>>from around the globe. It's the Q with digital coverage of exa scale day made possible by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Welcome, everyone to the Cube celebration of Exa Scale Day. Shaheen Khan is here. He's the founding partner, an analyst at Orion X And, among other things, he is the co host of Radio free HPC Shaheen. Welcome. Thanks for coming on. >>Thanks for being here, Dave. Great to be here. How are you >>doing? Well, thanks. Crazy with doing these things, Cove in remote interviews. I wish we were face to face at us at a supercomputer show, but, hey, this thing is working. We can still have great conversations. And And I love talking to analysts like you because you bring an independent perspective. You're very wide observation space. So So let me, Like many analysts, you probably have sort of a mental model or a market model that you look at. So maybe talk about your your work, how you look at the market, and we could get into some of the mega trends that you see >>very well. Very well. Let me just quickly set the scene. We fundamentally track the megatrends of the Information Age And, of course, because we're in the information age, digital transformation falls out of that. And the megatrends that drive that in our mind is Ayotte, because that's the fountain of data five G. Because that's how it's gonna get communicated ai and HBC because that's how we're gonna make sense of it Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies because that's how it's gonna get transacted on. That's how value is going to get transferred from the place took place and then finally, quantum computing, because that exemplifies how things are gonna get accelerated. >>So let me ask you So I spent a lot of time, but I D. C and I had the pleasure of of the High Performance computing group reported into me. I wasn't an HPC analyst, but over time you listen to those guys, you learning. And as I recall, it was HPC was everywhere, and it sounds like we're still seeing that trend where, whether it was, you know, the Internet itself were certainly big data, you know, coming into play. Uh, you know, defense, obviously. But is your background mawr HPC or so that these other technologies that you're talking about it sounds like it's your high performance computing expert market watcher. And then you see it permeating into all these trends. Is that a fair statement? >>That's a fair statement. I did grow up in HPC. My first job out of school was working for an IBM fellow doing payroll processing in the old days on and and And it went from there, I worked for Cray Research. I worked for floating point systems, so I grew up in HPC. But then, over time, uh, we had experiences outside of HPC. So for a number of years, I had to go do commercial enterprise computing and learn about transaction processing and business intelligence and, you know, data warehousing and things like that, and then e commerce and then Web technology. So over time it's sort of expanded. But HPC is a like a bug. You get it and you can't get rid of because it's just so inspiring. So supercomputing has always been my home, so to say >>well and so the reason I ask is I wanted to touch on a little history of the industry is there was kind of a renaissance in many, many years ago, and you had all these startups you had Kendall Square Research Danny Hillis thinking machines. You had convex trying to make many supercomputers. And it was just this This is, you know, tons of money flowing in and and then, you know, things kind of consolidate a little bit and, uh, things got very, very specialized. And then with the big data craze, you know, we've seen HPC really at the heart of all that. So what's your take on on the ebb and flow of the HPC business and how it's evolved? >>Well, HBC was always trying to make sense of the world, was trying to make sense of nature. And of course, as much as we do know about nature, there's a lot we don't know about nature and problems in nature are you can classify those problems into basically linear and nonlinear problems. The linear ones are easy. They've already been solved. The nonlinear wants. Some of them are easy. Many of them are hard, the nonlinear, hard, chaotic. All of those problems are the ones that you really need to solve. The closer you get. So HBC was basically marching along trying to solve these things. It had a whole process, you know, with the scientific method going way back to Galileo, the experimentation that was part of it. And then between theory, you got to look at the experiment and the data. You kind of theorize things. And then you experimented to prove the theories and then simulation and using the computers to validate some things eventually became a third pillar of off science. On you had theory, experiment and simulation. So all of that was going on until the rest of the world, thanks to digitization, started needing some of those same techniques. Why? Because you've got too much data. Simply, there's too much data to ship to the cloud. There's too much data to, uh, make sense of without math and science. So now enterprise computing problems are starting to look like scientific problems. Enterprise data centers are starting to look like national lab data centers, and there is that sort of a convergence that has been taking place gradually, really over the past 34 decades. And it's starting to look really, really now >>interesting, I want I want to ask you about. I was like to talk to analysts about, you know, competition. The competitive landscape is the competition in HPC. Is it between vendors or countries? >>Well, this is a very interesting thing you're saying, because our other thesis is that we are moving a little bit beyond geopolitics to techno politics. And there are now, uh, imperatives at the political level that are driving some of these decisions. Obviously, five G is very visible as as as a piece of technology that is now in the middle of political discussions. Covert 19 as you mentioned itself, is a challenge that is a global challenge that needs to be solved at that level. Ai, who has access to how much data and what sort of algorithms. And it turns out as we all know that for a I, you need a lot more data than you thought. You do so suddenly. Data superiority is more important perhaps than even. It can lead to information superiority. So, yeah, that's really all happening. But the actors, of course, continue to be the vendors that are the embodiment of the algorithms and the data and the systems and infrastructure that feed the applications. So to say >>so let's get into some of these mega trends, and maybe I'll ask you some Colombo questions and weaken geek out a little bit. Let's start with a you know, again, it was one of this when I started the industry. It's all it was a i expert systems. It was all the rage. And then we should have had this long ai winter, even though, you know, the technology never went away. But But there were at least two things that happened. You had all this data on then the cost of computing. You know, declines came down so so rapidly over the years. So now a eyes back, we're seeing all kinds of applications getting infused into virtually every part of our lives. People trying to advertise to us, etcetera. Eso So talk about the intersection of AI and HPC. What are you seeing there? >>Yeah, definitely. Like you said, I has a long history. I mean, you know, it came out of MIT Media Lab and the AI Lab that they had back then and it was really, as you mentioned, all focused on expert systems. It was about logical processing. It was a lot of if then else. And then it morphed into search. How do I search for the right answer, you know, needle in the haystack. But then, at some point, it became computational. Neural nets are not a new idea. I remember you know, we had we had a We had a researcher in our lab who was doing neural networks, you know, years ago. And he was just saying how he was running out of computational power and we couldn't. We were wondering, you know what? What's taking all this difficult, You know, time. And it turns out that it is computational. So when deep neural nets showed up about a decade ago, arm or it finally started working and it was a confluence of a few things. Thalib rhythms were there, the data sets were there, and the technology was there in the form of GPS and accelerators that finally made distractible. So you really could say, as in I do say that a I was kind of languishing for decades before HPC Technologies reignited it. And when you look at deep learning, which is really the only part of a I that has been prominent and has made all this stuff work, it's all HPC. It's all matrix algebra. It's all signal processing algorithms. are computational. The infrastructure is similar to H B. C. The skill set that you need is the skill set of HPC. I see a lot of interest in HBC talent right now in part motivated by a I >>mhm awesome. Thank you on. Then I wanna talk about Blockchain and I can't talk about Blockchain without talking about crypto you've written. You've written about that? I think, you know, obviously supercomputers play a role. I think you had written that 50 of the top crypto supercomputers actually reside in in China A lot of times the vendor community doesn't like to talk about crypto because you know that you know the fraud and everything else. But it's one of the more interesting use cases is actually the primary use case for Blockchain even though Blockchain has so much other potential. But what do you see in Blockchain? The potential of that technology And maybe we can work in a little crypto talk as well. >>Yeah, I think 11 simple way to think of Blockchain is in terms off so called permission and permission less the permission block chains or when everybody kind of knows everybody and you don't really get to participate without people knowing who you are and as a result, have some basis to trust your behavior and your transactions. So things are a lot calmer. It's a lot easier. You don't really need all the supercomputing activity. Whereas for AI the assertion was that intelligence is computer herbal. And with some of these exa scale technologies, we're trying to, you know, we're getting to that point for permission. Less Blockchain. The assertion is that trust is computer ble and, it turns out for trust to be computer ble. It's really computational intensive because you want to provide an incentive based such that good actors are rewarded and back actors. Bad actors are punished, and it is worth their while to actually put all their effort towards good behavior. And that's really what you see, embodied in like a Bitcoin system where the chain has been safe over the many years. It's been no attacks, no breeches. Now people have lost money because they forgot the password or some other. You know, custody of the accounts have not been trustable, but the chain itself has managed to produce that, So that's an example of computational intensity yielding trust. So that suddenly becomes really interesting intelligence trust. What else is computer ble that we could do if we if we had enough power? >>Well, that's really interesting the way you described it, essentially the the confluence of crypto graphics software engineering and, uh, game theory, Really? Where the bad actors air Incentive Thio mined Bitcoin versus rip people off because it's because because there are lives better eso eso so that so So Okay, so make it make the connection. I mean, you sort of did. But But I want to better understand the connection between, you know, supercomputing and HPC and Blockchain. We know we get a crypto for sure, like in mind a Bitcoin which gets harder and harder and harder. Um and you mentioned there's other things that we can potentially compute on trust. Like what? What else? What do you thinking there? >>Well, I think that, you know, the next big thing that we are really seeing is in communication. And it turns out, as I was saying earlier, that these highly computational intensive algorithms and models show up in all sorts of places like, you know, in five g communication, there's something called the memo multi and multi out and to optimally manage that traffic such that you know exactly what beam it's going to and worth Antenna is coming from that turns out to be a non trivial, you know, partial differential equation. So next thing you know, you've got HPC in there as and he didn't expect it because there's so much data to be sent, you really have to do some data reduction and data processing almost at the point of inception, if not at the point of aggregation. So that has led to edge computing and edge data centers. And that, too, is now. People want some level of computational capability at that place like you're building a microcontroller, which traditionally would just be a, you know, small, low power, low cost thing. And people want victor instructions. There. People want matrix algebra there because it makes sense to process the data before you have to ship it. So HPCs cropping up really everywhere. And then finally, when you're trying to accelerate things that obviously GP use have been a great example of that mixed signal technologies air coming to do analog and digital at the same time, quantum technologies coming so you could do the you know, the usual analysts to buy to where you have analog, digital, classical quantum and then see which, you know, with what lies where all of that is coming. And all of that is essentially resting on HBC. >>That's interesting. I didn't realize that HBC had that position in five G with multi and multi out. That's great example and then I o t. I want to ask you about that because there's a lot of discussion about real time influencing AI influencing at the edge on you're seeing sort of new computing architectures, potentially emerging, uh, video. The acquisition of arm Perhaps, you know, amore efficient way, maybe a lower cost way of doing specialized computing at the edge it, But it sounds like you're envisioning, actually, supercomputing at the edge. Of course, we've talked to Dr Mark Fernandez about space born computers. That's like the ultimate edge you got. You have supercomputers hanging on the ceiling of the International space station, but But how far away are we from this sort of edge? Maybe not. Space is an extreme example, but you think factories and windmills and all kinds of edge examples where supercomputing is is playing a local role. >>Well, I think initially you're going to see it on base stations, Antenna towers, where you're aggregating data from a large number of endpoints and sensors that are gathering the data, maybe do some level of local processing and then ship it to the local antenna because it's no more than 100 m away sort of a thing. But there is enough there that that thing can now do the processing and do some level of learning and decide what data to ship back to the cloud and what data to get rid of and what data to just hold. Or now those edge data centers sitting on top of an antenna. They could have a half a dozen GPS in them. They're pretty powerful things. They could have, you know, one they could have to, but but it could be depending on what you do. A good a good case study. There is like surveillance cameras. You don't really need to ship every image back to the cloud. And if you ever need it, the guy who needs it is gonna be on the scene, not back at the cloud. So there is really no sense in sending it, Not certainly not every frame. So maybe you can do some processing and send an image every five seconds or every 10 seconds, and that way you can have a record of it. But you've reduced your bandwidth by orders of magnitude. So things like that are happening. And toe make sense of all of that is to recognize when things changed. Did somebody come into the scene or is it just you know that you know, they became night, So that's sort of a decision. Cannot be automated and fundamentally what is making it happen? It may not be supercomputing exa scale class, but it's definitely HPCs, definitely numerically oriented technologies. >>Shane, what do you see happening in chip architectures? Because, you see, you know the classical intel they're trying to put as much function on the real estate as possible. We've seen the emergence of alternative processors, particularly, uh, GP use. But even if f b g A s, I mentioned the arm acquisition, so you're seeing these alternative processors really gain momentum and you're seeing data processing units emerge and kind of interesting trends going on there. What do you see? And what's the relationship to HPC? >>Well, I think a few things are going on there. Of course, one is, uh, essentially the end of Moore's law, where you cannot make the cycle time be any faster, so you have to do architectural adjustments. And then if you have a killer app that lends itself to large volume, you can build silicon. That is especially good for that now. Graphics and gaming was an example of that, and people said, Oh my God, I've got all these cores in there. Why can't I use it for computation? So everybody got busy making it 64 bit capable and some grass capability, And then people say, Oh, I know I can use that for a I And you know, now you move it to a I say, Well, I don't really need 64 but maybe I can do it in 32 or 16. So now you do it for that, and then tens, of course, come about. And so there's that sort of a progression of architecture, er trumping, basically cycle time. That's one thing. The second thing is scale out and decentralization and distributed computing. And that means that the inter communication and intra communication among all these notes now becomes an issue big enough issue that maybe it makes sense to go to a DPU. Maybe it makes sense to go do some level of, you know, edge data centers like we were talking about on then. The third thing, really is that in many of these cases you have data streaming. What is really coming from I o t, especially an edge, is that data is streaming and when data streaming suddenly new architectures like F B G. A s become really interesting and and and hold promise. So I do see, I do see FPG's becoming more prominent just for that reason, but then finally got a program all of these things on. That's really a difficulty, because what happens now is that you need to get three different ecosystems together mobile programming, embedded programming and cloud programming. And those are really three different developer types. You can't hire somebody who's good at all three. I mean, maybe you can, but not many. So all of that is challenges that are driving this this this this industry, >>you kind of referred to this distributed network and a lot of people you know, they refer to this. The next generation cloud is this hyper distributed system. When you include the edge and multiple clouds that etcetera space, maybe that's too extreme. But to your point, at least I inferred there's a There's an issue of Leighton. See, there's the speed of light s So what? What? What is the implication then for HBC? Does that mean I have tow Have all the data in one place? Can I move the compute to the data architecturally, What are you seeing there? >>Well, you fundamentally want to optimize when to move data and when to move, Compute. Right. So is it better to move data to compute? Or is it better to bring compute to data and under what conditions? And the dancer is gonna be different for different use cases. It's like, really, is it worth my while to make the trip, get my processing done and then come back? Or should I just developed processing capability right here? Moving data is really expensive and relatively speaking. It has become even more expensive, while the price of everything has dropped down its price has dropped less than than than like processing. So it is now starting to make sense to do a lot of local processing because processing is cheap and moving data is expensive Deep Use an example of that, Uh, you know, we call this in C two processing like, you know, let's not move data. If you don't have to accept that we live in the age of big data, so data is huge and wants to be moved. And that optimization, I think, is part of what you're what you're referring to. >>Yeah, So a couple examples might be autonomous vehicles. You gotta have to make decisions in real time. You can't send data back to the cloud flip side of that is we talk about space borne computers. You're collecting all this data You can at some point. You know, maybe it's a year or two after the lived out its purpose. You ship that data back and a bunch of disk drives or flash drives, and then load it up into some kind of HPC system and then have at it and then you doom or modeling and learn from that data corpus, right? I mean those air, >>right? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, you know, driverless vehicles is a great example, because it is obviously coming fast and furious, no pun intended. And also, it dovetails nicely with the smart city, which dovetails nicely with I o. T. Because it is in an urban area. Mostly, you can afford to have a lot of antenna, so you can give it the five g density that you want. And it requires the Layton sees. There's a notion of how about if my fleet could communicate with each other. What if the car in front of me could let me know what it sees, That sort of a thing. So, you know, vehicle fleets is going to be in a non opportunity. All of that can bring all of what we talked about. 21 place. >>Well, that's interesting. Okay, so yeah, the fleets talking to each other. So kind of a Byzantine fault. Tolerance. That problem that you talk about that z kind of cool. I wanna I wanna sort of clothes on quantum. It's hard to get your head around. Sometimes You see the demonstrations of quantum. It's not a one or zero. It could be both. And you go, What? How did come that being so? And And of course, there it's not stable. Uh, looks like it's quite a ways off, but the potential is enormous. It's of course, it's scary because we think all of our, you know, passwords are already, you know, not secure. And every password we know it's gonna get broken. But give us the give us the quantum 101 And let's talk about what the implications. >>All right, very well. So first off, we don't need to worry about our passwords quite yet. That that that's that's still ways off. It is true that analgesic DM came up that showed how quantum computers can fact arise numbers relatively fast and prime factory ization is at the core of a lot of cryptology algorithms. So if you can fact arise, you know, if you get you know, number 21 you say, Well, that's three times seven, and those three, you know, three and seven or prime numbers. Uh, that's an example of a problem that has been solved with quantum computing, but if you have an actual number, would like, you know, 2000 digits in it. That's really harder to do. It's impossible to do for existing computers and even for quantum computers. Ways off, however. So as you mentioned, cubits can be somewhere between zero and one, and you're trying to create cubits Now there are many different ways of building cubits. You can do trapped ions, trapped ion trapped atoms, photons, uh, sometimes with super cool, sometimes not super cool. But fundamentally, you're trying to get these quantum level elements or particles into a superimposed entanglement state. And there are different ways of doing that, which is why quantum computers out there are pursuing a lot of different ways. The whole somebody said it's really nice that quantum computing is simultaneously overhyped and underestimated on. And that is that is true because there's a lot of effort that is like ways off. On the other hand, it is so exciting that you don't want to miss out if it's going to get somewhere. So it is rapidly progressing, and it has now morphed into three different segments. Quantum computing, quantum communication and quantum sensing. Quantum sensing is when you can measure really precise my new things because when you perturb them the quantum effects can allow you to measure them. Quantum communication is working its way, especially in financial services, initially with quantum key distribution, where the key to your cryptography is sent in a quantum way. And the data sent a traditional way that our efforts to do quantum Internet, where you actually have a quantum photon going down the fiber optic lines and Brookhaven National Labs just now demonstrated a couple of weeks ago going pretty much across the, you know, Long Island and, like 87 miles or something. So it's really coming, and and fundamentally, it's going to be brand new algorithms. >>So these examples that you're giving these air all in the lab right there lab projects are actually >>some of them are in the lab projects. Some of them are out there. Of course, even traditional WiFi has benefited from quantum computing or quantum analysis and, you know, algorithms. But some of them are really like quantum key distribution. If you're a bank in New York City, you very well could go to a company and by quantum key distribution services and ship it across the you know, the waters to New Jersey on that is happening right now. Some researchers in China and Austria showed a quantum connection from, like somewhere in China, to Vienna, even as far away as that. When you then put the satellite and the nano satellites and you know, the bent pipe networks that are being talked about out there, that brings another flavor to it. So, yes, some of it is like real. Some of it is still kind of in the last. >>How about I said I would end the quantum? I just e wanna ask you mentioned earlier that sort of the geopolitical battles that are going on, who's who are the ones to watch in the Who? The horses on the track, obviously United States, China, Japan. Still pretty prominent. How is that shaping up in your >>view? Well, without a doubt, it's the US is to lose because it's got the density and the breadth and depth of all the technologies across the board. On the other hand, information age is a new eyes. Their revolution information revolution is is not trivial. And when revolutions happen, unpredictable things happen, so you gotta get it right and and one of the things that these technologies enforce one of these. These revolutions enforce is not just kind of technological and social and governance, but also culture, right? The example I give is that if you're a farmer, it takes you maybe a couple of seasons before you realize that you better get up at the crack of dawn and you better do it in this particular season. You're gonna starve six months later. So you do that to three years in a row. A culture has now been enforced on you because that's how it needs. And then when you go to industrialization, you realize that Gosh, I need these factories. And then, you know I need workers. And then next thing you know, you got 9 to 5 jobs and you didn't have that before. You don't have a command and control system. You had it in military, but not in business. And and some of those cultural shifts take place on and change. So I think the winner is going to be whoever shows the most agility in terms off cultural norms and governance and and and pursuit of actual knowledge and not being distracted by what you think. But what actually happens and Gosh, I think these exa scale technologies can make the difference. >>Shaheen Khan. Great cast. Thank you so much for joining us to celebrate the extra scale day, which is, uh, on 10. 18 on dso. Really? Appreciate your insights. >>Likewise. Thank you so much. >>All right. Thank you for watching. Keep it right there. We'll be back with our next guest right here in the Cube. We're celebrating Exa scale day right back.

>> From the SiliconANGLE media office, in Boston, Massachusetts, it's the CUBE. Now, here's your host, Stu Miniman. Hi, CUBE nation, I'm Sam Kahane. Thanks for watching the CUBE. Due to popular demand from the community, I will be interviewing the legendary Stu Miniman, here today. He is S-T-U on Twitter. Stu and I are going to be digging in to the 2019 predictions, and also recapping 2018 for you here. So, Stu, let's get into it a little bit. 2018, can you set the stage? How many events did you go to? How many interviews did you conduct? >> Boy, Sam, it's tough to look back. We did so much with the CUBE this year. I, personally, did over 20 shows, and somewhere between 400 and 450 interviews, out of, we as a team did over a 100 shows, over 2000 interviews. So, really great to be in the community, and immerse ourselves, drink from the fire hose, and some of the data. (laughs) >> So, over 400 interviews this year, that's amazing. What about some of the key learnings from 2018? Yeah, Sam,my premise when I'm going out is, how are we maturing? My background, as you know, Sam, I'm an infrastructure guy. My early training was in networking. I worked on virtualization, and I've been riding this wave of cloud for about the last 10 years. So, about two years ago, it was, software companies, how are they living in these public clouds? Amazon, of course, the dominant player in the marketplace, but we know it will be a multi-cloud world. And the update, for 2018, is we've gone from, how do I live in those public clouds, to how are we maturing? We call it hybrid clouds, or multi-cloud, but living between these worlds. We saw the rise in Kubernetes, as a piece of it, but customers have lots of environments, and how they get their arms around that, is a serious challenge out there, today. So, how are the suppliers and communities, and the systems integration, helping customers with this really challenging new environment, that we have today. >> I'd love to hear any OMG moments from you. What surprised you the most this year? >> It's interesting, when I wanna think about some of the big moves in the industry, I mean, we had the largest software acquisition in tech history. IBM, the company you used to work for, Sam, buying Red Hat, a company I've worked with, for about 20 years, for 34 billion dollars. I mean, Red Hat has been the poster child for open source, and the exemplar of that. It was something that was like, wow, this is a big deal. We've been talking for a long time, how important developers are, and how important open source is, and there's nothing like seeing Big Blue, a 107-year-old company, putting in huge dollars, to really, not just validate, cause IBM's been working in open source, working with Linux for a long time, but how important this is to the future. And that sits right at that core of that multi-cloud world. Red Hat wants to position itself to live in a lot of those environments, not just for Linux, but the Middleware, Kubernetes is a big play. We saw a number of acquisitions in the space there. Red Hat bought CoreOS for $250 million. VMware bought Heptio, and was kind of surprised, at the sticker shock, $550 million. Great team, we know the Heptio team well. We talked to them, some of the core people, back when they were at Google. But, some big dollars are being thrown around, in this space, and, as you said, the big one in the world is Amazon. One of the stories that everybody tracked all year was the whole hq2 thing. It kind of struck me as funny, as Amazon is in Seattle. I actually got to visit Seattle, for the first time, this year, and somebody told me, if you look at the top 50 companies that have employees in Seattle, of course, Amazon is number one, but you need to take number two through 43, and add them together, to make them as big as Amazon. Here in Boston, there's a new facility going up, with 5,000 employees. I know they're going to have 25,000 in Long Island City, right in the Queens, in New York City, as well as Crystal City, right outside of DC, 25,000. But, the realization is that, of course, Amazon's going to have data centers, in pretty much every country, and they're going to have employees all around the world. This doesn't just stay to the US, but Amazon, overall. So, Amazon, just a massive employer. I know so many people who have joined them. (laughs) Some that have left them. But, almost everything that I talk about, tends to come back to Amazon, and what there are doing, or how people are trying to compete, or live in that ecosystem. >> You're always talking to the community. What are some of the hottest topics you're hearing out there? >> So, living in this new world, how are we dealing with developers? A story that I really liked, my networking background, the Cisco DevNet team, led by Suzie Wee, is a really phenomenal example, and one of my favorite interviews of the year. I actually got to talk to Suzie twice this year. We've known her for many years. She got promoted to be a Senior Vice President, which is a great validation, but what she built is a community from the ground up. It took about four years to build this platform, and it's not about, "Oh, we have some products, and developers love it.", but it's the marketplace that they live in, really do have builders there. It's the most exciting piece of what's happening at Cisco. My first show for 2019 will be back at Cisco, live in Barcelona, and Cisco going through this massive transformation, to be the dominant networking company. When they talk about their future, it is as a software company. That actually, it blew my mind, Sam. You know, Cisco is the networking company. When they say, "When you think of us, "five to ten years from now, "you won't think of us as a networking company. "You'll think of us as a software company." That's massive. They were one of the four horsemen of the internet era. And, if Cisco is making that change, everything changes. IBM, people said if they don't make this move for Red Hat, is there danger in the future? So, everything is changing so fast, it is one of the things that everybody tries to sort out and deal with. I've got some thoughts on that, which I'm sure we'll get to later on. >> (laughs) As is Suzie Wee one of your top interviews of 2018, could you give your top three interviews? >> First of all, my favorite, Sam, is always when I get to talk to the practitioners. A few of the practitioners I love talking to, at the Nutanix show in New Orleans this year, I talked to Vijay Luthra, with Northern Trust. My co-host of the show was Keith Townsend. Keith, Chicago guy, said, "Northern Trust is one "of the most conservative financial companies", and they are all-in on containerization, modernized their application. It is great to see a financial company that is driving that kind of change. That's kind of a theme I think you'll see, Sam. Another, one, was actually funny enough, Another Nutanix show, at London, had the Manchester City Council. So, the government, what they're doing, how they're driving change, what they're doing with their digital transformation, how they're thinking of IOT. Some of my favorite interviews I've done the last few years, have been in the government, because you don't think of government as innovating, but, they're usually resource-constrained. They have a lot of constituencies, and therefore, they need to do this. The Amazon public sector show was super-impressive. Everything from, I interviewed a person from the White House Historical Society. They brought on Jackie O's original guidebook, of being able to tour the White House. So, some really cool human interest, but it's all a digital platform on Amazon. What Amazon is doing in all of the industry-specific areas, is really impressive. Some of these smaller shows that we've done, are super-impressive. Another small show, that really impressed me, is UiPath, robotic process automation, or RPA, been called the gateway drug to AI, really phenomenal. I've got some background in operations, and one of the users on the program was talking about how you could get that process to somewhere around 97 to 98% compliance, and standardize, but when they put in RPA, they get it to a full six sigma, which is like 99.999%, and usually, that's something that just humans can't do. They can't just take the variation out of a process, with people involved. And, this has been the promise of automation, and it's a theme. One of my favorite questions, this year, has been, we've been talking about things like automation, and intelligence in systems, for decades, but, now, with the advent of AI machine learning, we can argue whether these things are actually artificial intelligence, in what they are learning, but the programming and learning models, that can be set up and trained, and what they can do on their own, are super-impressive, and really poised to take the industry to the next level. >> So, I wanna fast forward to 2019, but before we do so, anything else that people need to know about 2018? >> 2018, Sam, it's this hybrid multi-cloud world. The relationship that I think we spend the most time talking about, is we talked a lot about Amazon, but, VMware. VMware now has over 600,000 customers, and that partnership with VMware is really interesting. The warning, of course, is that Amazon is learning a lot from Vmware, When we joke with my friends, we say, "Okay, you've learned a lot from them means that "maybe I don't need them in the long term." But in the short term, great move for VMware, where they've solidified their position with customers. Customers feel happy as to where they live, in that multi-cloud environment, and I guess we throw out these terms like hybrid, and multi, and things like that, but when I talk to users, they're just figuring out their digital transformation. They're worried about their business. Yes, they're doing cloud, so sassify what you can, put in the public cloud what makes sense, and modernize. Beware of lift and shift, it's really not the answer. It could be a piece of the overall puzzle, to be able to modernize and pull things apart. An area, I always try to keep ahead of what the next bleeding-edge thing is, Sam. A thing I've been looking at, deeply, the last two years, has been serverless. Serverless is phenomenal. It could just disrupt everything we're talking about, and, Amazon, of course, has the lead there. So, it was kind of an undercurrent discussion at the KubeCon Show, that we were just at. Final thing, things are changing all the time, Sam, and it is impossible for anybody to keep up on all of it. I get the chance to talk to some of the most brilliant people, at some of the most amazing companies, and even those, you know, the PhD's, the people inventing stuff, they're like, "I can't keep up with what's going on at my company, "let alone what's going on in the industry." So, that's the wrong thing. Of course, one of the things we helped to do, is to extract the signal from the noise, help people distill that. We put it into video, we put it into articles, we put it into podcasts, to help you understand some of the basics, and where you might wanna go to learn more. So, we're all swimming in this. You know, the only constant, Sam, in the industry is change. >> Absolutely. (laughing in unison) >> So, things are changing. The whole landscape, as you said, is changing. Going into 2019, what should people expect? Any predictions from you? Any big mergers and acquisitions you might see? >> It's amazing, Sam. The analogy I always use is, when you have the hundred year flood, you always say, "Oh gosh, we got through it, "and we should be okay." No, no, no, the concern is, if you have the hundred year flood, or the big earthquake, the chances are that you're going to have maybe something of the same magnitude, might even be more or less, but rather soon. A couple of years ago, Dell bought EMC, largest acquisition in tech history. We spent a lot of time analyzing it. By the way, Dell's gonna go public, December 28. Interesting move, billions of dollars. As Larry Ellison said, "Michael Dell, "he's no dummy when it comes to money.' He is going to make, personally, billions of dollars off of this transaction, and, overall, looks good for the Dell technologies family, as they're doing. So, that acquisition, the Red Hat acquisition, yeah, we're probably gonna see a 10-to-20 billion dollar acquisition this year. I'm not sure who it is. There's a lot of tech IPOs on the horizon. The data protection space is one that we've kept a close eye on. From what I hear, Zeam, who does over a billion dollars a year, not looking to go public. Rubrik, on the other hand, somewhere in the north of 200 million dollars worth of revenue, I kind of remember 200, 250 in run rate, right now, likely going to go public in 2019. Could somebody sweep in, and buy them before they go public? Absolutely. Now, I don't think Rubrik's looking to be acquired. In that space, you've got Rubrik, you've got Cohesity, you've got a whole lot of players, that it has been a little bit frothy, I guess you'd say. But, customers are looking for a change in how they're doing things, because their environments are changing. They've got lots of stuff in sass, gotta protect that data. They've got things all over the cloud, and that data issue is core. When we actually did our predictions for 2018, data was at the center of everything, when I talked about Wikibon. It was just talking to Peter Burris and David Floyer, and they said there is some hesitancy in the enterprise, like, I'm using Salesforce, I'm using Workday I'm using ServiceNow. We hear all the things about Facebook giving my data away, Google, maybe the wrong people own data, there's that concern I want to pull things back. I always bristle a little bit, when you talk about things like repatriation, and "I'm not gonna trust the cloud." Look, the public clouds are more secure, than my data centers are in general, and they're changing and updating much faster. One of the biggest things we have, in IT, is that I put something in, and making changes is tough. Change, as we said, is the only thing constant. It was something I wrote about. Red Hat, actually, is a company that has dealt with a lot of change. Anybody that sells anything with Linux, or Kubernetes, there are so many changes happening, on not only weekly, but a daily basis, that they help bring a little bit of order, and adult supervision, to what most people would say is chaos out there. That's the kind of thing we need more in the industry, is I need to be able to manage that change. A line I've used many times is, you don't go into a company and say, "Hey, what version of Azure are you running?" You're running whatever Microsoft says is the latest and greatest. You don't have to worry about Patch Tuesday, or 08. I've got that things that's gonna slow down my system for awhile. Microsoft needs to make that invisible to me. They do make that thing invisible to me. So does Amazon, so does Google. >> What's your number one company to watch, this upcoming year. Is it Amazon, Sam? Look, Amazon is the company at the center of it all. Their ecosystem is amazing. While Amazon adds more in revenue, than the number two infrastructure player does in revenue. So, look, in the cloud space, it is not only Amazon's world. There definitely is a multi-cloud world. I went to the Microsoft show for the first time, this year, and Microsoft's super-impressive. They focus on your business applications, and their customers love it. Office 365 really helped move everybody towards sass, in a big way, and it's a big service industry. Microsoft's been a phenomenal turnaround story, the last couple of years. Definitely want to dig in more with that ecosystem, in 2019 and beyond. But, Amazon, you know, we could do more shows of the CUBE, in 2019, than we did our first couple of years. They have, of course, Amazon re:Invent, our biggest show of the year, but their second year, it's about 20 shows, that they do, and we're increasing those. I've been to the New York City Summit, and the San Francisco Summit. I've already mentioned their Public Sector Summit. Really, really, really good ecosystems, phenomenal users, and I already told you how I feel about talking to users. It's great to hear what they're doing, and those customers are moving things around. Google, love doing the Google show. We'll be back there in April. Diane Greene is one of the big guests of the year, for us this year. I was sorry to miss it in person, 'cause I actually have some background. I worked with Diane. Back before EMC bought VMware. I had the pleasure of working with Vmware, when they were, like, a hundred person company. Sam, one of the things, I look back at my career, and I'm still a little bit agog. I mean, I was in my mid-20s, working in this little company, of about 100 people, signed an NDA, started working with them, and that's VMware, with 600,000 customers. I've watched their ascendancy. It's been one of the pleasures of my career. There's small ones, heck. Nutanix I've mentioned a couple of times. I started working them when they were real small. They have over a billion in revenue. New Cure, since the early days. Some companies have done really well. The cloud is really the center of gravity of what I watch. Edge computing we got into a bit. I'm surprised we got almost 20 minutes into this conversation, without mentioning it. That, the whole IOT space, and edge computing, really interesting. We did a fun show with PTC, here in Boston. Got to talk to the father of AI, the father of virtual reality. It's like all these technologies, many of which have been bouncing around for a couple of decades. How are they gonna become real? We've got a fun virtual reality place right next door. The guy running the cameras for us is a huge VR enthusiast. How much will those take the next step? And, how much are things stalling out? I worry, was having conversations. Autonomous vehicles, we're even looking at the space. Been talking about it. Will it really start to accelerate? Or have we hit road blocks, and it's gonna get delayed. Some of these are technologies, some of these are policies in place, in governments and the like, and that's still one of the things that slows down crowded options. You know, GDPR was the big discussion, leading into the beginning of 2018. Now, we barely talk about it. There's more regulations coming, in California and the like, but we do need to worry about some of those macro-economical and political things that sometimes get in the way, of some of the technology pieces. >> I'd love to put something out into the universe, here. If you could interview anyone in the world, who would it be? Let's see if we can make it happen. It's amazing to me, Sam, some of the interviews we've done. I got a one-on-one with Michael Dell this year. It was phenomenal, Michael was one. It took us about three or four years before we got Michael on the program, the first time. Now, we have him two or three times a year. Really, to get to talk to him. There is the founder culture John Furrier always talks about. Some of these founders are very different. Michael, amazing, got to speak to him a couple of times. There's something that makes him special, and there's a reason why he's a billionaire, and he's done very well for himself. So, that was one. Furrier also interviewed John Chambers, who is one of the big gets I was looking at. I was jealous that I wasn't able to get there. I got to interview one of my favorite authors this year, Walter Isaacson, at the shows. When I look at, Elon Musk, of course, as a technologist, is, I'm amazed. I read his bio, I've heard some phenomenal interviews with him. Kara Swisher did a phenomenal sit-down on her podcast with him. Even the 60 Minutes interview was decent this year. >> The Joe Rogan one was great >> Yeah, so, you'd want to be able to sit down. I wouldn't expect Elon to be a 15-minute, rapid-fire conversation, like we usually have. But, we do some longer forms, sit down. So he would be one. Andrew Jassy, we've interviewed a number of times now. Phenomenal. We've got to get Bezos on the program. Some of the big tech players out there. Look, Larry Ellison's another one that we haven't had on the program. We've had Mark Hurd on the program, We've had lots of the Oracle executives. Oracle's one that you don't count out. They still have so many customers, and have strong power in new issues, So there are some big names. I do love some of the authors, that we've had on the program, some thought leaders in the space. Every time we go to a show, it's like, I was a little disappointed I didn't get to interview Jane Goodall, when she was at a show. Things like that. So, we ask, and never know when you can get 'em. A lot of times, it's individual stories of the users, which are phenomenal, and there's just thousands of good stories. That's why we go to some small shows, and make sure we always have some editorial coverage. So that, if their customers are comfortable sharing their story, that's the foundation our research was founded on. Peers sharing with their peers. Some of the most powerful stories of change, and taking advantage of new technologies, and really transforming, not just business, but health care and finance, and government. There's so much opportunity for innovation, and drivers in the marketplace today. >> Stu, I love it. Thanks for wrapping up 2018 for us, and giving us the predictions. CUBE nation, you heard it here. We gotta get Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Larry Ellison on the CUBE this year. We could use your help. Stu, thank you, and CUBE nation, thank you for watching. (electronic techno music)

(upbeat music) >> Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE, covering Inforum D.C. 2018, brought to you by Infor. >> Well, back here on theCUBE, we are at Inforum '18. We're in Washington, D.C. here in the Walter Washington Convention Center. Not far from the White House. It's about a mile that way, and Capitol Hill's about a mile that way, I think. I know we're right in here, but I know we are smack dab in the middle of it. Dave Vellante and John Walls and Kevin Curry, who's the SVP of the global public sector at Infor. Good to have you with us. Good to see you, sir. >> Great to be here. Thanks for your time. >> So public sector, you're in the heart of it here, and you were telling us before we went on the air that you've got more than 700 clients here at the show this week? >> We do, we do. It's the best attendance we've had yet for Inforum, and I joined about six and a half years ago. And we built this business pretty much from the ground up. So it's been a great experience, and now we're starting to get a lot of adoption within the government, across the government, from federal to state to locals. >> What's the process been like, especially across those three, because I assume they're all different? You know, local, state, federal, everybody has different pain points and there's different tolerances. >> They do, they do. I mean, there's different micro-verticals within each of those statements. As an example, if you look at local governments, it could be anything from transit agencies to K-12 schools, to public works, to police, to fire. They all have all different requirements. State's the same thing, whether it's Department of Transportation or Department of Health and Human Services. And then when you get the federal side of it, then it's from the intelligence community to Department of Defense, healthcare within Defense, like the VA and DoD and Defense agencies as well. So it's a pretty wide swatch of use cases and business cases that you need to be able to sell to. >> Charles said something interesting in the keynote today. I want to ask you about it. He said, "We made a strategic decision to go to the cloud. "We didn't want to compete with Google "and Amazon and Microsoft for CloudScale. "That didn't make any sense for us." And he said, "When we were an on-prem software vendor, "we weren't managing servers for our customers." Now what struck me there is if you look back at the software company back in the day, they really didn't care about the server, right? It was just sort of infrastructure. It was kind of irrelevant to them. The cloud feels different. It seems like a more strategic relationship with Amazon. You know, we talk about Teresa Carlson and what a force she is in the government. AWS in the GovCloud has been a huge force. They had a giant lead. So have you been able to draft off that or is it just another sort of infrastructure platform? >> No, they're a major strategic partnership there with AWS and NN4. At the company level, and especially for me, with the government, they've made the right investments at the right time, I mean, and they actually have cloud environments that are very specific to different segments of the government and to different geographies. So as an example, in the federal government they have an intelligence cloud called C2S, which we work with them on. There's a very large procurement out right now for the Department of Defense called Jedi, which Amazon's going after, as well as the other larger cloud providers, so we're obviously riding that horse with AWS. And also for local governments, and they've done all of the compliancy for the government, whether it be FedRAMP, whether it be CJIS for those departments that are worried about the justice type of requirements. And as you get outside of the U.S., they're putting clouds and we're a global company as well, putting clouds in all the right places. They have a G-Cloud offering in the U.K. and as we talked about earlier when we sat down, they're opening a cloud in the Middle East right now too, in Bahrain that I think traces on oil over there as we speak. >> Right, right. The first Middle East country to claim cloud first. But it just seems like there's a strategic advantage there. And even with the other cloud suppliers. I mean, you know, Google's got its niche, big niche, you know, Microsoft, with its software state, but it seems like Amazon, they talk about that flywheel effect, brings certain technologies that, you know, when you talk to Soma, you guys have been able to take advantage of. It just feels a lot different than the old traditional server manufacturer. Oh, it's a Unix box and there's no difference between vendor A, B and C. >> Absolutely correct. And for us, we've taken advantage of the tools that Amazon has and obviously, we're doing all the compliancy on our applications and they've got whole the infrastructure piece of it, so the two work very well together. >> And that has allowed you to focus on your knitting, if you will. >> Yes. >> The things that you do best, which is a micro-verticals, suite across the application portfolio, bringing AI to the equation, automation, we heard a lot about robotic process automation, which is probably a hot topic in the government. >> Yes. I mean, Charles famously, he may have had a quote. I'm sure you heard it. It's friends don't let friends build data centers. >> Great quote. >> You know, that's not a business we're in. We're a software company. >> Right. >> So the public sector, obviously a different animal than the private sector. Very different needs, different constituents, you got tax payers, you got all that. When you bring the technology into the public sector, what does that do for it or how does that have to be, I don't know, re-conformed or adapted? And ultimately, what's the payoff, right? What's the return on that investment? >> So it was actually pretty shocking how quickly the government has adopted and moved towards the cloud. Typically, they're laggards. Everything happens in the commercial market and then government's a little bit of a late adopter, right? But we're seeing them very quickly go to the cloud and there's a lot of reasons for that. One being, you have an aging workforce. Okay, so the baby boomers are all retiring so a lot of that intellectual knowledge is going out the door. Two, is there's some economies of scale to be realized by doing that because once you're in the cloud, I mean, it's up to the vendor who's maintaining it to maintain that for you. So, you know, the people behind the scenes, they have to do it. You know, when you upgrade your software to go from one release to the other, it's automatically done for you. I mean, so there's real cost savings to be had, you know, from a care and feeding perspective there as well. Also a lot of the, on the ERP side of the things, a lot of the systems that are out in the marketplace today that governments have bought, like the Oracles or the SAPs, a lot of these systems are at end-of-life and the companies are no longer supporting them. So it's a re-implementation for them. You know, and so now they're looking, okay, if we have to re-implement and we have to look at our new options, we're going to do it in a cloud. >> So when you've been around as long as I have, Kevin, >> Right. >> you've seen the pendulum swing. You don't have to agree so vehemently. (laughing) But from mainframe to client server and so you're back to the cloud, and now with IoT, it seems like the pendulum is swinging back to a distributed environment. So help us understand where IoT fits to the cloud and even your on-prem business. >> Okay, so like I say, cloud is a pretty broad topic, okay? We have multiple applications that would run in that environment. So when I look at IoT, I think of things like our asset management platform. We have a very strong enterprise asset management platform that runs in the cloud or runs on-prem. And if you think about infrastructure as an example, which government has a lot of, okay. Think about the ability to have sensors on different pieces of equipment and being able to read that information. Think about using drone technology, okay, to be able to do physical inspections under bridges, so you're not having people having to climb around underneath there. I mean, so being able to do live feeds of data and be able to streamline the way you do business and have that automatically captured within an application. So yes, that is one area where we see it. I mean, I think you're going to see more and more of robotics and artificial intelligence and all the things come into play. I think you heard a lot about that here and it's here. I mean, they were things we saw in movies before but now the technology's here today. >> Well, the other thing we heard this morning that Charles has always talked a lot about the data. You guys always talked about your data lake. I like to think of it as a data ocean. You think about all the data out of GT Nexus and, you know, your customers that are providing data to inform. The data model starts to really expand and you guys have seemed to really take advantage of that. Talk about the data, the importance of data, the importance of securing data to the government. >> Well, think about that. I mean, there's islands of information that governments have that if they were able to consolidate that data and put some intelligence into it, be able to make business decisions versus, you know, one system sitting over here, one system sitting over here and none of them ever communicating or talking to each other. You know, the ability to, You could do from anything from, just think about crime statistics, okay? The ability to deploy resources where the crime is and then as it moves, be able to further deploy resources. You know, New York, years ago, did things like that with CompStat when they were cleaning up Times Square and so forth. But just think of that as a concept, realtime being able to manage data. >> So you've got, here at the show, we were talking about earlier, 700 and some odd clients, 725. You've got the federal forum for the first time. Why now? And what are you getting out of that or what do you hope to get out of that at the end of the week? >> So the whole executive team and our board of directors have made significant investments in this marketplace because they understand that government is a very large beast, if you will, and there's a lot of opportunity for deployment of our solutions and there's a real need to solve problems for constituents here as well. So they've made very significant investments in things for security like FedRAMP, compliancy. You know, some companies are doing it on some of their solutions. We're doing it across the board on all the products that we take to the government marketplace. So we're invested in it. You've probably heard today, Charles talked about the fact that we're going to have a federal cloud suite, which we are. So that means federal financials, okay? Actually being able to solve all the problems for the federal government and comply to all their needs and all the things that are part of mandated accounting for the federal government. They made all the right investments and human capital management would be another area. If you think about, we've got an application called Talent Science. The ability to hire the right people for the right job and retain those people. Just think about, ICE is a good example. You heard that they have to hire thousands of people to deploy on the borders, right? How do you quickly ramp and hire these right people if you don't have the right tools to do it? >> You were quoted in TIME magazine, Marc Benioff's new publication, about America's crumbling infrastructure. What role do you see technology playing generally and specifically in for software and helping with that problem? >> So we do a lot today around infrastructure. As an example, we have a very strong presence in transit agencies here in the U.S. New York City runs us, amounts to about a trillion dollars worth of assets there. So anything moving in, out or around the city, so subways, buses, trains, tunnels, bridges, Metro-North, Long Island Rail Road. L.A. runs us, San Francisco runs us, Chicago runs us, Dallas runs us and many others. So we're managing all of that infrastructure. So you hear a lot about infrastructure bills coming out of the federal government. And they're right. I mean, a lot of these tunnel, a lot of these bridges and tunnels and even roadways were built back during World War II, right? And they're aged, you know, they are starting to crumble and there's going to be a lot of money spent to do that and when it comes to rebuilding those types of things, there's a lot of assets that are going to need to be managed, you know, to do that. So we think there's a real opportunity for software such as what we bring to the marketplace to help with that process. >> How about talent retention? I mean, obviously, as administrations come and go, you know, people move, but there's been a lot of brain drain. I mean, take the Patent Office, people in commercial industry stealing some of the best and brightest out of government. Can software play a role in helping better retain, train, you know, evolve growth paths and careers? >> Yes. I guess, in a couple different ways. I mean, number one, I think the applications of today versus the applications of yesterday have changed so much. I mean, you look at, you know, the applications you have on your mobile phone. The ability to have that look and feel, I mean, our kids today are going to go into the workforce and they won't settle for anything less. They're going to want to have that look and feel. They're going to want to have those intuitive type of applications that help them do their job. And that's the kind of offering we're bringing to the marketplace. Then from just actually bringing the right people and we have an application called Talent Science, as an example, where actually there's multiple different areas of your personality that it can determine and map it back to your top performers in your company. And determine the right people for the right job where they'll fit into that environment and then they would thrive hopefully. And it should increase retention on the staff. In government, we've actually sold it to Department of Health and Human Services for hiring case workers. Okay? Or to police departments for hiring of law enforcement. So there's a real opportunity to take those types of applications and do some pretty creative things. >> What's, I hate to say, the pain side of it. But dealing with the government obviously contracts is an issue, right? And a challenge sometimes maybe for you. I'm curious, in a quickly evolving space such as yours, how do you help them keep up with you and their regulatory oversight and whatever mandated restrictions they have? All those things, you know, that come with government. It just doesn't square up with what you do. >> It is, it's a very, again, to your point, it's a different, it's a different industry with different requirements. And everything here is very open and above board. It's open procurements. Everything is competitively bid. There are contractual vehicles that you competitively bid for that'll allow you to be able to do business a lot easier in the future. I mean, in the feds you have things like the GSA 70 Schedule. U.K., you have something called the G-Cloud contract. A lot of states have vehicles where you can bid for it, so all states and local can buy off of those contracts without having to go to a competitive offering. So there's ways that the business can get done without having to go through a lot. >> Every hoop and every, yeah, right. >> The major pain process. But then there's also competitive RFPs, which, you know, well, they'll put a bid out, it'll be very detailed. You have to answer 3,000 requirements. And then after that you'll end up going into an orals and a demo process and, you know, nine months later, they're going to pick a winner. (laughs lightly) Then you go through, but then you have to go through a very painful contract negotiation process. >> That's the process I was talking about. (laughing) Exactly what I was talking about, right. >> Right. >> Yeah, yeah. Well, Kevin, thanks for being with us. We appreciate the time. >> It's my pleasure. >> And it sounds impressive, right, with the turnout you had, so I'm sure you're very, very pleased with the response you've had here on the show for so far. >> I am and I thank you for your time and >> You bet. >> have a good show. >> Look forward to seeing you down the road. Alright, sir, thank you. Back with more here live on theCUBE. We're at Inforum '18 and we are in Washington, D.C. >> I'm quite sure they got me pinned up back here, but I can't-- (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: From the SiliconANGLE Media Office in Boston, Massachusetts it's theCUBE. Now, here's your host, Stu Miniman. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and after many travels around the globe with theCUBE, really happy to be back in the Boston area studio, and happy to welcome to the program first time guest and first time we've had OpenLink on the program, Rich Grossi who's the CEO. Coming up from Long Island, appreciate you joining me up here and looking forward to discussing with you. >> Understood. >> So, first OpenLink, as I said, company, first time we've had on theCUBE. Why don't you give the audience a little bit of background, how long the company's been existing and what the focus is. >> Well, we're celebrating this year our 25th anniversary. So we serve the energy, financial, trading and treasury markets. We're based in Long Island with offices around the world serving about 500 clients or so in those different markets. I'm happy to be here today to talk about some of the innovation that we have going on. >> Great. Before we get into the OpenLink, Rich, give us a little bit about your background. You've been with OpenLink for a good part of the journey. >> I have. I've been with the company for 21 years in a variety of different roles. I've spent some time in operations, in development. Prior to the CEO position I spent some time in operations and prior to this role I was the CTO of the company. >> Okay, well congrats on the new role, Rich. So tell me, what is OpenLink today? You talked about kind of the industries you focus on. How do you fit in the markets today? >> So we are the market leader for the categories I mentioned. So we'll play in the energy and the commodity space. I will plan the financial services, banking, treasury space. We're well-known for our risk management capabilities and we serve top-tier clients in all those markets around the globe. >> Yeah, Rich, it's interesting. I think there's not a single segment in the market that's not going through some significant change. Disruption is on everyone's mind. What's changing for your customers and how is OpenLink really kind of adjusting to meet those needs? >> Yeah, it's always been a high degree of sensitivity towards risk. That's been our strong point as a company for a long time, and we serve the clients through kind of advanced analytics that provide them with that capability. But more frequently, we're seeing total cost of ownership driving a lot of the decisions made by our clients, right. So in markets that have some head wounds coming in and just kind of steady-state markets, looking for how to use technology to benefit them but also reduce the total cost of ownership. >> Okay, and so explain what that means. You say things like risk, things like analytics, you know, data, super important to all customers. How do we make sure they have the right data, how do they make sure that they're not getting a tax on what they have. Where does OpenLink help their-- what do the products look like? >> Yes, I mean, so we have a pretty advanced trading and risk-management platform. We also provide treasury and cash management solutions. And in those spaces what we're doing is we're providing our clients with the ability to manage their risk, manage their positions, take a peek ahead to see what's coming in the markets. Do sensitivity analysis to ensure that as they trade and as they train dex, and to your point, as they manage to the logistics. It's all done with a system capture from front to back, and it's all done with a view towards the risk of the application and a risk of the markets that they're in. >> Okay, you had a recent launch that was OpenCloud. Maybe explain what that is, how that fits with the broader discussion of Cloud. >> Sure, OpenLink's been in the private Cloudspace now for about 11 years. So this was our hosting application. And through those years, we built up the technology to support more of the, kind of, online, so predominantly we're a perpetual-based company, on-prem. And now our clients are looking for a little bit more ownership. A little bit more security. And they're looking for that single vendor to manage their applications within the could. So there's a big transformation in our markets where many of our large tier one energy financial services clients are looking for that reduction of total cost, and they're looking for OpenLink to be the provider that can offer them that service within the could environments. >> Okay, so is this a SAS offering? Is it living on some of the public Clouds? Help us, kind of, get our weeds a little bit. You're a former CTO. >> Sure, so, I mean, it's a similar technology to what we've built over the years. So, we're still managing scaleability and performance. We still have created security in the application. Still managing a lot of the monitoring and logging in application security within that. But it is in the Microsoft Azure environment, so we're working with Microsoft, partnered with them to build up a Cloud environment for our customers, such as they can manage this remotely as you would in any Cloud environment, and then provide all the advantages of Microsoft Azure on top of the technology that OpenLinks built over time. >> Okay, so it sounds, you know, similar to what you were doing before, but a lot of changes. How organizationally do you have to change for this, and maybe walk us through a customer, why would they choose one versus the other? What are the big advantages of the new way? >> Sure, so organizationally, we do have Cloud-dedicated teams now, right? So a lot of knowledge required to take your product, not only Cloud-enable it, but make it feature functionality-rich for the clients within the could. So we've built Cloud operations teams, we built SOx and NOx. We leverage our employee base around the world. We put a lot of technology advantages into the new software that is Cloud enabled. So, things like performance is just a big topic for us. So, allowing our clients to drive greater performance through scaleability and dynamic scaleability within the could. That's a big advantage to our clients. >> Yeah, you think back a couple of years ago if you talked about Microsoft and Google, and the Amazons of the world, it's like, 'Well, I'm worried about the security, the government is challenging.' I was just at one of the bigger Cloud shows and they said security is actually opportunity. You get to kind of get a re-do on security. Government seems to be something that we're sort of doing-- what's your customer's experiences? Is there still hesitancy, or are people, you know, kind of jumping in the waters nice? >> Well, I think there's still the question, and I think it's changing very rapidly for our client base. So, a couple years ago our clients were interested in the could but not necessarily moving to the could. And I think you're absolutely right in the sense that some of them were concerned about the security of their trading data being out in something like Microsoft Azure. Many of them recognize today that the security benefits of a Microsoft Azure, as an example, could be far greater than what they're doing in-house today. And as you look at the technology of OpenLink we've built layers of security on top of everything we used to have within the core application, encryption and the like. And now using some of the key vault technologies and some of the scaleability technologies of Microsoft Azure, we feel like we're able to provide a higher level of security than they even have on-prem using the could up close. >> Yeah, one of the other big advantages if you plug into, kind of, that ecosystem and platform of the public Cloud, what opportunities there-- Microsoft, you think of, like, you know, active directory, all of the business functionality. What do you gain today and maybe give us a little roadmap as to what this looks like down the road? >> Yeah, so our clients are looking for a handful of things. So they're looking for that reductioning of ownership. We've been able to save them on average about 30 per cent, just coming from them their on-prem or their data centers today. They're also looking for that single source of support. So today, we're working with their network engineers and they're DBAs. In the could version we're able to provide them with those same services, coupled with our support applications so that we're providing single line of visibility into their overall trading and risk-management application. And they're also looking for performances, I mentioned before, and security. So with the could application, we're not only able to provide them with the feature functionality of our application, but also the could technology that sits around it. >> One of the other things if you look at, kind of managing the environment versus going to the public Cloud, usually the public Cloud, you know the joke I have is: What version of Azure are you running on? Well, Microsoft takes care of it. A similar thing in your environment? >> Very similar. So, the ability to upgrade, the ability to leverage the scaleability of Microsoft Azure, the new technology coming out in Microsoft Azure. All the could feature functionality, that all comes with it for free. And to your point, providing our clients with a manage service so that we can manage not only their day-to-day environment, but we can also manage the infrastructure and the business needs that they have in using our application. So, all that combined has provided our clients with a great leg up in terms of how they use our software and how they manage it moving forward. >> Yeah, I'm curious: do the customers have to choose one over the other? The on-prem or the could? Do you have some customers that may be migrating, being to the Hybrid Multi-Cloud is kind of a big issue for a lot of customers these days. >> Yeah. So we have a large number of clients today that are still on-prem, and they're probably staying on-prem for awhile. But the evolution of the could as it relates to our client-base is quite rapid. So, a couple years ago we would talk to our clients and they were interested. Last year we announced our proof of concept coming and what we were building. We launched our public Cloud just in quarter three of this year. And the feedback from our client-base was dramatic. So now they're all looking to migrate over. We respond to ROPs quite often and I would estimate maybe about nine per cent of those coming have some interest in the public cloud moving forward. >> Okay, Rich, what do you want your clients to really know about OpenLink? And, the two pieces, just kind of today, and if they knew OpenLink, say, five years ago. You know, what's the big change? >> Yeah, well I think, well we have a tagline that says we like to solve the complex, right? And make it simple. You'll see many of our clients, the bigger names, avengers that are out there using our software to solve really complicated problems, right? So our software is pretty configurable and also addresses some of the larger challenges that we have within the spaces that OpenLink sits in. So, our clients are well-known in that area, and OpenLink is well-known in there, and our ability to solve those problems. When you take that, and you take the total cost of ownership, and you take the public Cloud capabilities and you build all that technology that we've advanced over the past, you know, 25 years, it's a pretty compelling application and company that we work for. >> Alright, well, Rich, appreciate the updates on everything happening at OpenLink. Wish you the best of luck with the could offering. We'll be back with more coverage here. Always check out thecube.net for all the coverage, and thanks for watching this, theCUBE. (upbeat techno music)