristine spectrum worth billions of dollars, but available for people like you and I, that want to build enterprises, that want to make things work. Also carriers, cable companies everybody else that needs it. It's really a new revolution for everyone. >> And that's how you, it got introduced to AWS. Was that through public sector, or just the coincidence that you're in DC >> No, I, well, yes. The center of gravity in the world for spectrum is literally Arlington. You have the DOD spectrum people, you have spectrum people from National Science Foundation, DARPA, and then you have commercial sector, and you have the FCC just an Uber ride away. So we went and found the scientists that are doing all this work, four or five of them, Virginia Tech has an office there too, for spectrum research for the Navy. Come together, let's have a party and make a new model. >> So I asked this, I'm super excited to have you on theCUBE. I sat through the keynotes on Monday. I saw Satya Nadella was in there, Thomas Kurian there was no AWS. I'm like, where's AWS? AWS is everywhere. I mean, you guys are all over the show. I'm like, "Hey, where's the number one cloud?" So you guys have made a bunch of announcements at the show. Everybody's talking about the cloud. What's going on for you guys? >> So we are everywhere, and you know, we've been coming to this show for years. But this is really a year that we can demonstrate that what we've been doing for the IT enterprise, IT people for 17 years, we're now bringing for telcos, you know? For years, we've been, 17 years to be exact, we've been bringing the cloud value proposition, whether it's, you know, cost efficiencies or innovation or scale, reliability, security and so on, to these enterprise IT folks. Now we're doing the same thing for telcos. And so whether they want to build in region, in a local zone, metro area, on-prem with an outpost, at the edge with Snow Family, or with our IoT devices. And no matter where they want to start, if they start in the cloud and they want to move to the edge, or they start in the edge and they want to bring the cloud value proposition, like, we're demonstrating all of that is happening this week. And, and very much so, we're also demonstrating that we're bringing the same type of ecosystem that we've built for enterprise IT. We're bringing that type of ecosystem to the telco companies, with CSPs, with the ISP vendors. We've seen plenty of announcements this week. You know, so on and so forth. >> So what's different, is it, the names are different? Is it really that simple, that you're just basically taking the cloud model into telco, and saying, "Hey, why do all this undifferentiated heavy lifting when we can do it for you? Don't worry about all the plumbing." Is it really that simple? I mean, that straightforward. >> Well, simple is probably not what I'd say, but we can make it straightforward. >> Conceptually. >> Conceptually, yes. Conceptually it is the same. Because if you think about, firstly, we'll just take 5G for a moment, right? The 5G folks, if you look at the architecture for 5G, it was designed to run on a cloud architecture. It was designed to be a set of services that you could partition, and run in different places, whether it's in the region or at the edge. So in many ways it is sort of that simple. And let me give you an example. Two things, the first one is we announced integrated private wireless on AWS, which allows enterprise customers to come to a portal and look at the industry solutions. They're not worried about their network, they're worried about solving a problem, right? And they can come to that portal, they can find a solution, they can find a service provider that will help them with that solution. And what they end up with is a fully validated offering that AWS telco SAS have actually put to its paces to make sure this is a real thing. And whether they get it from a telco, and, and quite frankly in that space, it's SIs such as Federated that actually help our customers deploy those in private environments. So that's an example. And then added to that, we had a second announcement, which was AWS telco network builder, which allows telcos to plan, deploy, and operate at scale telco network capabilities on the cloud, think about it this way- >> As a managed service? >> As a managed service. So think about it this way. And the same way that enterprise IT has been deploying, you know, infrastructure as code for years. Telco network builder allows the telco folks to deploy telco networks and their capabilities as code. So it's not simple, but it is pretty straightforward. We're making it more straightforward as we go. >> Jump in Dave, by the way. He can geek out if you want. >> Yeah, no, no, no, that's good, that's good, that's good. But actually, I'm going to ask an AWS question, but I'm going to ask Iyad the AWS question. So when we, when I hear the word cloud from Wayne, cloud, AWS, typically in people's minds that denotes off-premises. Out there, AWS data center. In the telecom space, yes, of course, in the private 5G space, we're talking about a little bit of a different dynamic than in the public 5G space, in terms of the physical infrastructure. But regardless at the edge, there are things that need to be physically at the edge. Do you feel that AWS is sufficiently, have they removed the H word, hybrid, from the list of bad words you're not allowed to say? 'Cause there was a point in time- >> Yeah, of course. >> Where AWS felt that their growth- >> They'll even say multicloud today, (indistinct). >> No, no, no, no, no. But there was a period of time where, rightfully so, AWS felt that the growth trajectory would be supported solely by net new things off premises. Now though, in this space, it seems like that hybrid model is critical. Do you see AWS being open to the hybrid nature of things? >> Yeah, they're, absolutely. I mean, just to explain from- we're a services company and a solutions company. So we put together solutions at the edge, a smart campus, smart agriculture, a deployment. One of our biggest deployment is a million square feet warehouse automation project with the Marine Corps. >> That's bigger than the Fira. >> Oh yeah, it's bigger, definitely bigger than, you know, a small section of here. It's actually three massive warehouses. So yes, that is the edge. What the cloud is about is that massive amount of efficiency has happened by concentrating applications in data centers. And that is programmability, that is APIs that is solutions, that is applications that can run on it, where people know how to do it. And so all that efficiency now is being ported in a box called the edge. What AWS is doing for us is bringing all the business and technical solutions they had into the edge. Some of the data may send back and forth, but that's actually a smaller piece of the value for us. By being able to bring an AWS package at the edge, we're bringing IoT applications, we're bringing high speed cameras, we're able to integrate with the 5G public network. We're able to bring in identity and devices, we're able to bring in solutions for students, embedded laptops. All of these things that you can do much much faster and cheaper if you are able to tap in the 4,000, 5,000 partners and all the applications and all the development and all the models that AWS team did. By being able to bring that efficiency to the edge why reinvent that? And then along with that, there are partners that you, that help do integration. There are development done to make it hardened, to make the data more secure, more isolated. All of these things will contribute to an edge that truly is a carbon copy of the data center. >> So Wayne, it's AWS, Regardless of where the compute, networking and storage physically live, it's AWS. Do you think that the term cloud will sort of drift away from usage? Because if, look, it's all IT, in this case it's AWS and federated IT working together. How, what's your, it's sort of a obscure question about cloud, because cloud is so integrated. >> You Got this thing about cloud, it's just IT. >> I got thing about cloud too, because- >> You and Larry Ellison. >> Because it's no, no, no, I'm, yeah, well actually there's- >> There's a lot of IT that's not cloud, just say that okay. >> Now, a lot of IT that isn't cloud, but I would say- >> But I'll (indistinct) cloud is an IT tool, and you see AWS obviously with the Snow fill in the blank line of products and outpost type stuff. Fair to say that you're, doesn't matter where it is, it could be AWS if it's on the edge, right? >> Well, you know, everybody wants to define the cloud as what it may have been when it started. But if you look at what it was when it started and what it is today, it is different. But the ability to bring the experience, the AWS experience, the services, the operational experience and all the things that Iyad had been talking about from the region all to all the way to, you know, the IoT device, if you would, that entire continuum. And it doesn't matter where you start. Like if you start in region and you need to bring your value to other places because your customers are asking you to do so, we're enabling that experience where you need to bring it. If you started at the edge, and- but you want to build cloud value, you know, whether it's again, cost efficiency, scalability, AI, ML or analytics into those capabilities, you can start at the edge with the same APIs, with the same service, the same capabilities, and you can build that value in right from the get go. You don't build this bifurcation or many separations and try to figure out how do I glue them together? There is no gluing together. So if you think of cloud as being elastic, scalable flexible, where you can drive innovation, it's the same exact model on the continuum. And you can start at either end, it's up to you as a customer. >> And I think if, the key to me is the ecosystem. I mean, if you can do for this industry what you've done for the technology- enterprise technology business from an ecosystem standpoint, you know everybody talks about flywheel, but that gives you like the massive flywheel. I don't know what the ratio is, but it used to be for every dollar spent on a VMware license, $15 is spent in the ecosystem. I've never heard similar ratios in the AWS ecosystem, but it's, I go to reinvent and I'm like, there's some dollars being- >> That's a massive ecosystem. >> (indistinct). >> And then, and another thing I'll add is Jose Maria Alvarez, who's the chairman of Telefonica, said there's three pillars of the future-ready telco, low latency, programmable networks, and he said cloud and edge. So they recognizing cloud and edge, you know, low latency means you got to put the compute and the data, the programmable infrastructure was invented by Amazon. So what's the strategy around the telco edge? >> So, you know, at the end, so those are all great points. And in fact, the programmability of the network was a big theme in the show. It was a huge theme. And if you think about the cloud, what is the cloud? It's a set of APIs against a set of resources that you use in whatever way is appropriate for what you're trying to accomplish. The network, the telco network becomes a resource. And it could be described as a resource. We, I talked about, you know, network as in code, right? It's same infrastructure in code, it's telco infrastructure as code. And that code, that infrastructure, is programmable. So this is really, really important. And in how you build the ecosystem around that is no different than how we built the ecosystem around traditional IT abstractions. In fact, we feel that really the ecosystem is the killer app for 5G. You know, the killer app for 4G, data of sorts, right? We started using data beyond simple SMS messages. So what's the killer app for 5G? It's building this ecosystem, which includes the CSPs, the ISVs, all of the partners that we bring to the table that can drive greater value. It's not just about cost efficiency. You know, you can't save your way to success, right? At some point you need to generate greater value for your customers, which gives you better business outcomes, 'cause you can monetize them, right? The ecosystem is going to allow everybody to monetize 5G. >> 5G is like the dot connector of all that. And then developers come in on top and create new capabilities >> And how different is that than, you know, the original smartphones? >> Yeah, you're right. So what do you guys think of ChatGPT? (indistinct) to Amazon? Amazon turned the data center into an API. It's like we're visioning this world, and I want to ask that technologist, like, where it's turning resources into human language interfaces. You know, when you see that, you play with ChatGPT at all, or I know you guys got your own. >> So I won't speak directly to ChatGPT. >> No, don't speak from- >> But if you think about- >> Generative AI. >> Yeah generative AI is important. And, and we are, and we have been for years, in this space. Now you've been talking to AWS for a long time, and we often don't talk about things we don't have yet. We don't talk about things that we haven't brought to market yet. And so, you know, you'll often hear us talk about something, you know, a year from now where others may have been talking about it three years earlier, right? We will be talking about this space when we feel it's appropriate for our customers and our partners. >> You have talked about it a little bit, Adam Selipsky went on an interview with myself and John Furrier in October said you watch, you know, large language models are going to be enormous and I know you guys have some stuff that you're working on there. >> It's, I'll say it's exciting. >> Yeah, I mean- >> Well proof point is, Siri is an idiot compared to Alexa. (group laughs) So I trust one entity to come up with something smart. >> I have conversations with Alexa and Siri, and I won't judge either one. >> You don't need, you could be objective on that one. I definitely have a preference. >> Are the problems you guys solving in this space, you know, what's unique about 'em? What are they, can we, sort of, take some examples here (indistinct). >> Sure, the main theme is that the enterprise is taking control. They want to have their own networks. They want to focus on specific applications, and they want to build them with a skeleton crew. The one IT person in a warehouse want to be able to do it all. So what's unique about them is that they're now are a lot of automation on robotics, especially in warehousing environment agriculture. There simply aren't enough people in these industries, and that required precision. And so you need all that integration to make it work. People also want to build these networks as they want to control it. They want to figure out how do we actually pick this team and migrate it. Maybe just do the front of the house first. Maybe it's a security team that monitor the building, maybe later on upgrade things that use to open doors and close doors and collect maintenance data. So that ability to pick what you want to do from a new processors is really important. And then you're also seeing a lot of public-private network interconnection. That's probably the undercurrent of this show that haven't been talked about. When people say private networks, they're also talking about something called neutral host, which means I'm going to build my own network, but I want it to work, my Verizon (indistinct) need to work. There's been so much progress, it's not done yet. So much progress about this bring my own network concept, and then make sure that I'm now interoperating with the public network, but it's my domain. I can create air gaps, I can create whatever security and policy around it. That is probably the power of 5G. Now take all of these tiny networks, big networks, put them all in one ecosystem. Call it the Amazon marketplace, call it the Amazon ecosystem, that's 5G. It's going to be tremendous future. >> What does the future look like? We're going to, we just determined we're going to be orchestrating the network through human language, okay? (group laughs) But seriously, what's your vision for the future here? You know, both connectivity and cloud are on on a continuum. It's, they've been on a continuum forever. They're going to continue to be on a continuum. That being said, those continuums are coming together, right? They're coming together to bring greater value to a greater set of customers, and frankly all of us. So, you know, the future is now like, you know, this conference is the future, and if you look at what's going on, it's about the acceleration of the future, right? What we announced this week is really the acceleration of listening to customers for the last handful of years. And, we're going to continue to do that. We're going to continue to bring greater value in the form of solutions. And that's what I want to pick up on from the prior question. It's not about the network, it's not about the cloud, it's about the solutions that we can provide the customers where they are, right? And if they're on their mobile phone or they're in their factory floor, you know, they're looking to accelerate their business. They're looking to accelerate their value. They're looking to create greater safety for their employees. That's what we can do with these technologies. So in fact, when we came out with, you know, our announcement for integrated private wireless, right? It really was about industry solutions. It really isn't about, you know, the cloud or the network. It's about how you can leverage those technologies, that continuum, to deliver you value. >> You know, it's interesting you say that, 'cause again, when we were interviewing Adam Selipsky, everybody, you know, all journalists analysts want to know, how's Adam Selipsky going to be different from Andy Jassy, what's the, what's he going to do to Amazon to change? And he said, listen, the real answer is Amazon has changed. If Andy Jassy were here, we'd be doing all, you know, pretty much the same things. Your point about 17 years ago, the cloud was S3, right, and EC2. Now it's got to evolve to be solutions. 'Cause if that's all you're selling, is the bespoke services, then you know, the future is not as bright as the past has been. And so I think it's key to look for what are those outcomes or solutions that customers require and how you're going to meet 'em. And there's a lot of challenges. >> You continue to build value on the value that you've brought, and you don't lose sight of why that value is important. You carry that value proposition up the stack, but the- what you're delivering, as you said, becomes maybe a bigger or or different. >> And you are getting more solution oriented. I mean, you're not hardcore solutions yet, but we're seeing more and more of that. And that seems to be a trend. We've even seen in the database world, making things easier, connecting things. Not really an abstraction layer, which is sort of antithetical to your philosophy, but it creates a similar outcome in terms of simplicity. Yeah, you're smiling 'cause you guys always have a different angle, you know? >> Yeah, we've had this conversation. >> It's right, it's, Jassy used to say it's okay to be misunderstood. >> That's Right. For a long time. >> Yeah, right, guys, thanks so much for coming to theCUBE. I'm so glad we could make this happen. >> It's always good. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> All right, Dave Nicholson, for Lisa Martin, Dave Vellante, John Furrier in the Palo Alto studio. We're here at the Fira, wrapping out MWC23. Keep it right there, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: theCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies, creating technologies that drive human progress. (upbeat music) >> Welcome back to the Fira in Barcelona. This is Dave Vellante with David Nicholson. Lisa Martin is also here. This is day two of our coverage of MWC 23 on theCUBE. We're super excited. We're in between hall four and five. Stop by if you're here. Dennis Hoffman is here. He's the senior vice president and general manager of the Telecom systems business at Dell Technologies, and he's joined by Yousef Khalidi, who's the corporate vice president of Azure for Operators from Microsoft. Gents, Welcome. >> Thanks, Dave. >> Thank you. >> So we saw Satya in the keynote. He wired in. We saw T.K. came in. No AWS. I don't know. They're maybe not part of the show, but maybe next year they'll figure it out. >> Indeed, indeed. >> Lots of stuff happened in the Telecom, but the Azure operator distributed service is the big news, you guys got here. What's that all about? >> Oh, first of all, we changed the name. >> Oh, you did? >> You did? >> Oh, yeah. We have a real name now. It's called the Azure Operator Nexus. >> Oh, I like Nexus better than that. >> David: That's much better, much better. >> Dave: The engineers named it first time around. >> I wish, long story, but thank you for our marketing team. But seriously, not only did we rename the platform, we expanded the platform. >> Dave: Yeah. >> So it now covers the whole spectrum from the far-edge to the public cloud as well, including the near-edge as well. So essentially, it's a hybrid platform that can also run network functions. So all these operators around you, they now have a platform which combines cloud technologies with the choice where they want to run, optimized for the network. >> Okay and so, you know, we've talked about the disaggregation of the network and how you're bringing kind of engineered systems to the table. We've seen this movie before, but Dennis, there are differences, right? I mean, you didn't really have engineered systems in the 90s. You didn't have those integration points. You really didn't have the public cloud, you didn't have AI. >> Right. >> So you have all those new powers that you can tap, so give us the update from your perspective, having now spent a day and a half here. What's the vibe, what's the buzz, and what's your take on everything? >> Yeah, I think to build on what Yousef said, there's a lot going on with people still trying to figure out exactly how to architect the Telecom network of the future. They know it's got to have a lot to do with cloud. It does have some pretty significant differences, one of those being, there's definitely got to be a hybrid component because there are pieces of the Telecom network that even when modernized will not end up centralized, right? They're going to be highly distributed. I would say though, you know, we took away two things, yesterday, from all the meetings. One, people are done, I think the network operators are done, questioning technology readiness. They're now beginning to wrestle with operationalization of it all, right? So it's like, okay, it's here. I can in fact build a modern network in a very cloud native way, but I've got to figure out how to do that all. And another big part of it is the ecosystem and certainly the partnership long standing between Dell and Microsoft which we're extending into this space is part of that, making it easier on people to actually acquire, deploy, and importantly, support these new technologies. >> So a lot of the traditional carriers, like you said, they're sort of beyond the technology readiness. Jose Maria Alvarez in the keynote said there are three pillars to the future Telecom network. He said low latency, programmable networks, and then cloud and edge, kind of threw that in. You agree with that, Yousef? (Dave and Yousef speaking altogether) >> I mean, we've been for years talking about the cloud and edge. >> Yeah. >> Satya for years had the same graphic. We still have it. Today, we have expanded the graphic a bit to include the network as one, because you can have a cloud without connectivity as well but this is very, very, very, very much true. >> And so the question then, Dennis, is okay, you've got disruptors, we had Dish on yesterday. >> Oh, did you? Good. >> Yeah, yeah, and they're talking about what they're doing with, you know, ORAN and all the applications, really taking account of it. What I see is a developer friendly, you know, environment. You got the carriers talking about how they're going to charge developers for APIs. I think they've published eight APIs which is nowhere near enough. So you've got that sort of, you know, inertia and yet, you have the disruptors that are going to potentially be a catalyst to, you know, cross the chasm, if you will. So, you know, put on your strategy hat. >> Yeah. >> Dave: How do you see that playing out? >> Well, they're trying to tap into three things, the disruptors. You know, I think the thesis is, "If I get to a truly cloud native, communications network first, I ought to have greater agility so that I can launch more services and create more revenue streams. I ought to be lower cost in terms of both acquisition cost and operating cost, right, and I ought to be able to create scale between my IT organization, everything I know how to do there and my Telecom network." You know, classic, right? Better, faster, cheaper if I embrace cloud early on. And people like Dish, you know, they have a clean sheet of paper with which to do that. So innovation and rate of innovation is huge for them. >> So what would you do? We put your Clay Christensen hat on, now. What if you were at a traditional Telco who's like, complaining about- >> You're going to get me in trouble. >> Dave: Come on, come on. >> Don't do it. >> Dave: Help him out. Help him out, help him out. So if, you know, they're complaining about CapEx, they're highly regulated, right, they want net neutrality but they want to be able to sort of dial up the cost of those using the network. So what would you do? Would you try to disrupt yourself? Would you create a skunkworks? Would you kind of spin off a disruptor? That's a real dilemma for those guys. >> Well for mobile network operators, the beauty of 5G is it's the first cloud native cellular standard. So I don't know if anybody's throwing these terms around, but 5G SA is standalone, right? >> Dave: Yeah, yeah. >> So a lot of 'em, it's not a skunkworks. They're just literally saying, "I've got to have a 5G network." And some of 'em are deciding, "I'm going to stand it up all by itself." Now, that's duplicative expense in a lot of ways, but it creates isolation from the two networks. Others are saying, "No, it's got to be NSA. I've got to be able to combine 4G and 5G." And then you're into the brownfield thing. >> That's the hybrid. >> Not hybrid as in cloud, but hybrid as in, you know. >> Yeah, yeah. >> It's a converge network. >> Dave: Yeah, yeah. >> So, you know, I would say for a lot of them, they're adopting, probably rightly so, a wait and see attitude. One thing we haven't talked about and you got to get on the table, their high order bit is resilience. >> Dave: Yeah, totally. >> David: Yeah. >> Right? Can't go down. It's national, secure infrastructure, first responder. >> Indeed. >> Anytime you ask them to embrace any new technology, the first thing that they have to work through in their minds is, you know, "Is the juice worth the squeeze? Like, can I handle the risk?" >> But you're saying they're not questioning the technology. Aren't they questioning ORAN in terms of the quality of service, or are they beyond that? >> Dennis: They're questioning the timing, not the inevitability. >> Okay, so they agree that ORAN is going to be open over time. >> At some point, RAN will be cloud native, whether it's ORAN the spec, open RAN the concept, (Yousef speaking indistinctly) >> Yeah. >> Virtual RAN. But yeah, I mean I think it seems pretty evident at this point that the mainframe will give way to open systems once again. >> Dave: Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> ERAN, ecosystem RAN. >> Any RAN. (Dave laughing) >> You don't have to start with the ORAN where they're inside the house. So as you probably know, our partner AT&T started with the core. >> Dennis: They almost all have. >> And they've been on the virtualization path since 2014 and 15. And what we are working with them on is the hybrid cloud model to expand all the way, if you will, as I mentioned to the far-edge or the public cloud. So there's a way to be in the brownfield environment, yet jump on the new bandwagon of technology without necessarily taking too much risk, because you're quite right. I mean, resiliency, security, service assurance, I mean, for example, AT&T runs the first responder network for the US on their network, on our platform, and I'm personally very familiar of how high the bar is. So it's doable, but you need to go in stages, of course. >> And they've got to do that integration. >> Yes. >> They do. >> And Yousef made a great point. Like, out of the top 30 largest Telcos by CapEx outside of China, three quarters of them have virtualized their core. So the cloudification, if you will, software definition run on industry standard hardware, embraced cloud native principles, containerized apps, that's happened in the core. It's well accepted. Now it's just a ripple-down through the network which will happen as and when things are faster, better, cheaper. >> Right. >> So as implemented, what does this look like? Is it essentially what we used to loosely refer to as Azure stacked software, running with Dell optimized Telecom infrastructure together, sometimes within a BBU, out in a hybrid cloud model communicating back to Azure locations in some cases? Is that what we're looking at? >> Approximately. So you start with the near-edge, okay? So the near-edge lives in the operator's data centers, edges, whatever the case may be, built out of off the shelf hardware. Dell is our great partner there but in principle, it could be different mix and match. So once you have that true near-edge, then you can think of, "Okay, how can I make sure this environment is as uniform, same APIs, same everything, regardless what the physical location is?" And this is key, key for the network function providers and the NEPs because they need to be able to port once, run everywhere, and it's key for the operator to reduce their costs. You want to teach your workforce, your operations folks, if you will, how to manage this system one time, to automation and so forth. So, and that is actually an expansion of the Azure capabilities that people are familiar with in a public cloud, projected into different locations. And we have technology called Arc which basically models everything. >> Yeah, yeah. >> So if you have trained your IT side, you are halfway there, how to manage your new network. Even though of course the network is carrier graded, there's different gear. So yes, what you said, a lot of it is true but the actual components, whatever they might be running, are carrier grade, highly optimized, the next images and our solution is not a DIY solution, okay? I know you cater to a wide spectrum here but for us, we don't believe in the TCO. The proper TCO can be achieved by just putting stuff by yourself. We just published a report with Analysys Mason that shows that our approach will save 36 percent of the cost compared to a DIY approach. >> Dave: What percent? >> 36 percent. >> Dave: Of the cost? >> Of, compared to DIY, which is already cheaper than classical models. >> And there's a long history of fairly failed DIY, right, >> Yeah. >> That preceded this. As in the early days of public cloud, the network operators wrestled with, "Do I have to become one to survive?" >> Dave: Yeah. Right. >> So they all ended up having cloud projects and by and large, they've all dematerialized in favor of this. >> Yeah, and it's hard for them to really invest at scale. Let me give you an example. So, your biggest tier one operator, without naming anybody, okay, how many developers do they have that can build and maintain an OS image, or can keep track of container technology, or build monitoring at scale? In our company, we have literally thousands of developers doing it already for the cloud and all we're doing for the operator segment is customizing it and focusing it at the carrier grade aspects of it. But so, I don't have half a dozen exterior experts. I literally have a building of developers who can do that and I'm being literal, here. So it's a scale thing. Once you have a product that you can give to multiple people, everybody benefits. >> Dave: Yeah, and the carriers are largely, they're equipment engineers in a large setting. >> Oh, they have a tough job. I always have total respect what they do. >> Oh totally, and a lot of the work happens, you know, kind of underground and here they are. >> They are network operators. >> They don't touch. >> It's their business. >> Right, absolutely, and they're good at it. They're really good at it. That's right. You know, you think about it, we love to, you know, poke fun at the big carriers, but think about what happened during the pandemic. When they had us shift everything to remote work, >> Dennis: Yes. >> Landline traffic went through the roof. You didn't even notice. >> Yep. That's very true. >> I mean, that's the example. >> That's very true. >> However, in the future where there's innovation and it's going to be driven by developers, right, that's where the open ecosystem comes in. >> Yousef: Indeed. >> And that's the hard transition for a lot of these folks because the developers are going to win that with new workloads, new applications that we can't even think of. >> Dennis: Right. And a lot of it is because if you look at it, there's the fundamental back strategy hat back on, fundamental dynamics of the industry, forced investment, flat revenues. >> Dave: Yeah. Right. >> Very true. >> Right? Every few years, a new G comes out. "Man, I got to retool this massive thing and where I can't do towers, I'm dropping fiber or vice a versa." And meanwhile, most diversification efforts into media have failed. They've had to unwind them and resell them. There's a lot of debt in the industry. >> Yousef: Yeah. >> Dennis: And so, they're looking for that next big, adjacent revenue stream and increasingly deciding, "If I don't modernize my network, I can't get it." >> Can't do it. >> Right, and again, what I heard from some of the carriers in the keynote was, "We're going to charge for API access 'cause we have data in the network." Okay, but I feel like there's a lot more innovation beyond that that's going to come from the disruptors. >> Dennis: Oh yeah. >> Yousef: Yes. >> You know, that's going to blow that away, right? And then that may not be the right model. We'll see, you know? I mean, what would Microsoft do? They would say, "Here, here's a platform. Go develop." >> No, I'll tell you. We are actually working with CAMARA and GSMA on the whole API layer. We actually announced a service as well as (indistinct). >> Dave: Yeah, yeah, right. >> And the key there, frankly, in my opinion, are not the disruptors as in operators. It's the ISV community. You want to get developers that can write to a global set of APIs, not per Telco APIs, such that they can do the innovation. I mean, this is what we've seen in other industries, >> Absolutely. >> That I critically can think of. >> This is the way they get a slice of that pie, right? The recent history of this industry is one where 4G LTE begot the smartphone and app store era, a bevy of consumer services, and almost every single profit stream went somewhere other than the operator, right? >> Yousef: Someone else. So they're looking at this saying, "Okay, 5G is the enterprise G and there's going to be a bevy of applications that are business service related, based on 5G capability and I can't let the OTT, over the top, thing happen again." >> Right. >> They'll say that. "We cannot let this happen." >> "We can't let this happen again." >> Okay, but how do they, >> Yeah, how do they make that not happen? >> Not let it happen again? >> Eight APIs, Dave. The answer is eight APIs. No, I mean, it's this approach. They need to make it easy to work with people like Yousef and more importantly, the developer community that people like Yousef and his company have found a way to harness. And by the way, they need to be part of that developer community themselves. >> And they're not, today. They're not speaking that developer language. >> Right. >> It's hard. You know, hey. >> Dennis: Hey, what's the fastest way to sell an enterprise, a business service? Resell Azure, Teams, something, right? But that's a resale. >> Yeah, that's a resale thing. >> See, >> That's not their service. >> They also need to free their resources from all the plumbing they do and leave it to us. We are plumbers, okay? >> Dennis: We are proud plumbers. >> We are proud plumbers. I'm a plumber. I keep telling people this thing. We had the same discussion with banks and enterprises 10 years ago, by the way. Don't do the plumbing. Go add value on the top. Retool your workforce to do applications and work with ISVs to the verticals, as opposed to either reselling, which many do, or do the plumbing. You'd be surprised. Traditionally, many operators do around, "I want to plumb this thing to get this small interrupt per second." Like, who cares? >> Well, 'cause they made money on connectivity. >> Yes. >> And we've seen this before. >> And in a world without telephone poles and your cables- >> Hey, if what you have is a hammer, everything's a nail, right? And we sell connectivity services and that's what we know how to do, and that both build and sell. And if that's no longer driving a revenue stream sufficient to cover this forced investment march, not to mention Huawei rip and government initiatives to pull infrastructure out and accelerate investment, they got to find new ways. >> I mean, the regulations have been tough, right? They don't go forward and ask for permission. They really can't, right? They have to be much more careful. >> Dennis: It is tough. >> So, we don't mean to sound like it's easy for these guys. >> Dennis: No, it's not. >> But it does require a new mindset, new skillsets, and I think some of 'em are going to figure it out and then pff, the wave, and you guys are going to be riding that wave. >> We're going to try. >> Definitely. Definitely. >> As a veteran of working with both Dell and Microsoft, specifically Azure on things, I am struck by how you're very well positioned in this with Microsoft in particular. Because of Azure's history, coming out of the on-premises world that Microsoft knows so well, there's a natural affinity to the hybrid nature of Telecom. We talk about edge, we talk about hybrid, this is it, absolutely the center of it. So it seems like a- >> Yousef: Indeed. Actually, if you look at the history of Azure, from day one, and I was there from day one, we always spoke of the hybrid model. >> Yeah. >> The third point, we came from the on-premises world. >> David: Right. >> And don't get me wrong, I want people to use the public cloud, but I also know due to physics, regulation, geopolitical boundaries, there's something called on-prem, something called an edge here. I want to add something else. Remember our deal on how we are partner-centric? We're applying the same playbook, here. So, you know, for every dollar we make, so many of it's been done by the ecosystem. Same applies here. So we have announced partnerships with Ericson, Nokia, (indistinct), all the names, and of course with Dell and many others. The ecosystem has to come together and customers must retain their optionality to drum up whatever they are on. So it's the same playbook, with this. >> And enterprise technology companies are, actually, really good at, you know, decoding the customer, figuring out specific requirements, making some mistakes the first time through and then eventually getting it right. And as these trends unfold, you know, you're in a good position, I think, as are others and it's an exciting time for enterprise tech in this industry, you know? >> It really is. >> Indeed. >> Dave: Guys, thanks so much for coming on. >> Thank you. >> Dave: It's great to see you. Have a great rest of the show. >> Thank you. >> Thanks, Dave. Thank you, Dave. >> All right, keep it right there. John Furrier is live in our studio. He's breaking down all the news. Go to siliconangle.com to go to theCUBE.net. Dave Vellante, David Nicholson and Lisa Martin, we'll be right back from the theater in Barcelona, MWC 23 right after this short break. (relaxing music)

(gentle music) >> Announcer: "theCube's" live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies, creating technologies that drive human progress. (upbeat music) (logo whooshing) >> Hey, everyone, welcome back to "theCube's" coverage of day one, MWC23 live from Barcelona, Lisa Martin here with Dave Vellante. Dave, we've got some great conversations so far This is the biggest, most packed show I've been to in years. About 80,000 people here so far. >> Yeah, down from its peak of 108, but still pretty good. You know, a lot of folks from China come to this show, but with the COVID situation in China, that's impacted the attendance, but still quite amazing. >> Amazing for sure. We're going to be talking about trends and mobility, and all sorts of great things. We have a couple of guests joining us for the first time on "theCUBE." Please welcome Dr. Srinivas Mukkamala or Sri, chief product officer at Ivanti. And Dave Shepherd, VP Ivanti. Guys, welcome to "theCUBE." Great to have you here. >> Thank you. >> So, day one of the conference, Sri, we'll go to you first. Talk about some of the trends that you're seeing in mobility. Obviously, the conference renamed from Mobile World Congress to MWC mobility being part of it, but what are some of the big trends? >> It's interesting, right? I mean, I was catching up with Dave. The first thing is from the keynotes, it took 45 minutes to talk about security. I mean, it's quite interesting when you look at the shore floor. We're talking about Edge, we're talking about 5G, the whole evolution. And there's also the concept of are we going into the Cloud? Are we coming back from the Cloud, back to the Edge? They're really two different things. Edge is all decentralized while you recompute. And one thing I observed here is they're talking about near real-time reality. When you look at automobiles, when you look at medical, when you look at robotics, you can't have things processed in the Cloud. It'll be too late. Because you got to make millisecond-based stations. That's a big trend for me. When I look at staff... Okay, the compute it takes to process in the Cloud versus what needs to happen on-prem, on device, is going to revolutionize the way we think about mobility. >> Revolutionize. David, what are some of the things that you're saying? Do you concur? >> Yeah, 100%. I mean, look, just reading some of the press recently, they're predicting 22 billion IoT devices by 2024. Everything Sri just talked about there. It's growing exponentially. You know, problems we have today are a snapshot. We're probably in the slowest place we are today. Everything's just going to get faster and faster and faster. So it's a, yeah, 100% concur with that. >> You know, Sri, on your point, so Jose Maria Alvarez, the CEO of Telefonica, said there are three pillars of the future of telco, low latency, programmable networks, and Cloud and Edge. So, as to your point, Cloud and low latency haven't gone hand in hand. But the Cloud guys are saying, "All right, we're going to bring the Cloud to the Edge." That's sort of an interesting dynamic. We're going to bypass them. We heard somebody, another speaker say, "You know, Cloud can't do it alone." You know? (chuckles) And so, it's like these worlds need each other in a way, don't they? >> Definitely right. So that's a fantastic way to look at it. The Cloud guys can say, "We're going to come closer to where the computer is." And if you really take a look at it with data localization, where are we going to put the Cloud in, right? I mean, so the data sovereignty becomes a very interesting thing. The localization becomes a very interesting thing. And when it comes to security, it gets completely different. I mean, we talked about moving everything to a centralized compute, really have massive processing, and give you the addition back wherever you are. Whereas when you're localized, I have to process everything within the local environment. So there's already a conflict right there. How are we going to address that? >> Yeah. So another statement, I think, it was the CEO of Ericsson, he was kind of talking about how the OTT guys have heard, "We can't let that happen again. And we're going to find new ways to charge for the network." Basically, he's talking about monetizing the API access. But I'm interested in what you're hearing from customers, right? 'Cause our mindset is, what value you're going to give to customers that they're going to pay for, versus, "I got this data I'm going to charge developers for." But what are you hearing from customers? >> It's amazing, Dave, the way you're looking at it, right? So if we take a look at what we were used to perpetual, and we said we're going to move to a subscription, right? I mean, everybody talks about subscription economy. Telcos on the other hand, had subscription economy for a long time, right? They were always based on usage, right? It's a usage economy. But today, we are basically realizing on compute. We haven't even started charging for compute. If you go to AWS, go to Azure, go to GCP, they still don't quite charge you for actual compute, right? It's kind of, they're still leaning on it. So think about API-based, we're going to break the bank. What people don't realize is, we do millions of API calls for any high transaction environment. A consumer can't afford that. What people don't realize is... I don't know how you're going to monetize. Even if you charge a cent a call, that is still going to be hundreds and thousands of dollars a day. And that's where, if you look at what you call low-code no-code motion? You see a plethora of companies being built on that. They're saying, "Hey, you don't have to write code. I'll give you authentication as a service. What that means is, Every single time you call my API to authenticate a user, I'm going to charge you." So just imagine how many times we authenticate on a single day. You're talking a few dozen times. And if I have to pay every single time I authenticate... >> Real friction in the marketplace, David. >> Yeah, and I tell you what. It's a big topic, right? And it's a topic that we haven't had to deal with at the Edge before, and we hear it probably daily really, complexity. The complexity's growing all the time. That means that we need to start to get insight, visibility. You know? I think a part of... Something that came out of the EU actually this week, stated, you know, there's a cyber attack every 11 seconds. That's fast, right? 2016, that was 40 seconds. So actually that speed I talked about earlier, everything Sri says that's coming down to the Edge, we want to embrace the Edge and that is the way we're going to move. But customers are mindful of the complexity that's involved in that. And that, you know, lens thought to how are we going to deal with those complexities. >> I was just going to ask you, how are you planning to deal with those complexities? You mentioned one ransomware attack every 11 seconds. That's down considerably from just a few years ago. Ransomware is a household word. It's no longer, "Are we going to get attacked?" It's when, it's to what extent, it's how much. So how is Ivanti helping customers deal with some of the complexities, and the changes in the security landscape? >> Yeah. Shall I start on that one first? Yeah, look, we want to give all our customers and perspective customers full visibility of their environment. You know, devices that are attached to the environment. Where are they? What are they doing? How often are we going to look for those devices? Not only when we find those devices. What applications are they running? Are those applications secure? How are we going to manage those applications moving forward? And overall, wrapping it round, what kind of service are we going to do? What processes are we going to put in place? To Sri's point, the low-code no-code angle. How do we build processes that protect our organization? But probably a point where I'll pass to Sri in a moment is how do we add a level of automation to that? How do we add a level of intelligence that doesn't always require a human to be fixing or remediating a problem? >> To Sri, you mentioned... You're right, the keynote, it took 45 minutes before it even mentioned security. And I suppose it's because they've historically, had this hardened stack. Everything's controlled and it's a safe environment. And now that's changing. So what would you add? >> You know, great point, right? If you look at telcos, they're used to a perimeter-based network. >> Yep. >> I mean, that's what we are. Boxed, we knew our perimeter. Today, our perimeter is extended to our home, everywhere work, right? >> Yeah- >> We don't have a definition of a perimeter. Your browser is the new perimeter. And a good example, segueing to that, what we have seen is horizontal-based security. What we haven't seen is verticalization, especially in mobile. We haven't seen vertical mobile security solutions, right? Yes, you hear a little bit about automobile, you hear a little bit about healthcare, but what we haven't seen is, what about food sector? What about the frontline in food? What about supply chain? What security are we really doing? And I'll give you a simple example. You brought up ransomware. Last night, Dole was attacked with ransomware. We have seen the beef producer colonial pipeline. Now, if we have seen agritech being hit, what does it mean? We are starting to hit humanity. If you can't really put food on the table, you're starting to really disrupt the supply chain, right? In a massive way. So you got to start thinking about that. Why is Dole related to mobility? Think about that. They don't carry service and computers. What they carry is mobile devices. that's where the supply chain works. And then that's where you have to start thinking about it. And the evolution of ransomware, rather than a single-trick pony, you see them using multiple vulnerabilities. And Pegasus was the best example. Spyware across all politicians, right? And CEOs. It is six or seven vulnerabilities put together that actually was constructed to do an attack. >> Yeah. How does AI kind of change this? Where does it fit in? The attackers are going to have AI, but we could use AI to defend. But attackers are always ahead, right? (chuckles) So what's your... Do you have a point of view on that? 'Cause everybody's crazy about ChatGPT, right? The banks have all banned it. Certain universities in the United States have banned it. Another one's forcing his students to learn how to use ChatGPT to prompt it. It's all over the place. You have a point of view on this? >> So definitely, Dave, it's a great point. First, we all have to have our own generative AI. I mean, I look at it as your digital assistant, right? So when you had calculators, you can't function without a calculator today. It's not harmful. It's not going to take you away from doing multiplication, right? So we'll still teach arithmetic in school. You'll still use your calculator. So to me, AI will become an integral part. That's one beautiful thing I've seen on the short floor. Every little thing there is a AI-based solution I've seen, right? So ChatGPT is well played from multiple perspective. I would rather up level it and say, generated AI is the way to go. So there are three things. There is human intense triaging, where humans keep doing easy work, minimal work. You can use ML and AI to do that. There is human designing that you need to do. That's when you need to use AI. >> But, I would say this, in the Enterprise, that the quality of the AI has to be better than what we've seen so far out of ChatGPT, even though I love ChatGPT, it's amazing. But what we've seen from being... It's got to be... Is it true that... Don't you think it has to be cleaner, more accurate? It can't make up stuff. If I'm going to be automating my network with AI. >> I'll answer that question. It comes down to three fundamentals. The reason ChatGPT is giving addresses, it's not trained on the latest data. So for any AI and ML method, you got to look at three things. It's your data, it's your domain expertise, who is training it, and your data model. In ChatGPT, it's older data, it's biased to the people that trained it, right? >> Mm-hmm. >> And then, the data model is it's going to spit out what it's trained on. That's a precursor of any GPT, right? It's pre-trained transformation. >> So if we narrow that, right? Train it better for the specific use case, that AI has huge potential. >> You flip that to what the Enterprise customers talk about to us is, insight is invaluable. >> Right. >> But then too much insight too quickly all the time means we go remediation crazy. So we haven't got enough humans to be fixing all the problems. Sri's point with the ChatGPT data, some of that data we are looking at there could be old. So we're trying to triage something that may still be an issue, but it might have been superseded by something else as well. So that's my overriding when I'm talking to customers and we talk ChatGPT, it's in the news all the time. It's very topical. >> It's fun. >> It is. I even said to my 13-year-old son yesterday, your homework's out a date. 'Cause I knew he was doing some summary stuff on ChatGPT. So a little wind up that's out of date just to make that emphasis around the model. And that's where we, with our Neurons platform Ivanti, that's what we want to give the customers all the time, which is the real-time snapshot. So they can make a priority or a decision based on what that information is telling them. >> And we've kind of learned, I think, over the last couple of years, that access to real-time data, real-time AI, is no longer nice to have. It's a massive competitive advantage for organizations, but it's going to enable the on-demand, everything that we expect in our consumer lives, in our business lives. This is going to be table stakes for organizations, I think, in every industry going forward. >> Yeah. >> But assumes 5G, right? Is going to actually happen and somebody's going to- >> Going to absolutely. >> Somebody's going to make some money off it at some point. When are they going to make money off of 5G, do you think? (all laughing) >> No. And then you asked a very good question, Dave. I want to answer that question. Will bad guys use AI? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Offensive AI is a very big thing. We have to pay attention to it. It's got to create an asymmetric war. If you look at the president of the United States, he said, "If somebody's going to attack us on cyber, we are going to retaliate." For the first time, US is willing to launch a cyber war. What that really means is, we're going to use AI for offensive reasons as well. And we as citizens have to pay attention to that. And that's where I'm worried about, right? AI bias, whether it's data, or domain expertise, or algorithmic bias, is going to be a big thing. And offensive AI is something everybody have to pay attention to. >> To your point, Sri, earlier about critical infrastructure getting hacked, I had this conversation with Dr. Robert Gates several years ago, and I said, "Yeah, but don't we have the best offensive, you know, technology in cyber?" And he said, "Yeah, but we got the most to lose too." >> Yeah, 100%. >> We're the wealthiest nation of the United States. The wealthiest is. So you got to be careful. But to your point, the president of the United States saying, "We'll retaliate," right? Not necessarily start the war, but who started it? >> But that's the thing, right? Attribution is the hardest part. And then you talked about a very interesting thing, rich nations, right? There's emerging nations. There are nations left behind. One thing I've seen on the show floor today is, digital inequality. Digital poverty is a big thing. While we have this amazing technology, 90% of the world doesn't have access to this. >> Right. >> What we have done is we have created an inequality across, and especially in mobility and cyber, if this technology doesn't reach to the last mile, which is emerging nations, I think we are creating a crater back again and putting societies a few miles back. >> And at much greater risk. >> 100%, right? >> Yeah. >> Because those are the guys. In cyber, all you need is a laptop and a brain to attack. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> If I don't have it, that's where the civil war is going to start again. >> Yeah. What are some of the things in our last minute or so, guys, David, we'll start with you and then Sri go to you, that you're looking forward to at this MWC? The theme is velocity. We're talking about so much transformation and evolution in the telecom industry. What are you excited to hear and learn in the next couple of days? >> Just getting a complete picture. One is actually being out after the last couple of years, so you learn a lot. But just walking around and seeing, from my perspective, some vendor names that I haven't seen before, but seeing what they're doing and bringing to the market. But I think goes back to the point made earlier around APIs and integration. Everybody's talking about how can we kind of do this together in a way. So integrations, those smart things is what I'm kind of looking for as well, and how we plug into that as well. >> Excellent, and Sri? >> So for us, there is a lot to offer, right? So while I'm enjoying what I'm seeing here, I'm seeing at an opportunity. We have an amazing portfolio of what we can do. We are into mobile device management. We are the last (indistinct) company. When people find problems, somebody has to go remediators. We are the world's largest patch management company. And what I'm finding is, yes, all these people are embedding software, pumping it like nobody's business. As you find one ability, somebody has to go fix them, and we want to be the (indistinct) company. We had the last smile. And I find an amazing opportunity, not only we can do device management, but do mobile threat defense and give them a risk prioritization on what needs to be remediated, and manage all that in our ITSM. So I look at this as an amazing, amazing opportunity. >> Right. >> Which is exponential than what I've seen before. >> So last question then. Speaking of opportunities, Sri, for you, what are some of the things that customers can go to? Obviously, you guys talk to customers all the time. In terms of learning what Ivanti is going to enable them to do, to take advantage of these opportunities. Any webinars, any events coming up that we want people to know about? >> Absolutely, ivanti.com is the best place to go because we keep everything there. Of course, "theCUBE" interview. >> Of course. >> You should definitely watch that. (all laughing) No. So we have quite a few industry events we do. And especially there's a lot of learning. And we just raised the ransomware report that actually talks about ransomware from a global index perspective. So one thing what we have done is, rather than just looking at vulnerabilities, we showed them the weaknesses that led to the vulnerabilities, and how attackers are using them. And we even talked about DHS, how behind they are in disseminating the information and how it's actually being used by nation states. >> Wow. >> And we did cover mobility as a part of that as well. So there's a quite a bit we did in our report and it actually came out very well. >> I have to check that out. Ransomware is such a fascinating topic. Guys, thank you so much for joining Dave and me on the program today, sharing what's going on at Ivanti, the changes that you're seeing in mobile, and the opportunities that are there for your customers. We appreciate your time. >> Thank you >> Thank you. >> Yes. Thanks, guys. >> Thanks, guys. >> For our guests and for Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching "theCUBE" live from MWC23 in Barcelona. As you know, "theCUBE" is the leader in live tech coverage. Dave and I will be right back with our next guest. (gentle upbeat music)