>> From Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Open Systems, the future is crystal clear with security and SD-WAN. Brought to you by Open Systems. >> Welcome back to Las Vegas everybody, you're watching the CUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. We're here covering the open systems networking event. Two Gardner events this week in Las Vegas. Big month. Last week, of course, was AWS re:Invent, 53,000 people. Talking security, cloud, all kinds of cool stuff going here at the Cosmopolitan Hotel. Matt Creeg is here, he's the chief revenue officer at Open Systems. 36 hours in Matt-- >> 36 hours in. >> You're an expert. >> And I'm in Vegas. >> Like, lay down the plutonium. Thanks for coming on theCUBE, it's good to see you. >> Thanks for having me, thanks for having me. >> So, first question. Why did you join Open Systems? >> You know, that's a great question. I asked myself that a lot over the past three months in discussions with the Open team. And really, it's a different offering. It's a complete offering. It's not a product, it's really a solution and a service. And I really feel like it's something that the market really needs and really wants and has really been asking for from a SD-WAN perspective, from a security perspective, from a sock perspective. It's really a solution or an offering that the market has demanded. So when I started in discussions with the Open team, it became clear, it became compelling to me, that this was something that customers wanted, customers needed, and customers have been asking for for five, eight, 10 years, really. >> Awesome. We're going to come back and unpack some of those things-- >> Okay. >> A little bit. But before we do, a little bit on your background. You're brand new here. >> 36 hours. >> Just left Cisco via the Vintela acquisition. The company we've tracked closely for V Nacarazhu, good friend of theCUBE. Tell us about your journey. >> Yeah, so-- >> Who is Matt Creeg? >> Matt Creeg was, I will claim I was the first field sales guy of Vintela. The VP of sales hired me just prior just pre-product launch. So I really started Vintela from zero customers, zero revenue, SD-WAN didn't exist when I started there, to an acquisition by Cisco and 18 months with Cisco post-acquisition continuing to build that team, continue to build that market. >> So Cisco is pretty renowned for its acquisitions, it certainly chambers big part of him building Cisco was through acquisitions. >> Absolutely. >> Made a lot of good ones, they weren't all great, but most were really quite good. The Vintela acquisition, as I understand it, when you guys plugged in to the Cisco model, you really scale to me. First of all, you had to get to the point where you were an interesting acquisition target. You had to prove some success. And then my understanding is things exploded. So you were part of that? >> It was a crazy ride. It was four and a half years later, I can't believe it's been four and a half years. It was simultaneously the longest and shortest time of my life. It was the blink of an eye. >> Awesome. So you're obviously trying to bring some of that magic to Open Systems. Let's come back to the differentiation. So, you gave us some sort of high level overview of what was different. When you look at the market, what are some of the trends that you see that this company is vectoring into that attracted you? >> So, there's a very clear trend around network architecture, WAN architecture, WAN traffic patterns changing, based on everything moving to the cloud. Really based on workloads moving around, workloads moving out of corporate data centers into AWS. You said you were at re:Invent last week. >> Yep. >> AWDS as your GCP. So we're really seeing workloads move around. We're seeing workloads move out of a corporate data center, which has changed traffic patterns substantially. That's what SD-WAN really came to the market to address those changes in traffic patterns. What Open offers over a traditional SD-WAN player is really a fully managed, full white glove network solution. So it's not just, as I said earlier, it's not just a product, it's not just an SD-WAN product. It's really a true solution and a true white glove offering. >> So one of the things we talk about a lot is the transition from north/south traffic to east/west, what people are talking about, as you just described, moving from various clouds, on-prem, SaaS is another major force. I heard a stat the other day, the average company, average global 2,000 has eight clouds. Siglo Media has eight clouds. And when you throw in SaaS, >> Eight might be a little low. >> 80, right. As I was saying, it's small companies. So, you have all this data that's now distributed. So SD-WAN helps what? Fill in the blank. >> Helps connect securely and seamlessly connect to all of those different clouds. To all of those different areas of data. And really gives customers the ability, gives IT departments the ability to provide a rich, very high user experience for connectivity to all of those different types of clouds. >> Well we used to be, we didn't realize at the time, but it used to be relatively simple. Secure the perimeter, build a moat, and we'll be good. >> And everything was in your data center. Just protect that data center and you don't have to worry. >> Control it all, I could see it all. Now that notion of perimeter is gone. Security has to be fundamental to what you do. If you're moving workloads around and data around, security is paramount. So talk about the ethos of security. Why is it a priority for you guys? And what is it about Open Systems that makes you guys qualified to be that leader? >> So it's interesting. I don't know where I heard it, but somebody quoted, or somebody said a while ago, our generation work has become something we do, rather than somewhere we go. And that really speaks to that moat experience. That everything is within those corporate walls, right? So, as we move outside of that, as we work from the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, security becomes paramount. Securing that workstation, securing that endpoint that your customer, that your end user is leveraging to connect to all of your data becomes paramount. So making sure that not only is that end station secure, but the connectivity in between that end station and all of your different sources, all of your different applications, all of your your different data sources is encrypted, is authenticated. Everything is secured and controlled is key. The other thing that we're seeing is with the move to SaaS, with the move to O365, with the move to Workday and Salesforce, the ability to securely connect directly to those applications becomes key. Not traversing through a corporate data center or a corporate DMZ to get to those services is key. So really extending security all the way down to that edge or to that endpoint becomes key. And providing a full service, a full manage service, a full monitoring service around all of those endpoints becomes key. >> So performance becomes critical. And so, again, I know you're early in, but in the conversations that you had leading up to you taking this position, you probably talked to some customers, you're at the Gardner event today. What kinds of things, performance, et cetera, are customers asking for in this space? >> That's a great question. That's a very good question. So everybody is asking for the best performance, the best user experience that they can possibly get. Right? And interestingly enough it's almost become corporate IT is getting compared to consumer IT. How come when I'm at home and I'm on my Verizon Fios connection, access to Office 365 is so much better than when I'm in the corporate office? So really we're being compared to that kind of metric. We're really being compared to that always on, always accessible, instant access type of user experience. >> In a manage service though, it's almost like you bring in the cloud experience to wherever your data lives. Whether it's in a public cloud, in a SaaS, on-prem, we were just talking to hill & brand, might be IoT at the edge at some point in time. And it sounds like, if I understand it correctly, that you want to be the most secure, the highest performance, the best user experience, fully managed for those different types of installation environments. >> That's a very good, yeah, you got it. You need a job? >> I got one, but thank you. (both chuckling) Thanks so much for coming to theCUBE. >> My pleasure. >> Best of luck. We'll be watching. High expectations, but you've done it before. Good luck in doing it again. >> Good to do it again. >> Alright, take care. >> Thanks for the time. >> Keep it right there, everybody. We'll be back with our next guest. You're watching theCUBE from Cosmopolitan Hotel at the Open Systems networking event. We'll be right back.