>> Live from Toronto, Canada, it's theCUBE, covering Blockchain Futurist Conference 2018. Brought to you by theCUBE. >> Hello everyone and welcome back to theCUBE's exclusive coverage here in Toronto, Canada, in Ontario. We are here live breaking down what's going on in the Blockchain world. It's the Untraceables event here, Tracy and team doing a great job of Untraceable. They're putting on the Blockchain Futurist conference. This is about the future, bringing the industry together. All the luminaries are here; Bounds of Ethereum, Ackerson Ecosystem influencers, original gangsters- OGs-are here, of course theCube, we got 2018 coverage breaking it down, I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. Wrapping up day one Dave, I know you got to take off and head back on a flight home, let's break down and analyze what's going on in the industry. Yesterday we had the first annual ever, first inaugural Cloud and Blockchain summit, global Blockchain and Cloud summit, two worlds coming together. Here it's a little bit different this is all about cryptocurrency, it's all about blockchain. Big movements, speculators versus builders is my theme and everyone's recognizing the trend of price shifts billions lost in market gap that were gained last year but still some are up. But the focus is about entrepreneurship on a global scale, this is the focus here, right? It's a lot of VIPs, a lot of players coming together. I don't see people crying in their wine about the prices- although you can see it on Anthony Di Iorio's face, probably a setback or the Ethereum community on the price but still, the long game is what they're going after. Your thoughts and analysis? >> Well you definitely seeing a lot of talk about the boom and bust cycles. And we're hearing a lot from people -but by the way, there are a couple of guys who went big, maybe hedge fund guys or other fund guys that are taking a bath, maybe they got in big in January, December, not the best time to get in. So you are seeing some long faces there, but generally the sentiment is: hey, these boom and bust cycles they come and they go we've seen them before, now's the time to hunker down and innovate, execute, and figure out how to add substance and value. Now, first of all, I would say a couple things. One is those guys probably have... a store of fiat currency that they cashed out, number one, so they're feeling pretty good. Two is, the big difference to me John, is in 2018, crypto is much more in the mainstream news. You see it on CNBC, you see it in every medium po- every day you get a medium post, everybody's blogging about it, whereas obviously we've been blogging about bitcoin for five, six years but the mainstream media has picked up on it. >> Seven years. >> Seven years, there you go. So the mainstream media has picked up on it so it's much more front and center than it ever has been in the past. So I think that's a different dynamic. There seems to be still a lot of opportunistic sentiment, people are sanguine about the future and I think that's because we're seeing some real hardcore innovation going on in real use cases. Now, having said all that, the other scenario is there's just a lot of competition for quality projects, we're hearing too many coins out there, you're seeing all these ICOs tied to Ethereum in an oversupply right now, and you're clearly seeing that affect the price of Ethereum, which has dropped, on a percentage basis, much more than bitcoin. It's down considerably this year, whereas bitcoin actually is still up. Ethereum's trading about where it was last September, Bitcoin's up considerably since last September. So you know, a lot of cycles, a lot of instability still, but a lot of optimism. >> The bottom line for me is that the big question that's coming out of this event and this whole week here in Toronto is why do cryptocurrencies matter, the mass influence and adoption of Blockchain technology, where is that on the progress bar? This is the topic, and again, a lot of people that are "poo pooing" this revolution and I'm seeing on my Facebook feed all the time, "bitcoin's at zero," there's a lot of nonbelievers. Here's what I would say, here's my analysis. I think that the comparisons to the dot-com bubble with all the irrational exuberance that was part of that phase, this ICO phase, is crashing. No doubt about them. The ICOs in the United States are down, almost to nill. Certainly a lot of action going outside the United States, still unregulated, still wild, wild, east- or west depending how you call it. So yeah, that's happening and a lot of the bad stuff's being filtered out there's an emphasis on build which you mentioned. But here's the thing that no one might not see in the mainstream. During the dot-com bubble, there was all this companies that were started to it public and that was because the market wanted it. That's what happened with the cryptocurrency ICOs, the market wanted more products, then just manufactured it and then they realized, oh shit too many tokens. But if you look at the internet revolution, and I think this is the comparison with blockchain and crypto. You got blockchain technology, cryptocurrency, which is token economics are absolute gamechangers and the demand for that is very high and there are more people coming on every day in a mass adoption basis. The internet actually never stopped, if you looked at internet penetration rates, Mary Meeker would point out at Morgan Stanley, now she's at Kleiner Perkins, that the internet adoption rate of the internet during the bubble and then post-bubble continued to accelerate. That means more people got on the internet. So therefore the population of users became larger and larger every day. That really level-setted the reality that this was not a fad, not going away. I see blockchain and token economics having the same trajectory where there'll be more people adopting the technology then putting it into use than ever before. That's the tell sign. If that trend line continues to grow, the corrections will all take place, cycles will happen, but the entrepreneurs will follow the money, they're going to follow the user experience, they're going to follow the demand for opportunity. That to me is going to be the major tell sign. I think that's the general sentiment that I'm feeling here is screw the price of the tokens, yes there's too many tokens, clear out the dead wood, get back down to building companies, that's validated by the fact that there are more deals being done from a financing standpoint that are starting to look like traditional funding structures. Security tokens, equities, starting to see people talk and fundraising, lower rounds, not the big mega rounds. Money that's going to be around 7 to 30 million, 30 to 50, 50 to 100, 100 plus. This is going to be traditional structures, not the land grab utility token which gets you into the tailspin of basically managing coins distribution, managing all these things. There'll be a balance, but that's really kind of what's happening. >> So that's great analysis John, I would add to that that the fundamentals are still in place, blockchain attacks inefficiencies. Where there's a middle man and there's inefficiencies and there are waste, blockchain is being applied to attack those inefficiencies. I think the second thing is that new capital-raising vehicles have catalyzed massive investments and are catalyzing innovation and a whole new breed of developers. The third point is a global phenomemon. You don't have to be in Silicon Valley, or New York City, or Boston, or Austin, in the United states, or from an Ivy League school, it's happening around the world, you're seeing non-US countries and island countries invite developers in, giving them tax havens, and as a result, it's becoming much more of a global phenomenon than a lot of the internet startups were. There are a lot of adoption barriers. I mean you have the cyclicality and the volatility, you've got industries that are essentially entrenched: financial services, healthcare, lots of defense and aerospace industries, very much entrenched, it's going to take a long time for that collaboration to come together. And you also have a lot of scams. >> Yeah >> There's going to be a shake out, we predicted that I think in February in the Bahamas, we predicted the flight to quality, people are trying to figure out where that quality is right now. And to your point, you're also seeing more hybrid models, more traditional equity models combined with token models, and that's not a surprise. You're going to see more and more of that as a hedge. The token model still gives people the potential for liquidity, and as long as that fundamental remains in place, I think that dynamic will- is here to stay. >> And also, you and I have seen many cycles of innovation you talk about in the industry, many waves. The people that we talked to that have been through multiple waves like Brailey Rodder, (mumbles) and others, experience, they all know what's going on. The difference here that I think is interesting is that the smart contrast, the flight to quality, the companies that have buildable products, are going to get the attention. Now the difference now in this community that I think is interesting that makes the funding dynamic different is you have now community dynamics. You've got open source software, Cloud computing, and new technology with new capital formation dynamics. I think those three things are the perfect storm of innovation that's being overlooked. and the interplay between that is going to give us a look and feel of an industry that we've never seen before. So we can compare and contrast waves "oh, BC, Client-Server, blah blah blah," I don't think this is going to look like any of those waves, it's going to look different. And that's going to be really the shake out between the pundits who claim they know what's going on, or... predictions whatnot. Talking to the people, putting the ear to the ground in the communities, that's key. And for the companies, the ones that are going to win are the ones that can build community, tap into communities, and grow communities because they're now part of the ecosystem. It's not just selling products to them, they got to be a bidirectional, symbiotic relationship between communities at large, in this ecosystem. I think these are going to be new dynamics they're going to be- impact valuation, it's going to impact time to market, time to value, and ultimately give the entrepreneurs and the investors what they need, which is good outcomes in the process. >> You know it's interesting you were saying about the waves. And the waves in the past, and certainly looking back, were quite easy to identify, they tended to be architectural, you know centralized mainframe, and they went to client server, then you went to the sort of public internet, and then this cloud of remote services. The next wave is maybe not ... blatantly architectural, but it's this blending of digital services that's ubiquitous across all industries. And I think the key is, there's an automation layer on top of these digital services, which is powered by AI and machine intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning, and blockchain is part of that automation layer. And people are building new businesses on top of that and disrupting existing industries. I think there's no industry that's safe from disruption as I put it before, there are some entrenched, high-risk industries like financial services, healthcare, defense, aerospace, education, that are going to take longer but ultimately there's waste in all of those businesses and I will say I think a lot of the incumbents are going to hop on this trend and do very well picking up blockchain and defending against the disruptors. Not all will make it, but a lot of the big guys are going to put some serious resources into this and they're going to lead in to blockchain in a big way. >> Yeah and just to kind of wrap up, I think you're the fact that what we're seeing here is that engineering-led dynamics are happening, blockchain's going to lay down the plumbing, it's got to be stable, desensualized applications over the top with token economics is the business model of innovation. We got technology theater booming with innovation with engineering-led initiatives, that's got to accelerate, that's infrastructure, that's got to be more cloud-like, that's got to be much more stable, that's got to get laid down, got to put the roads down if you will, and then the business model innovation coming from the software this is the game changer so you're looking at all the smart money, smart money is saying okay, we see guys building product, let's see some unique IP, let's see some token economics that are nobel and different for what's happening, that to me is going to be the new investor algorithm if you will, for vetting. And it's been that way in a way, the smart money follows the smart engineers, what are you building? And then they vet that with other stands so again, big engineering-led focus. >> So what would you do now- okay, soyou were hearing this week, too many damn tokens, everything's tied to Ethereum, most ICOs, what would you do now if you're an entrepreneur, you have an idea, you have a potential to build a community, where would you focus, would you just try to float another token? Would you go overseas? What would you do in that situation? >> I would look at the regulatory frameworks as a way, as a guidepost to risk management, right. I think you're going to see some regulatory regimes try to manage the bridge between slow changing, old guard, to new fast, and loose. Crypto-'Cause look at it. It's fast and loose, but there's real people that are working on it. I would focus on the real people that have builders, I'd look at the mechanisms where they're domiciling, and what they do with the economics or the tokens. One thing I will tell you that is that, as an entrepreneur, this is like, a golden rule, your focus is everything: focus, focus, focus. If you're focused on managing distribution of coins, and the arbitrage of coin pricing, that takes away form the focus of engineering and building. I think that's going to be an easy binary test for an investor to say, "what are these guys working on?" Is the token working for the venture, or is the venture working for the token? That is a fundamental mindset, if that is... Not in the right position, it should be: the token works for the venture, not the venture working for the token. That to me, I would run for the hills, if I see someone working for the token, I'd say, "I don't want to fly at all at that deal." Because you could maybe pass up some money right in the short term, but you're going to miss the long game. That's the way I look at it. >> And again, I would add to that, I mean, yeah, okay, so there are a bunch of crypto-billionaires that got minted, and they got in early and good for them, but that doesn't mean there's not more opportunities. And when I think of a company like Dell Michael Dell wasn't the first in PC's, you know? Compact was the first, you know, Rod Canion, the back of the napkin, that urban legend. But what Michael Dell did is he improved on the system. He took inefficiencies out of the supply chain, and became the dominant player! So first move advantage, yes, okay, great, you missed being a billionaire potentially. But the wave tends to get bigger after the market matures. And as a result, I think my focus would be on building, to your theme, building that community, demonstrating value, and then, eventually, I think you're going to be able to use Block Chain, Crypto currencies, tokenization, crypto economics to power your business. But figure out a way to actually execute today and prove value; that's what I would do. >> Again, all great stuff, great analysis, Dave, Good to see you here, where again: this is theCUBE's coverage in Toronto for Block Chain Futurist Conference. Again, this is part of our 2018 initiating coverage of the Block Chain Industry with our video presence. Engaging the community is an upstream content project sharing the data with you, so you can make your decisions, and understand who to connect with. That's our model, we're going to do it. We've been covering BitCoin and Block Chain since 2011, on siliconangle.com, that's our journalism site. Go to theCUBE.net, that's where we have all the videos, and soon to be our CUBE token coming out, be part of our network. Join our community if you wannna get engaged, we're happy to have you. Thanks for watching Day 1 of the Futurist Conference here in Toronto, Ontario. Thanks for watching.

(uplifting music) >> Narrator: Partners. Now, here are your hosts, John Furrier and Stu Miniman. >> US Amazon Web Services re:Invent 2016 their annual conference. 32,000 people, record setting number. I'm John Furrier, Stu Miniman co-host in theCUBE for three days of wall-to-wall coverage. Day two, day one of the conference our next guest is Kiran Bhageshpur, who's the CEO and co-founder of Igneous Systems. He was a hot startup in the, I don't want to say storage area, kind of disrupting storage in a new way. Kiran great to see you, thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks a lot, glad to be here, John. >> So, you're living the dream the cloud dream, it's not a nightmare for you because you're one of the progressive new ways. I want to get your thoughts on Andy Jassy's Keynote because he really lays out the new mindset of the cloud. Your startup that you founded with your team is doing something kind of, I won't say contrarian, some might say contrarian, but contrarians usually become the big winners, like Amazon was a contrarian now they're obviously the winning. So, take a minute to explain what you guys are doing. You're funded by Madrona Ventures and NEA, New Enterprise Associates, great backers, smart. Your track record at Isilon, you know the business. Take a minute to describe what you guys are doing. >> Great, yes I will. So, Igneous Systems was founded to really deliver cloud services to the enterprise data center for data-centric workloads. So what to we mean by that? With cloud services, just like with Amazon, customers don't buy hardware, license software. They do not monitor or manage your infrastructure. They consume it across API and they pay for it by the drip rather than the drink. Similarly, the same case with us but we make that all available within a customer's data center itself. And we focus on sort of data-centric, data heavy workloads. I don't know whether you saw James Hamilton's-- >> Yeah. >> Speech yesterday, but he also talked about the same thing that Mary Meeker talked about earlier this year which is an overwhelming amount of data generated today is machine generated and machine consumed and that's growing really rapidly. And our view is the same techniques that have made Amazon so powerful and so valuable are needed out at the edge or on-premise, close to where users and machines are generating and using the data. So that's kind of what we do. Very much the cloud model taken out to the enterprise data center. So, think of it as a hybrid. >> Kiran, let's talk about storage and where it lives because I think something that many people miss is that cloud typically starts with very compute heavy types of applications and we know that data is tough to move. I mean, Amazon rolled out a truck to show how they move 100 petabyes. And not just to show it, this is a new product they had 'cause customers do want to be able to migrate data and that's really tough and takes a lot of time. You mentioned IoT at the edge, they announced kind of query services on your data up in S3, so what are you hearing from customers? You know, kind of large data from your previous jobs. Where's the data living, where's data being created, where does data need to be worked on and how does that play into what you're doing? >> That's a great question Stu. What we find with customers, especially the one's with large and growing data sets is there is still a challenge of not just how to go store it but how to go process that on the fly. On a camera today or a next generation microscope could produce tens of terabytes of data per hour and that is not stuff that you can move across the internet to the cloud. And so the ask and the call from customers is to be able to go ingest that, curate that, process that locally and the cloud still has a very compelling role to play as a distribution mechanism and for a sharing mechanism of that data. I found it pretty wild that a big part of Andy Jassy's Keynote was for the first time they talked about hybrid and acknowledged the fact that it is the cloud and cloud-like techniques out in the enterprise data center. So, I look at that as hugely validating what we have been talking about which is bringing cloud native paradigms into the enterprise data center. >> Let's talk about that operational model because what you're highlighting and what Jassy pointed out is an operational model now for IT. >> Kiran: Yep. >> How are you guys creating value for customers? And be specific, is it, 'cause the on-prem is not going away, we've talked about this before and certainly VMware sees the cloud but also on-prem too. What is the value for customers? Because now this operational model of on the cloud is there, one way-- >> Yes. >> But how do I get cloud inside my data center? >> The way we do that is, very similar to the cloud operating model, right? So, we sell customers essentially an annual subscription service and that service is delivered using appliances that are purpose-built. Think of it as, like snowball, if you will, that goes into the customers data centers fully managed by our software running in our cloud. So, for a customer point of view, it happens to live within their data center, but they are consuming it pretty much the same way that they would consume a cloud service. That's the value, it's the same tool chains, the same programming paradigms that they are used to with, say, a native OS. But within their data centers at lower latencies addressing the same things that Andy Jassy brought up, which is you need a truck to go move large amounts of data. >> Well, I want to also bring up James Hamilton's presentation. You mentioned that yesterday one of the key points he made was that scaling up for these peak loads like they have on the Friday's, their Prime Friday spikes, they do instantly and elastic is a big deal we know that. His point though was they would have to provision on bare metal or in the data center months in advance to even rationalize what that peak could be which still is an unknown number. So, the scale point and provisioning is a huge headache for customers, so that's why that's relevant. How do you guys answer that claim when you say, "Hey, I need stuff to be done fast, "I don't have time to provision"? How do you guys, do you address that at all? How do you talk to that specific point? >> We take care of the provisioning and the additional expansion and shrinking of capacity within the customer's data center, because just like Amazon monitors their infrastructure users in the data center, we do that for our infrastructure within the customer's data center, and therefore we can react to go scale up or scale down. But then there's another point to the whole thing, which is the interesting thing is the elasticity is much more important for compute as opposed to data. Data just linearly grows, you never throw that stuff away. The things that you captured, the processing is highly elastic and you might want to do some additional processing and burst out and so on. So, that's another aspect of hybrid we see with our customers which is, I want my work flow here, I want to be able to burst out to the public cloud for that peak capacity that I don't want to have infrastructure locally for. >> So Kiran, sorry. So James Hamilton's presentation talks a lot about, just that hyper scale. They claim they've got the most scale and therefore nobody else should do anything because oversimplifying a little bit, but we've got the best price, we've got the whole stack, give you all the solutions. You talk to enterprises. Scale means different things for different applications for what I need to get done, what I have. What does that really mean to you? How does that hybrid piece fit in to the whole scale discussion? >> So, a lot of what we do is really ride on the coattails of the Amazon and the Google and the Microsoft because everyone has access to the same raw components, hard drives and CPUs and so on and so forth. And then the question is how do you go assemble those in a form factor that is appropriate for that particular use case? If you're going to go build a data center that's one level of scale, but if you look at a vast majority of applications and enterprises, their scales are much smaller. So, we literally look at taking a rack of infrastructure which might have, say, 40 servers and a couple of switches in sheet metal and shrinking that to a 4U form factor which has got 60 of our nano servers which has got switches and has got sheet metal. So, it's shrinking the whole thing down. The economy's of scale are still quite compelling because we use the exact same raw materials from the same suppliers to the cloud guys, right? And the real difference in cost is how things are put together and how they are operationalized. In which case, we are much more like Amazon than not. >> The other thing that's really interesting to watch, if you look at Amazon's storage move, is storage is in a silo, they've now got all these services that I can start doing this. How does the enterprise look at that? How does the solution like yours enable us to be able to use our data more? >> I absolutely think there is a palpable need for and desire for those sorts of new paradigms in the enterprise data center too because what you can do with not just storage but with lambda and with a bunch of other advanced services on top of that, what that really does is allows enterprises and customers to just focus on what is differentiated to them. This is the whole low-code, no-code moment, if you will, right, movement, and that's a compelling trend. It is something that we've actively embraced. We've got our architecture enables that on day one and that's kind of the way you're going to go build applications now onwards. >> So will we see lambda functions calling things on your end? >> Stay tuned. I think my, yeah, stay tuned. >> That's a smile, that's a yes. (laughs) Talk about the drivers in your business, 'cause you guys are new, you're a startup. For the folks watching you're making some bets, big bets obviously funded by some pretty big venture capitalists out there. What is your big bet? Is it true private cloud is going to emerge on-premise? Is the bet that cloud adoption with scalable compute and storage is going to be unmanaged or manageless or serverless, what's the big bet? >> So our bet is the cloud is going to win and I mean the cloud paradigm, which means consuming infrastructure by the drip rather than the drink across APIs. Flexibility, agility is going to win. One answer which is very compelling is the public cloud today. We believe that similar patterns will exist on the on-premise world and we believe we are very well positioned to supply that thing. And the infrastructure which shrinks would be very traditional infrastructure and software technology stacks which has really existed in the enterprise data center for the last 20 years. That will shrink and everything will look similar as in highly flexible, highly scalable, very easy to go put things together and you're going to have very similar patterns in both the public cloud and within your data center. >> Our Wikibon research team is looking at the practitioner side of the market. One of the things they're observing is, among a lot of things, is that you're seeing AWS teams come together. We're seeing Accenture was on earlier talking about the same dynamic. That's the pattern that we're seeing is these teams are coming together, some handful of people, the pizza box teams-- >> Yep. >> As Jeff Bezos calls it, growing into fully functional bigger teams. So, depending upon that progression, what's your advice to practitioners? And how do you add value into this momentum of as they scratch their head go, "Okay, we're going to go to the cloud"? So they know that's the mandate. How do you help them and why should they look at your solution and where do you fit into that? >> So one of the things customers and partners tell us is we are a great on-ramp to the cloud if you will. Everybody wants to embrace the new programming patterns, new programming paradigms and many people have taken that big leap and done the full shift in one step. You've heard Finra, you've heard Capital One all of these guys talk, but not everyone is that far out there. So what we sort of become for these folks is a stepping stone. We are on-premise. It allows them to get used to it. They start using the same patterns that can scale there. There can decide what workflows remain local and why and what go there, and that's our view. We very much live in they hybrid world to burst out to the world, bring it back as appropriate. >> Kiran thanks so much for coming on theCUBE, we really appreciate it, we're getting the break but I do want to ask one personal question. You're back in the entrepreneurial zeal again, you've got the startup, you have some capital but you're not loaded with cash, a good amount to achieve what you need to do. What's it like for you right now? I mean, what do you believe in? What's your guiding principles and what's it like to get back on the entrepreneurial treadmill again? >> You know, it's actually quite exhilarating and liberating to be back in a startup environment because it forces you to focus on what is important what is urgent and important at all points in time, and a guiding principle for us is less is more. Let's be driven by customers and do what is required there and then slowly extend that out. And actually, being a startup and not having infinite money to throw like, large legacy players would frees you from trying to do too many things and focus on only what is important and that's really key to success. >> And how are you making the decisions as an executive like, product-wise? Is it more agile, are you guys doubling down? >> Very, very agile, we can move very quickly. Since we are delivering a service, we are continuously updating infrastructure just like Amazon does within their data center so we can turn around very, very quickly. So I'm very impressed the fact that the Amazon rolls out 1,000 new features this year, but I can see how that is possible at scale and that's what we're doing. >> At Isilon you were very successful scaling up that generation of web scale, we saw that with Facebook and the Apples of the world. What's different now than then? Just in the short years between the web scalers dominating to now full Multi-Cloud, Hybrid Cloud cloud. In your mind, what's different about the landscape out there? Share your thoughts. >> I think there's a couple of things. One of them is Isilon was incredible, was a very useful infrastructure, was something that was easy to deploy, but it was still that something you built, you managed, you owned, if you will. The big transition is away from that, from build to consume and not worry about that infrastructure at all. And that is not something that you can retrofit into an existing architecture, you have to start from scratch to go do that. So, that's the biggest number one. Two, second one is just the scale is bigger. You heard Andy Jassy talk about the exobyte moving problem and he commented on the fact that exobytes are not all that rare and he's true because you go back 10 years ago, maybe four companies had an exobyte problem. It's now a lot more than that. And so the scale is two or three orders of magnitude larger than when Isilon was growing up. >> Scales at table stakes and consumption of infrastructure, that's a dev-ops ethos gone mainstream. >> Yes. >> Thanks so much for sharing. We're live here in Las Vegas for Amazon re:Invent. I'm John Furrier, Stu Miniman, we're back with more live coverage, three days of wall-to-wall coverage. theCUBE will be right back. (upbeat electronic music) (relaxing guitar music)