>> I am stupid men. And this is a special on the ground at the V Tug SummerSlam 2019. Nicky knows this morning is a lot of discussion about what's happened toe I t operations >> people and all of the changes that are impacting their career. One >> of the keynote speakers is Josh at, >> Well, who's a senior technology advocate with Splunk. Just welcome back to the program, >> thanks to always good to be here. >> All right, so you wait until the final V tug to show up s o about better late than never. >> That's exactly the way I look at it. Thank you so much for >> joining and yeah, you know, before you know, I don't want to talk, really hear about community and jobs. And of course, that's right in your sweet spot to talk about. You know, I've met you, you know, years ago, through the virtual ization community virtualization community, always good at, you know, people sharing, contributing and learning with each other. And you know, >> how have you seen that? >> You know, changing as we go into these new worlds of you, talk about nuance and cloud computing and all of these new things that >> have been changing >> well, so that uncovers a whole lot. I >> think one of them We >> need you to do it in, you know, under five >> minutes. I don't think I've >> been ever to have any conversation under five minutes, but I think we could pull this >> up. I think that >> during the virtual ization emerges, we required the bloggers and the contributors in the community in order for us as a as a industry to mature. Even the vendors weren't holy prepared on everything that they were going to need to deliver to handle that change. I think we're seeing a similar type scenario play out now, as digital transformation is impacting so much of what I t and development does, we have a whole new crop in mechanisms for getting people on board and understanding these trends in these new mechanisms. And I think the biggest way that people have really gravitated to our recently from a community standpoint are around events like your develops meet ups, Dev. Ops Day's events like those have been a huge and then video video has been the other element that has been just completely exploding everywhere throughout this and used to be very focused on the written technical documentation. Now it's I'm gonna show you step by step, how to do all these things. And then the last bit that I think is really interesting is because of the changes that we face now. The cultural elements are vastly different. It's a lot more conversation as a community about the cultural impacts of more transparency addressing burnout. How do you you lead up and influence up in an organization. Lots of cool >> stuff, Jack. Just did I see you were actually advocating >> reading books. You know, in your presentation this morning, don't you know millennials? You know, if I if I can't get it on tic tac or something like that and you know my daily newsletter, you know, it's probably a bit little bit too long form I digest, but, you know, maybe expand a little bit about what you were going out there. Well, >> I think one thing >> that's really important to note is that specifically within the IittIe space and with I t operations on as we solid the keynote today, most people have 10 plus years of experience, right? Most of the younger folks coming in and the operations or doing operational roles. And I have a different perspective in view, and they will have more of a development background and what they're doing. And so it's still hyper relevant. Thio Enterprise I t. And I to operations as a whole or consumption through books. And there's some really high quality books that have been published in the last few years. >> Yeah, maybe if you could speak a >> little bit of that, that organizational dynamic you know, the I >> t people >> versus you know, hey, who are those developers? You know, they used to just, you know, build their stuff and tell me to make it work out there. They dress a little bit different. They don't understand their language, you know? Are we seeing I t. And the developers coming together, at least working together? >> I think it's inevitable that we're going to continue to see more and more of that as I talked about earlier today, when Cloud was kind of emerging and, you know, we had rogue I T people development things in particular, going out looking for an easier option to get the IittIe resource is they need most I T departments for, like, roof. We dodged a bullet. We're not going to have to deal with agile development and lean development practices. Well, then, it turned out, Well, we actually need to modernize all of our applications in various different ways. We need to rationalize where they need to go. There's a lot better cost models for some of these applications. Get out of the, you know, spending money on things that aren't differentiating to our business because we have to. And so as such, those bridges have to be developed, and it is on operations team kind of change The model. It was their developing. You're not developing, but ah, helping developers. >> All right, Josh, explain what this new ops thing is that you're talking about. I know you've got the new op stays on, and, you know, so explain a little bit about >> that. Okay, Uh, new >> offices. A realization. Brinkley, that the way that we've operated I t and managed I t isn't going to work going forward with the addition of greater complexity applications being broken out. Micro Service's various cloud platforms, you know, pulling out private cloud using software as a service. I see operations has a much more diverse and much more complex job ahead of them on. And it's also increasing this scale of which what they need to operate. And so new technologies, new framework for how they operate had to be deployed. There's a lot of talk come out by motel I t. But this isn't really about by motility it's about. Here's what you need to do to operate the new. And you also then need to modernize everything that you've been doing to work within those same models, >> all right. And, >> Josh, you're holding the mic so >> that our audience can't see the T shirts. So maybe just >> shut up for a second and explain that one >> s So you know, it's like one of the things that we pride ourselves on or having really interesting T shirts. And this is really just getting just having people get out of the way and let the systems work for you. >> Yeah, absolutely. But it's a good point is, you know, I team you can't be the group of no from or the blocker where the Yale will get that done, and you know, Pope to 18 months and send us a pile of money we need to be able to move fast. The theme that I hear over and over again is it's the agility and tying things to the business. And I thought that was a great point in your presentation is if you don't understand You know what the key business objectives are this quarter in this year. I'm not saying you need to be, you know, drinking the Kool Aid on everything. But if you're not aware of it, you might be running in the total wrong direction. And therefore, things change. You can't be one of those. Oh, jeez. Why am I out of a job? Oh, well, maybe I wasn't relevant to the >> business. And I think what most I T organizations feel is that they don't get respected for their work they're doing, and it's primarily in large part because they can't show the work that they're doing is tying to business value on DSO until they start making that transition on, then becoming an organization that is a driver of business initiatives in business value and customer value. They're they're they're goingto have thio reconcile some of the things that they're doing >> Okay, final thing, Josh. So are there any skill sets >> or jobs that you know? I hate to see. It's like, Oh, you know the hot thing out there. But, you know, as people kind of look at their career, especially those that have been in I t operation for a while, what are some areas that you recommend them to start with? >> Well, I think one area that to core areas I think people really needed that developing good discipline about being data driven data managed. So being able to look at data management platforms, be able to extract, ask good questions of the data and then act on that data, whether it's an automated response or developing a plan for remediation or improvement on then the other is the adoption of automation framework. Specifically, be able to have an understanding of some some type of programming language don't have to be a full on developer, but you should be able to look at work. Other people have done know how to dissect that manipulate manage. It's what you need to be able to do so that you can remove yourself from the workflow, get out of being ticket driven and allow the systems >> that work for you. >> All right. >> Sounds great, Josh. Out. Well, always a pleasure to catch up >> with you on and off >> camera. So thanks so much for joining us. All right. More coverage is always at the cube dot net on stew minimum, and thanks for watching.

>> Announcer: Live, from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering NetApp Insight 2017. Brought to you by, NetApp. >> Hey welcome back everyone, live here in Las Vegas. This is theCUBE's exclusive coverage of NetApp Insight 2017, here at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconeANGLE Media, and co-host of theCUBE. My co-host this week is Keith Townsend, @CTOAdvisor, and our next guests are Josh Atwell, who's a developer advocate at NetApp, and Jason Benedicic, who's with, Principal Consultant ANS Group Cloud Service Provider in the UK, great topic, talking DevOps. Guys, welcome to theCUBE, good to see you again. >> Good to see you as well, thank you. >> Boy, DevOps has gone mainstream. >> It's a thing. >> Okay, it's absolutely gone mainstream, we've been saying it for years, I remember going back a few years ago, you say, DevOps, huh? Infrastructure as Code? Everyone loves it, it's now the new model, people are moving fast to. What's goin on with NetApp and tell all of us your story. Go ahead. >> So within NetApp, we look at DevOps as a unique opportunity for us to level up. Everybody that's doing infrastructure and going from saying, you just going out and developing an application to saying, we can actually help deliver you the best experience. We look at where applications are being developed and supported, everybody likes to say it's straight out to the public cloud, that's where all the innovation happens, but, it's also happening on premises as well. The reason that we see most frequently is that reduced friction. You know, going to the public cloud, that has become a model that people can go out, they can get what they need and do what they need, and it's been something that's significantly easier than what their local IT organization has had. DevOps is forcing infrastructure and IT to understand that availability and reliability, which is what we've always been measured on, is no longer the core measure that we have to focus on. It's agility and availability and delivering unique services. >> Well I would just say to your point, Wikibon analysts research have validated your point, and they actually show the data that the on premise, they call it true private cloud, numbers, are growing actually, not declining. What is declining is about $1.5 billion in non-differentiated labor, but that's shifting to SAS models. So what it means is, the on premise action, in a cloud operational way, is growing. Which is not saying that's declining, it's just saying, people are getting their house in order. They're doing DevOps on prem. Prep to do cloud. >> Yeah. >> Cloud's got native stuff, you do versioning, you can put some stuff in the cloud, test/dev, sure, there's great use cases, but most enterprises are on prem, getting ready to take advantage of it. >> It's an absolute and conversation, and that's also somethin' that we are working really hard with our customers, in our field and the entire company as a whole. To understand, it's not an or conversation. Most companies are looking at how do we solve a variety of different challenges, how do we accommodate for a variety of different workloads that are being developed, and how do we modernize the mode one operational workloads that we've had and bring them into the future with new services. So, it's an absolute and conversation. It's a pretty exciting time to be dealing with IT. >> So Jason, as we think about DevOps, we give, we have plenty of examples for private cloud and inside of our own datacenters, but you help run a public cloud. >> So we run services within a public cloud. >> Right. >> And a hybrid model. So we run a number of services to man assessments, so we help in the UK, I think we're a little bit further behind than the US is currently, so some of the biggest services that we do is helping people to assess their applications, assess their data, and understand what they can move. Using things like the Gartner TIME Analysis, where we can take best leverage of on premises private cloud, where you've got hybrid approach, where you've got native. We got the expertise around retooling and assessment services to move legacy applications into a cloud model, and then we provide management services on top, and those sorts of things. That's where we use, utilize the DevOps, around taking what would be our managed services ITIL processes, things that people would traditionally do manually. We take a lot of that, and we prepackage that up into workflows and data automation operations for our customers so they can provision where they like, across a multitude of on premises and in the public cloud. So we take that work which would traditionally be done by a analyst on a desk or that sort of thing, package that up, using a lot of NAVs, APIs, and Solufy tooling. So, we're saving enterprises time so they can work on what's really important to them, and that's their line of business applications. >> So from an assessment perspective, I love to get feedback, what are customers learning? Is it, that they thought they could just lift and shift, or that they have to go through some type of DevOps transformation -- >> Yeah, so -- >> What's been the balance of the results? >> Yeah, so a lot of people don't necessarily understand where they are. There are a lot of misconceptions around being able to lift and shift things to the crowd, but that's not really a great cost model. I find in the public sector in the UK a lot, is you've got a lot of legacy applications that potentially people don't have any knowledge of, 'cause the people that ran them and installed them in the first place have long gone. They need to understand what those applications do for their business, what the business processes around them are, and how they can take that forward into a new model. A lot of retooling. Actually, a lot of time we see the application should probably be ditched and let's look for something that we can just build cloud native. >> So, that requires a new set of skills to operate at that higher level of the stack as we call it in the industry, however, that leaves a lot of low level work that still needs to be done, so automation has kind of walked hand-in-hand with DevOps. What is the NetApp story around automation and helping to remediate some of this low level activity that needs to be done repeatedly? >> Big focus for us as a company is not trying to dictate tooling to people. If you are using Docker, we offer a native Docker volume plugin that allows you to plug right into Docker and be able to provision and manage storage as an application owner or developer, to get what you need, and to handle the services that are available there. When we look at configuration management, or helping code and artifact management, cloud, with Openstack, or VMware vRealize Suite, our initiative is to make the NetApp products seamless and invisible into your processes. How do we remove and eliminate handoffs, and how do we make all of those processes effortless, so that as you identify those tasks, and those high effort but low value tasks that has to be -- taken advantage of. >> And automation -- and automation's critical there. >> Yeah, yeah. Being able to automate those things, remove people from that process, and using their skills and talents for things like auditing, and understanding proper behavior, checking that people are delivering what they are supposed to, and consuming from a policy framework. >> I'd like to get back to the automation, but I just want to shift to Josh, so hold the thought on automation. Josh, I want to get your thoughts on, as we get to automation we start talking about hybrid cloud. You're doing hybrid cloud. That's your -- >> Yeah. >> You're on the front line, you're doing it. Also, hybrid cloud also means things differently, so when you think about hybrid cloud, a customer's got to get their act together. We heard earlier from the NetApp folks, the VP of Engineering, we're doing three things: modernizing the infrastructure, that's just like, okay go clean house, fix things, making sure we're solid, rock solid, build the next generation data center, be ready for the cloud. >> Yep. >> Okay. So, there's some things that need to get done there. What's your view on the table stakes to get there, because you got orchestration capabilities, cloud orchestration demo is hot, we saw that, at the show here. What is NetApp doing to make hybrid cloud easier? >> Across all the products that we utilize run NetApp, you've got APIs on everything. They got a lot of really good tools there, and they're moving away from the traditional hardware. I've been working with NetApp for like 16 years on. It was a hardware company, a software company, and now it's just moved on even further. There's a further evolution there, a management company. It's not just, you're managing your data, the data flow, the fabric around it, and the tools that are on offer there are just game changers. Especially the Cloud Automation option this morning. Yeah, that was great. >> As people know NetApp, eight years ago, they were -- I was scratching my head saying, wait a minute, why are you going to Amazon? So, early in cloud, so clearly they know what DevOps is, so it's not just lip service, we know that, that's just my personal observation and experience with NetApp, but Josh, I want you to talk to the audience that is either a NetApp customer or looking at NetApp, what's different now, what should they know about the new NetApp now, obviously you're on the A-Team, I see the shirt there, but, NetApp has changed and they're changing. I mean, SolidFire came in, you're seeing a lot more action on the DevOps cloud with the flash, some good stuff there, but NetApp has been an innovative company, what's the new story for NetApp in your words? >> For me, it's the speed that they're able to react to the market, moving the ONTAP to a cadence model, six month releases, moving products away from tin, into software, it's all about the value of what we can provide. We've got standalone products now from NetApp that can just do Office 365 backup. That's something that's completely moved forward. You've got a level of innovation and speed coming out of NetApp that's just unrivaled. >> Josh, I'd like to get your thoughts back to automation now, I'm CSO, the cost thing I hear all the time is the following narrative, I don't want the shiny new toy, I got to lot of stuff on my plate. I got an application development team I need to scale up and make modern, which is DevOps, not just take the old guys and put 'em in, I got to recruit, retrain, replatform, I have cybersecurity going on, I got to unbolt that from IT and make that essentially a top line, top reporting to the board, do all the cyber stuff, and I got the data governance stuff to deal with, and by the way, I got IoT over the top coming in. If it's not clear as day on the cloud, it doesn't meet my conversation. How do you guys engage in a dialog like that? One, do you agree with that, that makes that statement, but, that's a lot of stuff going on. Bombs are dropping inside the customer's environment, they're like, this is Hell right now, I got to lot of stuff to do. How do you guys help that environment? >> I think one thing that we have to be mindful of is that we've moved beyond being able to define a very static and rigid infrastructure architecture. In the past, we would define what our storage, what our compute, what our networking is, and that's going to -- what it's going to be. It's very easy to say I know how to support 10,000 Exchange users. That's always been something that we've been comfortable talking about. What you outlined, is the new reality for IT in that, we are getting a diverse set of requirements where we'll come in and say we need to deliver this new application so that we can get to market and capture -- I was actually talking to someone in the military. I said, what if the military was to develop a new recruiting tool, and they go in and say, we need to build this recruiting tool, but we actually don't know how much data is going to be required for it. IT is not comfortable with that conversation. But NetApp has developed, our portfolio, and the integrations and tool sets that we've integrated with, to make that conversation a little bit easier. >> They're not comfortable because they can't forecast it, or it's a blank check in their mind, or they don't know what the -- how to architect it, what's the -- >> It's because we're not accustomed to architecting for those types of scenarios. We generally have focused on what is going to be your use case, when do you need it delivered by, how much do you need? We're still having that same conversation, but the answer now is, I don't know, but we have to ready for whichever direction it goes. >> That creates a good point, at VMWorld we noticed that there's a convergence, not a lot of people are talking about this yet, but I can see the canary in the coal mine chirping away, is that the convergence between hardware and software stacks are coming together. There are untested use cases coming down the pike. >> Yeah. >> That just -- I need this, but, we haven't tested it. Or we don't know the capacity, so you have to have a serverless mindset, you got to have DevOps mindset, you really got to be prepared. >> Well there's certainly a lot of maturity that we're working through. We are definitely from a DevOps perspective, in that juvenile phase, where we're learning who we are, the changes that are happening to us as we go, and we're getting a much more responsible view of what we're trying to deliver against. It's really uncomfortable for a lot of people to have a conversation where there's so many unknowns, but fortunately, the technologies we're able to bring to market and deliver, are providing that, as I describe it, a foothold to make you feel stable in that process to at least know that your data's getting where it needs to be and protected. >> Keith, I know you got to question, but my final point of that is that, that kind of, we see that evolve in the customer mindset too, where you start to see the word trusted relationship become real. It became a cliche, we're a trusted partner, but reality now with all this uncertainty, they need the headroom, they got to cross the bridge with the future with proven people. So that's why I kind of like, I don't mean to dis on the startups, but the shiny new toy's not going to win the day. You got to really hit the scenario today, and prepare to cross that bridge to the future with partners, and I think that's what you're saying. >> Yeah, that is a big part, and the partnerships that we have with folks like Red Hat and Jfrog, where we're trying to improve that experience of implementing these environments and supporting these new workloads, is absolutely a big part of what we're doing. >> So I'd like to talk a little about the necessity of requirements coming from the business, and tying it into something I heard from the stage yesterday. I'm not a storage guy. >> Me neither. >> I'm a data guy. And you've said that before, but one of the things that has interested me is this concept of the data fabric. >> Yes. >> Can you tie in the vision of data fabric to kind of this model of DevOps and being able to adjust to the changing needs of the business? >> I think what's really important and to be mindful of is that as we are seeing IT getting these requirements, as the businesses are identifying what is really impactful and the innovation that we need to deliver on, the data fabric is providing choice. It's allowing you to look at being able to deliver these enterprise class protection and replication, and capabilities, and allowing you to develop, innovate, and run your workloads wherever is most important to you, without having to completely reshift your thinking and what your skillsets are. We are able to level up everyone that has been involved with NetApp, and has invested their career, and invested their energy and becoming knowledgeable in that space, now allowing them to extend out into new areas in the cloud, hybrid cloud frameworks, but also providing these capabilities to the people consuming those resources without them having to care about the infrastructure. They know it is there, they know they can reach out to it and define snapshotting and take advantage of clones, and deliver a good developer experience, without having to understand exactly what's happening in the infrastructure. >> Guys, thanks so much for coming on, I see having seamless infrastructure is what everyone wants, but it's hard. >> Yeah. (laughing) >> Final comments, as you go into the future now with DevOps, it's become now operationalized, a lot more work to do, it's not that easy, what's the hardest thing about DevOps, final comment, you guys each weigh in and get the last word. What's the hardest thing about DevOps that people may not understand, 'cause it sounds so easy, it's magic. >> I think the hardest thing for most people is having a critical eye, and being pragmatic about where the challenges really are. If you look at the methodologies that DevOps promotes, it is really identifying the constraints in the work flow process. Regardless of what you're developing and what you're doing, being very pragmatic and realistic about where those constraints are, and focusing energy on solving for those constraints. I think with we deliver out to market, we are providing people some stability, so that as they're going through this process and things feel really shaky as they accelerate their pace of development and release of software, they have some stability so they, when they focus, they don't feel like the wheels are coming off the cart, if you will. >> I think what I find is that you need to -- people need to understand DevOps isn't something that you can buy, you need to build. You need to get the right people, you need to get the right processes, the right mindset, and embrace it. A lot of people think it's just -- You see job adverts these days, I want a full stack DevOps engineer, it's just not that simple. You've got to take the time, take the effort, and move with it, and learn as much as you can. >> And it's a talent issue too, and I just -- I guess one final final question 'cause this just popped in my head, at Big Data NYC last week in New York, what became very clear to us was, certainly in big data applications analytics, a lot of things are being automated. But, question for you is, when should you automate, one comment on Big Dat NYC a guy said, if you do it more than twice manually, automate it. Not that easy in storage and networks and data, but is there -- most DevOps guys have an eye for automate that. They see it, they automate it. What are some of the things you see being automated away? Is there like a ethos, is there like a saying? If you automate twice, what's your thoughts on automation? What should you automate, what's the order of operations, what's the low hanging fruit? >> With respect to DevOps in particular, it is truly finding the constraint. Identifying areas where people are becoming a bottleneck in processes, or the process itself is a bottleneck to success. Focus on that area first. Now, it's also easy to just try to pick the low hanging fruit, and do various things, but there needs to be a discipline in looking at, where are your actual bottlenecks and how can I remove those bottlenecks? >> So you read in a blog post, you got to know your environment, see the pressure point, constraints -- >> Yeah. >> Get some direction, advice, but -- >> Correct. >> You're saying, look at your environment. >> Yeah, we're now moving away from a world where virtualization allowed us to just thrown everything into a big resource pool and we just didn't pay attention to it any longer. We are now actually having to start having conversations -- >> It's engineering involved. >> again, yep. >> It's engineering involved. >> It is. >> Not just writin' some code. Josh, thoughts on automation? What ya automate first? >> I share a lot of those things. You need to look at your processes. You need to look at where you've got your bottlenecks, like he said, things that we would traditionally do in the past as a service provider where you got teams of analysts and engineers working on things. If you can speed that up and allow them to provide a better service to your customers, then yeah, certainly, work on that automation. Deploying out new models, even internal stuff that we need to deploy out, if you need to do that more than once or twice, for test environments, all those sorts of things, then yeah, certainly, automate that out. Because the more time you get out of your people, the more value you are delivering to the business. >> Thanks Josh, A-Team, love the shirt, quick soundbite, what's the A-Team, is there a certification, is there a bar to get over? >> It's a pretty high bar. It's an advocacy program, it's quite a small tight knit group of partners and customers of NetApp. We work in a 360 feedback loop between the NetApp Product Management Teams and other developers, and just give feedback and then rave about them when we feel is necessary. >> Have a beer, or coffee and tea, and say, I love when a plan comes together. (laughing) I couldn't resist. >> That's what John had also mentioned, NetApp has also delivered a developer and opensource community, called The Pub. So at netapp.io, it's a location, we actually have the code on bar behind me, we've got people that are coming in who have interest in containers, interest in Openstack, DevOps, and these new models. We have a large community, over 900 people participating. >> It's called The Pub? >> The Pub. >> John: Is there a URL? >> Yep, netapp.io. >> Netapp.io, and just -- you know we're data driven, seven years been monitoring the community's data, just anecdotally, the favorite drinks of developers in our community, beer and tea. >> Makes sense. >> Pretty makes sense. Beer obviously, tea no coffee? >> Slow release caffeine, I think that probably works better. (laughing) >> Thanks guys so much Josh and Jason, data from the field from the front lines on cutting edge DevOps is going mainstream. This is the cloud native, native cloud, on premise infrastructure innovation here at NetApp. I'm John Furrier, Keith Townsend, we'll be back with more, after this short break.