(vibrant music) >> Everyone, welcome to our Palo Alto studio. I'm John Furrier host of theCUBE. We're here for a digital conversation. Part of our new digital events, part of our new structure of bringing people into the studio and also doing remotes. We'd love to do that in the era of the travel bans, but it's always great to have local Silicon Valley executives and startups here. Milin Desai, CEO of Sentry IO is here with me. Former VM-ware industry executive, CEO of Sentry IO hot startup. Thanks for coming in. >> Thank you for having me. >> So you can drive in. You don't have to fly anywhere. It's all good. No wearing masks. The coronavirus is crazy. I'm so glad we have you at this studio and get this content acquisition. Thanks for coming in. I want to get your take on your company before we get into the industry thing. I think you look at some of the most successful categories that just came out of nowhere. You know, you look at AIOps for instance in driving, you know, observability. But what is observability? That beginning, that comes with public page or do the list just goes on and on. The cloud has created this agile market where real time and then a lot of automation is going on so whether it's error logs like a Splunk does and that's scaled up. You get to doing something variation with software code that's not just something breaks, a phone rings. There's a lot a going on. You're this really kind of the tailwind here for you with cloud scale. What does Sentry doing? What's their secret sauce? >> So, the simplest way I would put it is we help you measure and monitor your code in production in close to real time. So what does that mean? You look at all, all of the companies that we talk about, whether it's a John Deere on one end or a Spotify on the other. They're all getting more digital in nature, which means they all trying to interact with their customers more often, building apps with an interface with an API. And as we all know, through our own personal experiences, if you don't get a great experience, you simply move on. So, you pull up your app, you pull up Uber, it's not working, let me look at Lyft. Right? That's the kind of consumer behavior that's starting to take in. >> So-- >> Meaning you don't really know as the owner of the app if they're abandoning or not, it's just down sales or? >> Correct. And so, what we do is we help developers monitor how the usages of their code in production. So, as users hit editors, a checkout button is not working or a user is having a bad experience on a mobile phone, whereas the same application on a browser looks fine. We in real time giving notification saying X number of users on this type of device, on this type of interface are having issues. And not just that, it's an alert, it's an alert that says this is the issue, this is the line of code where the issue's taking place, this is the potential commit that you did in your getRepository, which is causing it. So, it's the full kind of metadata around the issue. Which typically would be, what, two days? I take it as filed. Support me, look at it. Hey, customer has an issue, let's reproduce it. Well the customer is gone. So this is all done in real-- >> Or it could be a complete blindspot too. You don't know, right? This is the thing. This is why I love this whole digital transformation role where instrumentation is re-imagining how everything's being done. So for instance, you could see a code push and you go, okay, it's in production. And then why are sales down? Why is usage down? And then you've got to do a postmortem. >> Correct. >> No one called, just going what the hell happened? Fingers are blaming. He did it! Here you're trying to get to the point where you can see that error earlier or before or after, during as it work. >> It's almost in real time. Close to real time. As the user has the error immediately through either PagerDuty, Slack, email, whichever your communication medium is. You get to know a user or a set of users are having an issue. You click it, you go to this portal. All the metadata is right there. So, it's in real time. And so to exactly your point, it's not after the fact. >> Yeah. >> Right, it's happening. And so, the CTO of tackled.io, said it best, it's a startup that helps companies get on to marketplaces. He said, "Hey, we found issues before our customers even filed a issue against us." So, you know, this helps us deliver true customer experience, as a development team. >> So, on the developers that target profile get that and they're coding away. They don't have time to do research. They'll be like, "Oh, I better bolt on some instrumentation here." That's been the successful move. Look at like what Datadog has done in DevOps. Just the easy onboarding, free use it. Is that the same model you guys are taking this free land, adopt then expand. So, is it a freemium, could you explain the business model? >> Yeah, so, a Sentry is a open source. And so customers can take the piece of software that we have as is, fully functional and run it themselves on their data center on their cloud, or they can choose a SaaS version from us and we offer kind of like a free version and then you pay for the plan. So, what we typically see is customers turn it on, developers turn it on and they like it. And then, the best score I got recently was, one CEO who said, "Hey, you know, I don't send you that many events, but I see the value of what you do, so I decided to pay you." Right, so, they went from free to paid. And that's kind of typical pattern that we see. And the best thing about this is, it takes you approximately four lines of code to get started. Four lines of code in your code and you get started getting the benefits of Sentry. >> What's good sign for monetization when you got the paying it forward literally with cash. I want to ask you the difference between the open source version because I saw in the origination story it's really interesting. They were at jobs and they saw this side project grow into a real opportunity. And it's always good to see the open source not die, right. So, this been maintain the project. When would someone use the open sources? Is that the hardcore folks or, so SaaS, obviously makes sense. It's easier if you're doing a lot of the extra support and whatnot on top of it. But what's the use case for the folks who are going to bring it in house loaded on their cloud? >> I think we'll leave it to our customers to decide that. And we've seen, folks who say, "Hey, you know, we have, we're going to try it out, it's a small, we have got a good DevOps practice. We're going to get it up and running." Here's what happened with one of my teams at VMware. The engineer in charge looked at it and said, "It's not worth my time given what the price on SaaS is." Right, so, like our smallest plan is $29, which satisfies most startups or small software projects. And his point was like, "Hey, you know, it's almost better for me to start and using that versus--" >> Well they weren't using NSX. I'm sure Pat Gels would be like, "Get shipped the next product." Well this is the trade off, right? I mean, so that's what's beautiful of open source. You want to bring it in and make it work for yourself. That trade off has to be economically there. >> Correct. >> So you have a nice balance of if you're hardcore, no problem. >> Please use-- >> Use it, contribute, be part of the team. But if you want ease of use and all the bells and whistles and the speed. >> I think it comes down to what we are starting to see, which is, how much do you care about getting to value faster and where is your value? Is it in kind of running and operating all these pieces of software or is it in, you know, getting value to your end customer? So, if you are focused on building your business, we are this value add that kind of gets you there faster. So, stop focusing on kind of building the infrastructure. Start delivering kind of the value to the business. >> So I'm going to ask you, so, are you the CEO? So the founders who I've not met. I look forward to interviewing them. They seem pretty cool. I'm sure they probably say, "Oh this guy from VMware, he's probably the big company guy." 'Cause they were like, we're going to Dropbox now. Engineers, I could almost imagine their, what they're like. Probably skeptical, this is VMware guy. How did you get through the interview process? Obviously, you're the CEO, you made it. Were they skeptical ? What worked? Why you, why'd you go there? >> You know, the best thing about this transition is Chris and David. So, David was the CEO. He is now the CTO. He's the founder creator along with Chris. And it was his decision, to bring someone into the company, given that we are seeing this, you know, we are now at 20000 plus customers and he felt like he wanted to kind of go back to building and creating and bring a partner in crime. So, that was the good part. I would say like, we started talking and we are at the same energy level, you know? So, I think it just worked out in the way we communicated. And you've known me for a bit. I'm kind of hands on. I like, you know, to kind of get into things and build businesses. So, I think the profile matched out and both of us took our time. So it was, a long dating process, where we got to know each other. Not just as, you know, what we do for work. But, you know, how we operate and had coffee and lunch and dinner and--- >> Well, it is a dating, dating and marriage is always thinking, but the founders are, it's a tough move to make. I mean, for founders to be self-aware, to bring in someone else. But also the fit has to be there. And a lot of entrepreneurs just check the box and try to hire someone too fast that could fail or gets jammed down by the VCs, you know. So, the founders are pretty kind of reluctant. So, that's interesting that you did that. >> Yeah, he's been thinking. You know, the thing about David is he's super thoughtful and hopefully you'll get to see him soon. He's been thinking about this for a bit. And he took his time. And he worked through the process and that's why I said it felt like we were not just talking about, me joining as a CEO, as much as us getting to know each other and building this for the long run. And so we really took our time on both ends--- >> And he want to to get back on the engine of the business? He's a developer, right? He's like the code. >> Just don't want to, >> It was-- >> 20000 customers, you going to get hiring people. It's HR issues. This probably, I don't want to do that. >> That and you know it was kind of the personality thing, right? Grit and grind, you know. We kind of, can somebody come in and have the passion, the same that he believes in what we do. And he saw that and I saw that in him and I'm like, this is a great opportunity that I cannot forego. >> So talk about the, I say love modern, the modern startups because, you know, you're on the right side of history when you got cloud at your tailwind and kind of DevOps, like vibe you get going on with, I know it's not DevOps, but it's common like cloud scale and the agility. How are you guys organized? You guys have virtual teams. You have a central office. Is there a physical place? Do people come in? What's the, how is the company's philosophy on work environment? >> So, we actually have three locations. One in San Francisco, which is the headquarters, where we are located. And then in Vienna, Austria, where one of the early engineers and pioneers live. And so we built around that person and that location. >> No one's complaining about that. >> No. >> Vienna's not a bad place there-- >> Not a bad place. I haven't visited yet. (laughs) I am looking forward to it. I was supposed to be there in April, but, given the circumstances, I'm postponing it. And we recently started this past year in Toronto. And so, we are--- >> So three strong areas for tech talent for sure. >> And then we do have some employees working from home. So, we try and hire the best, and then we accommodate. But we do try to kind of cluster around these three locations. >> So, I got to get your take as the CEO, obviously we're all grappling with this, work at home, Covid 19, the coronavirus, is impacting. Everything's being canceled here in Silicon Valley. I would say Seattle has more of a hotspot than our area. Mostly China as China. What's the view that you guys are taking right now? You're telling people who work at home. Obviously, events are being canceled. Places where people doing Biz Dev, KubeCon was canceled, Dell Technology World is can-- I mean everything's being canceled. How's that affecting your business and what's your philosophy? How are you guys are executing through this tough time? >> I think as a company we've kind of taken the step for having people work from home and we did it on a location by location basis. So, for folks in San Francisco, especially because folks who are commuting on public transportation and other things. We wanted to make our team feel comfortable. And so we've instituted a work from home policy, for, I think we said two weeks, but I think it's going to keep going until we get a clear signal from the government, both locally and at the federal level. So that's kind of where we are as a team. And then what we noticed was the Austrian government kind of had similar regulations of everyone's working from home. Slack, you know, Google Hangouts. We spending a lot of time on video, making sure we are connected as a team. And you know, just that spirit of how we operate and talk to each other continues. As a business, we are a bottoms up business. So, what I mean by that is folks sign up, they use the product. And developers are right now globally still fully functional. The only difference being they're now working from home. So we feel like as a business, we'll be fine. And we are ensuring that our customers through this transition and through this period of kind of unknowns are able to continue to be successful for their customers. >> It's funny, I was talking with someone, it's like there's going to be some, obviously, sectors, like events are going to take a big hit. South by got canceled, Coachella's being canceled. All the tech events are being canceled. That's why we're going to be doing our stuff at the studio with virtual events, for theCUBE. But certain things are going to be different. You going to see pregnancy, boom. You know, nine months later, people are going to be having kids cause they're home alone or divorces depending on how you look at it. But productivity, developer wise has been talked about as actually developers want to just crank out some code. They don't have to come into the office. You can be more, I mean you can still be productive. Developers have been doing this for decades. >> I think-- >> At least if they are more. >> You know, I think you, you know, I think there might be a scenarios of adjustment, a period of adjustment. And then folks will get comfortable. So, it's super important to create that engagement model. Whether, do you have the tooling to keep the team engaged. And there companies that are completely remote. And so we're making sure we learn from their best practices around that. But I do believe that, for tech companies or even for manufacturing companies focused on building software, developers are going to be productive. >> Okay, so a baby boom's coming, divorce rate's going to go up and productivity is skyrocketing. (both laugh) >> For developers. >> For developers. Well, I mean it's a good time. Okay, can I get your take on the industry now. Honestly, putting all the coronavirus aside, we saw a surge in public cloud check. Done. And ask you when your VMware with NSX coming in and becoming the engine with software defined networking as part of the Series piece. You're starting to see hybrid clear as day. It's going to happen. Multi clouds on the horizon. So, you now have a three wave cloud game going on. Wave one, done. Wave two is hybrid. Wave three maybe bigger than them all with multicloud. Do you agree with that trend analysis and what's your take on that? >> So, this is where I'll probably kind of look back at my time at VMware. I think, you know, definitely see the multicloud wave catching on. But I would use the word multicloud as in, not a app spread across three clouds as much as, you know, a company choosing to have a certain assets in AWS, certain assets in Azure, certain in Google. So, I don't see yet this idea of an app being stretched across the three clouds but definitely, while I was-- >> VMware tried that. (both laugh) >> While I was at VMware and in talking to customers, we definitely saw adoption of multiple clouds. And that's where when I was working with the cloud health team, this idea of managing cost and security across three clouds became very common as a pattern that came up. You definitely see that as a kind of directional thing that a lot of organizations are doing. >> Yeah, the idea of just rapidly shifting up workloads based on pricing, all that stuff. I think it's aspirational at best because development teams are now just getting their groove on with hybrid and operation, cloud operations. So, I can see a day where if you can manage the latency network issues, maybe some day, but I mean, come on, really? I think about how hard that is, just latency alone. >> And the issue is like, architecturally you have to make really good choices to get there. So, I think you might see that in like kind of tech software firms. We're thinking about, how do I stay cloud neutral? But for the most part, if you want to take the full value of AWS or full value of GCP, you want to go deeper in there. And use all their services. >> Yeah, I think that's great insight. Let's riff on that a little bit because one of the things I was talking to Dave Alante and Stu Miniman about was, if you look at the multicloud, I don't think it's going to come from a vendor. I think if you look at the success of the Facebooks of the world, even Dropbox where your founders came from, early on, they had to just basically build it from cloud native, from ground up. And all the hyper scalers use open source. They built all their stuff. No one was selling them anything. They just did it. So, I think you'll see smart architectural moves, but that'll be the unicorn. That'll not be the standard. That'll be the exception, not the rule. I don't think you can sell multicloud, in my opinion, yet, or I don't think that'll even be possible. But I think someone will come out and say, make those architectural decisions saying, "I have an architecture that works multicloud because we architect it that way." >> Yup, yup. And I think that's kind of the more, kind of from an engineering standpoint, I think you'll see more of that. I think from a, you know, from a kind of solution standpoint, you will see folks saying, "I will help you manage or secure or build into each of the clouds and give you kind of common pattern versus the latter of it." And engineering team says, "Here's a way to architect for multicloud." >> You know, we pay a lot of attention to the next gen kind of psychologies. Obviously, we do a lot of coding on with our cube cloud that's coming out now. But, how do you see the founders you're working with and that in this new peer group that's developing. I call it, the next gen entrepreneur, technical entrepreneur. As they look at the vast resources of cloud and all of the data opportunities there and mobility, internet things and all this stuff going on. What is the general mindset right now of these kinds of entrepreneurs from a technology perspective? How are they looking at the problem space? What's your take on this new landscape as an entrepreneur? >> Yeah, I'll give you kind of what got me super excited about Sentry. Like how, why did I think about that? Which is if you look at 2000 to 2010, we did software defined infrastructure. Things started moving into software. 2010 to 2020 was, as you correctly wanted a cloud, hybrid, everything became kind of as a service. I think this next decade will be about data. So, companies using the data to get a competitive advantage or figuring out, you know, how to stay ahead, whether it's competitively or even to win a market. And the other aspect of this is because everything is so, as a service, API centric, I think it's going to explode how we develop things. And I think this is going to be truly now the decade for the developer, who's going to make deeper choices, greater choices, buying decisions. And so, with data kind of exploding, and the management of it and getting insights out of it is one aspect of it. And, you know, as somebody who's looking at Sentry, we do a lot of that, right? Which is how are customers using it? What are they using? What languages? And everything else that goes with that. But on the other end, developers are going to start kind of using things and create a whole new set of use cases that's going to change the way we think about it. So I think there's a whole set of elements around how to use this infrastructure to build new applications, creative products, that is going to be a massive boom. >> I think that's a great point. I think that's great insight. Because you think about observability, which I was just joking earlier on about, but I think the relevance observability is network management applied to value real time, right? Because if you can instrument everything, the smart people are going to saying, "Hey, I can just instrument this and get the data I need rather than dealing with this hassle process we had before." So, it brings up that kind of philosophy of kill the old to bring in the new or something new that kills the old. So, it's an interesting phenomenon. I think it's very relevant. But I want to get your, question as a CEO now, you've got, you're at the helm, helm of a company is technical. And talking about architecture, what's your architecture for the venture? What's your plans? How do you see the, you said you're going to come and build this next level growth. What's your architecture look like? Are you going to, do more of the same? Any new things that we see? What are you going to... What's your plan? >> Fundamentally, you know, we as a kind of set of users in the world today, have spent a lot of time monitoring, as I told you earlier, machines, systems and applications, right? And so there's a lot of successful companies doing that. But if you fundamentally believe that this is the decade where you're going to write more code than we've ever before or refresh more applications than we've ever before. Our focus is code and how it does whether it's in a staging environment, in a canary deployment, or in production. How do we measure code and monitor code in production. And the impact of that code to the end users. So it could be errors and now increasingly code performance. So you will see us kind of venture into this idea of helping developers. Not only find issues that they run into production like we talked about before, but also be able to say, looks like over the past three releases, our logins per second have gone down progressively by 10%. Why is that happening? Where is that happening? Which team made that change? So, you will see us kind of really double down on this idea of measuring and monitoring code going forward, complimenting how we measure monitor systems, machines and applications today. >> Yeah, I mean, code has got to be managed, as people more, people contribute. It's like a compiler for the compiler. (laughs) >> It's like if code fails, your business-- >> Code for the code. >> Yeah. >> Meta three meta meta as they say, but code for the code. But that's, it's basically code management in a way, right? It's the code data. You're leveraging that code relationship to the application. >> And so we talk about applications a lot. And so we write code, we store code, you know, in a getRepository. Now there's a whole set of elements around securing it. We deploy it. What about measuring and monitoring it? That is the element where we focus and kind of bring that whole cycle together. Helping that application developer be successful. >> What's it like for you going from VMware to the startup? What's the biggest, coolest thing that's happened? >> It's been a great transition. You know, and I always say this to folks who ask me for career advice. They say, always choose the people you work with and the people you work for. And I've been fortunate enough to do that and I think this transition has been great for that reason alone. Which is I've had the time to get to know the team at Sentry. They got to know me and it's just been, it's been fantastic. I think the velocity of and the pace at which I can make changes, has been the most fun part of it. >> And you've got like 25, 20000 paying customers 50000 total customers roughly in that range. Pretty sizeable. Employee count, how many employees do you have? >> 100 plus employees and-- >> Still small, still small. >> Yeah, still small. And we're going to probably double this year, give or take. And you know, it's 20000 customers from every startup. I've spoken to a startups, over 100 startups in two months. And it's amazing to see their reaction and their love for Sentry. >> And funding, how many rounds of funding have you guys done? >> We just finished Series C, in September of last year. 40 million, any Accel growth. So, we feel really good about where we are. With the revenue ramp that we've seen, we're in great shape. >> And pretty good numbers in terms of a head count too, very leveraged SaaS model. Get the developers. >> Yes. >> Great. Well, we're going to be entertaining a lot of developers at DockerCon this year. DockerCon used to be an event for Docker. Now they sold half the business to Mirantis. They're focusing on Docker developers. We have an event here. We're doing a virtual event. So, a lot more developer action coming. We'll talk more about that. Love to meet your founders, have them come in too. We want to thank you for coming on. >> Thank you. >> Milin Desai, CEO of sentry.io, former VMware executive with a great hot startup, Series C funded, growing here in Silicon Valley, San Francisco and in Austria. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (vibrant music)

(upbeat techno music) >> Live, from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering VMworld 2018, brought to you by VMware and it's eco-system partners. >> Hello everyone and welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage day three of three days of coverage, VMworld 2018 here in Las Vegas, CUBE wall-to-wall coverage, 94 interviews, two sets, our ninth year covering VMworld, I'm John Furrier with my co-host Stuart Miniman on this segment, our next guest is Milin Desai, who is the Vice President and general manager of Cloud Services at VMware, formerly driving the NSX business, been there for multiple years, eight years. Great to see you, thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Pleasure to be here. >> So you've seen the evolution, you've been there, you've been in the boat. NSX, on a good path, doing really well, cloud services, very clear visibility on what strategy is. >> Mm-hmm. >> Private and public, hybrid multi-cloud, validated by the leader AWS and Andy Jassy, again for the second year. So pretty clear visibility at least on what the landscape looks like. >> Mm-hmm. Multiple clouds, software driving all the value. What's the cloud services piece that you're running now? Take a minute to explain what the landscape looks like, what's your charter, what are you trying to do, and what's happening with news and announcements? >> Sure, so about two years back we started on this journey around cloud services. And the premise was that, increasingly, there are two trends taking place which is; SaaS delivered experiences for on prem. So how can we deliver SaaS experiences on prem? As well as the partnership with, you know AWS for VMware cloud on AWS. So the two things started coming together both in terms of a product opportunity, which is VMware cloud AWS. But overall delivering our capabilities as SaaS, both hybrid as well as in the public clouds. So cloud services is a portfolio that delivers VMware services from management, to security, to operations, as SaaS services to the private cloud as well as to the public cloud. >> Tom Corn, the Senior Vice President of general security projects, was just on theCUBE today as well before you came on. He said, I asked him for a prediction and I'll ask you at the end too, for a 2019 prediction, but he said, "I see the conversation starting to be "security as a service someday," and he's kind of like connecting the dots a bit. But that proves the point it's a SAS business model. The services need to be consumable and scalable. This is a key design criteria and a product guiding principal right, for you guys? >> Yes, So increasingly SaaS makes it easy. The value benefits on that is I don't need to operate, it just works and I can get the value out of what we are delivering. And that's really what's driving the adoption of SaaS. It's easy to use, it gets you to outcomes quicker, and I don't need to worry about the management elements of that and so whether it's you take our updates to cloud management, we announced Cloud Assembly, Service Broker, and Code Stream, all delivered as SaaS to our hybrid infrastructure as well as if you want to deploy workloads in AWS or Azure, same thing. AppDefense, Tom's product, is delivered as a SaaS service. VMC on AWS is a managed SaaS service. So you're seeing that come together as VMware. The idea is can we bring that experience on prem as well as in the hybrid cloud? >> Yeah, Milin really interesting topic because often what gets lost when we're talking about multi cloud is what really matters, is applications and the data that sits on top of it. Maybe walk through a little bit, my on premises vs my SASified stuff vs the cloud native and PKS. How much of the business is driven from all of these pieces? >> So the majority of our business right now, is on premise software. Where customers are building and operating the infrastructure with our software. Now the first evolution into SAS was actually with our service providers, who are using the subscription model to deliver VMware as a service to their end customers. And then the second iteration of that is VMware cloud on AWS, which is growing really well. Both in terms of adoption as well of number of customers and now you are seeing the next evolution. So I would say from a numbers standpoint it's low, but in terms of number of customers adopting it, that number is high. So whether it's cloud operations with Wavefront or the whole automations suite that was launched, AppDefense. We are starting to see the shift to SAS but I would say the majority of our customers are on on prem software with VMware cloud foundation which includes NSX, and a visualized management portfolio which has been driving the majority of the revenue. >> I got to ask you about NSX relative to the cloud services because one of the things we've been pontificating and analyzing is how multi cloud is really going to work and we always try to compare and contrast to networking because Stu and I love networking and storage and some of the infrastructure stuff but if you go back into the evolution of TCPIP and what that did for the industry and Gelsinger likes to talk about this too, is NSX the kind of enabler that TCPIP was? TCP and then you had IP, created a lot of value, in inter-networking. What does the customer challenge look like when you're doing multi-cloud? It's not trivial it's hard to do. Is there a inter-operability framework, is it NSX? What could that be? >> Great question. I think as we go from private, to public, to the edge the virtual cloud network is what connects it all together and so definitely from within the data center with now the Velo Cloud acquisition the WAN, and then layering it with analytics and observability with visualized network insight, the portfolio of NSX allows you to connect these disparate data islands and operate very seamlessly, in this hybrid cloud world. Now the same construct applies, when you go native public cloud, where you can connect into AWS or an Azure and that's where, again the Velo Cloud acquisition alongside how NSX is extending its security policy, into AWS and Azure so that you can get the same security posture on prem, at the Edge, in VMC on AWS, with our VCP providers, as well as Native AWS and native Azure. So definitely NSX is that connective tissue, that's why we call it the Virtual Cloud Network, connects the Hybrid Cloud to the Multi Cloud. >> Seamlessly? >> Seamlessly. >> One of the feedbacks I get from users is, you know multi-cloud is challenging. There's that big elephant, how do I get my arms around all of the pieces where'll my data lives? Maybe give us an update there. I did have a chat with Joe Kinsella on theCUBE yesterday. So if CloudHealth Technologies fits into that overall cloud management piece, I'm sure it does, and you can give a little bit of guidance? I'd like to understand how that fits. >> Yes, you know we talked a lot about SAS and delivering VMware services as SAS to vSphere customers but there's this other world where people are going native AWS, native Azure, native GCP. The interesting thing I tell folks is it's very easy to consume cloud but as you start consuming it, you start dealing with tens of thousands of objects, across multiple projects, hundreds of projects across thousands of users. And when you start looking at the problem statements, same things, visibility, lack of visibility, resource management, you tend to over provision to in the cloud, right? By now you're paying by the drip so there's a definite impact to the bottom line. End to end observability and then configuration compliance. Think about this, you're operating at 10X in terms of changes, the chances of making a configuration mistake like leaving an S3 bucket open, are quite high. >> We've seen examples of that, too. >> Exactly, many a CIO have been fired because of that issue. So what we've been seeing with our customers is this has become a data problem, right? So the acquisition of CloudHealth allows us to essentially provide a platform that has that data, and then deliver to our customers in the native cloud, visibility, I say cost management so using reserved instances over on demand, resource management, hey your old provision on your elastic block storage we can reduce the storage capacity and save money. I can optimize RDS better. Sequel right sizing in Azure, so resource management becomes very interesting. Returns on a typical customer with CloudHealth are upwards of 60%. When you take that into consideration with real time security configuration, Secure State was just announced in beta, this week so real time security configuration. When that mistake happens with an S3 bucket being open? Sub 10 seconds we will notify the user that there is a mis-configuration in the cloud, please go fix it. >> Yeah, I'm curious, one of the other challenges is when I have, especially using lots of different SAS providers, public cloud, private cloud, data protection is a big challenge there. I know VMware has a lot of ecosystem partners, one of the hottest things over the couple years. Is that primarily an ecosystem play? How does VMware position there? >> Yeah so in the hybrid cloud world, like you said we have a very strong ecosystem, multiple vendors here exhibiting, there will be some default elements that we bring into vSAN to help kind of the basics of data, you know back up and management but we will definitely continue to partner with our ecosystem when it comes to an aggregate stack of data management but there will be pockets of just simple back up capabilities that you'll start seeing in vSAN, I think we announced the beta of that this week. >> Talk about your organization, do the general managers, do you have a profit loss responsibility so do you have revenue? >> Yes. >> Talk about the team, how you guys are set up. How big is the team? What's the focus? >> Our team, there's two elements to my team. One is my team drives cloud service across VMware so there are folks developing services themselves. The size of the team is now 70 strong across product, marketing and engineering. And then I also work with my counterparts like Mark Lohmeyer, AJ Singh who are building services on our common platform, right? And it's an aggregate to the customer, they come to cloud.vmware.com they federate their enterprise identity, they log in, they see our catalog. It's like a Netflix-like catalog. You can subscribe to it, you get a common experience in terms of billing and essentially start using the services. So it's not only what my team builds but an aggregate what VMware is building and offering to our end users. >> And what go to market do you have? Which products are you doing that go to market for? >> It's all of our SAS based cloud services. We collectively drive the go to market for that as a team working with our corporate marketing team. >> Awesome. >> Yep. >> So that would be a combination of VMware on AWS, AppDefense, now Secure State, Wavefront, and very soon CloudHealth. >> Yeah, a lot of pressure. (laughing) >> Do the SAS product share, do they live in like the AWS marketplace, IBM, you know DOC or what? Where can they get all of them? >> Today you go to cloud.vmare.com and subscribe to them. Certain offers are starting to get into AWS Marketplace, so CloudHealth is actually in the AWS marketplace. >> Sure, sure. >> And we are looking at Wavefront, which is a hidden jewel in our portfolio is also we are thinking about how can get it into the respective marketplaces of Azure, GCP, and others. But today if you want to access any of these services, you simply go and trial it by just going to our website and starting a trial. >> So they've given you all the new stuff, make it happen. AWS, VMware, AWS, vice versa. RDS on premises, you doing that as well? >> Yes. RDS on vSphere, since the announce we've had phenomenal conversations over here. >> Yeah, it's really exciting, I think people don't understand how big this is. >> John, I had a phenomenal conversation with Yanbing and Christos from the storage and availability business who just really broke down how all of that worked in detail. >> Yes. >> Yeah. >> The customer interest is high. Someone asked me, why RDS? And they said it's such a hard problem and that was my point exactly, there is such a pain when it comes to managing databases and just like everything else, we started off the conversation, customers want a managed service. They don't want to deal with the intricacies of managing databases, they just want the outcomes from how they access databases. Amazon has solved it very elegantly with RDS, it's one of their most popular services. Why not bring it on prem? So that's been a great engineering partnership we are driving with them, and I'm really excited to bring it to market, shortly. >> Well we're looking forward to keeping in touch, we wanted to actually follow up with you on that. It's a story we're going to be following, certainly developing, it's big news, we love it. Thanks for coming on and spending the time. I got to get you to put a prediction out there for 2019. What do you see happening in 2019 that we're going to be talking about next year at VMworld? Personal prediction, could be a VMware prediction. You've seen a lot of what's going on with NSX, you see what's going on in the big picture, wholistically what is the prediction for 2019? >> It might be a boring prediction, but I fundamentally believe this notion of hybrid being bi-directional in nature. I think you'll see more of that. Even Google announced GKE on vSphere, as an example. So I think you will see more of that come through and it won't be a one way destination conversation that we keep having. And you will see VMware truly be a multicloud company. It won't matter if you're deploying the application in the native cloud, or in a vSphere based cloud. We will help the customer where they land the application. My firm belief is next year when we are here, we'll be talking about stories about how we are helping scale customers in Azure and AWS and GCP on one end, and about how we brought cloud on prem with services like RDS. >> Final question, I'm going to put you on the spot. What do you think is the biggest disruptive enabler for the next 10 years in this bi-directional multi cloud world? Can you point to one this that says, that's going to be the disruptive enabler for the next 10 to 20 years? Is there something out there you can point to, trend, technology, the standard? >> So the way I think about the world is a little bit differently in terms of I truly believe that we are getting inundated by data. I'm not talking about the data that you store in terms of running your business but in terms of the metadata that you run your operations and your infrastructure with. And I believe that the layer that will control that portion, the metadata of infrastructure and applications, we have not even begun to understand where that goes and then you apply AI and ML techniques to that? The idea of, I'll throw a term around here, self driving data centers and self optimizing applications I get really excited but it all begins with that data layer. And we are starting to put the beginning signs with CloudHealth, our private cloud assets to start that process. I'm really excited about how AI/ML meets that data layer to achieve those outcomes. >> It automates IT operations, sounds like automation's coming. Milin, thanks for coming on. Milin Desai, he's the vice president general manager of VMware's cloud services. The hottest area, it's emerging, it's got a lot of attention. We'll be following it, of course, on siliconANGLE and Wikibon and theCUBE. We're day three coverage here in the broadcast booth in Las Vegas in the VM village. I'm John Furrier, Stu Miniman, stay with us for more after this short break. (upbeat techno music)

>> LIVE from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering VMworld 2018. Brought to you by VMware and it's Ecosystem Partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's continuing coverage of VMworld 2018! I'm Lisa Martin, finally paired up with Stu Miniman. Hey, Stu! >> Lisa, three days, wall-to-wall coverage and how have you and I not been paired together yet? >> Did you do the scheduling, Stu? >> Um. >> That's okay. I'm glad to be paired up with you. The last interview, saving the best for last. Speaking of the last, we've got two guests, welcoming back some alumni to theCUBE, who also seem to be so busy at VMworld that you come to us as our last guests. I like this tradition. >> You had be the bookend, you know? Got to be the bookend. >> Best for last. >> Exactly. We've got Ajay Patel, SVP of VMware, and Russ Reeder, CEO of OVH US. Welcome, guys! >> Thank you, great to be here. - Thank you. >> Saving the best for last. >> Best for last, you bet. >> So, last year just, yeah, VMworld last year, vCloud Air acquisition by OVH had just happened. Give us an update on what's gone on in the last year and the momentum that that is giving the OVH business in the U.S. >> So, we're super excited to be here on second year as a Diamond Sponsor. We, as OVH Cloud, coming to the U.S. is a great opportunity. OVH is the largest hosting company in Europe. Everyone knows who we are in Europe, we come to the U.S. a year and a half ago, every one's like, who's OVH? We acquire vCloud Air, partnered with VMware, which is old news in Europe. For the past nine years, we've been virtualizing vSphere, seven of those nine we've been the award winning partner in Europe. So coming to America, the best way to really launch with the VMware partnership is to acquire vCloud Air. All of those customers, and brought over those employees, and the best news is that we just launched two months ago, starting to migrate those customers over to OVH Cloud. >> Fantastic. >> It's very exciting. >> Yes. >> Ajay, so, Multi-Cloud being the story of the show, we've seen really the maturation after, you know, we've been tracking this for a lot of years. It was like, okay, do we have the VMware Cloud story? Are we happy with it? Things like that. So first of all, congrats to you and your team. >> Thank you. >> We've had some good proof points, a lot of partners I hear. >> Absolutely. >> I'm joking to you, it's like, yeah, OVH- >> OVH clearly one of the important ones. (laughs loudly) >> So, you know, put this in perspective for us as to, from the vCloud Air world to, you know, we're talking AWS, IBM, OVH and many others. >> Stu, you and I talked about it a couple of times now, this is year number four, so thank you for inviting me, first of all. Our strategy's been consistent. How do we get VMware running on as many destinations as possible? And Hybrid, for us, has been a strategy that's been consistent. Glad the market caught up, even having Andy Jassy talk about moving RDS and making it available to vSphere on-prem is really a sign of maturity that the world is going to be hybrid for a long time. So from a strengths perspective, Hybrid is here to stay and we're really focused on what we've been calling this Cloud Verified Partner. So, OVH is a handful of partners that have reached that highest level achievement of delivering a full-stack VMware CDC and it can have a consistent infrastructure experience that cost customers 10 dollars. So we're at a point where the strategy's being realized. Strategic partners like OVH are delivering a full-stack VMware and customers are seeing the value of delivering Cloud, whether public Cloud or on-prem on vSphere. >> Russ, as I said, multi-cloud, it's matured a bit. You know, one of the big questions we had coming into was that AWS partnership, how much of it is a one-way? Well, things like RDS, really interesting. I've spent a bunch of time digging into it and understanding it. The other thing is, it's as Ajay said, the strategy was VMware everywhere. And partners like yourself, okay, where do we play? You know, public cloud's not the enemy, it's what do we do, what do we partner with? How they're help fitting the landscape as to, you know, how OVH and, you know, how do you play in that larger ecosystem and differentiate and, you know? >> Yeah, I think the third generation of the cloud here coming to multi-cloud is kind of going the first generation of hey, someone needs to do it for me. AWS, I'm going to do it myself. Now, hey, I want to do it myself, but I need multi-cloud. I'm not going to put all my eggs in one basket, I need a true infrastructure partner where I have predictability on billing. I don't have ingress or egress charges. I have a true infrastructure partner with the automation that can scale globally. And so, 20 years ago when we started OVH in Europe, the opportunity there was wide open. Coming here to the U.S. now it's a perfect opportunity in multi-cloud where all customers are saying I need to get out of my closet. I have seven-year-old machines in my Colo facility. I'm all-in-one whether it's AWS, or IBM, or another partner out there, they need to put different workloads where they would work best or DR. So coming in as a true infrastructure player with all of our automation, it's actually perfect timing for OVH to come to the U.S. and laugh OVH Cloud. >> So I'm curious, obviously with the European you have their legacy as we've transitioned and it's a spectrum but from kind of the traditional hosted environment to you're almost fully satisfied when you go this. >> Sure. >> The US, do you still have the spectrum or are you more built the modern with the vCloud Air being the foundation? You know, what spectrum of services are you offering customers? >> We offer the full spectrum. We had the opportunity to take OVH, all of our experience and systems, take the next generation of OVH in Europe, launch it in the U.S. and then bringing that back to Europe. So what we're launching in the U.S. is a full spectrum. The initial launch with VMware, fully hosted suite of the VMware products. So we have the VMware, the vSphere, vSAN, NSX offering that we've just announced. And having nine years of experience with vSphere as a service is a great opportunity to launch that. We also have a public cloud and that's the open source OpenStack public cloud, which is a different unique opportunity for a lot of companies that don't want to go the traditional public cloud. We also, being one of the largest dedicated server providers. It's all built on dedicated server, even server-less compute. And so you have to find a infrastructure partner that doesn't want to provide solutions first, and how do we rack and stack second. We understand the infrastructure and the network globally to help our partner's succeed. >> Ajay, I wonder if you could speak a little bit to the portfolio that your partners get to get access to from VMware. I was just interviewing Milin Desai, who you know oh so well. And the SAS piece is so, you know, it gets lost. You know, infrastructure as a service is one piece, but, you know, it's applications and services and, you know, yeah. >> Yeah, so far our cloud provider partners, what we've done is we introduced something we call Cloud Provider Platform. It gives them all the tools they need to sign up for Cloud, as Russ talked about, in a dedicated cloud. We give you a multi-tenant cloud. We're also, now with our cloud hub announcement, taking the VMware IP Cloud Services and making them available to our partners. And when you think about a partner on MSP, he's no longer just the asset heavy like OVH, but he's also the asset like a DXE. So we're now opening up the aperture for anyone who wants to either build clouds, or use clouds to offer managed services on top. I love the fact that OVH has economics, efficiency, and the customer support with the full VMware value proposition. They've always been the leader in kind of vSphere hosting, now they're offering a full private cloud built on VMware and the managed services go with it. So it's really about that choice, which really uniquely makes a provider program so compelling to our end customers. >> We've heard choice a lot. We hear it, Stu, at every show. Customers need choice, companies like VMware, OVH needs to build for what the customers want, not what you guys all think is great. Another thing that we've heard a lot at this show is that the seamlessness of the message, starting with Pat Gelsinger's keynote on Monday morning with people saying, you know, the structure is in place. I also thought it was one that was very cohesive in terms of the messaging and how the technologies are working together. I'm curious to get your feedback on what are some of the things that you've heard around this show from your customers who need a choice or in multi-cloud environments for many reasons, right? Applications that kind of dictate which direction that needs to go in, or through acquisition and, you know, have multiple cloud solutions. How are they taking this message? Especially with what you're doing with OVH in the U.S. And be able to digest this so they can really figure out, alright, here's what I can do with my infrastructure so that my business succeeds, whether I'm a bank or I'm a hospital. Tell us about that. >> I can go first and then Russ can add. So I think one of the things we've done a really good job this time is clarifying the message. I'm hoping, to the market, we're now becoming a very relevant and strategic platform that spans beyond the traditional VMware data center and hybrid cloud. So the first message is, you know, VMware is providing you the solutions while you're building on VMware or you're building on native clouds. And that CloudHealth acquisition is a good indication of VMware's commitment to kind of pure native public cloud. The second I would say is hybrid and this kind of consistent environment for runtime, if you will, and this hybrid control plane that give people a sense that I will lift and shift my workload first to an OVH and then transform leveraging the power of the public cloud. So it's become very pleasing to say, look, I don't need to change for changes sake, I can move and get economics off a public cloud, a dedicator, or even a pure multi-tenant. But then I can now refactor using public cloud services. So the power of VMware is giving them the flexibility to start a leverage cloud without having to make an upfront investment just for change sake, but more for the business transformation they're trying to drive, right? >> Yeah and so, what we've seen from the OVH side is really coming here and looking at all the partners. So we have Veam for backup, we can no offer Zerto for disaster recovery. Obviously, the VMware partnership we just launched earlier in the week which David Wigglesworth, our chief revenues officer was on talking about our partnership strategy and we have an amazing opportunity to bring partners in. FusionStorm is one of those partners, IT services. So OVH Cloud, we don't compete with our partners, true infrastructure partner with they can leverage our 28 data centers and our 15 terabytes of network and no charges for ingress. So what we're seeing here, our customers are coming and saying, hey, I just used you for DR but I'd like to actually take my on-prem full production system and bring it to the cloud now. So the customer's were migrating. There's more comfort going to the cloud, there's more understanding of the partnership ecosystem, and now instead of just saying, oh, we're going to just put DR or backup, we're going to come and we're going to migrate our entire production system because we've tried it out, our foot's been in the water, and now we're going all-in. So that's exciting and talking to all the customers this week, I love it. It's so exciting to talk to our customers that have migrated to OVH Cloud in the U.S. and now they want to bring over those production workloads. That's where it's really kind of that multi-cloud and I think VMware's been a huge asset to the cloud market in their strategy and a great partner. >> Getting that validation from your customers, the momentum that OVH is carrying is working. You've done a lot of education, especially in the last year. They're getting it and you're seeing your technologies and your partnership validating what it is that they're business needs. >> It's disheartening almost that the technology is in place now. We had to migrate from the vCloud Air into the OVH data center. Those tools, those best practices, those skills now are available to the end customer. So the compelling value here is, you want to take the entire data center and move it to OVH, we know how to do it. We have the tools, the people, the skills. And so just that kind of reference, the ability to say I'm not the first one to do it. It's been done before. That confidence is building in their business now. >> We had the opportunity, I mean, I don't want to say that there was a bleeding edge, but we were on a bleeding edge of HCX and it's working seamlessly now. >> Hybrid Cloud Exchange. >> The extension to bring, without any downtime, from on-prem to over to the cloud with OVH Cloud, or from the vCloud Air cloud over to ours. So it's working and the customer's are super excited, they get that trust. They go back to their management team and say, hey, now it's time to go more. I can go to the cloud and the cost efficiency, the savings, the redundancy of the network and the power, and not all this capex. That's why they're all moving to the cloud now. >> Final thing, you've talked about some good high level things. Any specific customer examples? I know you might not be able to mention names, but, you know, Vertical, or things like that as to how businesses are helping to transform themselves after they've done these sort of solutions. >> Yeah, sure, I mean first of all, it's all about the customer. So we, I can't mention any specific names, we will have some, we filmed some customer testimonials in the booth that we'll be announcing and maybe the next time we can bring customers up here to talk about it. Whether it's really education or high-tech, especially on a high-tech, the tech guys love OVH, right? They really love it. But from an infrastructure provider, people that are looking to lift and shift their existing applications without having to rewrite their applications for a public cloud, that's where OVH really comes into play. I've got all of these systems. I've got VMware on-prem, I need to move it but I don't want to rebuild it. So that's where we see the excitement of, of course I'm going to build some new stuff in the cloud, but how do I take all of my thousands of applications that we have, that we're never going to refactor and just move it over to the cloud to have that security. That's where I think customers are saying, wow, I can't actually do more in the cloud than I thought I could. >> For me, I think, I just walked out of a customer meeting, so I won't name them but just kind of give you a sense of what they're doing. They have four clouds, they believe they have monolithic applications, they don't want to be locked in to a particular cloud, so you're hearing the consistent view is, we're trying to figure out how do we change our development practices. You know, how do we leverage container, whether it's PKS, whether it's payloads. What's my development methodology? How do I make sure that deployment gives me a choice of running across clouds? How should I setup my IT operations to operate in the cloud? So consistency, portability, how do I manage the complexity of running on multiple clouds? What's my cost profile and how do I do it effective? So those are the kinds of questions we're getting. They're starting to look to VMware as a trusted advisor, that safe choice, as we talked about, to say, you know, one thing I can bet on is if I bet on VMware technology, it runs on more clouds than I can, you know, when I need them. It is portable, I can take a workload that traditionally I'd run on different hardware, now we run it on different clouds. So we're seeing a tremendous momentum around this notion of VMware's kind of the pathway or the hybrid control plane that we can bet on. And then partners like OVH, etc. But I have this destination that's safe, that's secure, that's consistent with what they're running today. So pretty exciting in terms of how customers kind of take in the message and start to put it into their strategy as they go forward. >> One more thing I'd like to understand, you talked about the tremendous capabilities that OVH and VMware have together with vCloud Air. You can enable customers to do a lot. To transform IT, to facilitate digital transformation. They're comfortable with this. But one of the things that that absolutely requires is cultural transformation. I'd love to get your final thoughts on how is OVH and VMware together helping your customers to understand and really impact the cultural changes that are need to take advantage, full advantage of the technology? >> That's a great question. Go ahead. >> On our side, what we try to do is, we as a company are going through the same transformation. We're a perpetual company becoming a services company. So the lessons learned, I spent some time where I-CIO actually talks about how we're operating our internal cloud. We're talking about the best practices of how we're moving to a service first mentality. How we're creating a CICD development mentality and practices. How are we leveraging public clouds and how are we managing cost? So those internal lessons learned, we're starting to make available to our customers and our partners. We're also packaging some of the products that we make available to VCP, our provider program. So the products that we're building up much more suited to run a services organization, which when we started five years ago at vCloud Air, we took enterprise products and tried to force fit them, now we're much more delivering our own service, eating our own dog food, if you will, have to incorporate that capability into our platform. So it's a combination of product improvement, best practices and lessons learned that we're making available to the market. >> I can talk from specific example. Acquiring vCloud Air, a great customer base, and all of the personnel from VMware in vCloud Air to come over. So not only was it cultural from a customers perspective, but also from an employee perspective. You build culture on trust. So what's interesting is that our employees and our customers that were over in Europe, in our U.K data centers and our German data centers, they're growing much quicker than the ones over in the U.S. The U.S. after a year of working with us and seeing that, hey, we say we're going to do this and now we're actually doing it, and I've migrated and that was really easy, and I can point and click and actually expand my compute and my storage and add more hosts in a matter of minutes. That builds trust, that has a great culture, and that spreads. So, from an education perspective, we have a lot of higher education customers, and now they're like, I'm going to go talk to this school and this school, and that word of mouth is golden. >> That validation of, we've been in your shoes, VMware has been in our shoes, they've done it successfully. Guys, I wish we had more time, but thanks so much for helping Stu and I wrap up the day on this set. It's great to talk to you both. I think it might be fair to say that we'll probably see you at the next VMworld on day three around the same time. >> Yeah, perfect! - Hopefully earlier. >> Maybe. Ajay, Russ, thank you so much for your time. >> Thank you. - Thank you so much, Lisa. >> For my co-host, Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's continuing coverage of VMworld 2018. Stick around, we'll be back to wrap up the show. (electronic music)