(upbeat music) >> Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of VMworld 2021. I'm Lisa Martin. I've got a CUBE alum with me next. Ajay Patel is here, the SVP and GM of Modern Apps and Management at VMware. Ajay, welcome back to the program, it's great to see you. >> Well thank you for having me. It's always great to be here. >> Glad that you're doing well. I want to dig into your role as SVP and GM with Modern Apps and Management. Talk to me about some of the dynamics of your role and then we'll get into the vision and the strategy that VMware has. >> Makes sense. VMware has created a business group called Modern Apps and Management, with the single mission of helping our customers accelerate their digital transformation through software. And we're finding them leveraging both the edge and the multiple clouds they deploy on. So our mission here is helping, them be the cloud diagnostic manager for application development and management through our portfolio of Tazu and VRealize solutions allowing customers to both build and operate applications at speed across these edge data center and cloud deployments And the big thing we hear is all the day two challenges, right of managing costs, risks, security, performance. That's really the essence of what the business group is about. How do we speed idea to production and allow you to operate at scale. >> When we think of speed, we can't help, but think of the acceleration that we've seen in the last 18 months, businesses transforming digitally to first survive the dynamics of the market. But talk to me about how the, the pandemic has influenced catalyzed VMware's vision here. >> You can see in every industry, this need for speed has really accelerated. What used to be weeks and months of planning and execution has materialized into getting something out in production in days. One of great example I can remember is one of my financial services customer that was responsible for getting all the COVID payments out to the small businesses and being able to get that application from idea to production matter of 10 days, it was just truly impressive to see the teams come together, to come up with the idea, put the software together and getting production so that we could start delivering the financial funds the companies needed, to keep them viable. So great social impact and great results in matter of days. >> And again, that acceleration that we've seen there, there's been a lot of silver linings, I think, but I want to get in next to some of the industry trends that are influencing app modernization. What are you seeing in the customer environment? What are some of those key trends that are driving adoption? >> I mean, this move to cloud is here to stay and most of customers have a cloud first strategy, and we rebranded this from VMware the cloud smart strategy, but it's not just about one particular flavor of cloud. We're putting the best workload on the best cloud. But the reality is when I speak to many of the customers is they're way behind on the bar of digital plats. And it's, that's because the simple idea of, you know, lift and shift or completely rewrite. So there's no one fits all and they're struggling with hardware capability, their the development teams, their IT assets, the applications are modernized across these three things. So we see modernization kind of fall in three categories, infrastructure modernization, the practice of development or devops modernization, and the application transform itself. And we are starting to find out that customers are struggling with all three. Well, they want to leverage the best of cloud. They just don't have the skills or the expertise to do that effectively. >> And how does VMware help address that skills gap. >> Yeah, so the way we've looked at it is we put a lot of effort around education. So on the everyone knows containers and Kubernetes is the future. They're looking to build these modern microservices, architectures and applications. A lot of investment in just kind of putting the effort to help customers learn these new tools, techniques, and create best practices. So theCUBE academy and the effort and the investment putting in just enabling the ecosystem now with the skills and capabilities is one big effort that VMware is putting. But more importantly, on the product side, we're delivering solutions that help customers both build design, deliver and operate these applications on Kubernetes across the cloud of choice. I'm most excited about our announcement around this product. We're just launching called Tanzu application platform. It is what we call an application aware platform. It's about making it easy for developers to take the ideas and get into production. It kind of bridging that gap that exists between development and operations. We hear a lot about dev ops, as you know, how do you bring that to life? How do you make that real? That's what Tanzu application platform is about. >> I'm curious of your customer conversations, how they've changed in the last year or so in terms of, app modernization, things like security being board level conversations, are you noticing that that is rising up the chain that app modernization is now a business critical initiative for our businesses? >> So it's what I'm finding is it's the means. It's not that if you think about the board level conversations about digital transformation you know, I'm a financial services company. I need to provide mobile FinTech. I'm competing with this new age application and you're delivering the same service that they offered digitally now, right. Like from a retail bank. I can't go to the store, the retail branch anymore, right. I need to provide the same capability for payments processing all online through my mobile phone. So it's really the digitalization of the traditional processes that we're finding most exciting. In order to do that, we're finding that no applications are in cloud right. They had to take the existing financial applications and put a mobile frontend to it, or put some new business logic or drive some transformation there. So it's really a transformation around existing application to deliver a business outcome. And we're focusing it through our Tanzu lab services, our capabilities of Tanzu application platform, all the way to the operations and management of getting these products in production or these applications in production. So it's the full life cycle from idea to production is what customers are looking for. They're looking to compress the cycle time as you and I spoke about, through this agility they're looking for. >> Right, definitely a compressed cycle time. Talk to me about some of the other announcements that are being made at VMworld with respect to Tanzu and helping customers on the app modernization front, and that aligned to the vision and mission that you talked about. >> Wonderful, I would say they're kind of, I put them in three buckets. One is what are we doing to help developers get access to the new technology. Back to the skills learning part of it, most excited about Tanzu of community edition and Tanzu mission control starter pack. This is really about getting Kubernetes stood up in your favorite deployment of choice and get started building your application very quickly. We're also announcing Tanzu application platform that I spoke about, we're going to beta 2 for that platform, which makes it really easy for developers to get access to Kubernetes capability. It makes development easy. We're also announcing marketplace enhancements, allowing us to take the best of breed IC solutions and making them available to help you build applications faster. So one set of announcements around building applications, delivering value, getting them down to market very quickly. On the management side, we're really excited about the broad portfolio management we've assembled. We're probably in the customer's a way to build a cloud operating model. And in the cloud operating model, it's about how do I do VMs and containers? How do I provide a consistent management control plane so I can deliver applications on the cloud of my choice? How do I provide intrinsic observability, intrinsic security so I can operate at scale. So this combination of development tooling, platform operations, and day two operations, along with enhancements in our cost management solution with CloudHealth or being able to take our universal capabilities for consumption, driving insight and observity that really makes it a powerful story for customers, either on the build or develop or deploy side of the equation. >> You mentioned a couple of things are interesting. Consistency being key from a management perspective, especially given this accelerated time in which we're living, but also you mentioned security. We've seen so much movement on the security front in the last year and a half with the massive rise in ransomware attacks, ransomware now becoming a household word. Talk to me about the security factor and how you're helping customers from a risk mitigation perspective, because now it's not, if we get attacked, it's when. >> And I think it's really starts with, we have this notion of a secure software supply chain. We think of software as a production factory from idea to production. And if you don't start with known good hard attacks to start with, trying to wire in security after attack is just too difficult. So we started with secure content, curated images content catalogs that customers are setting up as best practices. We started with application accelerators. These are best practice that codifies with the right guard rails in place. And then we automate that supply chain so that you have checks in every process, every step of the way, whether it's in the build process and the deploy process or in runtime production. And you had to do this at the application layer because there is no kind of firewall or edge you can protect the application is highly distributed. So things like application security and API security, another area we announced a new offering at VM world around API security, but everything starts with an API endpoint when you have a security. So security is kind of woven in into the design build, deploy and in the runtime operation. And we're kind of wire this in intrinsically to the platform with best of breed security partners now extending in evolving their solution on top of us. >> What's been some of the customer feedback from some of the new technologies that you announced. I'm curious, I imagine knowing how VMware is very customer centric, customers were essential in the development and iteration of the technologies, but just give me some of the idea on customer feedback of this direction that you're going. >> Yeah, there's a great, exciting example where we're working with the army to create a software factory. you would've never imagined right, The US army being a software digital enterprise, we're partnering with what we call the US army futures command in a joint effort to help them build the first ever software development factory where army personnel are actually becoming true cloud native developers, where you're putting the soldiers to do cloud native development, everything in the terms of practice of building software, but also using the Tanzu portfolio in delivering best-in-class capability. This is going to rival some of the top tech companies in Silicon valley. This is a five-year prototype project in which we're picking cohorts of soldiers, making them software developers and helping them build great capability through both combination of classroom based training, but also strong technical foundation and expertise provided by our lab. So this is an example where, you know, the industry is working with the customer to co-innovate, how we build software, but also driving the expertise of these personnel hierarchs. As a soldier, you know, what you need, what if you could start delivering solutions for rest of your members in a productive way. So very exciting, It's an example where we've leapfrogging and delivering the kind of the Silicon valley type innovation to our standard practice. It's traditionally been a procurement driven model. We're trying to speed that and drive it into a more agile delivery factory concept as well. So one of the most exciting projects that I've run into the last six months. >> The army software factory, I love that my dad was an army medic and combat medic in Vietnam. And I'm sure probably wouldn't have been apt to become a software developer. But tell me a little bit about, it's a very cool project and so essential. Talk to me a little bit about the impetus of the army software factory. How did that come about? >> You know, this came back with strong sponsorship from the top. I had an opportunity to be at the opening of the campus in partnership with the local Austin college. And as General Milley and team spoke about it, they just said the next battleground is going to be a digital backup power hub. It's something we're going to have to put our troops in place and have modernized, not just the army, but modernize the way we deliver it through software. It's it speaks so much to the digital transformation we're talking about right. At the very heart of it is about using software to enable whether it's medics, whether it's supplies, either in a real time intelligence on the battlefield to know what's happening. And we're starting to see user technology is going to drive dramatically hopefully the next war, we don't have to fight it more of a defensive mode, but that capability alone is going to be significant. So it's really exciting to see how technology has become pervasive in all aspects, in every format including the US army. And this partnership is a great example of thought leadership from the army command to deliver software as the innovation factory, for the army itself. >> Right, and for the army to rival Silicon valley tech companies, that's pretty impressive. >> Pretty ambitious right. In partnership with one of the local colleges. So that's also starting to show in terms of how to bring new talent out, that shortage of skills we talked about. It's a critical way to kind of invest in the future in our people, right? As we, as we build out this capability. >> That's excellent that investment in the future and helping fill those skills gaps across industries is so needed. Talk to me about some of the things that you're excited about this year's VMworld is again virtual, but what are some of the things that you think are really fantastic for customers and prospects to learn? >> I think as Raghu said, we're in the third act of VM-ware, but more interestingly, but the third act of where the cloud is, the cloud has matured cloud 2.0 was really about shifting and using a public cloud for the IS capabilities. Cloud 3.0 is about to use the cloud of choice for the best application. We are going to increasingly see this distributed nature of application. I asked most customers, where does your application run? It's hard to answer that, right? It's on your mobile device, it's in your storefront, it's in your data center, it's in a particular cloud. And so an application is a collection of services. So what I'm most excited about is all business capables being published as an API, had an opportunity to be part of a company called Sonos and then Apogee. And we talked about API management years ago. I see increasingly this need for being able to expose a business capability as an API, being able to compose these new applications rapidly, being able to secure them, being able to observe what's going on in production and then adjust and automate, you can scale up scale down or deploy the application where it's most needed in minutes. That's a dynamic future that we see, and we're excited that VM was right at the heart of it. Where that in our cloud agnostic software player, that can help you, whether it's your development challenges, your deployment challenges, or your management challenges, in the future of multi-cloud, that's what I'm most excited about, we're set up to help our customers on this cloud journey, regardless of where they're going and what solution they're looking to build. >> Ajay, what are some of the key business outcomes that the cloud is going to deliver across industries as things progress forward? >> I think we're finding the consistent message I hear from our customers is leverage the power of cloud to transform my business. So it's about business outcomes. It's less about technology. It's what outcomes we're driving. Second it's about speed and agility. How do I respond, adjust kind of dynamic contiuness. How do I innovate continuously? How do I adjust to what the business needs? And third thing we're seeing more and more is I need to be able to management costs and I get some predictability and able to optimize how I run my business. what they're finding with the cloud is the costs are running out of control, they need a way, a better way of knowing the value that they're getting and using the best cloud for the right technology. Whether may be a private cloud in some cases, a public cloud or an edge cloud. So they want to able to going to select and move and have that portability. Being able to make those choices optimization is something they're demanding from us. And so we're most excited about this need to have a flexible infrastructure and a cloud agnostic infrastructure that helps them deliver these kinds of business outcomes. >> You mentioned a couple of customer examples and financial services. You mentioned the army software factory. In terms of looking at where we are in 2021. Are there any industries in particular, maybe essential services that you think are really prime targets for the technologies, the new announcements that you're making at VM world. >> You know, what we are trying to see is this is a broad change that's happening. If you're in retail, you know, you're kind of running a hybrid world of digital and physical. So we're seeing this blending of physical and digital reality coming together. You know, FedEx is a great customer of ours and you see them as spoken as example of it, you know, they're continue to both drive operational change in terms of being delivering the packages to you on time at a lower cost, but on the other side, they're also competing with their primary partners and retailers and in some cases, right, from a distribution perspective for Amazon, with Amazon prime. So in every industry, you're starting to see the lines are blurring between traditional partners and competitors. And in doing so, they're looking for a way to innovate, innovate at speed and leverage technology. So I don't think there is a specific industry that's not being disrupted whether it's FinTech, whether it's retail, whether it's transportation logistics, or healthcare telemedicine, right? The way you do pharmaceutical, how you deliver medicine, it's all changing. It's all being driven by data. And so we see a broad application of our technology, but financial services, healthcare, telco, government tend to be a kind of traditional industries that are with us but I think the reaches are pretty broad. >> Yeah, it is all changing. Everything is becoming more and more data-driven and many businesses are becoming data companies or if they're not, they need to otherwise their competition, as you mentioned, is going to be right in the rear view mirror, ready to take their place. But that's something that we see that isn't being talked about. I don't think enough, as some of the great innovations coming as a result of the situation that we're in. We're seeing big transformations in industries where we're all benefiting. I think we need to get that, that word out there a little bit more so we can start showing more of those silver linings. >> Sure. And I think what's happening here is it's about connecting the people to the services at the end of the day, these applications are means for delivering value. And so how do we connect us as consumers or us employees or us as partners to the business to the operator with both digitally and in a physical way. And we bring that in a seamless experience. So we're seeing more and more experience matters, you know, service quality and delivery matter. It's less about the technologies back again to the outcomes. And so very much focused in building that the platform that our customers can use to leverage the best of the cloud, the best of their people, the best of the innovation they have within the organization. >> You're right. It's all about outcomes. Ajay, thank you for joining me today, talking about some of the new things that the mission of your organization, the vision, some of the new products and technologies that are being announced at VM world, we appreciate your time and hopefully next year we'll see you in person. >> Thank you again and look forward to the next VMWorld in person. >> Likewise for Ajay Patel. You're very welcome for Ajay Patel. I'm Lisa Martin, and you're watching theCUBEs coverage of VMWorld of 2021. (soft music)

>> Narrator: From around the globe it's "TheCUBE" presenting accelerating automation with DevNet brought to you by Cisco. >> Hello and welcome back to theCUBE's coverage theCUBE virtual's coverage of DevNet Create Virtual, we're not face to face, theCUBE's been there with DevNet and DevNet Create, since the beginning DevNet Create was really a part of the DevNet community looking out at the external market outside of Cisco which essentially is the cloud native world which is going mainstream. We've got a great guest here who's been on theCUBE many times, we've been talking to them, recently acquired by Cisco ThousandEyes we have Joe Vaccaro with us Vice President of Product. Joe, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for coming on. >> Great and thanks for having me. >> You have the keys to the kingdom you're the Vice President of the Product which means you get to look inside and you get to look outside figure it all out make everything run on ThousandEyes, You guys have been running common language across multiple layers of network intelligence, external services. This is the heart of what we're seeing in innovation with multi-cloud microservices, cloud-native. This is really a hard area, it's converging multiple theaters and technology, a super important I want to get into that with you but first ThousandEyes is recently acquired by Cisco big acquisition, super important. The new CEO of Cisco, very clear API everything we're seeing that come out. That's a big theme at DevNet Create. The ecosystem of Cisco is going outside their own their walls, outside of the Cisco network operators, network engineers. We're talking to developers, talking programmability. This is the big theme. What's it like at Cisco? Tell us as the COVID hits you get acquired by Cisco. Tell us what's happening. >> Yeah, surely been an exciting six months for a ThousandEyes and the entire team and our customers as we all kind of shifted to the new normal of working from home. And I think that change alone really kind of amplified even some of the fundamental beliefs that we have as a company that you know cloud is becoming the new data center or customers that internet has become the new network and the new enterprise network backbone. And SaaS has really become the new application stack. And as you think about these last six months those fundamental truths have never been more evident as we rely upon the cloud to be able to work as we rely upon our own home networks and the internet in order to be productive. And as we access more sized applications on a daily basis. And as you think about those fundamental truths what's common across all of them is that you rely upon them now more than ever not only to run your business but to enable your employees to be productive but you don't own them. And if you don't own them then you lack the ability in a traditional way to be able to understand that digital experience. And I think that's ultimately what ThousandEyes is trying to solve for. And I think it's really being amplified in really these last six months. >> Talk about the COVID dynamic because I think it highlighted and certainly accelerated digital transformation, but specifically exposes opportunities, challenges, weaknesses. I've talked to many CXOs, CSOs, chief security is huge. Talk track we'll get to in a second. But it exposes what's worth doubling down on what to abandon from a project standpoint as people start to look at their priorities and on hey, we going to have a connected experience. We going to have security. People are working at home. No one has VPNs at home VPNs are passe, maybe it's SD-WAN maybe it's something else, they're on a backbone, they're connecting to the internet. A lot of different diversity in connections. At the same time, you got a ton of modern apps running for these networks. This is a huge issue, COVID is exposed us at scale. What's your view on this? And what is ThousandEyes thinking about this? >> If you think about the kind of legacy application delivery it went from largely users internet office connected over say a dedicated corporate network largely to traditional say internal hosted applications. And that was a fairly simple connectivity bath. And as you mentioned, we've seen amplifications in terms of the diversity from the users. So users are not in the office. Now they're connected in distributed disparate locations that are dynamically changing. And you think that how they're getting to that application they're going across a really complex service chain of different network services that are working together across as public internet backbone will totally to land them on an application. And then those applications themselves are becoming now as you mentioned distributed largely based upon a microservices architecture and increasing their own dependence upon third party sample size applications to fulfill say key functions of that application. Those three things together, ultimately are creating that level of complex service chain. It really makes it difficult to understand the digital experience and ultimately the IT organization is really chartered with not just delivering the infrastructure but delivering the right experience. And yet then have a way to be able to see to gain that visibility that experience to measure it and understand and to provide that intelligence and then ultimately to act on it to be able to ensure that your employees as well as your customers are getting the right overall approach to being able to elaborate those assets. >> It's funny you know I was getting to some of these high scale environments a lot of these concepts are converging. We had terms like automation, self healing networks. You mentioned microservices earlier, you earlier mentioned the clouds of the new data center or when's the new land. Have you ever look at it, it's a whole different architecture. So I want to get your thoughts on the automation piece of networking and internet outages for instance. Because there's so many outages going up and down it is like catching looking for a needle in a haystack, right? So we've had this conversation with you guys on theCUBE before. How does automation occur when you guys look at those kinds of things? What's important to look at? Can you comment on and react to the internet outages and how you find resolve those? >> Yeah, it was really great and as you mentioned automation really in a place that a key when you think about the just a broad problem that IT is trying to drive you know from our lens we look at it in really three ways. First off is you have to be able to gain the level of visibility from where it matters and be able to test and be able to provide that level of active measurements across the type of ways you want to be able to inspect the network. But then also from the right vantage points you want to inspect them. But what we talked about RightSide Data alone doesn't solve that problem as you mentioned that needle in the haystack. Data just provides the raw metrics that are streaming across the screen you have to then enable that data to provide meeting. You need to enable that data to become intelligent. And that intelligence comes through the automation of being able to process that data very quickly to allow you to be able to see the unseen. To allow you to be able to quickly understand the issues that are happening across this digital supply chain to identify issues that are even happening outside of your own control across the public internet. And then the last step of automation really comes in the form of the action, right? How do you enable that intelligence to be put to use? How do you enable that intelligence to then drive across the rest of your IT workflow as well as to be able to be used as a signaling engine to be able to then make the fundamental changes back the network fabric whether that is dressing your modifying your BGP peering that we see happen within our customers using ThousandEyes data built around major internet outages that we've seen over the past six months or to be able to then use that data to be able to optimize the ultimate experience that they're delivering to both our customers as well as our employees. >> Classic policy-based activities taken to a whole another level. I going to get your thoughts on the employees working at home. Okay, because most IT people like Oh yeah, we're going to forecast in cases of disruption or a hurricane or a flood or hurricane sandy but now with COVID everyone's working at home. So who would have forecasted a hundred percent work from home which puts a lot of pressure on everything. So I got to ask you now that employees are working at home how do you tie network visibility to the actual user experience? >> Yeah, that's a great question. As you we saw within our own customer base when COVID hit and we saw this rise of work from home IT teams were really scrambling and said, okay I have to light up this say VPN infrastructure or I need to now be able to support my users in a work from home situation where I don't control the corporate network. In essence now you have essentially thousands. Every employee is acting across their own corporate network. And people were then using ThousandEyes in different ways to be able to monitor their CPP and infrastructure across back into the corporate network as well as in using our ThousandEyes end point agents that runs on a local user's laptop or machine in their home to help you to be able to gain that visibility down to that last mile of connectivity. Because when a user calls up support and says I'm having trouble say accessing my application whether that's Salesforce or something else what ultimately might be causing that issue might not necessarily be a Salesforce issue, right? It could be the device in the device performance in terms of CPU memory utilization. It could be the WiFi and the signal quality within your WiFi network. It could be your access point. It could be your local home router. It can be your local ISP. It could be the path that you're taking ultimately to your corporate network or that application. There's so many places that can go wrong that are now difficult to be able to see unless you have the ability to see comprehensively from the user to the application and to be able to understand that full end to end path. >> IT teams have also been disrupted. They've been on offsite prop off property as well but you've got the Cloud. How has your technology help the IT teams? Can you give some examples there? >> Yeah great way is how people use ThousandEyes as part of that data sharing ecosystem again that notion of how do you go from visibility to intelligence action. And where in the past you might be able as an IT administrator to walk over to their network team say hey, can you take a look at what I'm seeing? Now that's no longer available. So how do you be able to work efficiently as an IT organization? We think a ThousandEyes and how our customers are using a ThousandEyes becomes a common operating language. It allows them to be able to analyze across from the application down into the underlying infrastructure through those different layers of the network. What's happening and where do you need to focus your attention? And then furthermore within ThousandEyes in terms of enabling that data sharing ecosystem leveraging our share link capability really gives them the ability to say you know what here's what I'm seeing and be able to send that to anybody within the IT organization. But it goes even further and many times in recent times as well as over the course of people using ThousandEyes. They take those share links that actually send them to their external providers. Because they're not just looking to resolve issues within their own IT organization they're having worked collaboratively with the different ESPs that they're pairing with, with their cloud providers that they're leveraging or the SaaS applications that are part of that core dependency of how they deliver their experience. >> So I got to ask you the question what you think about levels of visibility and making the lives easier for IT teams, you see a lot of benefits with ThousandEyes. You pointed out a few of them. So I got to ask you the question. So if I'm an IT person in the trenches are you guys have an aspirin or a vitamin or both? Can you give an example because there's a lot of pain point out there. So yeah, give me a couple Advils and aspirins but also >> Yeah. you're an enabler too. The new things are evolving. You pointed out some use case. Talk about the difference between where you're helping people pain points and also enabling them be successful for IT teams. >> Yeah, that's a great analogy you're thinking like you said, it definitely sits on both sides of that spectrum ThousandEyes is the trusted tool the source of truth for IT organizations when issues are happening as their alarm bells are ringing as they are generating the different on call to be able to jump into a war room situation. ThousandEyes is that trusted source of truth that allow them to focus to be able to resolve that issue in the heat of the moment. But ThousandEyes is also when you think about baselining your experience what's important is not understanding that experience at that moment in time but also how that's deviated over time. And so by leveraging ThousandEyes on a continuous basis it gives you that ability to see the history of that experience to understand how your network is changing cause as you mentioned networks are constantly evolving, right? The internet itself is constantly changing. It's an organic system and you need to be able to understand not only what are the metrics that are moving out of your bounds but then what is potentially the cause of that as a network has evolved. And then furthermore you can be begin to use that as you mentioned in terms of your vitamin type of an analogy you'd be able to understand the health of your system over time on a baseline basis so that you can begin to be able to ensure its success in a great way to really kind of bring that to light as people using say ThousandEyes as part of say SD-WAN roll out. Where you're looking to say benchmark and again confidence as you look to scale out either benchmarking different ISP within that I feel like connectivity where as you look to ensure a level of success with a single branch to give you that competence to then scale out to the rest of your organization. >> That's great insights classic financial model ROI you got baseline and upside, right? You got handle the baseline as you pointed out and the upside music experience connectivity, application performance which drives revenue, etc. So great point great insight Joe, thank you so much for that insight. It's got a final question for you I want to just riff a little bit with you on the industry. A lot of us have been having debates about automation. Who doesn't love automation. Automation is awesome, right? Automate things, but as the trend starts going on as everything is a service or SaaS as it's called certainly Cisco is going down that road. Talk about your view about the difference between automation and everything is a service. Because at the end of the day everything will be a service but without automation you really can't have services, right? So, automation, automation, automation great drum to bang all day long but then also you've got the same business side saying as a service pushing that into the products. Means it's not trivial. Talk about how you look at automation and everything as service and the relationship and interplay between those two concepts. >> Yeah, ultimately I think about in terms of what is the problem that the business is trying to solve and ultimately, what is the deal that they're trying to face? And in many ways right, they're being exploded with increase of data they need to be able to not only process and gather but then be able to then make use of. Then from that as we mentioned once you've processed that data and you still gather the insights from it you need to be able to then act on that data. And automation plays a key role of allowing you to be able to then put that through your workflow. Because again, as that IT experience becomes even more complex as more, more services get put into that digital supply chain. As you adopt say increased complexity within your infrastructure by moving to a multicloud architecture where you look to increase the number of say network services that you're leveraging across that digital experience. Ultimately you need with the level of automation you'd be able to see outside of your own vantage point. You need to be able to look at the problem from as a broad of a way as possible. And data and automation allows you to be able to do what is fundamentally difficult to do from a very narrow point of view in terms of the visibility you gather intelligence you generate and then ultimately how do you act on that data as quick as possible to be able to provide the value of what you're looking to solve. >> Its like a feature (laughs). It's under the hood. The feature of everything comes to the surface is automation, data, machine learning all the goodness in the software. That's really kind of what we're talking about here, isn't it? >> Hmm. >> Final question for you as we wrap up DevNet Create really again is going beyond Cisco's DevNet community going into the industry ecosystem where developers are there. These are folks that want infrastructure as code. They want network as code. So network programmability, huge topic. We've been having that conversation with Cisco and others throughout the industry for the past three years. What's your message to developers out there that are watching this who say hey, I just want to develop code. Like I want you know, you guys got that. That was nice thanks so much. You take care of that I just want to write code. What's your message to those folks out there who want to tap some of these new services these new automation, these new capabilities what's your message? >> Ultimately I think when you look at ThousandEyes from a product perspective we try to build our product in an API first model to allow you to be able to then shift left of how you think about that overall experience and from a developer standpoint what I'd say is that, while you're developing in your silo you're going to be part of a larger ultimate system. And your experience you deliver within your application is now going to be dependent upon not only the infrastructure it's running upon but the network its connected to and then ultimately the user and the sense of that user. If I leveraging a ThousandEyes and being able to then integrate ThousandEyes into how you think closely on that experience that's going to help ensure that ultimately the application experience that the developers looking to deliver meets that objective. And I think what I would say is while you need to focus on your role as a developer having the understanding of how you fit into the larger ecosystem and what the reality of how your users will access that application is critical. >> Awesome Joe, thank you so much again. Trust is everything letting people understand that what's going on underneath is going to be viable and capable. You guys got a great product and congratulations on the acquisition that Cisco made of your company. And we've been following you guys for a long time and a great technology chops, great market traction. Congratulations to everyone at ThousandEyes. Thanks for coming on sharing. >> I appreciate it thanks for having me. >> Joe Vaccaro vice president of Product here with ThousandEyes is now part of Cisco. I'm John Furrier host of theCUBE Virtual for DevNet Create Virtual. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)