(bright upbeat music) >> Hey, good morning from Las Vegas. It's Lisa Martin and Paul Gillin here. We are on day three of AWS re:Invent. We started Monday night, we went all day yesterday, we are going all day today and all day tomorrow. The amount of content coming at you from theCUBE, great, interesting, fascinating conversations with AWS, its customers, its ecosystem partners is incredible. Paul, what's your take so far on re:Invent? We've been here two and a half days. >> Well, it's just a fire hose. Like I've said before, this morning's keynote was about was about ML, machine learning and AI, and I stopped counting at 15 new announcements during about a 90 minute keynote, it's just one thing after another. And that's the nature of re:Invent, you know? It's always a showcase for new stuff. And they talk about customers, you talk about customers, I love it when we have a chance to talk to customers on theCUBE as we are about to do. >> We are about to talk to one of the nation's leading digital banks, you know them well, Capital One. Please welcome, Lo Li, Managing Vice President of Customer Digital Experience and Payments. Thank you so much, Lo, for joining us. >> Why, thank you, I'm glad to be here. >> Talk a little bit about your role where it fits within the organization, what it encompasses? >> Sure, yeah. So, I lead the retail bank technology organization which is a form of, you know, we have teams that lead digital experiences for our consumers. We look after agent in-person experiences with their cafes in branches, our call centers and as well as of our MarTech and payments ecosystem. >> So you're new to Capital One, in the last less than a year, you know, we all know it, we love it, we know the tagline, what's in your wallet? I think we can all recite that. It's as I said in the opening, it's one of the nation's leading digital banks and technology is really core to its business strategy and delivering value to customers. What attracted you to Capital One and talk about it really as a digital bank that delivers all that value. >> Of course. Yeah, so, you know, I spent 20 years of my career in a digital space in retail, and fashion and hospitality. And that is what I love about IT and the industry that I'm in and what I do, which is bringing really great solutions and products to consumers and getting them excited about an experience and a brand. So I knew early on in my career I was attracted to really great brands and brands that wanted to innovate and disrupt the consumer space. So when Capital One gave me an opportunity, I couldn't be happier, right? This is an incredible bank, we have an incredible story, we're a young bank and yet we are very much on the leading edge of a digital bank experience. >> And you were in an interesting place because as we know retail banking is declining or at least bank branches are in decline. More and more people want to do their banking on their mobile apps or through their computers, particularly younger customers. And so you're having to manage all this, what are you doing? How are you tracking to these demographic changes accelerated by the pandemic and recreating the customer experience through multiple channels? >> Yeah, great question. We want to give our consumers an omnichannel experience irrespective of, you know, the few that still want to go into branches or perhaps they want to experience a cafe, and while there meet with one of our branch ambassadors to talk about their banking, we have consumers that want to go digital. So what we do is that we make sure that we're looking after the consumer holistically, irrespective of the channel. So whether they call into the call center because they need servicing or if they're physically present or they want to carry that on digitally, we make sure that we create super personalized custom experiences. We also work with a bunch of designers that are thinking through, you know, the life of a consumer now and their relationship to a bank. It is, to your point, it is no longer a branch, you know? That is a ubiquitous experience that we're by large knowing that we have to figure out and rethink. So, we're very lucky to have great designers that work with us and work on what is that experience that we want our consumers to have, from the pastries and the coffee, and the experience of being with an ambassador and how we can lead them through our iPads and digital experiences to continue to stay with us and for us to service them. >> You know, if we think about how much banking has changed especially in the last couple of years, when suddenly you couldn't get into a branch, even if you wanted to, it's amazing how we have this expectation that on my phone I can do any transaction I want in real time, I'm going to be able to see my balance, I can transfer money, I can make a payment. And we don't think about the technology on the back end but it's absolutely critical to powering that experience. >> Yeah. >> Talk about how you're doing that and is there customer feedback in that process? >> There is, but that's music to my ears by the way. The fact that you don't think about it tells me we're doing something really right, right? So first and foremost, we are super hypervigilant about security, that is top of mind, we are well managed. The cloud has enabled us to create these infrastructures that are highly secure, that are scalable and that allows us to really focus on innovation. So we use our mobile platform and our apps in that way, right? We know that this is a scalable, secure platform. We create really great products, we create very custom experiences for you that are relevant to you and your family and we create these digital products that are supposed to meet you where you are. >> But we certainly have, you know, this expectation that I'm going to get what I want, it's going to be relevant, it's going to be timely. If not, I'm going to pick up, not the phone, I'm going to go on social media and make a complaint. So from a brand reputation perspective, you guys, what you're doing is clearly going in the right direction. >> Yeah, yeah. Look, we take our bank voice and the voice of the customer extremely seriously. So, we have a really large infrastructure from a bank operations perspective. We have our bank voice agents that work with us that give us kind of really real-time feedback from our customers. You know, by the time you pick up the phone and call usually something has gone really wrong, right? So, we make sure that we stay lockstep with what our first level agents are hearing. Then we also look into our feedbacks, we have obviously ways to look into our mobile app. We look at all the reviews that we have and incorporate that into how we think about our product and how we invest and innovate on them. >> Before we turned on the cameras, you said an amazing thing. Capital One doesn't have any data centers anymore, doesn't have any mainframes anymore, it is fully in the cloud. Understanding that you weren't there in those old days but how does that change the way you think about new features, about technology, new technology developments for the customer when you don't have that legacy to drag along with you? >> It's incredible, right? Our cost efficiency, our production efficiency, how we think about going to the market now is really getting us to focus on the right parts of that product. We don't have to carry a lot of the technical debt, we don't carry that old infrastructure. So the way we develop, the way we design, the way we go to market is a lot faster than it ever was. >> Well, and the culture is there, the cultural mindset is there to be able to do that. I mean, if you think about who you compete with some of these institutions that have been around for a hundred years that also have to transform and digitize 'cause the customers expect it. That has to be a seamless process but their culture also has to be there because changing from being On-prem data centers to being completely in the cloud, it's a big change. >> Yeah, actually, you hit it, right? The cloud transformation is big, and hard and sticky. You got to move these workloads, you got to make 'em native, you got to deploy. But to your point, the harder part really is the culture, right? Because the cloud will then unleash productivity, it will unleash continuous improvement. It will bring product partners along the ride because they have to think differently about what they want to go to the market with, how they think about the cost of those units, how they think about cloud. So, you know, in my opinion, Capital One has done an incredible job bringing that entire, the entire organization along this cloud transformation including our culture, our processes, and our people. >> I know Capital One is proud of the work it's been doing in AI and machine learning. Can you talk about from the retail banking perspective, how is machine learning being applied to improve the customer experience? >> Yeah, well, you know, as you know, AI and machine learning is the heart of the bank, is the heart of Capital One. When we started in the early 90s, we were the only bank that was really trying to challenge how we use data to provide better products for our consumers, and that is ingrained in our DNA and everything that we do. So if you were to look at bank, we would start with, you know, from the time you are authenticating yourself, how we think about fraud and how do we capture bad actors, all the way to if you were to call into a call center, we use a lot of natural language processing models to make sure that we assess your sentiment, we give you the support that you need, and then of course, use that to learn more about how we service you. >> Interesting, I'm just wondering, do you think about Capital One as a technology company that does banking or a bank that is powered by technology? >> We are a technology company, and we happen to also have a bank. >> Lisa: I love that. What are some of the things that you've heard and seen at the show? Obviously, we're hearing numbers between 55 and 70,000 people here. It's crazy. And we're only getting a snapshot of that because here we are at Venetian Expo and the conference is going on all over the strip. But what are some of the things that you've heard from AWS that excite you about the partnership going forward? >> You know, I'll be honest, one of my happiest, proud moments, when we're talking about Lambda SnapStart yesterday, we actually, our team that is here today was part of the first beta of bringing in Lambda SnapStart. And we're super excited because it helps propel our serverless agenda. You know, we're continued to transform into the cloud. So, we have a lot of these partnership opportunities that, you know, make me super proud. >> Well follow up on serverless because to a lot of people, it's a concept that they don't really understand how to put it to practice. How is serverless a step forward? What has it enabled you to do that you couldn't otherwise do? >> Wow, a bunch. I think first and foremost, it helps us stay, you know, very well managed, security wise, right? It allows us to create automation and it takes away a lot of the heavy lifting that our engineers would have to do otherwise. And the byproduct of that is that we get to go focus on really fun, innovative ideas, and we get to go work on product development. We're taking a lot of the grit work of the management of the servers out of the engineer's hand and automating them. >> Banking, of course, one of the most regulated industries on the planet, has Cloud been able to help you in that respect? >> Yes. Yes it has. Look, we are in a regulated space which means everything we do has a ton of scrutiny, for the right reasons. So we actually built it into our design, so our design, our products, we design our platforms with security in mind, with the regulations in mind and make it where it's less of a thought, right? So, we obviously spend a lot of time from a risk posture helping our associates understand, really respecting the responsibility that we have to look after everybody's assets, right? Like it's, what a more incredible job than that? So, we spend a lot of time thinking about what is our risk posture, where is it, you know, from what you would imagine the regular scan vulnerabilities all the way to data protection. And now that we protect that data in Fly, like they're all things that is our number one job and we spend a ton of time focused on it. >> That's good, it's very complex but security is a topic we discuss regularly. We've seen the threat landscape change so dramatically in the last couple of years. Bad actors are getting far more sophisticated. They're leveraging the technology but when it comes to banking as Paul was talking about, from a regulations perspective, from an end customer perspective, we have this expectation that you're going to keep my data secure because nobody wants to be the next headline. >> Lo: Yes, that's right. That's right, and look, we are getting, we're getting smarter as well, right? So we are able to detect and monitor and go after the bad actors faster. We're doing it in a way that allows us configurability, it gives us time, it gives us speed, but at the same time we also work as a network, right? So a lot of our banks, we, you know, in some ways share a lot of this information to make sure that we're all going after a common enemy. >> Capital One recently launched a software company, Capital One Software, which is a relatively unusual move by a financial services organization. How has that affected the thinking at the company about what the company is and what other opportunities there might be outside of pure banking? >> Yeah, absolutely. So, Capital One Software is a very exciting new line of business. I think the team that is there is doing some really incredible, innovative work. But you know what's really interesting is they were talking about our new product SlingShot, it was born out of our needs, right? We knew that we needed to have better governance around our data. We created really great tools and it was very obvious that there was a commercial applicability there. And that is how we will continue to operate, right? As a bank, we're all in the cloud, we're all in in the cloud. It will give us the ability to start sharing some of these best practices. And I think the best is yet to come, I think we got some really good stuff in the pipeline. >> Lisa: Anything you can share in the-- >> No. >> Lisa: No? Tight lips. >> Tight lips. >> Excellent, well, last couple of questions. What's the main theme here? When people walk into the Venetian Expo and they see Capital One next to all these tech companies, what's the main theme that Capital One wants to get across to the greater community? >> Yeah, look, our mission is to change banking for good, it always has been our mission. We're very fortunate to be in a position to be tech innovators, and we're fortunate to disrupt, and that's what I want people to get out of it. >> Excellent, my last question for you, kind of continuing on this theme. If you had, you were going to have the opportunity to create new branding and it's going to go in the cafes and it's going to be like a little billboard inside about Capital One being a technology company that does banking. What do you think that that billboard, that sign would say? >> I think I'm going to stick with the change banking for good. I mean, that really is at the heart of our mission. >> Paul: It's a nice double message too, yeah. >> Yeah, with technology, with disruption, ultimately that's where our hearts and minds are at. >> Awesome. Lo, it's been great to have you on the program. Thank you for sharing what you're doing at Capital One, how you're working with AWS and also emerging technologies like AI and ML to really create a seamless digital customer experience. We really appreciate your time and your insights. >> Thank you. >> All right, for our guest and for Paul Gillin I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live emerging and enterprise tech coverage. (upbeat music)

(cheerful music) >> Hello everyone, welcome to today's session of theCUBE's presentation of AWS Startup Showcase, New Breakthroughs in DevOps, Data Analytics, Cloud Management Tools, featuring Okera from the cloud management migration track. I'm John Furrier, your host. We've got two great special guests today, Nong Li, founder and CTO of Okera, and Sanjeev Mohan, principal @SanjMo, and former research vice president of big data and advanced analytics at Gartner. He's a legend, been around the industry for a long time, seen the big data trends from the past, present, and knows the future. Got a great lineup here. Gentlemen, thank you for this, so, life in the trenches, lessons learned across compliance, cloud migration, analytics, and use cases for Fortune 1000s. Thanks for joining us. >> Thanks for having us. >> So Sanjeev, great to see you, I know you've seen this movie, I was saying that in the open, you've at Gartner seen all the visionaries, the leaders, you know everything about this space. It's changing extremely fast, and one of the big topics right out of the gate is not just innovation, we'll get to that, that's the fun part, but it's the regulatory compliance and audit piece of it. It's keeping people up at night, and frankly if not done right, slows things down. This is a big part of the showcase here, is to solve these problems. Share us your thoughts, what's your take on this wide-ranging issue? >> So, thank you, John, for bringing this up, and I'm so happy you mentioned the fact that, there's this notion that it can slow things down. Well I have to say that the old way of doing governance slowed things down, because it was very much about control and command. But the new approach to data governance is actually in my opinion, it's liberating data. If you want to democratize or monetize, whatever you want to call it, you cannot do it 'til you know you can trust said data and it's governed in some ways, so data governance has actually become very interesting, and today if you want to talk about three different areas within compliance regulatory, for example, we all know about the EU GDPR, we know California has CCPA, and in fact California is now getting even a more stringent version called CPRA in a couple of years, which is more aligned to GDPR. That is a first area we know we need to comply to that, we don't have any way out. But then, there are other areas, there is insider trading, there is how you secure the data that comes from third parties, you know, vendors, partners, suppliers, so Nong, I'd love to hand it over to you, and see if you can maybe throw some light into how our customers are handling these use cases. >> Yeah, absolutely, and I love what you said about balancing agility and liberating, in the face of what may be seen as things that slow you down. So we work with customers across verticals with old and new regulations, so you know, you brought up GDPR. One of our clients is using this to great effect to power their ecosystem. They are a very large retail company that has operations and customers across the world, obviously the importance of GDPR, and the regulations that imposes on them are very top of mind, and at the same time, being able to do effective targeting analytics on customer information is equally critical, right? So they're exactly at that spot where they need this customer insight for powering their business, and then the regulatory concerns are extremely prevalent for them. So in the context of GDPR, you'll hear about things like consent management and right to be forgotten, right? I, as a customer of that retailer should say "I don't want my information used for this purpose," right? "Use it for this, but not this." And you can imagine at a very, very large scale, when you have a billion customers, managing that, all the data you've collected over time through all of your devices, all of your telemetry, really, really challenging. And they're leveraging Okera embedded into their analytics platform so they can do both, right? Their data scientists and analysts who need to do everything they're doing to power the business, not have to think about these kind of very granular customer filtering requirements that need to happen, and then they leverage us to do that. So that's kind of new, right, GDPR, relatively new stuff at this point, but we obviously also work with customers that have regulations from a long long time ago, right? So I think you also mentioned insider trading and that supply chain, so we'll talk to customers, and they want really data-driven decisions on their supply chain, everything about their production pipeline, right? They want to understand all of that, and of course that makes sense, whether you're the CFO, if you're going to make business decisions, you need that information readily available, and supply chains as we know get more and more and more complex, we have more and more integrated into manufacturing and other verticals. So that's your, you're a little bit stuck, right? You want to be data-driven on those supply chain analytics, but at the same time, knowing the details of all the supply chain across all of your dependencies exposes your internal team to very high blackout periods or insider trading concerns, right? For example, if you knew Apple was buying a bunch of something, that's maybe information that only a select few people can have, and the way that manifests into data policies, 'cause you need the ability to have very, very scalable, per employee kind of scalable data restriction policies, so they can do their job easier, right? If we talk about speeding things up, instead of a very complex process for them to get approved, and approved on SEC regulations, all that kind of stuff, you can now go give them access to the part of the supply chain that they need, and no more, and limit their exposure and the company's exposure and all of that kind of stuff. So one of our customers able to do this, getting two orders of magnitude, a 100x reduction in the policies to manage the system like that. >> When I hear you talking like that, I think the old days of "Oh yeah, regulatory, it kind of slows down innovation, got to go faster," pretty basic variables, not a lot of combination of things to check. Now with cloud, there seems to be combinations, Sanjeev, because how complicated has the regulatory compliance and audit environment gotten in the past few years, because I hear security in a supply chain, I hear insider threats, I mean these are security channels, not just compliance department G&A kind of functions. You're talking about large-scale, potentially combinations of access, distribution, I mean it seems complicated. How much more complicated is it now, just than it was a few years ago? >> So, you know the way I look at it is, I'm just mentioning these companies just as an example, when PayPal or Ebay, all these companies started, they started in California. Anybody who ever did business on Ebay or PayPal, guess where that data was? In the US in some data center. Today you cannot do it. Today, data residency laws are really tough, and so now these organizations have to really understand what data needs to remain where. On top of that, we now have so many regulations. You know, earlier on if you were healthcare, you needed to be HIPAA compliant, or banking PCI DSS, but today, in the cloud, you really need to know, what data I have, what sensitive data I have, how do I discover it? So that data discovery becomes really important. What roles I have, so for example, let's say I work for a bank in the US, and I decide to move to Germany. Now, the old school is that a new rule will be created for me, because of German... >> John: New email address, all these new things happen, right? >> Right, exactly. So you end up with this really, a mass of rules and... And these are all static. >> Rules and tools, oh my god. >> Yeah. So Okera actually makes a lot of this dynamic, which reduces your cloud migration overhead, and Nong used some great examples, in fact, sorry if I take just a second, without mentioning any names, there's one of the largest banks in the world is going global in the digital space for the first time, and they're taking Okera with them. So... >> But what's the point? This is my next topic in cloud migration, I want to bring this up because, complexity, when you're in that old school kind of data center, waterfall, these old rules and tools, you have to roll this out, and it's a pain in the butt for everybody, it's a hassle, huge hassle. Cloud gives the agility, we know that, and cloud's becoming more secure, and I think now people see the on-premise, certainly things that'd be on-premises for secure things, I get that, but when you start getting into agility, and you now have cloud regions, you can start being more programmatic, so I want to get you guys' thoughts on the cloud migration, how companies who are now lifting and shifting, replatforming, what's the refactoring beyond that, because you can replatform in the cloud, and still some are kind of holding back on that. Then when you're in the cloud, the ones that are winning, the companies that are winning are the ones that are refactoring in the cloud. Doing things different with new services. Sanjeev, you start. >> Yeah, so you know, in fact lot of people tell me, "You know, we are just going to lift and shift into the cloud." But you're literally using cloud as a data center. You still have all the, if I may say, junk you had on-prem, you just moved it into the cloud, and now you're paying for it. In cloud, nothing is free. Every storage, every processing, you're going to pay for it. The most successful companies are the ones that are replatforming, they are taking advantage of the platform as a service or software as a service, so that includes things like, you pay as you go, you pay for exactly the amount you use, so you scale up and scale down or scale out and scale in, pretty quickly, you know? So you're handling that demand, so without replatforming, you are not really utilizing your- >> John: It's just hosting. >> Yeah, you're just hosting. >> It's basically hosting if you're not doing anything right there. >> Right. The reason why people sometimes resist to replatform, is because there's a hidden cost that we don't really talk about, PaaS adds 3x to IaaS cost. So, some organizations that are very mature, and they have a few thousand people in the IT department, for them, they're like "No, we just want to run it in the cloud, we have the expertise, and it's cheaper for us." But in the long run, to get the most benefit, people should think of using cloud as a service. >> Nong what's your take, because you see examples of companies, I'll just call one out, Snowflake for instance, they're essentially a data warehouse in the cloud, they refactored and they replatformed, they have a competitive advantage with the scale, so they have things that others don't have, that just hosting. Or even on-premise. The new model developing where there's real advantages, and how should companies think about this when they have to manage these data lakes, and they have to manage all these new access methods, but they want to maintain that operational stability and control and growth? >> Yeah, so. No? Yeah. >> There's a few topics that are all (indistinct) this topic. (indistinct) enterprises moving to the cloud, they do this maybe for some cost savings, but a ton of it is agility, right? The motor that the business can run at is just so much faster. So we'll work with companies in the context of cloud migration for data, where they might have a data warehouse they've been using for 20 years, and building policies over that time, right? And it's taking a long time to go proof of access and those kind of things, made more sense, right? If it took you months to procure a physical infrastructure, get machines shipped to your data center, then this data access taking so long feels okay, right? That's kind of the same rate that everything is moving. In the cloud, you can spin up new infrastructure instantly, so you don't want approvals for getting policies, creating rules, all that stuff that Sanjeev was talking about, that being slow is a huge, huge problem. So this is a very common environment that we see where they're trying to do that kind of thing. And then, for replatforming, again, they've been building these roles and processes and policies for 20 years. What they don't want to do is take 20 years to go migrate all that stuff into the cloud, right? That's probably an experience nobody wants to repeat, and frankly for many of them, people who did it originally may or may not be involved in this kind of effort. So we work with a lot of companies like that, they have their, they want stability, they got to have the business running as normal, they got to get moving into the new infrastructure, doing it in a new way that, you know, with all the kind of lessons learned, so, as Sanjeev said, one of these big banks that we work with, that classical story of on-premise data warehousing, maybe a little bit of Hadoop, moved onto AWS, S3, Snowflake, that kind of setup, extremely intricate policies, but let's go reimagine how we can do this faster, right? What we like to talk about is, you're an organization, you need a design that, if you onboarded 1000 more data users, that's got to be way, way easier than the first 10 you onboarded, right? You got to get it to be easier over time, in a really, really significant way. >> Talk about the data authorization safety factor, because I can almost imagine all the intricacies of these different tools creates specialism amongst people who operate them. And each one might have their own little authorization nuance. Trend is not to have that siloed mentality. What's your take on clients that want to just "Hey, you know what? I want to have the maximum agility, but I don't want to get caught in the weeds on some of these tripwires around access and authorization." >> Yeah, absolutely, I think it's real important to get the balance of it, right? Because if you are an enterprise, or if you have diversive teams, you want them to have the ability to use tools as best of breed for their purpose, right? But you don't want to have it be so that every tool has its own access and provisioning and whatever, that's definitely going to be a security, or at least, a lot of friction for you to get things going. So we think about that really hard, I think we've seen great success with things like SSO and Okta, right? Unifying authentication. We think there's a very, very similar thing about to happen with authorization. You want that single control plane that can integrate with all the tools, and still get the best of what you need, but it's much, much easier (indistinct). >> Okta's a great example, if people don't want to build their own thing and just go with that, same with what you guys are doing. That seems to be the dots that are connecting you, Sanjeev. The ease of use, but yet the stability factor. >> Right. Yeah, because John, today I may want to bring up a SQL editor to go into Snowflake, just as an example. Tomorrow, I may want to use the Azure Bot, you know? I may not even want to go to Snowflake, I may want to go to an underlying piece of data, or I may use Power BI, you know, for some reason, and come from Azure side, so the point is that, unless we are able to control, in some sort of a centralized manner, we will not get that consistency. And security you know is all or nothing. You cannot say "Well, I secured my Snowflake, but if you come through HTFS, Hadoop, or some, you know, that is outside of my realm, or my scope," what's the point? So that is why it is really important to have a watertight way, in fact I'm using just a few examples, maybe tomorrow I decide to use a data catalog, or I use Denodo as my data virtualization and I run a query. I'm the same identity, but I'm using different tools. I may use it from home, over VPN, or I may use it from the office, so you want this kind of flexibility, all encompassed in a policy, rather than a separate rule if you do this and this, if you do that, because then you end up with literally thousands of rules. >> And it's never going to stop, either, it's like fashion, the next tool's going to come out, it's going to be cool, and people are going to want to use it, again, you don't want to have to then move the train from the compliance side this way or that way, it's a lot of hassle, right? So we have that one capability, you can bring on new things pretty quickly. Nong, am I getting it right, this is kind of like the trend, that you're going to see more and more tools and/or things that are relevant or, certain use cases that might justify it, but yet, AppSec review, compliance review, I mean, good luck with that, right? >> Yeah, absolutely, I mean we certainly expect tools to continue to get more and more diverse, and better, right? Most innovation in the data space, and I think we... This is a great time for that, a lot of things that need to happen, and so on and so forth. So I think one of the early goals of the company, when we were just brainstorming, is we don't want data teams to not be able to use the tools because it doesn't have the right security (indistinct), right? Often those tools may not be focused on that particular area. They're great at what they do, but we want to make sure they're enabled, they do some enterprise investments, they see broader adoption much easier. A lot of those things. >> And I can hear the sirens in the background, that's someone who's not using your platform, they need some help there. But that's the case, I mean if you don't get this right, there are some consequences, and I think one of the things I would like to bring up on next track is, to talk through with you guys is, the persona pigeonhole role, "Oh yeah, a data person, the developer, the DevOps, the SRE," you start to see now, developers and with cloud developers, and data folks, people, however they get pigeonholed, kind of blending in, okay? You got data services, you got analytics, you got data scientists, you got more democratization, all these things are being kicked around, but the notion of a developer now is a data developer, because cloud is about DevOps, data is now a big part of it, it's not just some department, it's actually blending in. Just a cultural shift, can you guys share your thoughts on this trend of data people versus developers now becoming kind of one, do you guys see this happening, and if so, how? >> So when, John, I started my career, I was a DBA, and then a data architect. Today, I think you cannot have a DBA who's not a developer. That's just my opinion. Because there is so much of CICD, DevOps, that happens today, and you know, you write your code in Python, you put it in version control, you deploy using Jenkins, you roll back if there's a problem. And then, you are interacting, you're building your data to be consumed as a service. People in the past, you would have a thick client that would connect to the database over TCP/IP. Today, people don't want to connect over TCP/IP necessarily, they want to go by HTTP. And they want an API gateway in the middle. So, if you're a data architect or DBA, now you have to worry about, "I have a REST API call that's coming in, how am I going to secure that, and make sure that people are allowed to see that?" And that was just yesterday. >> Exactly. Got to build an abstraction layer. You got to build an abstraction layer. The old days, you have to worry about schema, and do all that, it was hard work back then, but now, it's much different. You got serverless, functions are going to show way... It's happening. >> Correct, GraphQL, and semantic layer, that just blows me away because, it used to be, it was all in database, then we took it out of database and we put it in a BI tool. So we said, like BusinessObjects started this whole trend. So we're like "Let's put the semantic layer there," well okay, great, but that was when everything was surrounding BusinessObjects and Oracle Database, or some other database, but today what if somebody brings Power BI or Tableau or Qlik, you know? Now you don't have a semantic layer access. So you cannot have it in the BI layer, so you move it down to its own layer. So now you've got a semantic layer, then where do you store your metrics? Same story repeats, you have a metrics layer, then the data centers want to do feature engineering, where do you store your features? You have a feature store. And before you know, this stack has disaggregated over and over and over, and then you've got layers and layers of specialization that are happening, there's query accelerators like Dremio or Trino, so you've got your data here, which Nong is trying really hard to protect, and then you've got layers and layers and layers of abstraction, and networks are fast, so the end user gets great service, but it's a nightmare for architects to bring all these things together. >> How do you tame the complexity? What's the bottom line? >> Nong? >> Yeah, so, I think... So there's a few things you need to do, right? So, we need to re-think how we express security permanence, right? I think you guys have just maybe in passing (indistinct) talked about creating all these rules and all that kind of stuff, that's been the way we've done things forever. We get to think about policies and mechanisms that are much more dynamic, right? You need to really think about not having to do any additional work, for the new things you add to the system. That's really, really core to solving the complexity problem, right? 'Cause that gets you those orders of magnitude reduction, system's got to be more expressive and map to those policies. That's one. And then second, it's got to be implemented at the right layer, right, to Sanjeev's point, close to the data, and it can service all of those applications and use cases at the same time, and have that uniformity and breadth of support. So those two things have to happen. >> Love this universal data authorization vision that you guys have. Super impressive, we had a CUBE Conversation earlier with Nick Halsey, who's a veteran in the industry, and he likes it. That's a good sign, 'cause he's seen a lot of stuff, too, Sanjeev, like yourself. This is a new thing, you're seeing compliance being addressed, and with programmatic, I'm imagining there's going to be bots someday, very quickly with AI that's going to scale that up, so they kind of don't get in the innovation way, they can still get what they need, and enable innovation. You've got cloud migration, which is only going faster and faster. Nong, you mentioned speed, that's what CloudOps is all about, developers want speed, not things in days or hours, they want it in minutes and seconds. And then finally, ultimately, how's it scale up, how does it scale up for the people operating and/or programming? These are three major pieces. What happens next? Where do we go from here, what's, the customer's sitting there saying "I need help, I need trust, I need scale, I need security." >> So, I just wrote a blog, if I may diverge a bit, on data observability. And you know, so there are a lot of these little topics that are critical, DataOps is one of them, so to me data observability is really having a transparent view of, what is the state of your data in the pipeline, anywhere in the pipeline? So you know, when we talk to these large banks, these banks have like 1000, over 1000 data pipelines working every night, because they've got that hundred, 200 data sources from which they're bringing data in. Then they're doing all kinds of data integration, they have, you know, we talked about Python or Informatica, or whatever data integration, data transformation product you're using, so you're combining this data, writing it into an analytical data store, something's going to break. So, to me, data observability becomes a very critical thing, because it shows me something broke, walk me down the pipeline, so I know where it broke. Maybe the data drifted. And I know Okera does a lot of work in data drift, you know? So this is... Nong, jump in any time, because I know we have use cases for that. >> Nong, before you get in there, I just want to highlight a quick point. I think you're onto something there, Sanjeev, because we've been reporting, and we believe, that data workflows is intellectual property. And has to be protected. Nong, go ahead, your thoughts, go ahead. >> Yeah, I mean, the observability thing is critically important. I would say when you want to think about what's next, I think it's really effectively bridging tools and processes and systems and teams that are focused on data production, with the data analysts, data scientists, that are focused on data consumption, right? I think bridging those two, which cover a lot of the topics we talked about, that's kind of where security almost meets, that's kind of where you got to draw it. I think for observability and pipelines and data movement, understanding that is essential. And I think broadly, on all of these topics, where all of us can be better, is if we're able to close the loop, get the feedback loop of success. So data drift is an example of the loop rarely being closed. It drifts upstream, and downstream users can take forever to figure out what's going on. And we'll have similar examples related to buy-ins, or data quality, all those kind of things, so I think that's really a problem that a lot of us should think about. How do we make sure that loop is closed as quickly as possible? >> Great insight. Quick aside, as the founder CTO, how's life going for you, you feel good? I mean, you started a company, doing great, it's not drifting, it's right in the stream, mainstream, right in the wheelhouse of where the trends are, you guys have a really crosshairs on the real issues, how you feeling, tell us a little bit about how you see the vision. >> Yeah, I obviously feel really good, I mean we started the company a little over five years ago, there are kind of a few things that we bet would happen, and I think those things were out of our control, I don't think we would've predicted GDPR security and those kind of things being as prominent as they are. Those things have really matured, probably as best as we could've hoped, so that feels awesome. Yeah, (indistinct) really expanded in these years, and it feels good. Feels like we're in the right spot. >> Yeah, it's great, data's competitive advantage, and certainly has a lot of issues. It could be a blocker if not done properly, and you're doing great work. Congratulations on your company. Sanjeev, thanks for kind of being my cohost in this segment, great to have you on, been following your work, and you continue to unpack it at your new place that you started. SanjMo, good to see your Twitter handle taking on the name of your new firm, congratulations. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you so much, such a pleasure. >> Appreciate it. Okay, I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, you're watching today's session presentation of AWS Startup Showcase, featuring Okera, a hot startup, check 'em out, great solution, with a really great concept. Thanks for watching. (calm music)

>>from around the globe. It's the queue with digital coverage of AWS Public sector online brought to you by Amazon Web services. Welcome back. I'm stew minimum. And this is the Cube coverage of Amazon Web service Public sectors, online summit Always love. We have phenomenal practitioner discussion. Of course, public sector includes both government agencies, universities, education, broad swath, you know, inside that ecosystem and some really, you know, important and timely discussion we're having. Of course, with the global pandemic Kobe 19 happening. I'm really happy to welcome to the program Wei Li, who is a PhD and principal investigator as well as an assistant professor both Children National Research Institute associated with George Washington University way Thank you so much for joining us. >>Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. We're here. >>Alright. Why don't we start with Ah, give us a little bit of you know, your research focus in general. And you know what projects it is that you're working on these days? Yeah, >>sure. So, yeah, so hello, everyone. So our laboratory is many interested in using computational biology and jim editing approaches to understand human genome and human disease. And we're particularly interesting in one gene editing technology will be called CRISPR screening. So this is a fascinating, high for proven technology because it tells you whether one doctor 20,000 human genes are connected with some certain pieces fit in type in one single experiment. So in the possibly developed some of the widely used every reasons to analyze the swimming data has been downloaded off by over 60,000 times. So it's really popular, and right now there are a couple of going projects. But basically we are trying to, for example, problem in machine learning and data mining approaches to find new clues of human disease from the original mix and screening big data on. We also collaborated with a lot of blacks around the world and to use this technology to use this technology to find new cures and drugs for cancer and other decisions. So this is the basic all the way off our current research programmes. Interns off the Conradi 19 research. I think one of the major projects we are having is that, um, we noticed that Christmas winning and other similar screening methods has been widely used in many years. Many research adapted to study waters infection. So in the past 10 years we have seen people you are using their Christmas screening and our AI suite, for example, to study HIV is a car wires, best bars, Western ire virus, Ebola influencers and also coronavirus. So that raises an interesting question from us if we collect all the screening data together. But these viruses, what a new information can we find that we cannot identify for the single study, for example, coe and identify new patterns or new human genes that are that are common in responsible for many different viruses? Type of all, we can find some genes that I work only for some certain people viruses so more well, we know that there are a lot of drugs that target different genes, and we are particularly interested in, for example, can repurpose some of these drugs to treat different hyper viruses, including Kobe, 18 19. So that's the one of the major profits off ongoing research, right and left ready to call the idea, writing So India. And we hope that we can find some new new Jim functions that after that that are broader, really essential for different hyper viruses. I also new drug targets that can potentially treat existing a new drug existing and new viruses, including compared to 19 >>Yeah, crisper. Shown a lot of promise is definitely a lot of excitement in the research community to be ableto work on this. You talked a little bit about, you know, big data, obviously a lot of computational power required to do some of the things you're talking about. Can you speak a little bit to the partnership between computer science and the medicine? How do you make sure on that? You know, there's that marrying of, you know, the people in the technology focus in the medical space. >>Yeah, so I think, Yeah, my my research background is actually from computer science. I call her on the grand graduates from their committed size. So I know a lot about some of the signs and have arisen. But right now it's quite interesting because our research for focus half on computer science and half on their medicine. So it's a complete heart experience, but it's really super was a super exciting to connect both women in science and medicine together. So I think most of the time we are focusing on the coding and the average analysis on. But at the same time, we also spent a lot of time like interpreting the results. In essence, we need a lot off. Yeah, knowledge from biology and medicine to make sense, to make our results since and interpret double in the end, we hope that our results can be They went into a son, for example, canonical, actionable solutions, including new drugs. >>Yeah, it's if you think about you know, the research space. You know, often you know its projects that you're taking months or years to investigate things for talking about the current code 19 pandemic. Of course, there's a critical need today for fast moving activities. So you know what? What are the outcomes from the cover? 19 aspects of of what you're working on. What are some of the outcomes that we might be able to help patients survivability and other things regarding, You know, this specific disease? >>Yeah, So I think there are two major are I would say there are two major benefits from their outcome of our research project. So the first the first thing is that we hope to find some genes that have that can be potentially drug targets. So if they are existing drug second heavily genes, then that would be perfect because we don't need to do anything. Apologies. We just need to try that. Extend existing drugs Toe cabinet is James and in the end, we hope that these drugs can have the broad on the wire. I would say the broad answer. Borrow activity. That means that and you leave, for example, if these drugs can be potentially used to treat Cooley 19 and sometimes in in several years later in the future if there's a new virus coming out. Hopefully they were doing like they're it's already the drugs that target known Gene. Hopefully, that's there were assume the noon numerous that never happened in something the future. But I hope that when the new risk is coming, we already have the new drugs to track it this way. Already have existing drugs to target these viruses, so that's one part and the alibis that way. We have, like, spend a lot of kind of, for example, collecting the genomics and screening data, and we are hoping that our research results can be freely accessible around the road by many different researchers in different laps. So that's why we are rely on AWS to build up there to process and to analyze the data as well as to, uh, to build up an integrated database and websites such that are the outcomes off our projects can be freely accessible around the world. Many other researchers. >>Yeah, great. I'm glad you connected the dots for us. For aws can you speak a little bit too? Obviously, Cloud has, you know, the ability for us to use, you know, nearly infinite computational capabilities. What's specific about AWS helps you along that project. Uh, let's start there. >>Yeah, So I think our AWS really helps us a lot because we developed on average and process their screening data actually takes, like, two or three days to Christmas one data. But if you were talking about, like, tens or hundreds or even thousands off the screen data existing, the high high performance cross team doesn't really help because it takes maybe years to finish. AWS provides, like flexible computing resources, especially the easy two instance that we can quickly deploy and process in military short amount of time. So our estimation is that we can reduce the amount of Time Media 2% to process the poverty Christmas. We need data from months to just a few days. So that's one part and the other guys that we are trying to build up the website and database, as I mentioned before, with which we host a large amount of data. And I think in that sense, AWS and the commuting instance as well as the AWS RDS service really helped us a lot because we don't need to worry too much about. There's a lot of the details of the after deployment off their database and the website. We just go ahead and use that as a service is really straightforward and save us a lot of kind of effort. >>Yeah, and you talk about the sharing of data. Information is so important, But of course it would, talking about medical data highly regulated. So you know what's important to the cloud to make sure that you can share with all the other researchers yet still make sure that there is the security and compliance that is required? >>Yeah, so yeah, that's a really good question. So right now, we don't really need to do if the patient information because all the data we get this from the public domain, it's It's both on the human sound lines, not on human patients. So we don't have their concerns about the privacy protections at this moment. But I think in the future, if you want to integrate genomics state our reach, this screen indeed A, which is already in my research plan. I think the highly secure AWS system actually really provided a really nice for us to do this job. >>Can you give us a little bit? Look forward as to where do you see this research going? What applicability is there before? What you're doing now? Both. You know, as this current pandemic plays out as well as applicability beyond Corp in 19. >>Yeah, sure, I think I think one of their major focus off our current, The company in 19 project is that we hope to find some drug targets tohave the broader under fire activity. So I think in the future, if they knew where it's coming out of the estimated locally in the 19 we hope that we are well prepared for that. I think in the future they're sharing as well as collateral cloud computing. You'll be becoming more and more important as you can see that most of us are working from home right now. So it's really critical to require us to have the platform toe accelerate accelerating sharing between research labs and around the world. And I think many different. I think aws provides this really nice preference for us to do this job well. >>Wei Li, thank you so much for sharing with our audience your updates, really important work. We wish your team the best of luck and hope that you also stay safe. >>Yeah, thank you so much. >>Alright, Stay with us for more coverage from AWS Public sector Summit online. I'm stew Minimum And thanks as always for watching the Cube >>Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

>> Live from Las Vegas, It's theCube. Covering VMworld 2018. Brought to you by VMware and it's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back, this is day three of three days live wall to wall coverage of VMworld 2018. This is theCube, I'm Stu Miniman, and my co-host this morning is Justin Warren. How about I welcome back to our program two Cube Alum's from the VMVare storage and availity business unit. Yanbing Li, second time in The Cube this week, is the senior vice president >> Yes. >> and general manager of the group. And Christos Karamanolis, is the fellow and CTO, thank you both for joining us. >> Great to be here. >> Great to be here. >> Alright, so first of all, congratulations. A lot of news this week, a lot of excitement around it. And we're talking off cameras, there's so much there that people don't understand some of the work that went into this. And some highlights as to things that I know VMWare thinks will be very game changing over the next couple of years. So, we're excited to dig into this. Yanbing, why don't you start us off with a little bit of an overview from your group as to the news this week. >> Yeah, happy to do that. I think, so, we are seeing a lot of customer energy around what we're doing in storage and availability. You know, there's huge momentum behind product like vSan and our customers are truly embracing HCI in very mainstream use cases, and we've seen customer after customer have gone all in, meaning they're taking HCI and made a determination to run that for all of their virtualized workload. So, very exciting time. But what's more interesting is their expanded view on what HCI is about. Certainly, we started with virtualizing computer and storage together on servers. But we're seeing rapid expansion of that definition. You know, we've been a believer that HCI is foundationally a software lab architecture. I think know, there's more recognition in that. And it's also going from just computers and storage to the full stack of the entire software defined data center. It's expanding into the cloud, as you've seen from VMCI WS. It's expanding to the edge, expanding from just traditional apps to cloud native apps. You know, we've announced beta for vSan to become the storage platform for Kubernetes' Navisphere environment. So, a lot of exciting expansion around how customers want to see HCI. And if you look at HCI, hybrid cloud, SDDC, the boundary around these three is not very very clear. I think they're all converging to work, something that's very common. >> Yeah, Christos? I want you to help unpack this a little bit for us. I remember speaking to you a couple of years ago, and your team. We know how many years of effort went into, set the ground work for vSan. with the underlying things that arrived with the API's, and development with your partner ecosystem. Taking vSan as a foundation... Oh, it's going to work with Kubernetes and cloud and everything. It's not a simple port, like, you know, no offense to the hardware people, but putting it on a new platform? Alright, you need to test it, integrate it, make it a couple tweaks, but. The software level, there's a lot of things that go on here. Talk about what the team's been working on, some of the big architectural things that've been happening. >> Oh, yes, absolutely. There are some fundamental changes. We never stop, we never declare that we have finished what we are doing. Obviously, the world is changing around us. Not only the hardware, as you know. There are many important changes there, with NVMe becoming now very prevalent, and renewed aero-technologies appearing, like persistent memory. But, for us, a focal point the last year or so has been, how do we move our entire software stack data on being outlined earlier, into any type of environment, including public clouds? So, you see now, with a few more clouds in AWS, the customers can run applications there without having to re-platform them. It's the exact same environment. So, a keystone of that environment is the storage. How do you virtualize storage? How do you deal with any type of infrastructure? So, vSan was developed for physical devices, SS disc and magnetic disc, more recently NVMe. Now, what we want to give is the option to our customers to use the cost efficiencies of cloud storage. Without the those sacrificing the semantics, the properties the vSphere stack. So, we did a lot of engineering to make vSan work on top of EBS. So, it may sound simple when you announce it at the keynote of VMWorld, but it took lot of hard engineering to adapt a platform. vSphere and vSan was designed for physical hardware, do not work on virtual storage volume. So, that is just one example, there are more examples. For cloud-native use cases, as you said. >> Yeah, I don't think people quite understand the implications of that. The fact that you can use things in the same way in multiple different locations, the whole idea behind multi-cloud-- If you can operate it in the same way as you can on site as you can in whichever cloud you choose. For enterprises who are used to doing things one way, and have made big investments in VMWare, this just opens up an entire universe of opportunity for them. >> Absolutely, and you get the best of both worlds, right? You have the same operational model, the same characteristics I can run now on Amazon applications that use vSphere, ETSI, or the motion pictures that require cell storage. On the cloud, you do not have cell storage. EBS volumes can be accessed by one host at a time, and like stores that need the networks, and vSan brings those stores their networks and semantics, all in software of course, on the cloud. So, I can run my traditional applications, as well as some new generation applications. And for us, strategically, what we've done with EBS? If you think about that is one step into a much bolder vision where vSan becomes this common storage platform that virtualize any type of storage. Physical, or cloud, or virtual, so we expose the same operational model, and the same store semantics to all those who run these three platforms. And this is, you know, just one step. >> And it's not how you-- there is the common operation model that's very appealing to all the enterprise customers. But we are truly marrying the strength and the capabilities of vSan and vSphere and the VMR platform was what EBS uniquely provide. That's elasticity, scalability, but you know, we have a much richer set of data services that we've already viewed into the whole VMR stack. >> Yeah, Yanbing, you bring up some really interesting points. When we put our critical analysis hat on, when the partnership was announced. It was like, "Well, Amazon's got access to 500,000 "VMWare customers, we're going to start "getting customers comfortable with Amazon. Great, they can start moving over." The thing that really caught a lot our attention is, it's some of the Amazon services that are now coming to the VMWare customers. So, EBS is a really good one. When you talk about, you know, the database capabilities that Amazon has, that now I can do on premises, this is a partnership, a two-way street. Its not, you know, just a one way. Maybe speak a little bit about that maturation, and, you know, definitely want to get from Christos, also. There's questions about some of the technical ways of how that works. >> Yeah, what I'm excited is exactly what you described. This is not a one way street, it's really bi-directional. And the levels of collaboration is not just superficial. It's deep levels of integration and leveraging each other to strength, in terms of both technology as well as customer reach. I think that what make the partnership is, you know, people can see that is taking to whole new level. And Christos has been very deeply involved with the various solution architects, and when we examine how we take RDS back on Prime to a VMR environment, I think he can tell a lot more stories behind that. >> For us, actually, it was a great learning experience, I must admit. Because, obviously, we see strongly the desire for our classroom is to start moving from managing the low level, nitty gritty details of the physical IT infrastructure, which we were, you know, traditionally helping them to do, to moving up the starter. Many of them now, they want to have their own users, their own customers, internal customers, to run all those applications. And what are the most critical components of business critical applications? They are the databases, right? So, how can we make the life of our customers easier, how can we provide them the tools to offer data, databases, as a service to their own users? So, this has been our high level objective, and of course, our partnership with AWS helps us deliver some of those properties. >> Christos, I want you to go one level deeper for us. Because some people it's like, >> I'd be happy to. "Wait, RDS, that's, you know, the cool new databases "in Amazon. Wait, I can do something on--" Is that an extension, am I putting things back and forth? Those of us that lived through the virtualization were getting databases just virtualized took years and a lot of hard work. And, I can't just have a database spanning between these, and moving back and forth. This isn't, you know, -- We haven't broken the laws of physics. >> We have not, because here-- >> Help us explain >> What is and isn't possible today. >> Absolutely. First of all, let me highlight what are the main pain points of customers. It's one thing to set up your application and install it and run it. But then there are all the day two operations, right? How do you patch the software, the operating system, the database? How do you scale it, up or down? How do you, even more to the performance, how do you do data protection, backup, disaster recovery? Those are really painful, difficult tasks, that involve a lot of work from expert database administrators that they'd rather be doing some of the important things that address the business earnings, right? So, our objective is to address this. Now, to your point, how do we, you know? What about those laws of physics? How can we have services on the cloud and service on a premise? What we announce here, this RDS, Relational Database Services, on VMWare, it is a fully stand alone service that runs on VMWare environment on premises. There are no dependencies on the public cloud, you have your data sets on your own data centers, and this is actually a major requirement of customers. Whether it's for compliance reasons, or security, or company policy, we insure that your data stays in your data center, while you still get all the benefits of a managed database that you don't need to do all those, you know, little tedious operational tasks I mentioned earlier. Moreover, we support data protection using, actually, underlying vSphere features. Like ETSI and clustering, or even data protection by creating copies of your database in another available domain within your data center. And this is a lot of work that VMWare did to make this happen, as you can imagine. So, that's a lot of infrastructural work, but we support the full range of features that you get on AWS, without having to go over the wire and, you know, break those laws of physics. >> I don't think people have quite understood how profound that is. We're here at a VMWare show, I've spent a lot of time with developers, and the developers are going to love this. Because, now they can use exactly the same way that they operate in public cloud, which they've loved for many years. Being able to do that on site? The way application development is going to happen inside enterprises, where they want to keep it on site, they want to keep it under they're own control, they want their data secured inside their own data centers. The ability for them to do that, and still develop applications in the same way that they could as cloud-native? Cloud-native now means that it runs on site. This is going to be amazing. >> Absolutely. Our customers explicitly tell us that they want to consume, not storage, but data. Those abstractions that matter to the application. So much so, that they have been asking us already, "Hmmm, what is next?", right? "Can you offer us some of this new generation databases?", you know, "the Mongoose or the Cassandra's of the world? "Can we have some similar experience with those "because they're very painful to deploy "and manage in the data centers." So, I cannot make any commitment, of course, but this is an indication of how much interest there is in this type of services. >> Yeah, it really does show you, I think, some of the strategic intent from VMWare. And this is a very clear move for what is going to be possible for customers to actually be able to do on site, it's really quite exciting. >> And for us, you know. Our role providing all the storage related capability, and we've been strongly expanding our application footprint to cover the Hadoop, the Cassandra, the Mango DV type of application as well as containerize the applications. And, you know, we have introduced a lot of new capability or solution that address exactly like that. >> Containerize the applications, for example, against the announcement, I think, didn't receive the attention, that in my opinion, it deserved is supporting natively in vSphere, and with vSan, specifically, cloud-native use cases. Actually, we're introducing a controlled playing, and expanding our store's controlled playing, to manage natively, container volumes. So, now, the same way today, our customers can visit builders through the UI or API's, and have management workflows for virtual machines and virtual disc, VMDK's. Now, they can also manage volumes of containers. And, as you've heard also, we are working with Kubernetes being our main focal point and with PKS to support natively Kubernetes on vSphere, down the road. >> Yeah, great point. I wonder, since we're talking about storage here, you've talked about Kubernetes, we talked about what's in the cloud and on premises. Give us the updated view how VMWare views and how you're helping customers with-- Data can't-- I can't just move, you know, data anywhere, so. While it's good to have similar frameworks, and different-- similar tools there, but still, where data lives, what I move, how I move it, do I move it, how that whole, kind of, data locality is seen today? >> The answer, we have been very keen in defining what we doing in the broader category of data management. From data mobility to protection to analytics, and to life cycle management, the whole slew of that. And we've been starting by building a lot of-- First of all, our job is to make vSan a storage platform that can enable these different demands of data. So, we've expanded vSan's roll from purely from delivering block storage now to offer file, and down the road, object. Cuz a lot of the new data will be consumed in an object like format. And we've also been painting our roadmap for the broader data management, so. >> Yes, exactly. On one hand, we'll provide the platform for primary storage that serves all the needs of the applications, block, file, object, we may even consider a native file interface, actually, for zero data copies, since you were asking about the technical details. I'm very excited about that, you know. We'll see, some of these things will come in the future. But, then, given that you have the platform, what you are building on top of that is data mobility and data protection workflows that are driven by policies. The very first step in that direction is our disaster recovery as a service we offer for hybrid clouds. There, the new model is that, even how you manage your data is as a service. Not a traditional model of installing software and a hundred different bits and pieces that have to integrate with each other and operate. Very simple, you go to a portal, and you manage your data, in this case, starting with disaster recovery use cases. You specify policies, like recovery point objectives. Down the road you may also give the options for recover time objectives. And, also, specify, by policies, what of your data want to be archived and stay on your data center, what of the data can go to the public cloud through your, you know, the hybrid models of cloud model we offer. So, our goal down the road is quite ambitious in offering comprehensive, uniform data management across clouds, that goes all the way from the edge, your Motofy's, your oil rig, all the way to the enterprise, the Cassandra's, to the hybrid clouds. And data mobility there is, you know, using our data transport, our archival capabilities that are coming with vSan Native Snapshot that we also announced at this VMWorld. These will give you the ability to manage your data across all those environments. >> Alright, so, last thing I just want to say. It's interesting to watch this space because we say there's a lot happening under the scenes that people don't understand. I was seeing some research lately saying where AWS lives in the storage ecosystem. I've written an article, couple a years ago. They were the quiet, billion dollar, you know, storage company. And one analyst firm said,"Oh, they're number 3, "and they'll be number 1 in storage." Wikibon actually published a report this month talking about what we call true private cloud. And in our support where we look at the software ecosystem, Yanbing, do you remember who we had number 1 on the list there when you picked >> Ah, yeah... software plus the ecosystem around there for -- >> I remember it clearly, you said it's VMWare. >> Yeah, so, you know, it surprises some people when you look it there, but I'm sure it's no surprise to you and your team, I'm sure. >> So, you know what we've started with vSan is quickly becoming a big way of how all of vSphere customers consume storage. And certainly, that has been our initial focus. But what we are doing for the cloud, what we are doing for the next generation applications. I think we are re-imagining a lot of the things. And it's great to have people like Christos, who started this journey many many years ago, and continue to expand our horizon. Yeah, this is an exciting time for our business unit, and certainly for VMWare, and our customers. >> Christos, in the end, really appreciate us being able to geek out, dig into some of the really important innovations happening in this space. For Justin Warren, I'm Stu Miniman, still a full third day live coverage here from VMWorld 2018, thanks for watching theCube.

>> Hey welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE One of our favorite things to do is go out and visit a lot of the cool innovation companies that are all around us here in Silicon Valley. It's a real blessing to be here. We can do it. And so we're really excited to come here today to Nightscope. They are doing so many interesting things that combine software hardware autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence security a lot of the topics that we talked about all the time sometimes in the general terms. And here it's real. You can feel it. You can touch it. Don't try to not get over, it way too much. But we're excited to be here. We've got the founder he's the chairman and CEO William Santana Li of Knightscope. Great to see you William. >> Welcome a night scope headquarters. Good to have you here. >> Well first off congratulations on the recently announced funding that's good. >> Thank you. It's our fourth round of funding. So we're using that capital to scale across the country. We're now holding contracts in about 14 states and the companies are now starting to accelerate our growth. So we're pretty excited about that. >> So nothing do the whole history but kind of where you come kind of when did you start when did the first one get deployed. And now you're about ready to launch your fourth model. >> Sure, the company started April of 2013. When we started basically we got the first initial round of comments from all sorts of interesting folks.... Bill, you're out of your mind; This will never work; Security is not an investment thesis; You'll need 50 million dollars to build the first one; Oh and by the way it's too complicated; It's hardware and software you should pick one. And like most good entrepreneurs we ignored everyone and just did what we said we were going to do. So we deployed in the real world. Let's see, May 2015 was the first one that actually was out, operating 24/7, and that seems like so long ago but also just recently as well. >> But you really had bitten off a huge chunk of challenges, right, because you have the hardware piece and they're not only hardware, like a computer, but it's a vehicle goes outside it's in the weather. You've got the software piece, you've got the sensors piece, you've got the monitoring. So you did did bite off quite a chunk, and then you're really delivering it as a solution. So you know you're putting all these things together very much like the first iPhone. >> Yes, probably two comments: one, clients don't care about all that they just want their problem fixed. And so whatever it's going to take to fix that problem; in their particular cases it's crime. And second, I'm going X Ford Motor Company executive, spent 10 years in Detroit a little bit fluent in say large scale hardware outdoors. And for me these are lot easier than building a car. Let's put it that way. >> That's right, no people no glass No. No airbags. Things out. OK. But it begs the question how did you get to the design. Cause they're very distinctive. You know they do look like R2D2, some of the mid tier ones, you've got the stationary and this really cool Jeep-looking one back here. How did you come up with designs what were some of your initial thoughts >> Well first of all we design we engineer we build we deploy we support everything start to in-house. So maybe a little background we have a challenge similar to a law enforcement officer or a law enforcement officer and it's a command respect and authority. Shiny shoes stand up straight. But you cannot scare grandma you cannot scare the child. These are not military products so you need to be able to operate within society. So we spent maybe way too much time worrying about every little font every radius every surface color treatment everything else because part of it is putting that physical presence there to deter negative behavior. But at the same time it needs to be inviting enough to be accepted by society so that when and may are 15 when we first put the one out we were worried like what's going to happen are people going to go nuts or or what we didn't expect and ended up happening was a massive amount of robot selfies everyone's wanting to take a picture with the robot. So maybe put it a different way if you showed up today and the machines patrolling outside were painted black with red LEDs glowing with an ominous sound moving ten times faster than they probably wouldn't be sitting here talking. All right >> Exactly. I was scared by the white one when I pulled this afternoon. >> But we need to provide again that genetical presence and the turns it needs to be accepted by society. >> The next thing I think it's really interesting is the business model and I'm sure when you talk to your investors after they told you you were crazy for doing software to create a system then fracturing they probably said you know what's the business model how are you going to support these things how expensive are they going to be for a capital investment point of view. How about maintenance and ongoing upgrades. But you said forget that we're going to go as a service. So if you could tell us a little bit about that decision and how that's impacted your customer relationships. >> So we offer our technology and machine as a service business model so that gives you the machine the data transfer data storage analysis user interface. All the hardware software upgrades all the maintenance service everything one throat to choke were responsible. So one of the things we want to do for our clients is we don't want you setting up the robot robot maintenance service division right. We need. They're already busy. We've got plenty on their plate. All the security officers and our staffs. So we need to be able to empower them and not add more workload to them. So from a service standpoint that works well too. We're at the bleeding cutting edge of technology. If we were to offer it on our purchase type of arrangement let's just say I spent a lot of time in Detroit we could barely cover our cost of capital selling hardware. And that's probably not a good business model to go after long term. So if we can provide a lot more value to the client and then also retain the authority over the assets and be able to upgrade it. And as most technology around here in Silicon Valley it's better and better and better and better as Mercedes mentioned we dropped the software every two weeks on new hardware 3 6 9 months. So the clients continue to get improved technology and then from a security standpoint we want to make sure given the nature of the product that all the assets are under our control. >> It's interesting too I think that I think something that's not spoken about enough is when you have a services relationship with your client and I assume it's a monthly or a quarterly or whatever you structure your payment system. It forces you to maintain a great relationship. It forces you to continue to deliver value when they are you know writing about the feedback loop is the feedback loop is really important. >> So we signed one to three year long contracts and we had quarterly business reviews with our clients and we get to learn real time and we get real time input. So yeah after the transaction the contract signed that's when the work begins. When we get to celebrate we get to celebrate when our clients win. >> Right. So don't tell me the secret sauce or you can't tell me but I'm just curious as to where some of the real significant challenges are that people maybe don't appreciate is that the integration of these various sensors is the way that it moves. I mean what are some of the real things that make a nightscope autonomous security robot special. >> So as an ex auto executive I think self driving technology is going to turn the world completely upside down and I'm really excited to see all the massive amount our India efforts small medium large and extra large that have been going on. However we're the only company in the world that's actually scaling autonomous technology in the real world with real clients doing real work. It's easy to go build prototypes but you want machines running 24/7 in the rain. Cats dogs people cars trucks goats and sheep. And I don't know what else we've seen. That's a whole other level of engineering and fortunately we've been able to operate in that manner for a very long time depending on who you believe. Autonomous are self driving vehicles require a fail over a human one meaning 30 to 70 percent of the times the algorithms fail someone needs to take over. Despite what some people think there there is nobody in their right. >> And so we've got to we've got to be right 100 percent of the hype right. >> And 24/7 and you got to do a good enough job that it is going to pay you for it. Right. And that requires a different level of scale and a different level of discipline. >> Another question in terms of customer adoption. Well first to back up what you just said. I mean that's part of the benefit of your services model right is that you're getting feedback you get these things feel like he said as you've shipped them to heat and snow and this and that you know you're learning all the time so you actually benefit from that relationship too as opposed to just selling them something. I'm curious from the customer adoption point of view. What was the biggest hurdle that people just didn't either didn't buy it didn't expect it. I got great security guards before Mercedes told me that they'd turn over 300 cent a year. But you know clearly it's a new technology it's something new something different I would imagine there was all kind of interesting challenges to overcome. >> One is just a fundamental structure of our country. Most people don't realize that may be different than the Department of Defense. DoD has a 600 billion dollar budget. There is one person in charge. There's a massive industrial complex to build your new favorite submarine, jet fighter or what have you and they give the troops every level capability you might ever imagine and I'm fine with that. What I have a problem with is we have 2 million law enforcement professionals and security guards that get up every morning on our own soil and won't take a bullet for you and your family. And the level of technology that we provide to them as a country is certainly beneath the dignity of this nation. >> And so what I expect to happen is for us to give them the right set of tools for them to do their jobs much more effectively. The Department of Justice and Homeland Security have no federal jurisdiction over the 19000 law enforcement agencies and 8000 private security firms. There's literally no one in charge and there's basically been no innovation and space so when you ask me how you're going to get this into a clients hands. Well we basically took the thing that was on the movie screen and is now operating autonomously on your premises. Right. And that takes a little bit of gall to do that right. >> Probably the best way is showing how you can do as many videoconferences and calls and what have you but also bringing a machine to their premises and instead of having a discussion with just the chief security officer or the director of physical security or whatever it's like hey the robots here and 50 people come streaming downstairs and it's purchasing it's legal it's finance it's the CFO it's everybody who has a stake somehow of this new massive device patrolling their campus. So you get that by in that way and then now that we've got a track record of crime fighting becomes a little bit easier. >> So we've had in some cases of criminal incidents where a client is experiencing one to two vehicle thefts assaults battery you name it on the premises. We put the machine there and for the last year it's all gone down to zero. As was a Mercedes and mentioned earlier and that makes a big impact. Now when the staff says or the guards this area is so crime ridden I won't even patrol. Now this machines come here and actually made the environment that much safer. They're going to renew that contract. Right. And so the adoption starts getting stronger. Just from our own winds. And so we've now been in service and long enough they're starting to get renewals and renewals are based on merit. We had five break ins or negative things happen a month. Now it's gone down to 2 to 1 0. That makes a huge difference and it's extremely cost effective. >> Now what happens I just want to say it is a really rough neighborhood and your and your machine is patrolling in the parking lot. Certainly some bad guys must come up NATO with a baseball bat or something. I mean there's got to be a tough kind of initial reaction of some of these rough neighborhoods. I mean how do they respond. >> So you want to think of this as two different things. One these are tools for the guards to use. So majority of the clients are looking at this as adding additional capability a force multiplier to get really smart eyes and ears for the security guards to cover more ground and be able to do their jobs again more much more effectively in some cases the physical presence deters a lot of the behavior. So simply if I put a marked law enforcement vehicle in front of your home or your office right. Criminal behavior changes right. Most of these guys, and they're mostly guys, are literally just trying to get away with something and looking for the path of least resistance least resistance right. You walk up like you did today. You pull into a parking lot. I have no idea what this thing does. I don't know what it's recording like. I'll go. All right. And that's exactly what happens. And so clients get to see that that there is a net positive brand enhancing effect. So manufacturing plant a puts one in Kentucky is like hey this is kind of working. Let me call my sister plant in Mississippi. Right. And let's put one there you know mall a in San Jose decides you know this is actually working really well. These guys have helped us a lot. In one case for a different client we were able to have a law enforcement agency and issuing an arrest warrant for a sexual predator. Right. That's a huge win for us to be able to do that or there was a someone that showed up with a shotgun to basically steal someone's car. We captured all the video and everything else that nothing above 12 stories looking at the top of your head is going to be very helpful in doing gave the evidence to law enforcement. The guy was caught before he crossed the state state line. We helped the security guard apprehend thief in a retail environment. The list goes on and on and on. So you start having those kinds of wins. The next mall calls up and says Hey I heard things went really well here. How can we get a couple over here. Right. And that's that's where we are now are starting to really accelerate the growth of the company. So I would be remiss if I didn't ask the obligatory security question terms of getting act so. >> High tact everyone who wants to hack the machine they can't get a home. A little bit that kind of how's the communications work. Do they work autonomously. Do they work in teams. And you know clearly someone's going to sit outside with the laptop and on their second trip back to the parking lot. I'm going to crack this code. >> So we try to do a few things one because we don't sell these things outright. They're always in our control. Just as a basic advantage there. Second we change it often. So that gives us another advantage. Third the teams working on hardening a lot of the stuff making making sure stuff's encrypted encrypted and we only transfer a certain amount though we really need or don't need type of things and then we hire white hack a white hat hackers to try to hack the system and we make the changes accordingly. Everything as you know is hackable but we try to do our job as best possible to make these systems as secure as possible. >> So for the not-hacker, at the mall deployment, I mean how should people interact with these things how do people interact with these things in an environment where it's not necessarily the security guard who is trained and knows exactly what the capabilities are but just kind of in the wild weather be in a parking lot or at the mall I think is a bunch of stuff. >> First it's a kid magnet right. So parents can now explain in the real world why you should probably be studying math and science and yes which is an engineering is a really good thing. Second we're about to release in production a concierge's feature that allows a two way dialogue between the human and the machine. So you know walls closing in 30 minutes or where is Macy's or you know what jeans are on sale today. That sort of thing. You can also do that for authentication at a entrance for manufacturing facility. So let's say there's a K1 stationed at the entrance for a manufacturing plant of transmission parts 18 wheeler shows up at 3:00 in the morning. Compress the intercom button to a dialogue get authenticated. We have the plates we've got all the other signatures that we need. Digital or otherwise to allow that that truck in. All right. So there's all kinds of opportunities again to give the guards much more capability. So go back to the math. You have 2 million guards and officers trying to secure 300 million people across 50 states. I don't care what math you're going to come up with. It doesn't work. And by the way the population keeps growing and that taxpayers can't afford funding this stuff. You need something that's going to be the game changer in this is that game changer. Crime has a trillion dollar negative economic impact on the U.S. every single year. It's a hidden tax we all pay in blood tears and treasure and somehow society has found it acceptable that at these levels it's OK. And I don't know about you but I'm sick and tired of waking up every morning looking on my news feed to find some horrific thing happened again. And what do our political leaders do. We extend our thoughts and prayers. Hey listen buddy. No amount of thoughts and prayers are going to fix this problem. I've got a team of very dedicated engineers and patriots here working on trying to actually fix the problem so we have the honor and privilege to be able to do that every single day here in Silicon Valley. >> Well the the passion comes through Bill and clearly it's a very important mission and congrats on the new funding and I can't wait to see you deployed. >> Appreciate it. >> All right. He's Bill, I'm Jeff. We're at Nightscope. Check it in Mt. View, Thanks for watching. We'll catch you next time.

>> Speaker: Live from Las Vegas. It's the Cube. Covering VMworld 2017. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Yeah we're here live the Cube coverage at VMworld 2017. Behind us is the floor of the VMvillage. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. Our next two guest Beth Phalen who's the President and General Manager of Data Protection Division at Dell EMC and Yanbing Li who's the Senior Vice President General Management with Storage and Availability at VMware, vSAN, all the greatness; Welcome back to the Cube. Great to see you guys. >> Yeah, great to see you. >> Got the heavy hitters here, data protection, AWS lot of great relationships synergies happening. >> Yeah. >> Give us the update. >> Yeah well go ahead yeah. >> We've been working together for a long time but recently we've really amped it up to the next level. Great discussions around enabling data protection for vSAN and as announced this week you know with Dell EMC will be first vendor to have data protection for VMware cloud on AWS. So it's a really exciting time to be here and I've been in this business for a long time. This is the best VMworld that I've seen so far and so it's just really great to be here with Yanbing. >> It's been very cohesive, I want to just stay on that for a second. This is the big milestone for VMware. >> It is. >> To have this shipping of the general availability especially with on the heels of the vCloud Air and all that controversy. Andy Jassy's on stage from Amazon web services. >> Yeah. >> Really kind of looking right at the audience and saying we got your back, this is a real deal, and the bridge to the future. I'm paraphrasing, he didn't say those exact words. >> Yeah yeah yeah. >> How do you get that data protection? Because that data protection in the cloud is hard. >> Yeah, well the nice thing is that since we've got all of our data protection running in a cloud environment now we could then use that to build the connections with VMC. So we had Data Domain Virtual Edition running, we have Data Protection Suite running in the cloud. So people can use the same technology they used on prem but now in AWS in conjunction with VMC. >> So you kind have hyper converged infrastructure meets cloud data protection. Yanbing, what is the difference? I mean what's the requirement of hyper converged infrastructure data protection? How does it differ from traditional storage and how is it evolving? >> Ah, great questions you know Beth and I we've known each other for quite a few years. I have to say our relationship hasn't been, you know, this close is and it's getting closer and closer. So coming back to your question in terms of hyper converged infrastructure. We're seeing two fundamental shifts around data protection. One is, the blurring of the boundary between backup and DR and these two really coming together as unified data protection. I think there has been a lot of discussion around this for a long time but this become even more compelling; now we talk about hyper converged infrastructure where you know our customers they so enjoy the benefit of having compute and storage combined together in a common management experience, they're looking for the same for data protection. So we're really seeing customers want to see data protection as a feature of hyper converged, as a capability that's part of that rather than yet another silo they have to manage separately. You know they want policy that manage storage, compute, and backup and DR altogether. So that's why you know that's really drive our partnership so much closer. >> You know it's interesting many of the clients that we've worked with over the years they'll have a backup strategy but they don't really have a DR strategy and they sleep with one eye open at night and they're afraid to go to the board because it's so expensive, it's expensive insurance. So you're seeing that there, sounds like they're blending those 2 together kind of killing 2 birds with one stone. Are there trade offs or things that customers should think about in that regard? How do they sort of go from where they are today which is sort of a backup bolt on to that integrated DR and backup? >> I think one of the key is the technology that we're leveraging now and we leverage something that has like CDP continuous data protection you can use that one to have data path to the secondary storage and you can use that same code to also initiate disaster recovery with near 0 RPO and RTO. So another thing that we announced this week is with our DPS for apps next edition that we now have hypervisor direct back up and what that means is that we're integrated directly with ESX and we are leveraging ProtectPoint through VM's to move data to data domain. That same technology is also leverage within RecoverPoint through VM's and so you can see the engine, the internal engine of the data movements, can be applied both to disaster recovery and to back up with different windows of RTO and RPO. >> I'm glad you said near 0 RPO causes no such thing as 0 RPO but you're seeing, more pressure to get as close to 0 as possible. What's driving that pressure and how are you meeting it? >> Well I think with all of us we know that an industry customers are expecting 24 by, you know 24 by 7 up time right. So they have many many applications that they need to have the confidence that if it does go down for any reason they're going to be able to bring it back up within minutes or hours not days. So that's really the drive for continuous availability. Getting as close to that as possible. >> If I may one more John, the challenge in data protection has always been it's, it's largely been a one size fits all and it's either I'm either under protected or I'm spending and breaking the bank. So are you able to through your technology and process improvements improve the level of granularity for different workloads that require different service levels. >> Two things come to mind, One, we're seeing more and more interesting customers integrating data protection directlywith their applications. Whether it SQL or Oracle and or the VM itself. So that's one thing. So we can custom the data protection to particular application and then on the second piece of that is where the different interfaces that VM offers we're able to do either V80P level integration or more fine grained integration like we do with CheckPoint through VM. So we are getting to the point that we can make different choices either application specific or something that is fine tuned based on the level of mission critical capabilities that application requires. >> I will get you guys perspective just a high level ballistic view for a second. We're seeing convergence of two worlds. The cloud native world that have no walls, have no perimeters they operate in a mindset of there's a security holes everywhere. Then the protections hard. >> They think of a differently. >> Yeah On prem the traditional methods, how are those coming together? Because you have customers that run VMware and do stuff with data protection and then one of them VMware in the cloud. What's different, what do customers need to know that are we on either side of that equation? If I'm on prem and I now want to use VMware in the cloud on AWS. How does data protection fit in that? Is it the same, is there tweaks, how they think about it? >> You want to answer that? >> In terms of on prem or VMware in AWS you know a big value prop is reading at the consistency in the operating model. I'm sure you have heard about this a million times said. >> Yes, talking about it all week. >> All week long. From data protection we're trying to do exactly the same. So for example VMware cloud on AWS, the very first data protection that we certify on that platform is from [Vast 00:07:39] organization is Avamar networker being the first set of solution certified and our customers definitely love the continuity of I already have the experience and licensing associated with my own prem protection solution and they want to carry that forward in today's cloud. >> So same operating module, so from the customers perspective I've been doing it this way >> Exactly. >> With VMware and Dell Data Protection, now it's the same in the cloud. No change in. >> Yeah I mean I think that's really the beauty of it, even with DDVE I mean you can have applications or you can do through different; You know you can have application in the cloud as well as another level of protection of your secondary storage. >> I think some of the changes probably not necessary. So RPD model consistency, Dave we touch upon, hyper convergence is driving a lot of functionality into a single control plate as opposed to these different silos and you know we would like to see that happen in the cloud as well and along that line you know best organization and my organizing are really looking at how we viewed the best next generation integrated technology that truly leverages the strengths of both organizations. >> That's simple and easy to use. >> Simple, easy to use, policy base, you know turn key solutions, so this is, you know what we're doing something pretty innovative by truly bring our engineering together and try to boost our next generation solution. >> Since the synergies that Michael was talking about when we interviewed Michael yesterday he's like look, the synergies are well beyond its expectations. Just it seems to be flowing nicely in the culture. When EMC had the federation there was always kind of like an interesting but now things are flowing differently. It seems to be smoother you guys. >> They are. >> Every action. >> I totally agree with what you said. I mean it feels different and I think as we go forward we have even more opportunities but we're not even a year into it and there was a distinct difference in terms of recognition around the joint opportunity and like you said the smoothness of the conversation I think is >> It's clear, it's clarity. >> It's really helpful. >> Well also you know, the rising tide floats all boats, well VMware stock as gone like this. >> It makes us all happy. >> Its got a nice slope to it. >> I definitely want to hackle Beth on that and the type of collaboration we're seeing between our two organizations, might be you is actually having multiple touch point into Dell and Dell EMC organization whether it's our VxRail and you know the vSAN based collaboration or the data protection angle and we're really seeing that happen across different functions. So we are starting from go to market collaboration you know how we provide the best set of solutions to our customers in joint go to market effort. vSAN is gaining a lot of free print in mission critical workloads and a critical requirement is data protection. So so we're doing a lot of joint solution, joint selling together. And really in the next step is that joint engineering effort leveraging the best of both worlds to build next generation products that's optimized for hyper converged, that's optimized for the cloud. >> For the software defined data centers. >> If I dial back a decade let's say as virtualization generally in VMware specifically saw its ascendancy, data protection totally changed. For a number of reasons, you had less physical resources but backup was still very resource intensive application and so; That's really where Avarmar came before. He walked the floor, back up and data protection is exploding again. It's like the hottest area. So two part question. Why is that and then how does Dell EMC with you know its large portfolio, its big install base, how do you maintain competitiveness with all that new emerging innovation? >> Yeah well I think the first question and I want to hear your answer too but what I would say is because the industry is changing so dramatically it's requiring data protection to change just as dramatically. >> Right. >> Right, so that is a lot of people are seeing opportunity there. Where is maybe, I've had people say, you know, well you don't really have to protect data in the cloud it's all stuff that's magically protected, I've had customers say that to me and I think that we're now beyond that, right and people are realizing, wow you know, just as much of a need or more of a need than it was before. So I think there's plenty of you know companies appreciate opportunity and they see opportunity right now as data protection evolves quickly to address the new IT world that we live in. On anything you would add to the first answer? >> Yeah so I think, several years ago VMworld feels like a storage shelf you know. I think there is still a lot of exciting interesting storage company but there has been quite a bit of consolidation you know. Software defined storage it seems like that market's landscape is becoming clearer and clearer and we're definitely seeing that spreading into secondary storage is now right for a disruption and we're also seeing that is disruption around secondary storage isalso impacting data protection software. It's not just the secondary storage element but you know extent to the entire software stack. I think it's very exciting and also thinking about you know what is going to be the economical benefit of cloud and how do we take best advantage of that and this is why you know our AWS relationship. You know we are rejuvenizing our DR effort. We have successful on prem product like SRM but we're seeing tremendous new opportunity to look at that in the context of cloud to truly leveraging the economy is scale of what cloud has to offer. So lots of driving factors to really revitalize that. >> It's a cloud show and you have no cloud. >> Okay Beth second part of my question is how do you keep pace, it's a pretty tremendous innovations going on, how do you keep pace, what are your thoughts on all that? >> So the really cool thing is because where you know we're Dell Technologies we have not only data protection assets, we also have servers, we also have switches, we have everything we need to build a full integrated stack which we now have without EPA. So within a integrated data protection appliance we have the best of data domain, we have the best of our software, we're leveraging also power at servers and dellium C switches. So we have everything that we need to build that end to end best in class integrated appliance and as customers change how they consume data protection to more like a converged consumption model or hyper converged consumption model we have all the pieces that we need to make that a reality and then to continue to move forward. So when you combine that with our relationship with VMware and the ability that we have to drive innovation jointly I have no doubt that we're going to be really moving ahead into you know modern data protection. >> Final question before we rap. R&D comes up, Micheal also mention and so do Pat, billions of dollars now are in R&D. Free cash was a billion dollars. Three billion for VMware. A lot of observations this week that we kind of looked and read the tea leaves one of them was at least for me was the stack a collision between hardware software stacks as IoT and servers and devices, you have hardware stacks and software stacks. Untested scenario certainly in vSAN; You see a lot of activity around untested new use cases and so it's going to put pressure on engineers. So the question is what's the vision for the R&D for you guys around data protection, because it's not just data protection anymore it's a fundamental linchpin in the equation of cloud >> Yeah. >> Thoughts on engineering road map I mean engineering R&D. >> One thing we're doing actually right now this week is we're restructuring our EMC lab dellium c lab back in Hopkinton to move to more of an open shared pivotal type environment. So you know it's clear that as we go forward doing things like pere programming on test driven development. You know enabling continuous always good known stayed like there is definitely advancements happening in software development that are accelerating innovation and so as we take advantage of that, that's how we keep pace with what's going on around us. Because you're right the number of things to get involved in is endless. >> I just want to point out before we end the segment you guys are very inspirational women in tech. I think you guys are amazing. We talk about the engineer resources. >> Thank you John. Your thoughts on the industry, as there's a lot of controversy in Silicon Valley and around the world around STEM and women in tech. Thoughts that you'd like to share to all the men watching and all the folks and young girls who might inspiration. You know it's passionate for us. >> Yeah, I'll start. So I think, first of all I want to tank the Cube for having such awareness in this topic and you know constantly featuring women in tech on your shows. You guys have been doing a great job raising the visibility women leaders. >> Thank you >> Thanks >> in the industry. Thank you. So certainly this is a topic very dear and near to my heart. This week you know we can still see not only our employee base but our customer base is heavily men dominated. But I think we're seeing unprecedented levels of awareness and attention to this topic in Silicon Valley and across the world. Really I do think we are starting to see much better transparency metric. We're seeing increased accountability in business and business leadership. So I think those and we're seeing a lot of social awareness I think those are going to drive a positive change. So let me give you a concrete example of fuzz for example things we do in VMware, we just gone through bonus allocation and compensation adjustment. I would get a report from it make sure, comparing the percentage of what we have done for the men population and women population and so you get a real time feedback in data and when we see the data is actually quite shocking hopefully we do see, unconsciously you know we may be allocating those >> Unconscious bias if you will. >> Yeah those differently. But because of those real time data and feedback we're good able to you know keep ourself accountable. So just you know this is no longer just talk this is a real data you know in the real HR practices that we are already building into our day to day practice. So I think I'm very optimistic, this will take time but this is you know we're moving in the right direction. >> Historical moment in the world if you think about it. This is super important time. The inspiration and also the young women out there too and also for the men. They need to be aware as well because inclusion includes not just women it's everyone. That seems to be >> Absolutely. >> In fact a trend we had an interview on the Cube and our Simpson who works for Mozilla she's doing some work for Tech Nation, she said they're changing it from diversity inclusion to inclusion and diversity. They're flipping it around where inclusion leads diversity cause they want to lead with the message of inclusion; >> Yeah. >> as a primary message with diversity. So it's not just the diversity message it's inclusion. >> Yeah. >> Love that. >> Yeah the only thing I would add would be the phrase "She can be it if she sees it" I think having people like myself and Yanbing be visible role models it's very impactful, especially for young women to see you know women in tech leadership positions. It's hard to imagine yourself in a role if you don't see anyone similar to in a role. So I think the more that people like us and our peers get out there and really put an effort into being visible. >> Do you see the networks forming more, I mean is there more action flowing happen. Can you compare and contrast just even a few years ago is it on the rise significantly? >> I think it's on the rise. >> Yeah I do get us to be involved in a lot of opportunistic situations, yeah. >> And of course your Twitter handle puts it right out there, @ybhighheels. >> Yeah. >> Right, your not shy about it. >> Yeah, there's nothing shy about it. I realize you know Beth and I, we are both addressed in very feminine way. I do think. >> Your capabilities are off to chart you to great and impressive executives. >> Society is increasingly more inclusive about their notions of female tech leader. It's not just one size fits all and I think it's encouraging us to show who we really are and the authentic self and I think that's very important for young girls to see because I remember when I was a young girl I didn't go into tech expecting I do not get to be who I am >> Yeah and that shouldn't reflect your capability of anyway any kind and that seem to be the greater awareness. The Google memo that went around as all of it so getting us some great videos on Silicon Angle on that topic. Again you guys are great inspiration. We love working with you you guys are great executives. >> Thank you. >> Its great content. >> Your welcome. >> We super passionate about it. We'll be at Grace Hopper for our 4th year we do that. >> Fantastic. >> As we show every year, we're learning more and more and we're going to do a podcast for guys too. >> Nice. >> Different angle. >> Love that. >> A lot of guys want to do what to do. >> Okay that's great. >> Inclusion and diversity of course; I need the help. I'm John Furrier With Dave Vellante Here. Live at Vmworld. More coverage coming after this short break.

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's the Cube, covering VMworld 2017, brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. (bright music) >> Welcome to VMworld 2017. This is the Cube. We are live in Las Vegas on day one of the event, a really exciting, high energy general session kicked things off. I'm Lisa Martin with my cohost, Stu Miniman. We're excited to be joined by two folks from VMware. We've got Cube alumni Yanbing Li, senior VP and GM of the storage and availability BU. Welcome back to the Cube. >> Good to be here. >> Lisa: And we've also got Matt Amdur, your first time on the Cube, principle VMware chief architect. >> Thanks for having me. >> We're excited to have you guys here so been waiting with baited breath, a lot of folks have, for what are VMware and AWS going to actually announce product-wise. Really exciting to see Pat Gelsinger on stage with Andy Jassy today. Talk to us about, as the world of hyper-converged infrastructure is changing, what does VMware cloud on AWS mean for, not just VMware customers, but new opportunities for VMware? >> Yeah, that's a great question Lisa. Let me get it started. You know, I think my biggest takeaway from the exciting keynote, a couple of things. One is private cloud is sexy again. You know, so we've been talking about cloud a lot, but there is so much opportunity and tremendous growth associated with private cloud, and certainly hyper-converged infrastructure being the next generation architecture shift is going to drive a lot of the modernization of our customers' private environment, so that's certainly very exciting. The other aspect of the excitement is how that same architecture and consistent operating model is extending into the cloud with our AWS relationship, and this is also why I have my colleague, Matt, here, because he's been the brain behind a lot of the things we're doing on AWS. >> Yeah, thanks so much, Yanbing, and I tell you, for years, it was like, ah, storage is sexy, storage is hot. Cloud's kind of sexy and hot, so we found a way to kind of connect storage into that. Matt, you know, a lot of people don't really understand what happened here. This isn't just, oh, you know, we're not layering, you know, VMware on top of the infrastructure as a service that they have. Last year, we kind of dug in a little bit with Cloud Foundation. Talk to us, what did it take to get this VMware cloud onto AWS, bring us inside a little bit, the sausage making if you would. >> I think Andy talked about this a little bit at the keynote this morning, where it's really been an incredible, collaborative effort between both engineering organizations, and it's taken a lot of effort from a huge number of people on both sides to really pull this off, and so you know, as we started looking at it, I think one of the challenges that we faced, and Andy mentioned this this morning was there was this really binary decision for customers. If you had vSphere workload, do you want them to bring them to the public cloud? There was nothing that was compatible. And so, we really sat down with Amazon and said, okay, how can we take advantage of the physical infrastructure and scale that Amazon built and provides today, and make it compatible with vSphere, and if you look at what we've done with VSAN on premise as an HCI solution, it's become a sort of ubiquitous storage platform, and it offers customers an operational and a management experience for how they think about managing their storage, and we can take that and uplift it into the cloud by doing the heavy lifting of how do we make VSAN run, scale, and operate on top of AWS's physical infrastructure. >> One of the things that I found was really interesting this morning was seeing the, I couldn't see it from where I was sitting, the sort of NASCAR slide of customers that were in beta. Talk to us a little about some of the pain points that you're helping with VMware cloud and AWS. What are some of those key pain points that those customers were facing that from an engineering perspective you took into the design of the solution? >> Sure, so I think if you look at it, some of the benefits that we see with public cloud infrastructure that our customers really want to take advantage of are flexibility and elasticity. One of the challenges that you have on premise today is if you need new hardware, you have to order it, it's got to ship on a truck, someone's got to rack it and hook it up, and if you're trying to operate and keep pace with your competition, and you have a need to allocate a lot of capacity to drive a project forward, that can be a huge impediment, and so what we wanted to do is make it really easy for our customers to configure, deploy, and provision our software. And so, one of the really interesting things about VMware managed cloud on AWS is that it's a managed service, so some of the things that, you know, we've talked about VCF and the things that we've done on premise to streamline physical infrastructure management is taken to the next level. Customers don't have to worry about managing the vSphere software lifecycle. VMware is now going to do that for them, and Amazon is going to manage the physical infrastructure, and that removes a lot of burdens and gives customers the opportunity to focus on their core business. >> If you think about, you know, Stu, you touched on Cloud Foundation, we were using Cloud Foundation to automate how our customer consumed the entire software-defined data center stack. And you think about moving that same goodness into, you know, the VMware cloud on database, and you know, really removing a lot of the complexity around managing your own infrastructure. And so that customer can truly focus on their value adds, through, you know, developing the next generation of applications that enable their business. It's been a great extension of what we're solving on premise to the public cloud. >> Yeah, I wonder if we can drill in a little bit deeper on this. So you know, most customers I think understand, okay, if I needed to set up a VSAN environment right, I got to get my servers, how long it takes, what skill set I had, virtualization admins have been doing this for a few years now, and congratulations, you've got the number up near 10,000 customers, which is, you know, great milestone there. Walk us through, you know, when we're saying okay, I want to spin it up. If I know, swipe a credit card and turn on a VM, is it as fast? And what is that base configuration, what kind of scale can it go to? >> Sure, so to start with, what was announced today for initial availability, you can come to the VMware portal, so if you come to our portal, you give us your credit card, obviously, and then you can provision between four and 16 nodes. So you pick how many nodes you want. And you give us a little bit of networking-related information so we can understand how to lay out IP address ranges so we're not going to conflict with what you have on premise. And then you click provision, and in a few hours you'll have a fully stood up SDDC. And so that's going to include a vCenter instance that we've installed, all of the ESXOs we've provisioned from Amazon, we install ESX, we configure VSAN for you. And it's basically like getting a brand new vSphere deployment, and you can start provisioning your VM workload as soon as it's ready. And then once it's there, if you want to grow your cluster, you can dynamically add hosts, on the order of about 10 minutes. And if you want to remove capacity, you can remove hosts as well. So it gives you that elasticity and flexibility from the public cloud. >> Awesome, so we're early with some of the early customers. I'm curious, do you have any compare contrast as to what they like about, you know, doing it the Amazon, you know, VMware cloud on Amazon versus my own data center? Of course there's things I could say, okay, I could spin it up faster, but I could turn it off and then not have to pay for it. What, are we at the point we understand some of those use cases to tell why they might do one versus the other? >> Yeah, I think lots of the customers interested in this new model are really liking that common operating experience. It has some of the flex of customers you've heard about this morning, you know, Medtronic for example. They are a VMware Cloud Foundation customer. They are running entire, you know, SDDC through VMware Cloud Foundation, but because they really enjoy that experience and that simplicity that brings, now they're extending that into the cloud. So they're also one of the earlier customers for VMware cloud on AWS. So having that common operational experience is a big value prop to our customers. >> And I think we really see customers wanting both, right? The customers, you mentioned before, the private cloud is sexy again. The customers who have a lot of workloads, that makes sense to run in a private cloud. But they also want the flexibility of how they can take advantage of public cloud resources. And so depending on the problem that they're trying to solve, they view this as a complement to their existing infrastructure. >> And I have to think, some of the services I have available are a little different. Things like disaster recovery, if I'm doing it in kind of that cloud operating model, a little different. I now have Amazon services I can use, and VMware announced a whole, what was it, seven new SaaS services which kind of spanned some of those environments. >> Yeah, so the SaaS services we announced, they are truly across cloud. Cause they not only limit to a vSphere power cloud, they truly are extending into this cross-cloud, multi-cloud world of, you know, heterogeneous type of cloud environments. And now, you know, you spoke about DR, and certainly for someone coming from the storage and availability background, you know, in terms of our, BU's role that we're playing in our cloud relationship, you know, certainly we are trying to provide the best storage infrastructure as part of our cloud service. But we are also looking at what are the next levels of data-related services, whether it's data mobility, application mobility, disaster recovery, or the futures of other aspects of data management. And that's what we've been focusing on. You know, we have lots of customers, you know, even thinking about what's happening with, you know, Hurricane Harvey, I still remember the Hurricane Sandy days. A lot of our site recovery manager customers told us, you know, how SRM has saved their day. We're seeing the power of a disaster recovery solution. And now with the cloud, you can totally leverage the economics and the flexibility and scalability that cloud has to offer. So those are all the directions we're working on. >> So we're coming up on the one-year anniversary of the closure of the Dell acquisition of EMC and its companies. Would love to understand, looking at this great announcement today, VMware cloud on AWS, from a differentiation perspective, what does this provide to VMware as part of Dell EMC, this big partnership with AWS? >> Yeah, so let me, you know, maybe take it back a step, not just the AWS relationship but really look more broadly, what we're doing together with Dell. And certainly, you know, starting with the storage business, we're doing amazing work around our entire portfolio of software defined storage, hyper-converged infrastructure. And the good thing is, as Stu pointed out, we're seeing tremendous growth in our core business around VSAN. You know, 10,000 customers, expanding rapidly. But we're truly firing from multiple cylinders of both consuming it as a software model as well as working with partner like Dell EMC, TurnKey appliance, such VxRail. They're seeing tremendous success. So we are extending into our partnership around data protection. This is why I'll be coming to the Cube with Matt Felon to talk about all the great things we're doing around data protection collaboration, both for on prem as well as in the VMware cloud for AWS. So lots of things happening in different parts of the business unit. So but coming back to VMware on AWS, I think we're thinking about leveraging the strength of our portfolios, say this is not just a full VMware stack, but there is some of the Dell technology IPs we're pulling in. So for example data protection, they're part of our ecosystem, being one of the very first partners, enabling data protection on top of AWS. Yeah, so Matt, anything to add? >> Yeah, I think, you know, when we look to what's made us so successful on premise, it's been that extended storage ecosystem of which Dell EMC is a huge part of. And we continue to see that value as we go to the cloud. Yanbing mentioned backup and disaster recovery as sort of the obvious starting points, but I think beyond that there's a bunch of technology that they have that's equally applicable whether or not you're running on premise or the public cloud. And the tighter we can integrate and the more we can take advantage of it, the more value we can derive for our customers. >> So VSAN 6.6 is now out. You know, any other things that we haven't talked about that you want to highlight there, and any roadmap items that you can share that are being kind of publicly discussed, you know, here at VMworld? >> So yeah, 6.6 was definitely a big hit, you know, with encryption and also lots of the cloud analytics and things we were doing has been really hitting, you know, the hard core of what our customers are looking for. So going forward with VSAN, we talked about AWS, our relationship with AWS for a long time, but the fundamental product-level innovation is happening inside VSAN as well. One of the big focus is really looking at our next generation architecture that truly enables the leverage of all the new device technology. You know, I keep saying, a software defined product is really driven by sometimes hardware innovation, and that's very true for VSAN. So at the foundational layer, we're looking at new hardware innovations and how to best leverage that. But moving up the stack, we're also looking at cloud analytics and, you know, proactive maintenance. I was just talking to one of our customers about what it takes to support, provide support in 2017. It's all these automatic intelligence, proactive, you know, you heard Pat talk about Skyline. This is a new proactive support approach we've provided, and there will be a lot of cloud analytics that's driving technology like that. >> I was going to say, on the analytics side, what are you hearing from customers with respect to what they're needing on analytics as they have this big decision to make about cloud, private, public, hybrid, what are some of the analytics needs that you're starting to hear from customers that would then be incorporated into that roadmap? >> So from our view, we're looking at lots of the infrastructure-level analytics. Certainly there is also lots of the application-level analytics. But from an infrastructure point of view, you know, to Matt's earlier point, customers do not want to really worry about their, you know, the plumbing around their infrastructure. So we're gathering analytics, we're pumping them into the cloud, we're performing, you know, intelligent analysis so that we can proactively provide intelligence and support back to our customers. >> I think it really, it helps customers to understand things about how their using their storage, how they're using their data, what applications are consuming storage, who needs IOPs, who has latency constraints, all that type of data. And being able to package that up and show it to customers in real time and help them both understand what they're currently doing and future planning, we see a lot of value in. >> Matt, I'm curious, one of the challenges you have as a software product is you need to be able to live in lots of different environments. Amazon is kind of a different beast, you know, they hyper-optimize is what I said. There's kind of misconception now. They're oh, they take, you know, white box and do this. I said, no, they will build a very specific architecture and build 10,000 nodes or more. Without sharing any trade secrets, any lessons learned or anything, you know, that kind of is like, wow, this was, you know, an interesting challenge and here's what we learned when you talk cause the challenge of our time is building distributed architectures. And I'd have to think that porting over to Amazon was not a, you know, oh, yeah, I looked at the code and everything worked day one. So what can you share? >> I think goes back to sort of the really interesting and tight collaboration from the engineering aspects. And it's really been phenomenal to see the level of detail that Amazon has in terms of how they operationalize hardware and what they can tell us about the hardware that they're building for us. And so I think it really highlights some of the value that you see in the public cloud, which is, it's not just about having physical infrastructure hosted somewhere else. It's about having a company like AWS that's understood how to deploy, monitor, and operate it at scale. And that goes to everything from how they think about, you know, the clips that are holding power cables into servers to how they think about SSDs and how they roll our firmware changes. And so from an engineering standpoint, it's been a great collaboration to help us see the level of detail that they go to there, and then we're able to take that into account for how we design and build solutions. >> Yeah, we are definitely taking all that learning into, you know, how to build cloud scale solutions that truly empower, you know, cloud scale operations. And lots of the operation learning, you know, that we get from this exercise has been just tremendous. >> Yeah, well one of the bits of news I saw is that VMware's IT is now running predominantly or all on VSAN, right? What can you tell us about that? Are there still storage arrays somewhere inside the IT? >> So we're extremely excited about this, and we have a visionary CIO, Bask Iyer, I know he was a Cube guest as well. So he's been really pushing this notion of VMware running on top of VMware. So we have 119 clusters, you know, 30,000 VMs, probably close to 1,000 hosts, and seven petabytes of data running on VSAN. And so if VSAN as a product doesn't hold up, you know, I get to experience it firsthand. So it's been pretty phenomenal to see that happen. We are also deliberately running a range of different versions of VSAN. There's, you know, some that are GA versions. There are some that are cloud edition that's yet to be made GA to our customers. So this really helps us develop much more robust software. If you see what's happening here in the hands on lab, that's being powered by VSAN as well behind the scenes. >> VMware's done a great job of leveraging kind of core competencies, like VSAN for the software defined data center. As you mentioned, 10,000 customers, I think Pat said adding 100 a week, >> Yanbing: Yeah. not sure if I heard that correctly. Wow, that's phenomenal. So as, and another thing that he said that was interesting, right before we wrap up here, is we're moving from data centers to centers of data. As customers are transitioning and really kind of figuring out what flavors of cloud are ideal for them, are you seeing any industries really leading the charge with respect to, for example, VMware cloud on AWS? Are you seeing it in, you know, we saw Medtronic, but health care, financial services, any industry specificities that you're seeing that are really leading edge that need this type of infrastructure? >> I think it's happening across many different industries. So tomorrow, I'm going to be in a session called Modernizing Data Center, but there is also lots of emphasis what's happening on the edge. So I have been exposed to customers from health care, customers from, airline customers, so we're going to be probably talking about examples of airbus 380, you know, the biggest airplane that's been ever built, and they have 300,000 sensors on the plane that's generating tons of data, and those data are being processed by technology like VSAN. And just, you know, stories across different industry. And I think that data center to edge story is very powerful. And this is also why the next generation architecture such as HCI make it happen. Clearly we've seen tremendous adoption in the data center. Now we're seeing adoption in the cloud. And I have to say, it's not just the VMware cloud on AWS. We have about 300 cloud provider partners to VMware that's adopted and deployed VSAN to different degrees. And now we're seeing it go to the edge. We have some amazing announcement this morning around HCI accelerator kit that is really providing a much more affordable solution to enable really edge use case. >> Fantastic, well tremendous momentum, great growth, we wish you guys the best of luck. Congratulations on everything announced today. And we hope you have a great rest of the show. Yanbing Li, Matt Amdur, thanks so much for joining us on the Cube. >> Thank you very much for having us. >> Thank you for having us. >> Woman: Absolutely. And we want to thank you for watching. I'm Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman, live from day one at VMworld 2017. Stick around, we'll be right back. (bright music)

>> Narrator: Live from Palo Alto, it's theCUBE, covering Women Transforming Technology 2017, brought to you by VMware. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Women Transforming Technology conference held at VMware here in beautiful Palo Alto, California. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. I'm joined by Yanbing Li, who is the senior vice president and general manager for storage and availability here at VMware. Thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you for having me, Rebecca. I'm so excited to meet you actually. I've done quite a few CUBE interviews. >> You're a CUBE veteran, yes, I know. >> But you're the first female host I got to talk to, so really excited meeting you. >> Well, the pleasure's all mine. >> Thank you. >> So Business Insider calls you one of the most powerful women engineers in the world, in Silicon Valley. It's exciting to be talking to you. VMware is committed to diversity and inclusion. We're here at a Women Transforming Technology conference. You're hosting the conference. Talk a little bit about your experience and what you're involved in, in terms of that emphasis on diversity and inclusion here. >> Yes, certainly being a part of VMware and certainly being a female engineering leader myself, this is very near and dear to my heart. My experience, actually involvement in women leadership initiative started many years ago when I was actually based in China. My career at VMware, I've been here for nine years. >> You led the Chinese operation for a while. >> Yeah, I was leading the China engineering operation in China for a few years, and when I was based in China, I started a series of women technology conferences in Beijing. So we started in 2011, and that quickly turned into an industry event, kind of very similar to what's going on here at Women Transforming Technology. So this has been certainly close to my heart, and I've been involved in starting the initiative in China. And when I moved back to Palo Alto, I have been part of the VM Women initiative. I was part of a dialogue circle, and this year, we expanded the initiative, or since last year, from just the women focus to now a much broader diversity focus and certainly being Chinese myself, I'm also representing the Chinese community at VMware. We have a Chinese VMware circle that create that community feeling for all the Chinese and Chinese Americans working at VMware. >> Can you talk a little bit about what you've observed with the women in China and the women here in Silicon Valley? Are the issues the same? Is the culture similar? What are your experiences? >> I think there is a lot more similarity than differences. China, there has been a stronger emphasis of women contributing to the society for the past 50, 60 years, so you see a higher percentage of women working. You see a slightly higher percentage of women in tech. But the issues are still the same. You know, how we deal with stereotype of women, especially how we overcome unconscious bias and how we overcome the lack of women in technology and lack of women in leadership. I think these issues definitely transcend culture and community. It was interesting, we hosted an APJ discussion on diversity. >> In China? >> In Sydney. >> Okay. >> So this was part of our APJ initiative. And there were tables of people from different countries talking about the women issue, the gender issue. And the simple question was, is there a glass ceiling in your country? And I guess every country's answer was yes, except for the country, the table of Japan because their answer was they didn't have a glass ceiling, they had a steel ceiling. >> Yeah. (laughs) >> But you get the point is, yeah, this is a issue that's everywhere. >> And did you find that your Chinese colleagues in China were as mobilized to work on them and to make changes? >> Yeah, I think definitely, you see that coming down from the leadership level. I think when you have initiatives like this, often sometimes, you have grassroot initiatives, but it's much more important to up-level that to a business focus. And I think that is what VMware is doing by starting VM Women several years ago and now extending that to VM Inclusion. At VMware, the leadership team definitely see this as a business imperative rather than just something we want to do good to the society. So there is a balance of trying to do good but also trying to do smart. You know, how we move the needle from a business outcome point of view. You know, we've been very open about our diversity data. We've been tracking them as part of leadership MBOs, so I'm excited to see the levels of investment and emphasis that VM as a company is putting on. >> As a leader, you are a senior vice president here. How do you make sure that you are, you're a woman, you're a Chinese woman, but we also know that we're not immune just because we're women to subtle biases, to discrimination. How do you work on yourself in your day-to-day practice as a leader and a manager? >> Yeah, I think it's... Along our career, we've seen a lot of things like sexism or how people apply unconscious bias toward women and certain stereotyped view of women. I think we've all experienced that. And just the, I can think of lots of examples on a daily basis. I was having dinner with a male coworker, which is a very important way for us to build strong relationships. >> Relationships, yeah. >> And as we were eating, we were mistaken as on a date. There's all these subtle things that reminds you somehow people see women not necessarily, even if you're having a business setting, they tend to not assume the same. So I think that's happening all the time. So my approach towards this has been recognizing that it happens and have a good way to defuse it because most people are doing it in a very unconscious way. And when you have a way to defuse it, you help have a positive impact on that person. Give you an example. I think for women, we are constantly introduced as a woman something. One year, I was speaking at an event, and when we were doing the rehearsal, a senior leader was introducing me as a woman engineering leader. So I just gently said, "Hey, look. "People can tell I'm a woman. "You don't have to say it." >> The dress gives it away. >> Yeah, and that made him become aware. Yeah, that's, the merit you're standing on that stage is not because of your gender or shouldn't be limited by your gender, rather than because of the message or the business or the technology that you're bringing to the audience. >> But that's not always easy for people to do, to use humor to defuse the situation. We just heard from Kara Swisher, the founder of Recode, and one of her pieces of advice was to be authentic, be genuine, be an original. Your Twitter handle is ybhighheels. I love it. I love it. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> But it is this mix of professionalism and femininity. Is that hard to do? Is it hard to pull off? >> It is hard, and I have debated over and over. Where I got my Twitter handle actually, one of my coworkers, my team members from many years ago said to me, "Yanbing, you're the high tech girl "in high heels." And I kind of liked it. It felt like very me. But there's been lots of people telling me, Oh, is that really good? Is that insulting? Or is that demeaning of the levels of the position, the type of job you have? And I actually felt otherwise. First of all, it is fairly authentic of me. If people who, I remember when I was leaving one job and my male boss was commenting, saying, "Yanbing, you didn't leave very big shoes to fill. "You leave very high shoes." >> Very tall shoes. (laughs) >> To fill. So I'm known to like high heels. And people, and I've also learned that once you establish your competence, this does not become something that is negative. And I've seen increasingly your colleagues or coworkers, people around you, want to embrace who you are rather than penalize for who you are, as long as you're confident about who you are. So I find that, yeah, having lots of fun with my Twitter handle. >> Right. Right, right. But as you said, as a woman, you have to also have proved yourself and that you are smart and just 'cause you wear high heels and you like high shoes, you also can get the job done. >> Yeah, and it's not just high shoes or whatever shoes of choice that people have. Yeah, and we are most comfortable and most successful when we are truly authentic to ourselves. >> Being who you are at work, at home, and in your private life. >> Yeah, yeah. >> So talk a little bit. The last time you were on the show, you talked about the hyper-converged world. Can you give us a little bit of an overview of what's going on in the software space and what you're working on now? >> Yeah, it's a very exciting time. Certainly as part of the storage business unit, a key initiative that we're working on is vSAN. This is VMware's leading product in a hyper-converging infrastructure. And what we're seeing certainly is this fundamental disruption that's going on in storage and data centers and infrastructure in general. And if you think about what is one of the highest gross market segment that's happening in a data center and infrastructure today is actually hyper-converge. As a market, this is quickly disrupting the traditional way of delivering storage, and it's growing at 60% for the next few years. And we as a business has been growing triple digits. Last year, we almost tripled our the size of the business, and we're seeing tremendous customer momentum and tremendous customer adoption and seeing hyper-converged is really becoming a mainstream way of delivering infrastructure to our customers. So a very exciting time. >> It is exciting, and yet, it's hard to think beyond hyper-converged because if everything then becomes one, what's next? What do you see down the pipeline two, three years from now, in terms of how businesses deal with their storage? >> Yeah, so certainly VMware are, being a leading infrastructure software vendor, we're going through a fundamental transformations of providing not just the best in class software for your data center, you know, how we modernize it, how we provide higher levels of automation in the private cloud but increasingly, there is a shift towards service-based consumption and cloud-based delivery of infrastructure. And I think the same thing is happening in the storage space. You know, certainly, with a hyper-converged infrastructure, not only we see a highly, high degrees of integration, automation, but we're also seeing the same architecture is extending into the cloud. And as we look at the cloud, we also constantly think about how do we take the value prop of just building the best infrastructure, the best storage, take that infrastructure plate now to an application plate or a data plate. And certainly, from a storage side, we're increasingly focusing on how we make data better managed, better governed, how we provide more insights through data. So taking that storage levels of innovation to focus on data. >> Understanding what the data is telling you and making that data work for customers. What are you hearing from customers in terms of what is keeping them up at night? >> Keeping our customers are all facing the challenge of how they keep up with their business demand. As we look at it, every company is now being transformed but into a digital business, and suddenly, the role of IT becomes so much more interesting and exciting and it's really about enabling business. And so, that put demand on how you deliver things in a much more agile fashion, how you keep costs down so that you can invest for really where the business value at is, and how you can ready yourself to adopt a new way of building your application for the future. So these are the typical challenges that we hear from our customer, is really to keep up with their business demand. And we are certainly excited to see VMware is playing a very vital role in helping solving our customers' digital transformation challenges. >> So the role of Silicon Valley looms large in our business world and also just in our imagination. What do you think the media get wrong about Silicon Valley? Or just, what do you think is the line out there that you wish you could dispel in the sense of this is not right, this is not the way it happens? >> Yeah, so I have lived in Silicon Valley for the past 20 years, except for a few years where I was back in Beijing. I decided to move back because I just feel for being someone in tech, this is really just an amazing place to live in. >> To be at the center, yeah. >> And it's definitely the epicenter. I have three children, and I just see how privileged they're growing up, being exposed in this very dynamic, innovative, vibrant environment. So this is what I absolutely love about Silicon Valley. But on the other hand, when you go outside the world, I do think it feels like it's almost like a little ivory tower. You know, there's so much technology, so much access, so much wealth being created here. Sometimes, we tend to forget life is different outside Silicon Valley. And so, I think having that perspective is very, very important. >> In terms of, you mentioned you're a mom, what do you wish for your children? I don't even know if you've got daughters or sons, but in terms of just getting back to why we're here, breaking barriers is a theme of this year's conference, Women Transforming Technology, what barriers do you want to see broken for your kids, for the next generation? >> Right, I'm excited. My kids, certainly being a part of Silicon Valley and being in this very dynamic environment right now, I think there is incredible levels of awareness in them about what's going on in the world. It was funny, I was just talking to my son. He's got a new shirt, and he's 13 years old. And I didn't know where the shirt had come from because I didn't buy it. That turned out, it's the first shirt he bought using his own money, and he bought a pink shirt. And he told me that he wanted to get a pink shirt because he wanted to break the gender stereotype. And I certainly wasn't thinking anything like that when I was 13 years old. And this is just being exposed to certainly what's going on in Silicon Valley, being exposed to working parents and being exposed to what's happening in the political arena, that led him to make a very interesting choice. And I have two 11-year-old girls, and I wish they can grow up, they love technology to begin with. Their Christmas wish was to build all of their Christmas cards using some online language. And so, we all got these electronic animated things from my girls, and they want to write video games. And so, I wish they grow up in an environment feeling when they have that social awareness, being female does not create a barrier for them to pursue what they love because they genuinely are excited and interested in technology. And I'm hoping that's the environment we're going to help create for them, but I'm also very excited to see, at a very young age, they have demonstrated levels of awareness that I certainly didn't experience when I was young. >> And just speaking about that level of awareness and you brought up politics and sort of what's happening on the national stage, so much about this administration really does go against what are core values of Silicon Valley and particularly in terms of immigration, in terms of gender issues, transgender rights, gay rights. Do you feel that Silicon Valley will take a leadership stance on these things and stand up? >> I think we should. We should because Silicon Valley has benefited tremendously from the success of our technology and success of our businesses. And so, with that, we have incredible power, incredible platform that's being. >> And a voice. >> And a voice, being created out of Silicon Valley. I think, yeah, we should play a role in advocating for what we believe in, just like VMware and other partner companies are taking a leadership position to advocating women transforming technology, the role women play in Silicon Valley and in technology at large. I wish all of the companies here have the willingness and you know, to really stand up for what we believe in. Yeah, so given the power that we have and given the influence that we have, not just in this country but all over the world. >> Yanbing Li, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a pleasure talking to you. >> Thank you, Rebecca. I'm so glad to have spoken to you. Thank you for having me back at theCUBE. >> Thank you. I'm Rebecca Knight. We'll be back with theCUBE's coverage of Women Transforming Technology here in Palo Alto.

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of IBM Think 2021 brought to you by IBM. >> Hey, welcome to theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2021. I'm Lisa Martin. I have two IBM alumni with me here today. Please welcome Briana Frank, the Director of Product Management at IBM and Jason McGee is here as well, IBM Fellow, VP and CTO of the,IBM Cloud Platform. Brianna and Jason. Welcome back to theCUBE. >> Thanks Lisa. >> Thank you so much for having us. >> You guys were here a couple of months ago but I know there's been a whole bunch of things going on. So Brianna, we'll start with you. What's new? what's new with IBM Cloud? >> We--it's just, it's been such a rush of announcements lately, but one of my favorite announcements is the IBM Cloud Satellite product. We went GA back in March and this has been one of the most fun projects to work on as a product manager. Because it's all about our clients coming to us and saying, "Hey, look, we're having, these are the problems that we're really facing with as we move to cloud and our journey to cloud and can you help us solve them?" And I think this has been just an exciting place to be in terms of distributed cloud. This new category that's really emerging where we've taken the IBM Cloud but we've distributed into lots of different locations on-prem, at the edge and on other public clouds. And it's been a really fun journey and it's such a great fulfilling thing to see it come to life and see clients using it and getting feedback from analysts and the industry. So it's been a great a few months. >> That's good. Lots of excitement going on. Jason talk to me a little bit about, kind of unpack the cloud satellite from your seat which is flashing in Jason's background as an IBM Cloud Satellite neon sign I love that. But talk to me a little bit about the genesis of it. What were some of the things that customers were asking for? >> Yeah, absolutely. So okay I think as we've talked about a lot at IBM as people have gone on their journey to cloud and moving workloads in the cloud over the last few years. Not all workloads have moved, maybe 20% of workloads have moved to the cloud and that remaining 80%, sometimes the thing that's inhibiting that is regulation, compliance, data latency, where my data lives. And so people have been kind of struggling with how do I get the kind of benefits and speed and agility to public cloud, but apply it to all of these applications that maybe need to live in my data center or need to live on the edge of the network, close to my users or need to live where the data is being generated or in a certain country. And so the genesis of satellite was really to take our hybrid strategy and combine it with the public cloud consumption model and really allow you to have public cloud anywhere you needed it. Bring those public cloud services into your data center or bring them to the edge of the network where your data is being generated and let you get the best of both. And we think that really will unlock the next wave of applications to be able to get the advantages of as a service kind of public cloud consumption while retaining the flexibility to run wherever you need. >> Curious station. Did you see any particular industries in the last year of I don't want to say mayhem, but mayhem taking the lead and the edge in wanting to work with you guys to understand how to really facilitate digital business transformation because we saw a lot of acceleration going on last year. >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's interesting cloud is fundamentally a pretty horizontal technology. It applies to lots of industries. But I think this past year especially with COVID and lockdowns and changes in how we all work have accelerated massively clients adoption of cloud. And they've been looking for ways to apply those benefits across more of what they do. And I think there's different drivers there's security compliance drivers maybe in places like the financial services industry but there's also industries like manufacturing and retail that have, they have a geographic footprint like where things run matters to them. And so they're like, "Well, how do I get that kind of remote cloud benefit in all those places too? And so, I've seen some acceleration in those areas. >> And one of the interesting things that I thought has emerged from industry focus is this concept of our FS cloud control. So we have specific control and compliance built into the IBM Cloud. And one of the most prevalent questions I get from clients is "When can I get those FS cloud controls in satellite, in all of these different locations?" And so we've built that in that's coming later this year but I was really surprised to hear every industry. And I guess I shouldn't be surprised I mean, every industry is trading money. So it's important to keep things secure but those FS cloud controls being extended into the satellite location is something I hear it constantly as a need no matter the industry, whether it's retail or insurance et cetera. So I think that the security concerns and being able to offload the burden and chores of security is huge. >> One of the things we saw a lot last year and along the security lines was ransomware. Booming ransomware as a service ransomware getting more personal. I talked to a lot of customers and to your point in different industries that are really focused on, it's not if we get hit by ransomware, it's when. so I'm wondering if that, if some of the things that we saw last year, or maybe why you're seeing this being so such a pervasive need across industries. What do you think? >> Absolutely. I think that it's something that you really have to concentrate on full time and it has to be something you're just maniacally focused on. And we have all kinds of frameworks and actually groups where we're looking at shaping regulation and compliance and it's really something that we study. So if, when we can pass on that expertise to our clients. And again, offload them. So not everyone can be an expert in these areas. I find that relieving. Our clients have these operational and security chores allows them to get back to what they want to do. Which is actually just keep inventing and building better technology for their business. >> I think that's such a-- I think that's such an important point that Briana is bringing it up too that was like part of the value of something like satellite is that we can run these technology platforms as a service. And well, what does as a service means? It means you can tap into a team of people who are the industry's best at building and operating that technology platform. Like maybe you've decided that Kubernetes and OpenShift is your go-forward platform as a business. But do you have the team and skills that you need to operate that yourself? You want to use AI. You probably don't want to become an expert in how to run like whatever the latest and greatest AI framework is. You want to actually like figure out how to apply that to your business. And so we think that part of what's really attracting people to solutions like satellite, especially now with with like the threats you described is that they can tap into this expertise by consuming things as a service instead of figuring out how to run it all themselves. >> Yeah. To that point. A lot of times we see really talented developers. I really like talking to incubation teams where they're building new and they're just trying to figure out how to create the next new thing. And it's not that they're not talented enough. They could do whatever they put their mind to. It's just that they don't have enough time. And they, then it just becomes, comes down to what do you really want to spend your time doing? Is it security and operational chores or is it inventing the next the big thing for your business? And I think that that's where we're seeing the market really shift is that, it's not efficient or a great idea and no one really wants to do that. So if we can offload those chores then that becomes really powerful. >> It does. Resource allocation is key to let those businesses to your point. We're going to focus on their core competencies innovating new products, new services, meeting customers where they are as customers like us become more and more demanding of things they are readily available. I do want to understand a little bit, Jason, help me understand. How this service is differentiated from some of the competitors in the market? >> Yeah. It's a totally fair question. So I would answer that in a couple of ways. First off, anytime you're talking about extending a cloud into some other environment you obviously need some infrastructure for that application to run. And whether that infrastructure is in your data center or at the edge or somewhere else. And one of the things that we've been able to do is by leveraging our hybrid cloud platform by leveraging things like OpenShift and Linux, we've been able to build satellite in a way where you can bring almost any-- infrastructure to the table and use it to run satellite. So we don't require you to buy a certain rack of hardware or a particular gear from us. You don't have to replace all your infrastructure. You can kind of use what you have and extend the cloud. And that to me is all about, if the goal is to help people build things more quickly and consume cloud, like you don't want step one to be like wheel in a whole new data center full hardware before you can get started. The second thing I would say is, we have built our whole cloud on this containerized technology on Kubernetes and OpenShift which means that we're able to deliver more of our portfolio through satellite. We can deliver application platforms and databases and Dev tools and AI and security functions all as a service via satellite. And so the breadth of cloud capability that we think we can deliver in this model is much higher than what I think our competitors are going to be able to do. And then finally, I would say the tie to kind of IBM's view of enterprise and regulated industries, the work Briana mentioned around things like FS cloud the work we're doing in telco. Like we spend a lot of our energy on like, how do we help enterprises regulated industries take advantage of cloud. And we're extending all of that work outside of our cloud data centers with satellite to all these other places. And so you really can move those mission critical applications into a cloud environment when you do it with us. >> Let's talk about some successes. Brianna, tell me about some of the customers that are getting some pretty big business outcomes. And this is a new service. And talk to me about how it's being used, consumed and the benefits. >> Absolutely. What I find a trend that I'm seeing is really the cloud being distributed to the edge. And there are so many interesting use cases I hear every single day about how to really use machine learning and AI at the edge. And so, maybe it's something as simple as a worker safety app or you're making sure that workers are safe using video cameras in an office building and alerting someone if they're going into a construction area and you're using the AI and all of the images that's coming, they're coming in through the security cameras you're doing some analysis and saying, all right this person is wearing a hard hat or not and warning them. But those use cases can be changed so quickly. And we've seen that. And I think I've talked about it before with COVID you changed that to masks. You could change that you could hook up the application of thermal devices. We've seen situations where machine learning is used at the manufacturing edge. So you can determine if there's an issue with your production of in a factory we're seeing as use cases in hospitals in terms of keeping the waiting room sanitized because of over usage. So there's all kinds of just really interesting solutions. And I think this is kind of the next area where we're really able to, and even partner with folks that have extraordinary vertical expertise in a specific area and bringing that to life at the edge and being able to really process that data at the edge so that there's very little latency. And then also you're able to change those use cases so quickly because you're really consuming cloud native best practices in cloud. Cloud services at the edge. So you're not having to install and manage and operate those services at the edge it's done for you. >> I'd mentioned changing the ability to change use cases so quickly in a year that plus that we've seen so much dynamics and pivoting is really key for businesses in any industry Brianna. >> I agree. And that's the thing. There hasn't been one particular industry. I think of course we do see a lot in the financial services industry, just probably cause we're IBM, but in every industry, we see retail, it's interesting to see sporting goods companies want to have pop-up shops at a specific sporting events. And how do you have a van that is a sporting good shop but it's just there temporarily. And how do you have a satellite location in the van? So there's really interesting use cases that have emerge just over time due to the need to have this capability at the edge. >> Yeah. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say right? Well, thank you both so much for stopping by and sharing what's going on with IBM Cloud Satellite, the new service, the new offerings, the opportunities in it for customers. I'm sure it's going to be another exciting year for IBM cause you clearly have been very busy. Thank you both for stopping by the program. >> Thank you. >> Thanks so much Lisa. >> For Briana Frank and Jason McGee. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE. Live coverage of IBM Think. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of Dell Technologies. World Digital Experience Brought to You by Dell Technologies Everyone welcome back to the cubes Coverage of Dell Technologies World Digital Experience I'm John for your host of the Cube Cube. Virtual. We're not in person this year were remote We're doing The interviews were not face to face. So thanks for watching two great guests to talk about the Dell Technology Storage and data protection for the VM Ware environments got Caitlin Gordon, vice President, product management, Dale Technologies and Leak as well. Vice president of Cloud Platform Business Unit, also known as CPB. You for VM where Lee and Cable in Great to see you both. Thanks for coming on. >>Thanks for having me >>s So what? What a crazy year. We're not in person. Usually the the events Awesome. VM world recently went on and then you guys have the same situation role online now and it's >>really kind >>of highlighted the customer environments of cloud needed. But I've been saying this on all my reports and all the Cube interviews that the executives who are in charge and now saying, Look at our modern APS have to be cloud native because the obvious benefits are there and container ization has become mainstream. But yet I d c still forecast about 15% of enterprises are still fully containing rise, with a huge amount of growth coming around the corner. So you're seeing this mature market where containers are validated, they're being put into production. People are now moving hard core with containers. And you have the kubernetes. I gotta ask you, Li, I'm Caitlin. What does this mean for the customers? Are they getting harder pressure points to do things faster? What does it all mean for the customer? >>Yeah, I'll start. Only you can add to it. I mean, I think what we see is the trends that were already happening of now. Accelerated and modern APs were kind of the top of the priority list, but now it has is really expedited. But at the same time, traditional applications haven't gone anywhere. So there's this dichotomy that a lot of I t is dealing with of head Oh, accelerate those modern APs while also streamlining and simplifying my environment for my traditional laps. And not only do I need to the right infrastructure to have that for production workloads, modern, traditional, but also form a data protection standpoint. How to ensure that those are all secure and do all of that in a way that simplifies life for whether it's the data protection admin, the BM admin or even the developer right, all of the different folks involved and needing to make all of their lives simpler has just really exacerbated a challenge and really given us a lot of opportunity to try to solve that for customers together. >>Lee, What's your take on the landscape out there? >>Yeah, I'd emphasized that speed really matters today, right? That we're really looking at. How do you go and deploy new applications faster, right? New ways to get engaged with customers. I mean, it's not happening physically anymore. So how is it happening while it's happening largely through applications? And so as you now basically develop new applications more quickly, containers are a way to speed the pace of applications, and the theme that you know we continue to drive home is that that means infrastructure has to respond more quickly, and it means that for the teams that are managing infrastructure, it really helps if you have a consistent model where you can get mawr done with the same teams and leverage all the experience you have, as well as the security and infrastructure resiliency model that we're bringing together to our customers. >>This brings up the real question, and if this comes up, kind of you see more of the executive level like we need to have a modern application direction. They'll go. Everyone goes, Yeah, of course. Thumbs up. Then they go Try to make that a reality because even though Dev ops and Infrastructures Code is still the viable path, it's hard. It's like Caitlin, we're talking about EJ to core Data center hybrid the multi cloud. There's a lot going on under the hood there. So you guys are doing a lot of stuff together. VM Ware and Dell Technologies. What's the solution for customers? They gotta move faster. As lead pointed out, Caitlin, how are you guys working together to make that infrastructure more modern, faster, programmable and reliable, >>and make it simpler for the customers right? I think it really comes down to one of the most powerful things about the partnership is that from the dull technology standpoint, we have really a plethora of different solutions to support your VM or environment. Whether it's a three tier architecture with Power Edge power store or leveraging the X rail. Or very commonly, it's gonna be both of those. You have the right infrastructure to support the production workloads and have a consistent operating model between them leveraging devils and primary storage side and all the integrations we have with the ex rail. And then we have with power, protect data manager Great integrations in some recent enhancements that make that even better and are now able to protect Tan Xue, protect the VCF management domain and not only have the storage, but also the protection for that environment. But do it in a way that supports what the V A madman needs and also gives that consistent protection, consistent storage, consistent operating model for the rest of I T. And at the same time you're enabling the developers to move faster. >>Lee, You guys have been doing a lot of joint development, and we've been covering a lot of the news VM world. Ah, lot of joint engineering, a lot of joint integrations. You guys have been collaborating with Dell Technologies for a long time. Also, the relationship. Where is that Today? Can you expand on that a little bit and take a minute to explain the joint >>collaboration? I'll start with the fact that you know, good marketing is really easy when you have great engineering. And so the work that we're doing together, like between our companies. Now we have a lot to talk about, right? E mean the work scaling mentioned right around Devil's integration, for example, on power Max right on da npower store, right? I mean, you start looking at the integration work that we're doing together. It means that customers are getting the benefits of the joint integration work and testing right that comes and so you're guaranteed out of the box toe work. Also, you know, don't forget that contain owners and all of the things we're doing around containers. It's basically designed thio accommodate the fact that containers air spun up more quickly or destroyed more quickly, their shared across the hybrid cloud more frequently and without an inherent security model and built in data protection. It's really hard to go and see how you can deploy these with the enterprise resilience that's demanded at enterprise scale. And so that's what we're doing together, right? And, you know, we build great software, Uh, but without great hardware partnerships, it's one hand clapping, right. It's about getting our teams together, right? That really makes it sing at the customer level. >>You know, I think that's a really example of the business. Performance results have come in Vienna, where you guys were doing a great job. Go way back to the years ago when Pat and Raghu we're talking with from Amazon and all. Since then, it's been joint development, join integrations, and that's a great business model for you. And so, Caitlyn, I wanna get back to you. Because at VMRO we covered Project Monterey, the new initiative for the anywhere but a year before they had Project Pacific that came toe life with product results. Tan Xue specifically, you guys have the power protect data manager that we talked about in the summer, but now for Tan Xue supported and Tan Xue environments that super relevant, can you share any updates on your end on the power protect Data Manager and Tan Xue? >>Yeah, I li I couldn't agree more that great engineering mix our jobs a lot more fun and a whole lot easier. So we've been really lucky. And the partnership we've had has really never been stronger. So yeah, but the most recent release of power protect Data Manager introduces the support for that tan xue protection. It also introduces really important things like storage, storage based policy management. So in in biosphere, when you set up a storage policy, you have data protection as part of that and you have the integration with power protect data Manager. So you're able to automatically protect new VM that are created by that storage policy of being applied. >>But >>at the same time, it's also being tracked in power. Protect Data Manager. So you have that consistency across enabling your vitamins and enabling your data protection your i t. Team. To keep track of that, we also have ah tech preview that we did at VM World about how we're working as from Dell technology standpoint to innovate around. How do you protect some of these VMS that are so large and so mission critical that you need to be able to protect them in a new and innovative way that doesn't disrupt the business. And we did a tech preview of that, and it's something you'll hear more about from us, too. But it's PM traditionally would be in this category of unprotected ble because of the impact it could have on the environment and how we're really looking to do that in a more efficient and intelligent way. So we can actually protect those be EMS. And there's there's really a whole lot more. When you talk about objects, scale and everything else that we've done, it's really exciting. And you don't think Lee and I have ever talked as much as we do now. Ah, and it's been a lot of a lot of fun. >>It's been great following both of you guys on the keep interviews over the years. The success in the vision We had early conversations about what the plans where it's kind of all playing out. So I want to congratulate both of you of VM Ware Adele Technology. So good job going forward. The collaboration. I want to get to that in a second, you'll into it. But Caitlin Lee, I want to get your thoughts because one of the big themes this year besides covert and all the issues that that's highlighting. But in the cloud world, automation has been the number one conversation we've been hearing, and with that you got machine learning all the tech around that as you abstract away. The complexity of the infrastructure to make the modern APS automation has been great. The business cross connect is everything is a service we're seeing. This is the big wave coming. Could you guys share your vision on how all this stuff you mentioned V balls and all objects scale all these things? There's a >>lot of >>plumbing underneath and a lot of tooling, a lot of part piece parts. If that gets programmable, >>automation >>kicks in, which then enables everything is the service because you guys both share your vision of what that means in terms of what's going to change and what would it impact the customer? >>Yeah, and it's very relevant for this week, right? Dell Technologies world. That's a big part of what we've announced this week in our commitment to really bringing our portfolio as a service, and it's really interesting, especially for folks like Lee and I, who have been doing kind of mawr product marking and talking about speeds and feeds and thinking about how you make the product life simpler. And how do you automate that? Have the intelligence built in things like Biaro have been such an important part of that, especially with power store coming to market. But if you think about where that leads us, actually changes everything, which is when you have everything as a service and we're really delivering outcomes to our customers and no longer products. That automation is actually just a important and maybe even more important. But it's not the end user that cares about it directly is actually us, because as Dell Technologies, we become the ones managing that infrastructure, owning that infrastructure and the more automation we can bring in, the more intelligence we can build them for ourselves. The more insights we can give to our customers, the better that service can become. And it's really a flip from how we've always been thinking about and really rolling out automation. It's not actually about enabling our end users to do anything. It's actually about enabling them to not worry about any of it, but enable our own organization to support their outcomes better. So it really changes everything. >>Lee, what's your thoughts on this? Everything you've got, V Sphere V Center. You've got all the storage you got all the back up. All this stuff has to be automated. Makes sense. But as a service, how does that impact your world? >>You know, it really does. When you think about the VMRO Cloud Foundation, right, which is the integration of all of our V sphere with Visa. And with these, you know, our NSX products that will be realized. Management suite. Tom Zoo now, right, All of this pulled together. One of things that's interesting is when you go to the public cloud, we have some experience now where we always deliver that full stack together. And what that does is it frees up customers. Thio, go on, focus on the applications, I think and stop looking down the infrastructure. Start looking up at the APS. And so we're offering and bringing that same level of experience to the on premises data centers. And now bridging that across the hybrid cloud that all of a sudden gives you this sense that Hey, I'm future ready. No, matter where I am today. If I'm thinking about the hybrid cloud, I could go on move there, right. And with our partnership with Dell Technologies, there's such a great opportunity to bridge that uniquely, by the way across all of my on premises infrastructure, including common policy based management, back into storage through RV Valls efforts, right and then back in through objects scale right into objects based, uh, applications and through our DP efforts to data protection efforts, then back into, like, date full data protection. And so what you get now is we're helping customers realize that I got this. I could take new Cooper navies orchestrated applications and I could make them work and do it with the same operational model that I have today. Start spending more time on the applications, less time, basically configuring and managing underlying infrastructure. >>Caitlin you mentioned that earlier at the top of the segment, ease of use, making it easier, simpler, great stuff on the on on the future. Lee, I gotta ask you about Project Monterey. We did a lot of coverage on VM World on silicon angle in the Cube. I love how this comes out. It's always, You know, the brain trust that VM Ware lays out the future, they fill it in throughout the year, expect to see some meat on the bone there. But what is that gonna do from for new capabilities and how with Dell Technologies? Because, um, it's end to end, right this Michael Dell and I talked, I think, two years ago, a Dell Tech world. And then last year, he hit the point home hard and to end with Dell Technologies. It kind of feels like it's gonna be a good fit. Could you share how that Monterey project fits in with Dell Technologies? >>Yeah. We're so pleased to be showing this together with Dell Technologies at the VM World to showcase this new idea that you could basically go on, start offloading CPUs and using smart knicks as a way to basically now provide, um or let's call it a, You know, a architecture that allows you to, uh, be responsive to new application needs. So let me talk a little bit about that. So when we opened up Tansu, right, we got this complete inflow pouring of new container base kubernetes orchestrated APS. So what? We found was, Hey, they're driving a lot of CPU needs their driving a lot of scale out security needs for things like distributed firewalls. And so we started looking at this, and what's clear is we need to basically use the CPU very judiciously, So it's basically reserved for the APS. And so what we're doing now is we're basically saying there's an opportunity for us to go in, offload the CPU for things that look more like infrastructure, including S X, I and other things. And at the same time, then we could go and work together with Dell Technologies to be the deployment vehicle. And so, just like Project Pacific, which was going broad, if you will, this project moderate, which is going deep like the canyon, John not far from here, um is, you know, a source of all new discovery right where we'll be working together and over time, just like the Project Pacific name faded to black and became product Tan Xue vcf with Tom juvie sphere. With Hangzhou, we'll see that Project Monterey will evolve into new products coming together with Dell Technologies. >>Caitlin, can you elaborate on Take a min, explain the product how this renders into products because I can also imagine just the benefits just from a security standpoint. Efficiency. If the platform, um, there's a range of things, could you take a minute to >>explain the >>impact on products? >>Yeah, I think you'll hear a lot more about it, but we're obviously excited to be partners on this is Well, and I think it's It's just another example of the more intelligent the infrastructure can become than the rest of the entire I T organization can run more efficiently and that that can come in the form of the A. I built into power, Max, that can come in the form of the evils that we have both in Power Max and Power Store that can come in the form of even just the fact that we have now built a fully containerized S three compatible objects or platform called objects scale which we have no in early access. Um, that can run on the V sand data persistence platform, and it just gives you the ability to leverage this all of the right technology. And we can continue to really partner on that. I think Project Monterey really opens up even more opportunities to do that, and you'll certainly hear more from us on that in the future. >>I >>mean, you got compression, you got encryption. A lot of benefits across the board. Great to have you guys both on and your graduation. The great event. Final question for both of you, talk about this has been a crazy year. We're not face to face, so everything will be online. What should customers and partners and people watching know about the relationship between VM Ware and Dell Technologies this year? What's the big message to take away? What should people walk away with and and think about? >>I think it's It's never been stronger than ever, uh, than it's been than it is right now. We have never had >>more >>breath and more depth of integration. I think that the partnership on the engineering level, on the product management level on the marketing level, we have really never been in a better place. And you know what? What? My team is really enjoyed with VM world season and you're coming up on Deltek. World season is we've really enjoyed the fact that we've had so much richness >>of >>that integration to talk >>about, and >>we also know there's even more coming. So I, you know, from from my standpoint, if we really feel it and probably the best and most rewarding time we hear about that, is when we bring new things into market, we hear that back. And when Power Store came into the market and over the past few right kind of first months in market, one of the most resounding feedback that has come out as one of the most differentiated parts is that it? It's so incredibly integrated with VM ware. But we've even gotten questions from analysts asking, you know, did you purposely make it feel like you are really working similarly to a B M or environment? And you know what? That just shows how closely we have been working as organizations is that it comes a very seamless experience for our customers. >>Lee Final Word. >>What >>should people walk away with this year on the relationship between Be and we're in Dell Technologies? >>Well, I think the best partnerships right are ones that are customer driven. And what you're finding here is customers. They're actually encouraging us, right? We're doing a lot of three way meetings now, right where customers like, Hey, tell me how you're going to go involved this. How do I How do I basically modernized right and preserve my existing investment, perhaps Or, you know, update here, Or how do I grow like customers have really complex individual situations. And what you confined right is that we're helping jointly not, you know, just simply with the engineering side, which is awesome, but also with the idea that we're helping customers go on deploy responsibly in a time where it's very difficult to plan. And so if you come to us, we can help you jointly plan for the future in uncertain times and make sure that you're gonna be successful. And that's just a great feeling when you're a customer looking at, How do you deploy going forward in this? You know, with the amount of pace of change that we've got, >>I want to congratulate. Both of you have been following you guys. Success has been proven out on the business results and also the products and the enablement that you guys are providing customers been great. Thanks for coming on. Great to see both of you have a great event. Thanks for. Come on. >>Thank you. It's a pleasure. >>Okay, I'm John for your here with the Cube. Covering Del Technology Worlds Digital experience 2020 The Cube Virtual. >>Thanks for watching.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of Dell Technologies. World Digital experience brought to you by Dell Technologies. Hello, everyone. And welcome back to the cubes coverage of Del Tech World 2020 the virtual del tech world. Of course, the virtual queue with me is Alison Do. She's the CMO and a member of the executive leadership team at Dell Technologies. Hey there, Alison. Good to see you. >>Hi, David. Good to see you too. I'm gonna see you alive, but it's so good to see on the feed. >>Yeah, I miss you, too. You know, it's been it's been tough, but we're getting through it and, you know, it's a least with technology. We're able to meet this way and, you know, for us continue the cube for you to continue del Tech world, reaching out to your to your customers. But, you know, maybe we could start there. It's like I said the other day else into somebody. I feel like everybody I know in the technology industry has also become a covert expert in the last six months. But but, you know, it changed so much. But I'm interested in well, first of all, you're a great communicator. I have met many, many members of your team. They're really motivated group. How did you handle the pandemic? Your communications. Uh, did you increase that? Did you? Did you have to change anything? Or maybe not. Because like I say, you've always been a great communicator with a strong team. What was your first move? >>Eso There's obviously there's many audiences that we serve through communications, but in this instance, the two most important our customers and our team members. So I'll take the customers first. You have likely seen the spoof Real's Going Around the Internet of Here's How Not to Talk to Customers, Right? So you saw early in February and March in April, all of these communications that started with in these troubled times We are here to help you and, you know, we're already in a crisis every single day, all day long. I don't think people needed to be reminded that there was a crisis happening. So you've got this one end where it's over crisis mongering and the other side where it was just ignoring the crisis. And so what we did was we really looked at all of our communications a new So, for example, in our small business space, we were just about I mean days away from launching a campaign that was about celebrating the success of small businesses. It's a beautiful piece of creative. I love it, and we made the very tough decision to put that work on the shelf and not launch it. Why? Because it would have been incredibly tone deaf in a moment where small businesses were going out of business and under incredible struggle to have a campaign that was celebrating their success. It just wouldn't have worked. And what we did very quickly was a new piece of creative that had our own small business advisers, lower production values, them working from home and talking about how they were helping customers. But frankly, even that then has a shelf life, because ultimately you have to get back to your original story. So as we thought about our own communications, my own leadership team and I went through every single piece of creative toe. Look for what's appropriate now what's tone deaf, and that was a very heavy lift and something that we had to continue to do and I'm really proud of the work. We did pivot quickly, then on the employee side. If you'd asked me in January, was Team member Communications the most important thing I was doing? I would have said It's an important thing I'm doing and I care deeply about it, But it's not the most important thing I'm doing. Where there was a period from probably February to June where I would have said it became the most important thing that I was doing because we had 120,000 people pivot over a weekend toe. Working from home, you had all of the demands of home schooling, the chaos that stress whilst also were obviously trying to keep a business running. So this engagement with our employees and connecting the connecting with them through more informal means, like zoom meetings with Michael and his leadership team, where once upon a time we would have had a more high value production became a key piece of what we did. So it sounds so easy, but this increase of the frequency with our own employees, while also being really honest with ourselves about the tone of those communications, so that's what we did and continue to dio >>Well, you've done a good job and you struck a nice balance. I mean, you weren't did see some folks ambulance chasing and it was a real turn off. Or like you said, sometimes tone deaf. And we can all look back over history and see, you know, so many communications disasters like you say, people being tone deaf or ignoring something. It was sloughing it off, and then it really comes back to bite them. Sometimes security breaches air like that. So it seems like Dell has I don't know, there's a methodology. I don't know if you use data or it's just a lot of good good experience. How have you been able to sort of nail it? I guess I would say is it is. >>But there's some secret method that I'm cautiously optimistic. And the superstitious part of me is like, Don't say that, Okay, I'm not gonna would alright eso so that it's it's both it z experience, obviously. And then what? I What I talk a lot about is this intersection of data versus did data and creativity, and you spend a lot of time in marketing circles. Those two things can be sometimes pitched is competing with each other. Oh, it's all about the creativity, or it's all about the data. And I think that's a silly non argument. And it should be both things And this this time like this. This point that I make about ambulance chasing and not re traumatizing people every single day by talking about in these troubled times is actually from a piece of research that we did, if you believe it or not. In 2008 during the middle of the global financial crisis, when we started to research some of our creative, we found that some of the people who have seen our creative were actually less inclined to buy Dell and less positive about Dell. Why? Because we started with those really hackneyed lines of in these troubled times. And then we went on to talk about how we could take out I t costs and were targeted at I T makers, who basically we first played to their fear function and they said, and now we're going to put you out of a job, right? So there's this years of learning around where you get this sweet spot from a messaging perspective to talk about customer outcomes while also talking about what you do is a company, and keeping the institutional knowledge is knowledge of those lessons and building and refining over time. And so that's why I think we've been able to pivot as quickly as we have is because we've been data driven and had a creative voice for a very long time. The other piece that has helped us be fast is that we've spent the last 2.5 3 years working on bringing our own data, our own customer data internally after many, many years of having that with the third party agency. So all the work we had to do to retarget to re pivot based on which verticals were being successful in this time and which were not we were able to now due in a matter of hours, something that would have taken us weeks before. So there's places where it's about the voice of who we are as a brand, and that's a lot of that is creative judgment. And then there's places about institutional knowledge of the data, and then riel getting too real time data analysis where we're on the cusp of doing that. >>Yeah, so I like the way you phrase that it's not just looking at the data and going with some robotic fashion. It reminds me of, you know the book. Michael Lewis, Moneyball, the famous movie, You know, it's like for a while it was it was in baseball, like whoever had the best nerds they thought we were gonna win. But it really is a balance of art and science, and it seems like you're on this journey with your customers together. I mean, how much how much? I mean, I know there's a lot of interaction, but but it seems like you guys are all learning together and evolving together in that regard. >>Absolutely. David, One of the things that has been really interesting to watch is we have had a connected workplace program for 10 years, so we've had flexible work arrangements for a very long time, and one of the things that we have learned from that is a combination of three key factors. The technology, obviously, can you do it? The three culture, and then the process is right. So when you have a the ability to work from home doesn't mean you should work from home 22 out of 24 hours. And that's where culture comes in. And I frankly, that's where this moment of cumulative global stress is so important to realize as a leader and to bring out to the Open and to talk about it. I mean, Michael's talked a lot about this is a marathon. This is not a sprint. We've done a lot of things to support our employees. And so if you think about those three factors and what we've learned, one of the things that we found as we got into the pipe pandemic was on the technology side. Even customers who thought they had business continuity plans in place or thought that they had worked from home infrastructure in place found that they didn't really so there was actually a very quick move to help our customers get the technology that would enable them to keep their businesses running and then on the other two fronts around processes and culture and leadership. We've been ableto have smaller, more intimate conversations with our customers than we would have historically, because frankly, we can bring Michael, Jeff. Other parts of the leadership team me together to have a conversation and one of the benefits of the fact that those of us who've been road warriors for many, many, many years as I know you have a swell suddenly found yourself actually staying in one place. You have time to have that conversation so that we continue to obviously help our customers on the technology front, but also have been able to lean in in a different way on what we've learned over 10 years and what we've learned over this incredibly dramatic eight months, >>you know, and you guys actually have some work from Home Street cred? I think, Del, you're the percentage of folks that were working from home Pre Koven was higher than the norm, significantly higher than normal. Wasn't that long ago that there were a couple of really high profile companies that were mandating come into the office and clear that they were on the wrong side of history? I mean, that surprised me actually on. Do you know what also surprised me? I don't know. I'm just gonna say it is There were two companies run by women, and I would have thought there was more empathy there. Uh, but Dal has always had this culture of Yeah, we were, You know, we could work. We could be productive no matter where. Maybe that's because of the the heritage or your founders. Still still chairman and CEO. I don't know. >>You know those companies and obviously we know who they are. Even at the time, what I thought about them was You don't have a location problem. You have a culture problem and you have a productivity problem and you a trust problem with your employees. And so, yes, I think they are going to be proven to be on the wrong side of history. And I think in those instances they've been on the wrong side of history on many things, sadly, and I hope that will never be us. I don't wanna be mean about that, but but the truth of the matter is one of the other benefits of being more flexible about where and how you work is. It opens up access to different talent pools who may or may not want to live in Austin, Texas, as an example, and that gives you a different way to get a more diverse workforce to get a younger workforce. And I think lots of companies are starting to have that really ization. And, you know, as I said, we've been doing this for 10 years. Even with that context, this is a quantum leap in. Now we're all basically not 100% but mainly all working from home, and we're still learning. So there's an interesting, ongoing lifelong learning that I think is very, very court of the Dell culture. >>I want to ask you about the virtual events you had you had a choice to make. You could have done what many did and said, Okay, we're going to run the event as scheduled, and you would have got a covert Mulligan. I mean, we saw Cem some pretty bad productions, frankly, but that was okay because they had to move fast and they got it done. So in a way, you kind of put more pressure on your yourselves. Andi, I guess you know, we saw this with VM Ware. I guess Was, you know, just recently last >>few >>weeks. Yeah, and so but they kind of raise the bar had great, you know, action with John Legend. So that was really kind of interesting, but, you know, kind of what went into that decision? A Zeiss A. You put more pressure on yourself because now you But you also had compares what? Your thoughts on >>that. So there was a moment in about March where I felt like I was making a multimillion dollar decision every single day. And that was on a personal note, somewhat stressful to kind of wake up and think, What? What? Not just on the events front. But as I said on the creative front, What work that my team has been working on for the last two years? I am I going to destroy today was sort of. I mean, I'm kind of joking, but not entirely how that felt for me personally at the moment. And we had about we made the decision early on to cancel events. We also made the decision quite early on that when we call that, we said we're not going to do any in person events until the end of this calendar year. So I felt good about the definitiveness there. We had about a week where we were still planning to do the virtual world in May and what I did together with my head of communications and head of event is we really sat and looked at the trajectory in the United States, and we thought, this is not gonna be a great moment for the U. S. The week we were supposed to run in May, if you looked at the trajectory of diseases, you would have news be dominated by the fact that we had an increasing spike in number of cases and subsequent deaths. And we just thought that don't just gonna care about our launches. So we had to really, very quickly re pivot that and what I was trying to do was not turn my own organization. So make the decisions start to plan and move on. And at the same time, though, what that then meant is we still have to get product launches out the door. So we did nine virtual launches in nine weeks. That was a big learning learning her for my team. I feel really good about that, and hopefully it helps us. And what I think will be a hybrid future going forward. >>Yeah, so not to generalize, but I've been generalizing about the following. So I've been saying for a while now that a lot >>of the >>marketing people have always wanted to have a greater component of virtual. But, you know, sales guys love the belly. The belly closed the deals, you know? But so where do you land on that? How do you see? You know, the future of events we do, you expect to continue to have ah, strong virtual component. >>I think it's gonna be a hybrid. I think we will never go back to what we did before. I think the same time people do need that human connection. Honestly, I miss seeing the people that I work with face to face. I said at the beginning of this conversation, I would like to be having this discussion with you live and I hate Las Vegas. So I never thought I'd be that interested in, like, let's go to Las Vegas, you know, who knew? But but so I think you'll see a hybrid future going forward. And then we will figure out what those smaller, more direct personal relationship moments are that over the next couple of years you could do more safely and then also frankly give you the opportunity to have those conversations that are more meaningful. So I'm not entirely sure what that looks like. Obviously, we're gonna learn a lot this year with this event, and we're going to continue to build on it. But there's places in the world if you look at what we've done in China for many, many, many years, we have held on over abundance of digital events because of frankly, just the size of the population and the the geographic complexity. And so there are places that even early into this, we could say, Well, we've already done this in China. How do we take that and apply it to the rest of the world? So that's what we're working through now. That's actually really exciting, >>You know, when you look at startups, it's like two things matter the engineering and sales and that's all anything else is a waste of money in their minds when you and and all they talk about is Legion Legion Legion. You don't hear that from a company like Dell because you have so many other channels on ways Thio communicate with your customers and engage with your customers. But of course, legions important demand. Gen. Is important. Do you feel like virtual events can be a Z effective? Maybe it's a longer tail, but can they be as productive as the physical events? >>So one thing that I've always been a little bit cantankerous on within marketing circles is I refuse to talk about it in terms of Brand versus Li Jen, because I think that's a false argument. And the way I've talked about it with my own team is there are things that we do that yield short term business results, maybe even in corridor in half for a year. And there are things that we do that lead to long term business results. First one is demand, and the second one is more traditional brand. But we have to do both. We have to think about our legacy as a known primarily for many, many years as a PC maker. In order for us to be successful in the business businesses that we are in now, we love our PC heritage. I grew up in that business, but we also want to embrace the other parts of their business and educate people about the things that we do that they may not even know, right? So that's a little bit of context in terms of you got to do both. You got to tell your story. You've got to change perceptions and you got to drive demand in quarter. So the interesting things about digital events is we can actually reach more people than we ever could in an in person world. So I think that expands the pie for both the perceptions and long term and short term. And I hope what we are more able to do effectively because of that point that I made about our own internal marketing digital transformation is connect those opportunities to lead and pass them off to sales more effectively. We've done a lot of work on the plumbing on the back end of that for the last couple of years, and I feel really fortunate that we did that because I don't think we'd be able to do what we're doing now. If we hadn't invested there, >>Well, it's interesting. You're right. I mean, Del of course, renowned during the PC era and rode that wave. And then, of course, the AMC acquisition one of the most amazing transformations, if not the most amazing transformation in the history of the computer industry. But when you when you look to the future and of course, we're hearing this week about as a service and you new pricing models, just new mindsets I look at and I wonder if you could comment, I look at Dell's futures, you know, not really a product company. You're becoming a platform. Essentially, for for digital transformation is how I look atyou. Well, how do you see the brand message going forward? >>Absolutely. I think that one of the things that's really interesting about Dell is that we have proven our ability to constantly and consistently reinvent ourselves, and I won't go through the whole thing. But if you look at started as a direct to consumer company, then went into servers then and started to go into small business meeting business a little bit about when private acquired e. M. C. I mean, we are a company who is always moving forward and always thinking about what's next. Oftentimes, people don't even realize the breadth and depth of what we do and who we are now so as even with all of that context in place, the horizon that we're facing into now is, I believe, the most important transformation that we've done, which is, as you see, historical, I t models change and it becomes, yes, about customer choice. We know that many of our customers will continue to want to buy hardware the way they always have. But we also know that we're going to see a very significant change in consumption models. And the way we stay on top of our game going forward is we lean into that huge transformation. And that's what we're announcing this week with Project Apex, which is that commitment to the entire company's transformation around as a service. And that's super exciting for us. >>Well, I was saying Before, you're sort of in lockstep with your customers. Or maybe you could we could. We could close by talking a little bit about Dell's digital transformation and what you guys have going on internally, and maybe some of the cultural impacts that you've seen. >>So you, you you touched on it. It's so easy to make it about just the I t. Work, and in fact, you actually have to make it about the i t. The business process. Change in the culture change. So if you look at what we did with the AMC acquisition and the fact that you know that there's a lot of skepticism about that at the time, they're not gonna be able to absorb that. Keep the business running. And in fact, we have really shown huge strides forward in the business. One of the reasons we've been able to do that is because we've been so thoughtful about all of those things. The technology, the culture and the business process change, and you'll see us continue to do that. As I said in my own organization, just to use the data driven transformation of marketing. Historically, we would have hired a certain type of person who was more of a creative Brett bent. Well, now, increasingly, we're hiring quants who are going to come into a career in marketing, and they never would have seen themselves doing that a couple of years ago. And so my team has to think about okay, these don't look like our historical marketing profile. How do we hire them? How do we do performance evaluations for them. And how do we make sure that we're not putting the parameters of old on a very new type of talent? And so when we talk about diversity, it's not just age, gender, etcetera. It's also of skills. And that's where I think the future of digital transformation is so interesting. There has been so much hype on this topic, and I think now is when we're really starting to see those big leaps forward and peoples in companies. Riel transformation. That's the benefit of this cookie year we got here, Dave. >>Well, I think I do think the culture comes through, especially in conversations like this. I mean, you're obviously a very clear thinker and good communicator, but I think your executive team is in lockstep. It gets down, toe the middle management into the into the field and and, you know, congratulations on how far you've come. And, uh, and and also I'm really impressed that you guys have such a huge ambitions in so many ways. Changing society obviously focused on customers and building great companies. So, Alison, thanks so much for >>thank you, Dave. You virtually I'm very >>great to see it. Hopefully hopefully see Assumes. Hopefully next year we could be together. Until then, virtually you'll >>see virtual, >>huh? Thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Volonte for the Cube. Keep it right there. Our coverage of Del Tech World 2020. We'll be right back right after this short break.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of biz ops Manifesto unveiled. Brought to you by biz ops Coalition. Hey, welcome back your body, Jeffrey here with the Cube. Welcome back to our ongoing coverage of the busy ops manifesto unveiling its been in the works for a while. But today is the day that it actually kind of come out to the to the public. And we're excited to have a real industry luminary here to talk about what's going on, Why this is important and share his perspective. And we're happy to have from Cape Cod, I believe, is Tom Davenport. He is a distinguished author on professor at Babson College. We could go on. He's got a lot of great titles and and really illuminate airy in the area of big data and analytics. Thomas, great to see you. >>Thanks, Jeff. Happy to be here with you. Great. >>So let's just jump into it, you know, and getting ready for this. I came across your LinkedIn post. I think you did earlier this summer in June and right off the bat, the first sentence just grabbed my attention. I'm always interested in new attempts to address long term issues, Uh, in how technology works within businesses. Biz ops. What did you see in biz ops? That that kind of addresses one of these really big long term problems? >>Well, yeah. The long term problem is that we've had a poor connection between business people and I t people between business objectives and the i t. Solutions that address them. This has been going on, I think, since the beginning of information technology, and sadly, it hasn't gone away. And so busy ops is new attempt to deal with that issue with a, you know, a new framework. Eventually a broad set of solutions that increase the likelihood that will actually solve a business problem with a nightie capability. >>Right. You know, it's interesting to compare it with, like, Dev ops, which I think a lot of people are probably familiar with, which was, you know, built around a agile software development and the theory that we want to embrace change that that changes okay on. We wanna be able to iterate quickly and incorporate that, and that's been happening in the software world for for 20 plus years. What's taking so long to get that to the business side because the pace of change is change on the software side. You know, that's a strategic issue in terms of execution on the business side that they need now to change priorities. And, you know, there's no P R D S and M R. D s and big giant strategic plans that sit on the shelf for five years. That's just not the way business works anymore. Took a long time to get here. >>Yeah, it did. And, you know, there have been previous attempts to make a better connection between business and i t. There was the so called strategic alignment framework that a couple of friends of mine from Boston University developed, I think more than 20 years ago. But, you know, now we have better technology for creating that linkage. And the, you know, the idea of kind of ops oriented frameworks is pretty pervasive now. So I think it's, um you know, time for another serious attempt at it, >>right? And do you think doing it this way right with the bizarre coalition, you know, getting a collection of of kind of like minded individuals and companies together and actually even having a manifesto which were making this declarative statement of principles and values. You think that's what it takes to kind of drive this, you know, kind of beyond the experiment and actually, you know, get it done and really start to see some results in, in in production in the field. >>I think certainly no one vendor organization can pull this off single handedly. It does require a number of organizations collaborating and working together. So I think a coalition is a good idea, and a manifesto is just a good way to kind of lay out. What you see is the key principles of the idea, and that makes it much easier for everybody. Toe I understand and act on. >>Yeah, I I think it's just it's really interesting having, you know, having them written down on paper and having it just be so clearly articulated both in terms of the of the values as well as as the the principles and and the values, you know. Business outcomes, matter, trust and collaboration, data driven decisions, which is the number three or four and then learn, responded pivot. It doesn't seem like those should have to be spelled out so clearly. But obviously it helps to have them there. You can stick them on the wall and kind of remember what your priorities are. But you're the data guy. You're the analytics guy. Yeah, And a big piece of this is data analytics and moving to data driven decisions. And principle number seven says, you know, today's organizations generate more data than humans can process. And informed decisions can be augmented by machine learning and artificial intelligence right up your alley. You know, you've talked a number of times on kind of the many stages of analytics. Onda. How has that's evolved over over time? You know, it is You think of analytics and machine learning driving decisions beyond supporting decisions, but actually starting to make decisions in machine time. What's that? What's that think for you? What does that make you? You know, start to think Wow, this is This is gonna be pretty significant. >>Yeah, well, you know, this has been a long term interest of mine. Um, the last generation of a I I was very interested in expert systems. And then e think more than 10 years ago, I wrote an article about automated decision making using, um, what was available then, which is rule based approaches. But, you know, this address is an issue that we've always had with analytics and ai. Um, you know, we tended Thio refer to those things as providing decision support. The problem is that if the decision maker didn't want their support, didn't want to use them in order to make a decision, they didn't provide any value. And so the nice thing about automating decisions with now contemporary ai tools is that we can ensure that data and analytics get brought into the decision without any possible disconnection. Now, I think humans still have something to add here, and we often will need to examine how that decision is being made and maybe even have the ability to override it. But in general, I think, at least for, you know, repetitive tactical decisions, um, involving a lot of data. We want most of those I think, to be at least, um, recommended, if not totally made by analgesic rhythm or an AI based system, and that, I believe would add to the quality and the precision and the accuracy of decisions. And in most organizations, >>you know, I think I think you just answered my next question before I Before I asked it. You know, we had Dr Robert Gates on the former secretary of Defense on a few years back, and we were talking about machines and machines making decisions, and he said at that time, you know, the only weapon systems that actually had an automated trigger on it, We're on the North Korean South Korea border. Um, everything else that you said had to go through some person before the final decision was made. And my question is, you know what are kind of the attributes of the decision that enable us that more easily automated? And then how do you see that kind of morphing over time both as the the data to support that as well as our comfort level, Um, enables us to turn mawr mawr actual decisions over to the machine? >>Well, yeah, I suggested we need data, and the data that we have to kind of train our models has to be high quality and current, and we need to know the outcomes of the that data. You know, most machine learning models, at least in business, are supervised, and that means we need tohave labeled outcomes in the in the training data. But you know, the pandemic that we're living through is a good illustration of the fact that the data also have to be reflective of current reality. And, you know, one of the things that were finding out quite frequently these days is that the data that we have a do not reflect you know what it's like to do business in a pandemic. I wrote a little piece about this recently with Jeff Cam at Wake Forest University. We call it Data Science Quarantined and it we interviewed somebody who said, You know, it's amazing what eight weeks of zeros will do to your demand forecast. We just don't really know what happens in a pandemic. Our models may be have to be put on the shelf for a little while and until we can develop some new ones or we can get some other guidelines into making decisions. So I think that's one of the key things with automated decision making. We have toe make sure that the data from the past and you know that's all we have, of course, is a good guide toe. You know what's happening in the present and in the future, as far as we understand it. >>Yeah, I used to joke when we started this calendar year 2020 was finally the year that we know everything with the benefit of hindsight. But it turned out 2020 the year we found out we actually know nothing and everything >>we thought we d >>o. But I wanna I wanna follow up on that because, you know, it did suddenly change everything, right? We got this light switch moment. Everybody's working from home now. We're many, many months into it, and it's going to continue for a while. I saw your interview with Bernard Marr and you had a really interesting comment that now we have to deal with this change. We don't have a lot of data and you talked about hold, fold or double down, and And I can't think of, um or, you know, kind of appropriate metaphor for driving the value of the biz ops. When now your whole portfolio strategy, um, needs to really be questioned. And, you know, you have to be really well executing on what you are holding. What you're folding and what you're doubling down with this completely new environment? >>Well, yeah, And I hope I did this in the interview. I would like to say that I came up with that term, but it actually came from a friend of mine was a senior executive at gen. Packed, and I used it mostly to talk about AI and AI applications, but I think you could You could use it much more broadly to talk about your entire sort of portfolio. Digital projects you need to think about. Well, um, given some constraints on resource is and a difficulty economy for a while. Which of our projects do we wanna keep going on Pretty much the way we were for and which ones, um, are not that necessary anymore. You see a lot of that in a I because we had so many pilots. Somebody told me, You know, we've got more pilots around here than O'Hare Airport in a I, um and then the the ones that involve double down there, even mawr Important to you, they are. You know, a lot of organizations have found this out in the pandemic on digital projects. It's more and more important for customers to be ableto interact with you digitally. And so you certainly wouldn't want toe cancel those projects or put them on hold. So you double down on them, get them done faster and better. >>Another. Another thing I came up in my research that that you quoted um, was was from Jeff. Bezos is talking about the great bulk of what we do is quietly but meaning fleeing, improving core operations. You know, I think that is so core to this concept of not AI and machine learning and kind of the general sense, which which gets way too much buzz but really applied, applied to a specific problem. And that's where you start to see the value. And, you know, the biz ops manifesto is calling it out in this particular process. But I just love to get your perspective. As you know, you speak generally about this topic all the time, but how people should really be thinking about where the applications where I can apply this technology to get direct business value. >>Yeah, well, you know, even talking about automated decisions, um, the kind of once in a lifetime decisions, uh, the ones that a G laugh. Li, the former CEO of Proctor and Gamble, used to call the big swing decisions. You only get a few of those, he said. In your tenure as CEO, those air probably not going to be the ones that you're automating in part because you don't have much data about them. Your you know, only making them a few times and in part because they really require that big picture thinking and the ability to kind of anticipate the future that the best human decision makers have. Um, but in general, I think where they I The projects that are working well are you know what I call the low hanging fruit ones? The some people even report to refer to it as boring A. I so you know, sucking data out of a contract in order to compare it Thio bill of lading for what arrived at your supply chain. Companies can save or make a lot of money with that kind of comparison. It's not the most exciting thing, but a I, as you suggest, is really good at those narrow kinds of tasks. Um, it's not so good at the at the really big Moonshots like curing cancer or, you know, figuring out well, what's the best stock or bond under all circumstances or even autonomous vehicles. We made some great progress in that area, but everybody seems to agree that they're not gonna be perfect for quite a while. And we really don't wanna be driving around on, um in that very much, unless they're, you know, good and all kinds of weather and with all kinds of pedestrian traffic. And you know that sort of thing, right? >>That's funny. Bring up contract management. I had a buddy years ago. They had a startup around contract management, and I'm like and this was way before we had the compute power today and cloud proliferation. I said, You know how How could you possibly built off around contract management? It's language. It's legalese. It's very specific. He's like Jeff. We just need to know where's the contract and when does it expire? And who's the signatory? And he built a business on those you know, very simple little facts that weren't being covered because their contracts from people's drawers and files and homes and Lord only knows so it's really interesting as you said. These kind of low hanging fruit opportunities where you could extract a lot of business value without trying to, you know, boil the ocean. >>Yeah, I mean, if you're Amazon, Jeff Bezos thinks it's important toe have some kind of billion dollar projects, and he even says it's important to have a billion dollar failure or two every year. But I think most organizations probably are better off being a little less aggressive and, you know, sticking to what a I has been doing for a long time, which is, you know, making smarter decisions based on based on data. >>Right? So, Tom, I want to shift gears one more time before before you let Ugo on on kind of a new topic for you, not really new, but you know, not not the vast majority of your publications. And that's the new way toe work, you know, as as the pandemic hit in mid March, right? And we had this light switch moment. Everybody had to work from home, and it was, you know, kind of crisis and get everybody set up. Well, you know, now we're five months, six months, seven months. A number of companies have said that people are not gonna be going back to work for a while, and so we're going to continue on this for a while, and then even when it's not what it is now, it's not gonna be what it was before. So, you know, I wonder and I know you, you tease. You're working on a a new book, you know, some of your thoughts on, you know, kind of this new way, uh, toe work and and and the human factors in this new, this new kind of reality that we're kind of evolving into, I guess, >>Yeah, this was an interest of mine. I think. Back in the nineties, I wrote an article called a co authored an article called Two Cheers for the Virtual Office. And, you know, it was just starting to emerge than some people were very excited about it. Some people were skeptical, and we said to cheers rather than three cheers because clearly there's some shortcomings and, you know, I keep seeing these pop up. It's it's great that we can work from our homes. It's great that we can accomplish most of what we need to do with a digital interface, but you know, things like innovation and creativity and certainly, um a A good, um, happy social life kind of requires some face to face contact every now and then. And so you know, I think we'll go back to an environment where there is some of that. Um, will have, um, time when people convene in one place so they can get to know each other face to face and learn from each other that way. And most of the time, I think it's a huge waste of people's time to commute into the office every day and toe jump on airplanes. Thio, Thio, give every little sales call or give every little presentation we just have to really narrow down. What are the circumstances, where face to face contact really matters and when can we get by with digital? You know, I think one of the things in my current work on finding is that even when you have AI based decision making, you really need a good platform in which that all takes place. So in addition to these virtual platforms, we need to develop platforms that kind of structure the workflow for us and tell us what we should be doing next and make automated decisions when necessary. And I think that ultimately is a big part of biz ops as well. It's not just the intelligence of an AI system, but it's the flow of work that kind of keeps things moving smoothly throughout your organization. Yeah, >>I think such such a huge opportunity as you just said, because I forget the stats on how often were interrupted with notifications between email text, slack asana, salesforce The list goes on and on. So, you know, t put an AI layer between the person and all these systems that are begging for attention. And you've written a you know, a book on the attention economy, which is a whole nother topic will say for another day. You know, it really begs. It really begs for some assistance because, you know, you just can't get him picked, you know, every two minutes and really get quality work done. It's just not it's just not realistic. And you know what? I don't think that's the future that we're looking for. >>Great. Totally. Alright, >>Tom. Well, thank you so much for your time. Really enjoyed the conversation. I got to dig into the library. It's very long song. I might started the attention economy. I haven't read that one in to me. I think that's the fascinating thing in which we're living. So thank you for your time. And, uh, great to see you. >>My pleasure, Jeff. Great to be here. >>All right, take care. Alright. East, Tom. I'm Jeff. You are watching the continuing coverage of the biz ops manifesto. Unveil. Thanks for watching the Cube. We'll see you next time.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of biz ops Manifesto unveiled. Brought to you by biz ops Coalition. Hey, welcome back your body, Jeffrey here with the Cube. Welcome back to our ongoing coverage of the busy ops manifesto unveiling its been in the works for a while. But today is the day that it actually kind of come out to the to the public. And we're excited to have a real industry luminary here to talk about what's going on, Why this is important and share his perspective. And we're happy to have from Cape Cod, I believe, is Tom Davenport. He is a distinguished author on professor at Babson College. We could go on. He's got a lot of great titles and and really illuminate airy in the area of big data and analytics. Thomas, great to see you. >>Thanks, Jeff. Happy to be here with you. Great. >>So let's just jump into it, you know, and getting ready for this. I came across your LinkedIn post. I think you did earlier this summer in June and right off the bat, the first sentence just grabbed my attention. I'm always interested in new attempts to address long term issues, Uh, in how technology works within businesses. Biz ops. What did you see in biz ops? That that kind of addresses one of these really big long term problems? >>Well, yeah. The long term problem is that we've had a poor connection between business people and I t people between business objectives and the i t. Solutions that address them. This has been going on, I think, since the beginning of information technology, and sadly, it hasn't gone away. And so busy ops is new attempt to deal with that issue with a, you know, a new framework. Eventually a broad set of solutions that increase the likelihood that will actually solve a business problem with a nightie capability. >>Right. You know, it's interesting to compare it with, like, Dev ops, which I think a lot of people are probably familiar with, which was, you know, built around a agile software development and the theory that we want to embrace change that that changes okay on. We wanna be able to iterate quickly and incorporate that, and that's been happening in the software world for for 20 plus years. What's taking so long to get that to the business side because the pace of change is change on the software side. You know, that's a strategic issue in terms of execution on the business side that they need now to change priorities. And, you know, there's no P R D S and M R. D s and big giant strategic plans that sit on the shelf for five years. That's just not the way business works anymore. Took a long time to get here. >>Yeah, it did. And, you know, there have been previous attempts to make a better connection between business and i t. There was the so called strategic alignment framework that a couple of friends of mine from Boston University developed, I think more than 20 years ago. But, you know, now we have better technology for creating that linkage. And the, you know, the idea of kind of ops oriented frameworks is pretty pervasive now. So I think it's, um you know, time for another serious attempt at it, right? >>And do you think doing it this way right with the bizarre coalition, you know, getting a collection of of kind of like minded individuals and companies together and actually even having a manifesto which were making this declarative statement of principles and values. You think that's what it takes to kind of drive this, you know, kind of beyond the experiment and actually, you know, get it done and really start to see some results in, in in production in the field. >>Well, you know, the manifesto approach worked for Karl Marx and communism. So maybe it'll work. Here is Well, now, I think certainly no one vendor organization can pull this off single handedly. It does require a number of organizations collaborating and working together. So I think a coalition is a good idea, and a manifesto is just a good way to kind of lay out. What you see is the key principles of the idea, and that makes it much easier for everybody. Toe I understand and act on. >>Yeah, I I think it's just it's really interesting having you know, having them written down on paper and having it just be so clearly articulated both in terms of the of the values as well as as the the principles and and the values, you know, business outcomes, matter, trust and collaboration, data driven decisions, which is the number three or four and then learn responded Pivot, It doesn't seem like those should have to be spelled out so clearly, but obviously it helps to have them there. You can stick them on the wall and kind of remember what your priorities are. But you're the data guy. You're the analytics guy. Uh, and a big piece of this is data analytics and moving to data driven decisions. And principle number seven says, you know, today's organizations generate more data than humans can process. And informed decisions can be augmented by machine learning and artificial intelligence right up your alley. You know, you've talked a number of times on kind of the many stages of analytics Onda how that's evolved over over time. You know, it is you think of analytics and machine learning driving decisions beyond supporting decisions, but actually starting to make decisions in machine time. What's that? What's that think for you? What does that make you? You know, start to think Wow, this is this is gonna be pretty significant. >>Yeah, well, you know, this has been a long term interest of mine. Um, the last generation of a I I was very interested in expert systems. And then e think more than 10 years ago I wrote an article about automated decision making using, um, what was available then, which is rule based approaches. But, you know, this address is an issue that we've always had with analytics and ai. Um, you know, we tended Thio refer to those things as providing decision support. The problem is that if the decision maker didn't want their support, didn't want to use them in order to make a decision, they didn't provide any value. And so the nice thing about automating decisions with now contemporary ai tools is that we can ensure that data and analytics get brought into the decision without any possible disconnection. Now, I think humans still have something to add here, and we often will need to examine how that decision is being made and maybe even have the ability to override it. But in general, I think, at least for, you know, repetitive tactical decisions, um, involving a lot of data. We want most of those I think, to be at least, um, recommended, if not totally made by analgesic rhythm or an AI based system, and that I believe would add to the quality and the precision and the accuracy of decisions in in most organizations. >>You know, I think I think you just answered my next question before I before I asked it. You know, we had Dr Robert Gates on the former secretary of Defense on a few years back, and we were talking about machines and machines making decisions, and he said at that time, you know, the only weapon systems that actually had an automated trigger on it, We're on the North Korea and South Korea border. Everything else, as you said, had to go through some person before the final decision was made. And my question is, you know what are kind of the attributes of the decision that enable us to more easily automated? And then how do you see that kind of morphing over time both as the data to support that as well as our comfort level, Um, enables us to turn Maura Maura actual decisions over to the machine? >>Well, yeah, I suggested we need data and the data that we have to kind of train our models has to be high quality and current, and we need to know the outcomes of that data. You know, most machine learning models, at least in business, are supervised, and that means we need tohave labeled outcomes in the in the training data. But, you know, the pandemic that we're living through is a good illustration of the fact that the the data also have to be reflective of current reality. And, you know, one of the things that we're finding out quite frequently these days is that the data that we have do not reflect. You know what it's like to do business in it. Pandemic it. I wrote a little piece about this recently with Jeff Cam at Wake Forest University. We call it Data Science quarantined, and we interviewed somebody who said, You know, it's amazing what eight weeks of zeros will do to your demand forecast. We just don't really know what happens in a pandemic. Our models may be have to be put on the shelf for a little while and until we can develop some new ones or we can get some other guidelines into making decisions. So I think that's one of the key things with automated decision making. We have toe, make sure that the data from the past and you know, that's all we have, of course, is a good guide toe. You know what's happening in the present and and the future as far as we understand it. >>Yeah, I used to joke when we started this calendar year 2020 is finally the year that we know everything with the benefit of hindsight. But it turned out 2020 the year we found out we actually know nothing and everything way. But I wanna I wanna follow up on that because, you know, it did suddenly change everything, right? We got this light switch moment. Everybody's working from home now. We're many, many months into it, and it's going to continue for a while. I saw your interview with Bernard Marr and you had a really interesting comment that now we have to deal with this change. We don't have a lot of data and you talked about hold, fold or double down and and I can't think of, um or, you know, kind of appropriate metaphor for driving the value of the biz ops. When now your whole portfolio strategy, um, needs to really be questioned. And, you know, You have to be really well, executing on what you are holding, what you're folding and what you're doubling down with this completely new environment. >>Well, yeah, And I hope I did this in the interview. I would like to say that I came up with that term, but it actually came from a friend of mine who's a senior executive at gen. Packed. And I used it mostly to talk about AI and AI applications, but I think you could You could use it much more broadly to talk about your entire sort of portfolio of digital projects you need to think about. Well, um, given some constraints on resource is and a difficulty economy for a while. Which of our projects do we wanna keep going on Pretty much the way we were And which ones, um, are not that necessary anymore. You see a lot of that in a I because we had so many pilots, somebody for me, you know, we've got more pilots around here, then O'Hare airport in a I, um and then the the ones that involve double down there, even mawr Important to you, they are, you know, a lot of organizations have found this out in the pandemic on digital projects, it's more and more important for customers to be ableto interact with you, um, digitally. And so you certainly wouldn't want toe cancel those projects or put them on hold. So you double down on them, get them done faster and better. >>Another. Another thing that came up in my research that that you quoted, um, was was from Jeff. Bezos is talking about the great bulk of what we do is quietly but meaning fleeing, improving core operations. You know, I think that is so core to this concept of not AI and machine learning and kind of the general sense, which which gets way too much buzz but really applied, applied to a specific problem. And that's where you start to see the value and, you know, the biz ops. Uh, manifesto is calling it out in this particular process, but I just love to get your perspective. As you know, you speak generally about this topic all the time, but how people should really be thinking about where the applications where I can apply this technology to get direct business value. >>Yeah, well, you know, even talking about automated decisions? Uh, the kind of once in a lifetime decisions, uh, the ones that a g laugh Li, the former CEO of Proctor and Gamble, used to call the big swing decisions. You only get a few of those, he said. In your tenure as CEO, those air probably not going to be the ones that you're automating in part because you don't have much data about them. You're only making them a few times, and in part because they really require that big picture thinking and the ability to kind of anticipate the future that the best human decision makers have. Um, but in general, I think where they I the projects that are working well are you know what I call the low hanging fruit ones? The some people even report to refer to it as boring A I so you know, sucking data out of a contract in order to compare it Thio bill of lading for what arrived at your supply chain. Companies can save or make a lot of money with that kind of comparison. It's not the most exciting thing, but a I, as you suggest, is really good at those narrow kinds of tasks. Um, it's not so good at the at the really big Moonshots like curing cancer or, you know, figuring out well, what's the best stock or bond under all circumstances or even autonomous vehicles. We made some great progress in that area, but everybody seems to agree that they're not going to be perfect for quite a while. And we really don't wanna be driving around on, um in that very much, unless they're, you know, good and all kinds of weather and with all kinds of pedestrian traffic. And you know that sort of thing, right? >>That's funny. Bring up contract management. I had a buddy years ago. They had a startup around contract management, and I'm like, and this was way before we had the compute power today and and cloud proliferation. I said, You know how How could you possibly built off around contract management? It's language. It's legalese. It's very specific. He's like Jeff. We just need to know where's the contract and when does it expire? And who's a signatory? And he built a business on those you know, very simple little facts that weren't being covered because their contracts from People's drawers and files and homes, and Lord only knows So it's really interesting, as you said, these kind of low hanging fruit opportunities where you could extract a lot of business value without trying to, you know, boil the ocean. >>Yeah, I mean, if you're Amazon, Jeff Bezos thinks it's important toe have some kind of billion dollar projects, and he even says it's important to have a billion dollar failure or two every year. But I think most organizations probably are better off being a little less aggressive and, you know, sticking to what a I has been doing for a long time, which is, you know, making smarter decisions based on based on data. >>Right? So, Tom, I want to shift gears one more time before before you let Ugo on on kind of a new topic for you, not really new, but you know, not not the vast majority of your publications. And that's the new way toe work, you know, as as the pandemic hit in mid March, right? And we had this light switch moment. Everybody had to work from home, and it was, you know, kind of crisis and get everybody set up well you know, Now we're five months, six months, seven months. A number of companies have said that people are not gonna be going back to work for a while. And so we're going to continue on this for a while, and then even when it's not what it is now, it's not gonna be what it was before. So, you know, I wonder and I know you, you tease. You're working on a a new book, you know, some of your thoughts on, you know, kind of this new way. Uh, toe work and and and the human factors in this new, this new kind of reality that we're kind of evolving into, I guess. >>Yeah, This was an interest of mine. I think back in the nineties, I wrote an article called Ah Co authored an article called Two Cheers for the Virtual Office. And, you know, it was just starting to emerge. Then some people were very excited about it. Some people were skeptical and we said to cheers rather than three cheers because clearly there's some shortcomings and, you know, I keep seeing these pop up. It's great that we can work from our homes. It's great that we can accomplish most of what we need to do with a digital interface. But you know, things like innovation and creativity and certainly a a good, um, happy social life kind of requires some face to face contact every now and then. And so you know, I think we'll go back to an environment where there is some of that. We'll have, um, time when people convene in one place so they can get to know each other face to face and learn from each other that way. And most of the time, I think it's a huge waste of people's time to commute into the office every day and toe jump on airplanes. Thio, Thio give every little mhm, uh, sales call or give every little presentation. We just have to really narrow down. What are the circumstances, where face to face contact really matters and when can we get by with digital? You know, I think one of the things in my current work I'm finding is that even when you have a I based decision making, you really need a good platform in which that all takes place. So in addition to these virtual platforms, We need to develop platforms that kind of structure the workflow for us and tell us what we should be doing next and make automated decisions when necessary. And I think that ultimately is a big part of biz ops as well. It's not just the intelligence oven, a isis some, but it's the flow of work that kind of keeps things moving smoothly throughout your organization. Yeah, >>I think such such a huge opportunity as you just said, because I forget the stats on how often were interrupted with notifications between email text, slack asana, salesforce The list goes on on and on. So, you know, t put an AI layer between the person and all these systems that are begging for attention. And you've written a you know, a book on the attention economy, which is a whole nother topic will say for another day. You know, it really begs. It really begs for some assistance because, you know, you just can't get him picked, you know, every two minutes and really get quality work done. It's just not it's just not realistic. And you know what? I don't think that's the future that we're looking for. >>Great totally alright, >>Tom. Well, thank you so much for your time. Really enjoyed the conversation. I gotta dig into the library. It's very long song. I might started the attention economy. I haven't read that one in to me. I think that's the fascinating thing in which we're living. So thank you for your time. And, uh, great to see you. >>My pleasure, Jeff. Great to be here. >>All right, take care. Alright. He's Tom. I'm Jeff. You are watching the continuing coverage of the biz ops manifesto. Unveil. Thanks for watching. The Cube will see you next time.

>> Thank you, everyone for joining. I'm here today to talk about ingress controllers, API gateways, and service mesh on Kubernetes, three very hot topics that are also frequently confusing. So I'm Richard Li, founder/CEO of Ambassador Labs, formerly known as Datawire. We sponsor a number of popular open source projects that are part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, including Telepresence and Ambassador, which is a Kubernetes native API gateway. And most of what I'm going to talk about today is related to our work around Ambassador. So I want to start by talking about application architecture and workflow on Kubernetes and how applications that are being built on Kubernetes really differ from how they used to be built. So when you're building applications on Kubernetes, the traditional architecture is the very famous monolith. And the monolith is a central piece of software. It's one giant thing that you build deploy, run. And the value of a monolith is it's really simple. And if you think about the monolithic development process, more importantly is that architecture is really reflected in that workflow. So with a monolith, you have a very centralized development process. You tend not to release too frequently because you have all these different development teams that are working on different features, and then you decide in advance when you're going to release that particular piece of software and everyone works towards that release train. And you have specialized teams. You have a development team, which has all your developers. You have a QA team, you have a release team, you have an operations team. So that's your typical development organization and workflow with a monolithic application. As organizations shift to microservices, they adopt a very different development paradigm. It's a decentralized development paradigm where you have lots of different independent teams that are simultaneously working on different parts of this application, and those application components are really shipped as independent services. And so you really have a continuous release cycle because instead of synchronizing all your teams around one particular vehicle, you have so many different release vehicles that each team is able to ship as soon as they're ready. And so we call this full cycle development because that team is really responsible not just for the coding of that microservice, but also the testing and the release and operations of that service. So this is a huge change, particularly with workflow, and there's a lot of implications for this. So I have a diagram here that just tries to visualize a little bit more the difference in organization. With the monolith, you have everyone who works on this monolith. With microservices, you have the yellow folks work on the yellow microservice and the purple folks work on the purple microservice and maybe just one person work on the orange microservice and so forth. So there's a lot more diversity around your teams and your microservices, and it lets you really adjust the granularity of your development to your specific business needs. So how do users actually access your microservices? Well, with a monolith, it's pretty straightforward. You have one big thing, so you just tell the internet, well, I have this one big thing on the internet. Make sure you send all your traffic to the big thing. But when you have microservices and you have a bunch of different microservices, how do users actually access these microservices? So the solution is an API gateway. So the API gateway consolidates all access to your microservices. So requests come from the internet. They go to your API gateway. The API gateway looks at these requests, and based on the nature of these requests, it routes them to the appropriate microservice. And because the API gateway is centralizing access to all of the microservices, it also really helps you simplify authentication, observability, routing, all these different cross-cutting concerns, because instead of implementing authentication in each of your microservices, which would be a maintenance nightmare and a security nightmare, you've put all of your authentication in your API gateway. So if you look at this world of microservices, API gateways are a really important part of your infrastructure which are really necessary, and pre-microservices, pre-Kubernetes, an API gateway, while valuable, was much more optional. So that's one of the really big things around recognizing with the microservices architecture, you really need to start thinking much more about an API gateway. The other consideration with an API gateway is around your management workflow, because as I mentioned, each team is actually responsible for their own microservice, which also means each team needs to be able to independently manage the gateway. So Team A working on that microservice needs to be able to tell the API gateway, this is how I want you to route requests to my microservice, and the purple team needs to be able to say something different for how purple requests get routed to the purple microservice. So that's also a really important consideration as you think about API gateways and how it fits in your architecture, because it's not just about your architecture, it's also about your workflow. So let me talk about API gateways on Kubernetes. I'm going to start by talking about ingress. So ingress is the process of getting traffic from the internet to services inside the cluster. Kubernetes, from an architectural perspective, it actually has a requirement that all the different pods in a Kubernetes cluster needs to communicate with each other. And as a consequence, what Kubernetes does is it creates its own private network space for all these pods, and each pod gets its own IP address. So this makes things very, very simple for interpod communication. Kubernetes, on the other hand, does not say very much around how traffic should actually get into the cluster. So there's a lot of detail around how traffic actually, once it's in the cluster, how you route it around the cluster, and it's very opinionated about how this works, but getting traffic into the cluster, there's a lot of different options and there's multiple strategies. There's Pod IP, there's Ingress, there's LoadBalancer resources, there's NodePort. I'm not going to go into exhaustive detail on all these different options, and I'm going to just talk about the most common approach that most organizations take today. So the most common strategy for routing is coupling an external load balancer with an ingress controller. And so an external load balancer can be a hardware load balancer. It can be a virtual machine. It can be a cloud load balancer. But the key requirement for an external load balancer is to be able to attach a stable IP address so that you can actually map a domain name and DNS to that particular external load balancer, and that external load balancer usually, but not always, will then route traffic and pass that traffic straight through to your ingress controller. And then your ingress controller takes that traffic and then routes it internally inside Kubernetes to the various pods that are running your microservices. There are other approaches, but this is the most common approach. And the reason for this is that the alternative approaches really require each of your microservices to be exposed outside of the cluster, which causes a lot of challenges around management and deployment and maintenance that you generally want to avoid. So I've been talking about an ingress controller. What exactly is an ingress controller? So an ingress controller is an application that can process rules according to the Kubernetes ingress specification. Strangely, Kubernetes is not actually shipped with a built-in ingress controller. I say strangely because you think, well, getting traffic into a cluster is probably a pretty common requirement, and it is. It turns out that this is complex enough that there's no one size fits all ingress controller. And so there is a set of ingress rules that are part of the Kubernetes ingress specification that specify how traffic gets routed into the cluster, and then you need a proxy that can actually route this traffic to these different pods. And so an ingress controller really translates between the Kubernetes configuration and the proxy configuration, and common proxies for ingress controllers include HAProxy, Envoy Proxy, or NGINX. So let me talk a little bit more about these common proxies. So all these proxies, and there are many other proxies. I'm just highlighting what I consider to be probably the three most well-established proxies, HAProxy, NGINX, and Envoy Proxy. So HAProxy is managed by HAProxy Technologies. Started in 2001. The HAProxy organization actually creates an ingress controller. And before they created an ingress controller, there was an open source project called Voyager which built an ingress controller on HAProxy. NGINX, managed by NGINX, Inc., subsequently acquired by F5. Also open source. Started a little bit later, the proxy, in 2004. And there's the Nginx-ingress, which is a community project. That's the most popular. As well as the Nginx, Inc. kubernetes-ingress project, which is maintained by the company. This is a common source of confusion because sometimes people will think that they're using the NGINX ingress controller, and it's not clear if they're using this commercially supported version or this open source version. And they actually, although they have very similar names, they actually have different functionality. Finally, Envoy Proxy, the newest entrant to the proxy market, originally developed by engineers at Lyft, the ride sharing company. They subsequently donated it to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. Envoy has become probably the most popular cloud native proxy. It's used by Ambassador, the API gateway. It's used in the Istio service mesh. It's used in the VMware Contour. It's been used by Amazon in App Mesh. It's probably the most common proxy in the cloud native world. So as I mentioned, there's a lot of different options for ingress controllers. The most common is the NGINX ingress controller, not the one maintained by NGINX, Inc., but the one that's part of the Kubernetes project. Ambassador is the most popular Envoy-based option. Another common option is the Istio Gateway, which is directly integrated with the Istio mesh, and that's actually part of Docker Enterprise. So with all these choices around ingress controller, how do you actually decide? Well, the reality is the ingress specification's very limited. And the reason for this is that getting traffic into a cluster, there's a lot of nuance into how you want to do that, and it turns out it's very challenging to create a generic one size fits all specification because of the vast diversity of implementations and choices that are available to end users. And so you don't see ingress specifying anything around resilience. So if you want to specify a timeout or rate-limiting, it's not possible. Ingress is really limited to support for HTTP. So if you're using gRPC or web sockets, you can't use the ingress specification. Different ways of routing, authentication. The list goes on and on. And so what happens is that different ingress controllers extend the core ingress specification to support these use cases in different ways. So NGINX ingress, they actually use a combination of config maps and the ingress resources plus custom annotations that extend the ingress to really let you configure a lot of the additional extensions that is exposed in the NGINX ingress. With Ambassador, we actually use custom resource definitions, different CRDs that extend Kubernetes itself to configure Ambassador. And one of the benefits of the CRD approach is that we can create a standard schema that's actually validated by Kubernetes. So when you do a kub control apply of an Ambassador CRD, kub control can immediately validate and tell you if you're actually applying a valid schema and format for your Ambassador configuration. And as I previously mentioned, Ambassador's built on Envoy Proxy, Istio Gateway also uses CRDs. They can be used in extension of the service mesh CRDs as opposed to dedicated gateway CRDs. And again, Istio Gateway is built on Envoy Proxy. So I've been talking a lot about ingress controllers, but the title of my talk was really about API gateways and ingress controllers and service mesh. So what's the difference between an ingress controller and an API gateway? So to recap, an ingress controller processes Kubernetes ingress routing rules. An API gateway is a central point for managing all your traffic to Kubernetes services. It typically has additional functionality such as authentication, observability, a developer portal, and so forth. So what you find is that not all API gateways are ingress controllers because some API gateways don't support Kubernetes at all. So you can't, they can't be ingress controllers. And not all ingress controllers support the functionality such as authentication, observability, developer portal, that you would typically associate with an API gateway. So generally speaking, API gateways that run on Kubernetes should be considered a superset of an ingress controller. But if the API gateway doesn't run on Kubernetes, then it's an API gateway and not an ingress controller. So what's the difference between a service mesh and an API gateway? So an API gateway is really focused on traffic into and out of a cluster. So the colloquial term for this is North/South traffic. A service mesh is focused on traffic between services in a cluster, East/West traffic. All service meshes need an API gateway. So Istio includes a basic ingress or API gateway called the Istio Gateway, because a service mesh needs traffic from the internet to be routed into the mesh before it can actually do anything. Envoy Proxy, as I mentioned, is the most common proxy for both mesh and gateways. Docker Enterprise provides an Envoy-based solution out of the box, Istio Gateway. The reason Docker does this is because, as I mentioned, Kubernetes doesn't come package with an ingress. It makes sense for Docker Enterprise to provide something that's easy to get going, no extra steps required, because with Docker enterprise, you can deploy it and get going, get it exposed on the internet without any additional software. Docker Enterprise can also be easily upgraded to Ambassador because they're both built on Envoy. It ensures consistent routing semantics. And also with Ambassador, you get greater security for single sign-on. There's a lot of security by default that's configured directly into Ambassador. Better control over TLS, things like that. And then finally, there's commercial support that's actually available for Ambassador. Istio is an open source project that has a very broad community, but no commercial support options. So to recap, ingress controllers and API gateways are critical pieces of your cloud native stack. So make sure that you choose something that works well for you. And I think a lot of times organizations don't think critically enough about the API gateway until they're much further down the Kubernetes journey. Considerations around how to choose that API gateway include functionality such as how does it do with traffic management and observability? Does it support the protocols that you need? Also nonfunctional requirements such as does it integrate with your workflow? Do you offer commercial support? Can you get commercial support for this? An API gateway is focused on North/South traffic, so traffic into and out of your Kubernetes cluster. A service mesh is focused on East/West traffic, so traffic between different services inside the same cluster. Docker Enterprise includes Istio Gateway out of the box. Easy to use, but can also be extended with Ambassador for enhanced functionality and security. So thank you for your time. Hope this was helpful in understanding the difference between API gateways, ingress controllers, and service meshes, and how you should be thinking about that on your Kubernetes deployment.

>> Live from San Diego, California It's the queue covering Sisqo live US 2019 Tio by Cisco and its ecosystem barters >> Welcome back to the cubes coverage of Day one of Sisqo Live from Sunny San Diego on Lisa Martin, my co hostess student. A man and Stuart are pleased to welcome a couple of guests from this Cisco platform and Solutions Group. We've got Barbara Half Li, senior director of Business development Barbeque. Great to have you nice to be here. And Matt Ferguson, director of product development. Matt, Welcome. >> Thank you. Nice to be here. >> So we appreciate you guys being here right at the start of happy hour here in San Diego. Thank you. Some our drinking water. Right wing quick. Just getting so, Barbara. So here we are at this's the 30th year Cisco's partner and customer, then a lot. A lot happens in 30 years. A lot of change here we are customers in every industry, living in this multi cloud hybrid world for many reasons. >> What are some >> of the things from the business perspective that you're hearing from customers? What are they looking to Sisko to do to help them traverse this new multi cloud world successfully. >> Yeah, well, one of the things that we hear customers tell us often is how doe I manage this landscape. Many people think of the cloud is just Oh, I've got a public cloud or oh, I'm gonna have my cloud on primp. But really, with the explosion of devices and I ot right, people want to know. How do we take that data from the edge from the edge? What do I do with that data? Do I put it up in a public cloud immediately? Do I bring it back to do some kind of analysis on that data? Is it goto a polo? Does it come to the branch doesn't go to the headquarters and that landscapes Very complex. So you look across that landscape and as customers of either proactively adopted the public cloud or had to adopt multiple clouds because of acquisitions they've made, this landscape just gets incredibly complex very, very quickly. So when people come to Cisco, they basically looking for a couple of things. Number one security. Because putting the security wrapper around all of that right, it becomes paramount. People lose their jobs if they're data isn't protected, so they want help with their security. They also want to know what's the best cost mix, right? How do I have the right options available to me? But the other thing they really want is speed of innovation. I mean, we hear this over and over and over. Uh, I talked to a bank the other day. 100 year old bank, right? You think 100 year old bank, um, speed of innovation may not be top of their priority, but absolutely. I walked in and they held up the phone and they said, Our competitors Aire delivering capabilities faster for the mobile user. And every time our competitors releases a new application or a new feature, I lose market share. So it isn't about cost savings anymore. It's about speed of innovation, even for 100 year old bank. When they come to Cisco, they want to know. Can you help secure this landscape? Can you give me speed of innovation? And then, of course, every cloud started the networking layer as well, Right? So what innovations is Cisco doing on the networking side? So these are some of the things that's customers come to Cisco and they ask us, what can you do for us and the help that they want? It comes back to innovation every time. >> Barbara. Actually, I've talked to some of those 100 year old Cos they need it more than ever, because that five year old bank doesn't have all the legacy and they're already moving is fast. But it's an interesting point. Matt. You know, we've been tracking community since the early days. This year, it finally feels like it's gotten to a certain maturity level, such that I've talked to a number of customers talking about how that is a lever for their digital transformation, how they're modernizing their application, pork portfolio and not just, you know, the, you know, making of the sausage of how this, you know, container orchestration, layers going toe, you know, do something that most people won't understand. It's that connection with the business kind of building up. What what robber says They're bring us inside a little bit more. You know the community's piece of that, >> Yeah, it's absolutely been tremendous to see the CNC F and Kume con absolutely just take off on the number of people that are attending. I think you been at ease as as a technology is really starting to hit its stride in the mainstream. It's a combination. I think of a number of factors. You have the developer community that's starting to really sort of embrace containers as they sort of re fact to their applications. So you have that going on, and then you have the ops persona or the people that actually have to manage and deploy the Cuban in these clusters that are starting to dive in and go waken. Take this on. We know what it means to actually manage a Cuban aunties cluster. The thing that what we're bringing, I think at Cisco is, ah, a curated staff. The opinionated stack, the ability to manage those clusters ability to actually deploy those clusters, whether it's on prime in the private in the private cloud, or leveraging the AP eyes that eight of us or Google or sure would publicly provide so that you can manage those clusters in the in the actual public's places. Well, so you have a combination of factors that are starting to come together. They're really sort of said, This is the opportunity that we're starting to see it happen right now. >> How would container ization looking at that example that Barber gave of the 100 year old bank needing to transform quickly? Otherwise, there there's so much competition, but not from your perspective. How what are some of the biggest advantage is that a legacy organization like 100 year old make is going to get by adopting containers. >> Yeah, so containers is one thing. So speed of innovation where they actually have to take their application. Asians, let's, for example, as a developer, you're have taken your monolithic applications re factor than into micro services. Now you have one piece of code turning into multiple different pieces of code in containers. Now what you have to do is you have to manage those containers, and that's where Cuban aunties comes in to be ableto orchestrate. Those containers in Google has really sort of offered this technology to the community, and that's where I think you know. You have the history of Google's, you know, operational sort of expertise, the open source ability to take uber Netease and then Sisko to sort of wrap around the lifecycle management of those containers so that you can not think about how, like the note operating system, the doctor run time, all the pieces that make up that stack and let the developers just focus on their code. And that's really what we're trying to do is enable the developers to focus on their code and not have, you know, on entire team of folks managing the cluster itself. >> So, Barbara, it's an open source community. There's a lot of partners involved. So what leads customers? Teo, turn to Sisko for these type of solutions. What differentiates them >> when you when you look at a company trying to do it on their own, I'm going to go do it is a service I'm gonna offer. Containers is a service right to do it on their own. Could take a year or more. I talked to a entertainment company the other day, and they had been working on trying to just define the requirements to do a container platform for a year. So if they could come to a company like Cisco and they can buy the container platform, we have as a sass offering, have it up and running in a matter of hours, which we have presidents of it running up in a couple of couple of hours and then delivering containers is a service to their constituents. It makes the team you're oh, right when you also look at how much it takes to curate that and then maintain it over time, the ability for us to actually consume the changes from the open source community curate that and release it is very fast. So from a nightie perspective, a nightie administrators perspective, you're able to take that offer it to the community, allow them to do development wherever they want to develop, whether it's in the public cloud, whether it's on from but maintain that, control it within the community, then you've got something right, and I mean, Matt could talk about that, too. But But then he'll agree. When we go to all the customers what our container pop firm does, how it leverages Coover Netease. How fast we give the updates out to our customers, and at the price point they are why we're talking about a month, two months. It is a pretty phenomenal opportunity for administrators to get something up and running an offering to their community very, very quickly. >> Yeah, No, you bring up some great points. They remember a couple of years ago when I talk to most customers, it's like, Well, what's your stack? Well, I pull these 35 different tools and I build all this stuff and I'm like, and I'm sorry, Don't you remember when we went to Cloud? It's about getting rid of that undifferentiated heavy lifting. Exactly why is this mission critical for your business to build and maintain this stack? And of course, the interest is for most customers out there. I want to consume it in platforms and from vendors that I trust so that I can focus on what's important in my business and drive the those business drivers. So it was a maturity thing for some of those early customers. So that Ari there, I mean, because Sisko, you've got your Cisco Container platform. You partner with the aid of Lewis's Googles. The world. Yeah, you know, Are we getting that point where customers shouldn't need to even think about that? That there's that communities and service measures and all that stuff in the >> middle of the number one goal is simplicity. And and what I would say with the container platform is that we are leveraging the speed of innovation that's occurring at the public cloud. So we're not taking a a curated stack from Cisco and putting it on the public cloud. We're leveraging the speed of innovation that that the public cloud provides. But at the same time, we're also taking that that cluster and we're putting it on crime into a private cloud. And I say Right now you're the point you're making is spot on, You know you don't necessarily in an ice tea shop with developers managing that entire stack from top to bottom. You know, why would you want to do that? And a recent quote that I heard recently was you either purchase or buy the product or you are the product, and I think that's a fascinating way to look at it because, you know, you could do that, you could curate it. You could absolutely, from top to bond curate the entire stock. But what typically happens that we're seeing from customers is well, um, organizations move on. They might not necessarily know what was built. They might be code that goes, gets older and expires, or you know gets out of dates. And so now you get stuck in an environment where your not terrified. But there's a nervousness, trepidation of going. I don't know, Let's not break it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And that's a lot of times what happens in these stacks. So I think we're absolutely with the CCP and the public how we're starting to actually get to that. >> So, Barbara, last question for you talking about the speed of innovation and when you were describing the massive fast R A Y customers can get by working with you guys from a container solution perspective, it's It's a no brainer as we look at some of the things that we know were coming. The wave of connectivity changes. Five. G WiFi sex. What excites you about how Cisco's story from a container platform perspective is going to change? Change as you start building and crisis that continued building technologies for these networks that are primarily wireless and incredibly fast. >> I think that's exciting for me is the way we approach the architecture, er way we're looking at certainly being more open, everything we do, building it with open AP eyes uh, and and looking across that Cisco stack knowing that at this moment in time, if you would've asked us five years ago Where are you? In cloud, Right? If you would've asked us 10 years ago, what are you going to do in Cloud? But at this moment in time to look at how we differentiate ourselves like I mentioned, every cloud started to the network. You've got to secure the entire infrastructure. You've gotta have connectivity between the clouds. Hence the CCP, the container platform, right. You have to have cloud management. You have to have cloud analytics way. Bring all of that together. So if a company has made investments and Cisco in the past, those those investments are going to come forward in this new multi cloud, multi tool man's domain landscape. And they can leverage those investments while they continue to invest with Cisco in innovations. And and that's what that's what really excites me. I think also just the world of a I and ML and big data And how when excites me is that developers Khun develop anywhere they can use all the great tools that are available. And I love the idea that the control is back in the hands of the I t administrator. From a compliance standpoint from a governance stand like we're bringing that control back into developers hands while giving the speed of innovation and the ability to develop anywhere back to the line of business in the developers. That combination is just really exciting at this moment in time. >> Awesome. And here we are in the definite zone. This is a massive community of over nearly 600,000. Strong, definite. So can you imagine all the innovation going on in this room behind us on day one? We'll we thank you both so much, Barbara, and not for joining stew and me on the A kid this afternoon. Lots of exciting things to come. Francisco or just the as I think, Chuck said this morning, were just getting started. >> We are just getting started. >> Absolutely. >> Guys are pleasure. Forced to mint a man, I'm Lisa Martin and you're watching The Cube from Cisco Live 2019