>> Live, from Orlando Florida, it's The Cube! Covering Cisco Live 2018. Brought to you by Cisco, NetApp, and The Cube's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman and this is The Cube's coverage of Cisco Live 2018 in Orlando. We're in the middle of the Devnet Zone. Happen to have a panel of distinguished guests on the program. To my right, I have Dave Cope who's with Cisco. To his right, Bob Krentler with Google Cloud. And, down on the end, Lars Dannecker who's with SAP. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for having us. >> Nice to be here. >> Alright, so Dave, we're going to start. Cloud has been a big discussion, you're the senior director of cloud market development. >> Right. >> I think I know why Google's here. We had Diane Green up on the main stage with Chuck Robbins yesterday. But, before we get into it, what are you hearing from customers? When they think of cloud, what does that mean and connect that with Cisco? >> Yeah, I mean, you think about it, everything we hear about has something to do with cloud today. And, what's amazing is cloud is really only nine to ten years old. And we've seen it go through this, sort of, evolution from skepticism to debating about public and private to today, everyone realizing that it's all about hybrid cloud. Being able to logically place different workloads in different environments. And so, in almost everything we hear about, it has something to do with that notion of hybrid cloud. How do I secure those environments? How do I develop new applications? So, it's really everywhere. >> Alright, so Bob, you know, we've been watching Google since it entered the cloud. Of course, we had a team at the Kubernetes Show in Copenhagen just a month ago. We're excited to bring The Cube to your cloud show, Google Cloud Next this July in San Francisco. >> We are too. >> So, we think we know a little bit about what Google's doing in cloud, but from your with the Alliance's side of things, tell us a little bit about your role, what you're hearing from your customers and partners when it comes to cloud. >> Yeah, thanks again for the opportunity. So, yeah, Google Cloud is everything from the undersea cables that Google uses to move data around the world all the way up through G-Suite, alright. And, we develop this really cool hybrid cloud partnership with Cisco, kind of in response to some of the same problems that Google itself had to face. Largely, we had to be able to securely and scaleably deploy applications all over the world. So, customers are asking us, hey, how do I move to that world while not disrupting the infrastructure I've already purchased? So, how do I get the disruptive cloud technologies without disrupting myself? Right, and so what we developed with Cisco is this approach to meet you where you are as a developer or the customer that allows you to get the advantages of cloud while maintaining the infrastructure you already purchased. And, it's a great partnership with Cisco because of the security aspects that they bring, the sales and support that Cisco brings, as well as Google's technology in the cloud. >> Alright, so Lars you're the only one who doesn't have cloud in their title. So you're a big data architect. Look, we had a part of our team was here last week, the same building, for SAP Sapphire last week. Remember when we first started The Cube was the wave of mobile. But, absolutely, we hear SAP at every single one of the cloud events that we go to. So, from your role, how does cloud fit in to the story? >> So, I don't have cloud in my title, but big data in the title. And this is a great connection to the cloud. Because, what we are seeing with our customers is that they more an more move, let's say especially data that is regarded as big data, into the cloud. So, we have this combination of having enterprise data in your data center secure, but you still want to utilize what you have and capabilities in the cloud. Like, for example, machine learning with Google or cheap storage that you can utilize with other cloud vendors so that you can basically store huge amounts of data inside of a secure storage. >> Alright, great, I almost feel like we're going up the stack when we went through it. You know, Cisco, the infrastructure, Google certain pieces of it, SAP really at the application. Can you bring us back to Lars's, how the SAP piece connects to Cisco. >> Yeah, so as I said, what we are serving especially a need for is hybrid environments. Right, that you have your central system still in your data centers, but you want to connect to cloud environments and you want to bring, in principle, the cloud to your on-premise systems. That you have the best of both worlds. And this is also what SAP is basically about, to enable customers to do so and to bring products out that actually go in the direction of hybrid could and allow customers to go into more increasingly complex landscapes but still manage them in a, let's say, sophisticated way. >> Alright, Dave, I think back when I think of Cisco and partnerships, very rigorous programs out there. Spent many years looking at all the CVDs which is the Cisco Validated Designs. When we get into the cloud world, fill us in as to how that partnership expands and what's similar and what's different. >> If you look at the heritage of Cisco around networking and also infrastructure, but you're also seeing a huge evolution towards software. And so, a lot of what we're doing in the cloud has really software solutions whether it be the Cisco Container Platform that actually works with he Cisco Google Solution and also works with SAP's data hub. And we ensure, we still though have the rigor of things like CVDs, so this software can be proven to run on infrastructure environments that Cisco provides or provide customers the choice to run it on their own environment. And, of course, when it runs on Cisco infrastructure, it does have that CVD that gives customers and partners that confidence that it's already tested and that it works. >> Great, Bob, Kubernetes container, something we heard about on-stage, that the main thing that Google and Cisco are partnering on, walk us through a little bit, some of the announcements, what people might have missed. >> Yeah, so I think in general, our hybrid cloud solution at Google is very, very strong. I think what we're doing with Cisco is the most important missing piece. Which is, to be able to deliver and on-prem experience that customers are comfortable with, developers are comfortable with first and foremost, but also everyone behind the firewall essentially is very happy with. The security folks, the IT operations folks, I mentioned developers, and, of course, the line of business. So, yes, we're investing heavily with Cisco to bring Kubernetes and containers on-prem and we're really excited with the work we're doing with SAP in that space as well. We're also working with Cisco on an open-source initiative called Istio, essentially helps you do networking between microservices and containers. It's in a declarative way, right, really nice. And then, I think, overall, just the overall partnership with Cisco is very, very strong. We've been very happy with Cisco for a very long time. And, I think, customers are really starting to understand that this journey to the cloud is not one size fits all and certainly there's a lot of workstreams you have in flight. It's modernizing the existing application. That's one workstream. But, at the same time, you want to move to more cloud-native applications. So, we're really bring that, best of both worlds to the customer base. >> And, I think too, I mean we announced the relationship formally last October and it was really based on the fact that we had a shared vision that, while everybody wants to use the cloud, they didn't always have to think they had to refactor their applications or lift and shift and there's definitely use cases to do that. But, also, we had this vision that they wanted to be able to adopt the cloud at their own pace. Maybe give traditional applications a facelift with powerful services from people like Google or maybe they wanted to use cool new development tools on the cloud like on Google Cloud and still have access to legacy systems. And so, it really was a marriage of the best of both companies. Sort of, Cisco's traditional enterprise discipline, sales and support, along with developer, cool technology, sort of the father of Kubernetes and also a very powerful cloud services from Google. >> Yeah, I would just say, like right out of the gate, to make it really tangible, this is the way to do CICD. For hybrid, period. And, if you're a developer today, learning, that's, kind of, what you know, you use Spinnaker and you deploy, that's what you're going to be able to do here. And I just really think that that's a really strong message from Google, like, we're very, very big into open source. And that resonates with developers and I think it really resonates the buyers of Cisco gear. I mean, developers are expensive, you want to free them up to do, abstract things away. And that's what we're doing, abstract, abstract, abstract, until you can get more velocity out of all of your investments, whether that's people, infrastructure, or your own time. >> Just one last thought on that is that while we're talking a lot about cloud native, working with traditional systems, etc., applications need to feed on data and so that why, it's really this perfect marriage with the data hub. Because now, whether you're aggregating data on-prem or want to reach out to, like, Google Cloud to get aggregated data, it really is the best of all worlds. >> Yeah, well, when we look at cloud, cloud really is much more of an operational model than it is a destination and it's the data and the applications that ultimately is the life blood of our business, that's what is important for our business. So, yeah, Lars, would love your commentary on what you're hearing from the developer side, from customers that they're moving here. >> So, just short, the data hub is basically a tool to manage those complex landscapes and get a holistic data landscape view on the entire data of your company. So, it's a bridge between enterprise data and big data if you want. And, I think a little bit more than one year back, we were searching for a platform that allows us to deploy the data hub on-premise and in the cloud and that's what we found with Kubernetes which is an awesome abstraction platform for us. Because we don't need to necessarily care now what is the native deployment, we just need to make sure that our application runs on Kubernetes. So, that's why the data hub is running natively on Google Cloud platform and especially Google Kubernetes engine. And it is running the same way on-premise. And that's enabling us to provide, let's say a tool that can manage those hybrid landscapes, the data landscape, in such a way. And that's why, for us, it's a perfect thing. On the one hand side, you have this stable platform with Google Kubernetes engine in the cloud, and, then, partner with Cisco to bring basically the Cisco container platform on-premise. So, for us, now it means just we have on all the different aspects, we have a way to deploy our software and then bring customers value in the cloud, on-premise and in hybrid environments. >> But Dave, I would love to hear your commentary on really how do customers get support for all of this. Cause, one of the challenges always was, well, you know, I build my temple from my application and then, you know, I need to test it out and it took a long time, you know. The old time, it used to be, "oh yeah, 12, 18 months, "no problem, throw a million bucks on it, it's great." Today, it's "I need to move faster." We're talking about developers. If it's not up and running and proven within a few months, probably you failed and you better move on or we're gonna look to some other group to do that. How has this dynamic changed? Walk us through the partnership, support, how do customers, from the application all the way down be able to turn and get from partners like yourselves. >> Yeah, I think that, so look, the customers today want it all, right. They need to maintain investments, extend investments that they have in traditional systems but they want to take advantage of these new, really cool technologies like microservices, like, sort of, data hub, data aggregation and they don't want somebody knocking on their door and saying, "hey, I'll sell you anything "as long as you want to buy this." So, I think Cisco, along with its partners has evolved to the point to be able to align customer initiatives with solutions and it can never be just be from one vendor. And so, Cisco is working very hard to partner with people like Google and SAP to truly meet the needs of extending those traditional systems but also accelerating their application development, using these new technologies and getting them all to work together. So it really is a new way to approach the market. >> Just to second this Dave, so for us it was like, when we're talking on-premise, we don't have to launch like in the cloud. In the cloud, we have Kubernetes as a managed service. So, so far, we had to say when we go on-premise with the data hub that the customer needs to provide us a Kubernetes cluster. And this is a major challenge because the adoption of Kubernetes on the customer's side is, it's a new technology, right? It's not that high. >> It's not trivial to do. >> Exactly, it's not trivial to do, to operate and things like that. And now, we're providing a solution, a hybrid cloud solution that is a turn-key solution so you can plug it in to your rack, you push the power button, everything is up an running, and you can use it. And that's a major step even in the direction of adoption of Kubernetes and a major step in the adoption of hybrid cloud solutions. >> And I would add, I mean our engineering teams are working like side-by-side. So, essentially, you're are mutual customer here and, from a provider point of view, like, our engineers are working directly with Cisco's engineers to make sure that GKE is in-sync with Cisco's deployment. And so, as a customer, you can have confidence that those things are going to work. And you mentioned support earlier, Cisco's tack will actually support the front end of this and we'll support them on the back end. They work directly with our engineering team already. >> And they really kind of go hand in hand with your point is that anytime you get truly a valuable solution today, I think it spans multiple companies and we really owe it to our customers to integrate those things together. But, at the same time, they don't want to have to go necessarily to all three of our companies independently to get support or maybe ten other startups that might have components in it. And so, as Cisco rolls this out, we're working with these companies to provide that single point of technical support. >> Yeah, I mean I went to a session with Chuck Robbins last night for dinner and he said basically what all Cisco customers know is like Cisco generally gets things right, but when they do mess up, they will get in there and make it right immediately. And, I think that's what customers really, really love about Cisco and that's what we love about the partnership. >> And it's super important in the enterprise market, right? Especially important for enterprises. I mean, just imagine an enterprise running their critical systems on this platform and you need really someone who is there when there's a problem, right. And that's why this is a great partnership with all three parties. >> Absolutely. >> Last question, Bob, maybe we've got your event coming up in a couple of months, what should we be looking for from these partnerships going forward? >> Yeah, so, speaking broadly about Google Cloud partnerships. Certainly we do a lot with SAP, we do a lot with Cisco. I think Cisco already has signed on to be the top sponsor, one of the top sponsors of Google Cloud Next. Thanks Dave. We'll be doing much more with Cisco. I think we're also gonna do some stuff with developers. You know, we're in the Devnet community here. Cisco Devnet has like 500,000 developers. We totally love that and we're working on a couple things. So, stay tuned for that. And I think from our partnership, we're looking forward to showing some really great customer wins and having customers who are really successful. And, like Diane and Chuck were talking about, really bringing, kind of this cloud disruption. Right, disrupts in the business world but keep your IT as an advantage, right. Make it so that your IT can help you win more as a business. And we're gonna try to deliver more of that with these guys. >> Well, Dave, Bob, and Lars, thank you so much for coming to talk about the partnership. Cube will be at Google Cloud Next in July and the future is so bright for cloud, we better wear shades. So, I'm Stu Miniman, thanks so much for watching The Cube.