>>Hello everyone, This is Dave Lanta and you're watching The Cube's coverage of the Dell Technology Summit 2022 with exclusive behind the scenes interviews featuring Dell executive perspectives. And right now we're gonna explore Apex, which is Dell's as a service offering Dell's multi-cloud and edge strategies and the momentum around those. And we have news around Project Frontier, which is Dell's vision for its edge platform. And there's so much happening here. And don't forget, it's Cyber Security Awareness Month. Sam Groot is here. He's the senior vice president of marketing at Dell Technologies. Sam, always great to see you. How you doing? >>Always great to be here, Dave. >>All right, let's look at cloud. Everybody's talking about cloud Apex, multi-cloud. What's the update? How's it going? Where's the innovation and focal points of the strategy? >>Yeah, yeah. Look, Dave, if you think back over the course of this year, you've really heard us pivot as a company and discussing more and more about how multi-cloud is becoming a reality for our customers today. And when we listen and talk with our customers, they really describe multi-cloud challenges and a few key threads. One, the complexity is growing very, very quickly. Two, they're having a harder time controlling how their users are accessing the various different clouds. And then of course, finally the cloud costs are growing unchecked as well. So we, we like to describe this phenomenon as multi-cloud by design, where essentially organizations are waking up and seeing cloud sprawl around their organization every day. And this is creating more and more of those challenges. So of course at Dell we've got a strong point of view that you don't need to build multi-cloud by by default, rather it's multi-cloud by design, where you're very intentional in how you do multi-cloud. >>And how we deliver multi-cloud by design is through Apex. Apex is our modern cloud and our modern consumption experience. So when you think about the innovation as well, they've like, we've been on a pretty quick track record here in that, you know, the beginning of this year we introduced brand new Apex backup services that provides that SAS based backup service. We've introduced or announced Project Alpine, which is bringing our storage software, intellectual property from on-prem and putting it and running it natively in the public cloud. We've also introduced new Apex cyber recovery services that is simplifying how customers protect against cyber attacks. They can run an Amazon Azure, aw, I'm sorry, Amazon, aws, Azure or Google. And then, you know, we are really focused on this multi-cloud ecosystem. We announce key partnerships with SaaS providers such as Snowflake, where you can now access our information or our data from on-prem through the Snow Snowflake cloud. >>Or if needed, we can actually move the data to the Snowflake cloud if required. So we're continuing to build out that ecosystem SA providers. And then finally I would say, you know, we made a big strategic announcement just recently with Red Hat, where we're not only delivering new Apex container services, but we announce a strategic partnership to build jointly engineered solutions to address hybrid and multi-cloud solutions going forward. You know, VMware is gonna always continue to be a key partner of ours at the la at the recent VMware explorer, we announced new Tansu integration. So, So Dave, I, I think in a nutshell, we've been innovating at a very, very fast pace. We think there is a better way to do multi-cloud and that's multi-cloud by design. >>Yeah, we heard that at Dell Technologies world. First time I had heard that multi-cloud by design versus sort of default, which is great Alpine, which is sort of our, what we called super cloud in the making. And then of course the ecosystem is critical for any cloud company. VMware, of course, you know, top partner, but the Snowflake announcement was very interesting Red Hat. So seeing that expand, now let's go out to the edge. How's it going with the edge expansion? There's gotta be new. Speaking of ecosystem, the edge is like a whole different, you know, OT type That's right. Ecosystem's, telcos, what and what's this new frontier platform all about? >>Yeah, yeah. So we've talked a lot about clouds and multi clouds. We've talked about private and hybrid clouds, we've talked about public clouds, clouds and cos, telcos, et cetera. There's really been one key piece of our multi-cloud and technology strategy that we haven't spent a lot of time on. And that's the edge. And we do see that as that next frontier for our customers to really gain that competitive advantage that is created from their data and get closer to the point of creation where the data lives. And that's at the edge. We see the edge infrastructure space growing very, very quickly. We see upwards of 300% year of year growth in terms of amount of data being created at the edge. That's almost 3000 exabytes of data by 2026. So just incredible growth. And the edge is not really new for Dell. We've been at it for over 20 years of delivering edge solutions. >>81% of the Fortune 100 companies in the US use Dell solutions today at the Edge. And we are the number one OEM provider of Edge solutions with over 44,000 customers across over 40 industries and things like manufacturing, retail, edge healthcare, and more. So Dave, while we've been at it for a long time, we have such a, a deep understanding of how our customers are using Edge solutions. Say the bottom line is the game has gotta change. With that growth that we talked about, the new use cases that are emerging, we've got to un unlock this new frontier for customers to take advantage of the edge. And that's why we are announcing and revealing Project Frontier. And Project Frontier in its most simplest form, is a software platform that's gonna help customers and organizations really radically simplify their edge deployments by automating their edge operations. You know, with Project Frontier organizations are really gonna be able to manage, OP, and operate their edge infrastructure and application securely, efficiently and at scale. >>Okay, so it is, first of all, I like the name. It is software, it's a software architecture. So presumably a lot of API capabilities. That's right. Integration's. Is there hardware involved? >>Yeah, so of course you'll run it on Dell infrastructure. We'll be able to do both infrastructure, orchestration, orchestration through the platform, but as well as application orchestration. And you know, really there's, there's a handful of key drivers that have been really pushing our customers to take on and look at building a better way to do the edge with Project Frontier. And I think I would just highlight a handful of 'em. You know, freedom of choice. We definitely see this as an open ecosystem out there, even more so at the Edge than any other part of the IT stack. You know, being able to provide that freedom of choice for software applications or IOT frameworks, operational technology or OT for any of their edge use cases, that's really, really important. Another key area that we're helping to solve with Project Frontier is, you know, being able to expect zero trust security across all their edge applications from design to deployment, you know, and of course backed by an end and secure supply chain is really, really important to customers. >>And then getting that greater efficiency and reliability of operations with the centralized management through Project Frontier and Zero Touch deployments. You know, one of the biggest challenges, especially when you get out to the far, far reach of the frontier is really IT resources and being able to have that IT expertise. And we built in an enormous amount of automation helps streamline the edge deployments where you might be deploying a single edge solution, which is highly unlikely or hundreds or thousands, which is becoming more and more likely. So Dave, we do think Project Frontier is the right edge platform for customers to build their edge applications on now and certain, excuse me, certainly, and into the future. >>Yeah. Sam, no truck rolls. I like it. And you, you mentioned, you mentioned Zero trust, so we have Mother's Day, you, we have Father's Day. The kids always ask When's Kids' day? And we, of course we say every day is kids' day and every day should be cyber security awareness day. So, but we have cyber security awareness month. What does it mean for Dell? What are you hearing from customers and, and how are you responding? >>Yeah, yeah. No, there isn't a more prevalent top of mind conversation, whether it's the boardroom or the IT departments or every company is really have been forced to reckon with the cyber security and ransom secure issues out there. You know, every decision in IT department makes impacts your security profile. Those decisions can certainly, positively, hopefully impact it, but also can negatively impact it as well. So data security is, is really not a new area of focus for Dell. It's been an area that we've been focused on for a long time, but there are really three core elements to cybersecurity and data security as we go forward. The first is really setting the foundation of trust is really, really important across any IT system. And having the right supply chain in the right partner to partner with to deliver that is kind of the foundation in step one. >>Second, you need to of course go with technology that is trustworthy. It doesn't mean you are putting it together correctly. It means that you're essentially assembling the right piece parts together. That, that coexist together in the right way. You know, to truly change that landscape of the attackers out there that are gonna potentially create risk for your environment. We are definitely pushing and helping to embrace the zero trust principles and architectures that are out there. So finally, while when you think about security, it certainly is not absolute all correct. Security architectures assume that, you know, there are going to be challenges, there are going to be pain points, but you gotta be able to plan for recovery. And I think that's the holistic approach that we're taking with Dell. >>Well, and I think too, it's obviously security is a complicated situation now with cloud, you've got, you know, shared responsibility models, you've got that multi-cloud, you've got that across clouds, you're asking developers to do more. So I think the, the key takeaway is as a security pro, I'm looking for my technology partner through their r and d and their, you mentioned supply chain processes to take that off my plate so I can go plug holes elsewhere. Okay. Sam, put a bow on Dell Technology Summit for us and give us your closing thoughts. >>Yeah, look, I I think we're at a transformative point in it. You know, customers are moving more and more quickly to multi-cloud environments. They're looking to consume it in different ways, such as as a service, a lot of customers edge is new and an untapped opportunity for them to get closer to their customers and to their data. And of course there's more and more cyber threats out there every day. You know, our customers when we talk with them, they really want simple, consistent infrastructure options that are built on an open ecosystem that allows them to accomplish their goals quickly and successfully. And look, I think at Dell we've got the right strategy, we've got the right portfolio. We are the trusted partner of choice to help them lead, lead their, their future transformations into the future. So, Dave, look, I think it's, it's absolutely one of the most exciting times in it and I can't wait to see where it goes from here. >>Sam, always fun catching up with you. Appreciate your time. >>Thanks Dave. >>All right. A Dell Tech world in Vegas this past year, one of the most interesting conversations I personally had was around hybrid work and the future of work and the protocols associated with that and the mindset of, you know, the younger generation. And that conversation was, was with Jen Savira and we're gonna speak to Jen about this and other people and cult culture topics. Keep it right there. You're watching the Cube's exclusive coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022.

>>As we said in our analysis of Dell's future, the transformation of Dell into Dell emc and now Dell Technologies has been one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the technology industry. After years of successfully integrated EMC and becoming VMware's number one distribution channel, the metamorphosis of Dell com culminated in the spin out of VMware from Dell and a massive wealth creation milestone pending, of course the Broadcom acquisition of VMware. So where's that leave Dell and what does the future look like for this technology powerhouse? Hello and welcome to the Cube's exclusive coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. My name is Dave Ante and I'll be hosting the program today In conjunction with the Dell Tech Summit. We'll hear from four of Dell's senior executives. Tom Sweet is the CFO of Dell Technologies. He's gonna share his views of the company's position and opportunities and answer the question, why is Dell good long term investment? >>Then we'll hear from Jeff Boudreau was the president of Dell's ISG business unit. He's gonna talk about the product angle and specifically how Dell is thinking about solving the multi-cloud challenge. And then Sam Grow Cot is the senior vice president of marketing's gonna come in the program and give us the update on Apex, which is Dell's as a service offering and a new edge platform called Project Frontier. By the way, it's also Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and we're gonna see if Sam has any stories there. And finally, for a company that's nearly 40 years old, Dell has some pretty forward thinking philosophies when it comes to its culture and workforce. And we're gonna speak with Jen Savira, who's Dell's chief Human Resource officer about hybrid work and how Dell is thinking about the future of work. We're gonna geek out all day and talk multi-cloud and edge and latency, but first, let's talk wallet. Tom Sweet cfo, and one of Dell's key business architects. Welcome back to the cube, >>Dave, it's good to see you and good to be back with you. So thanks for having me, Jay. >>Yeah, you bet. Tom. It's been a pretty incredible past 18 months. Not only the pandemic and all that craziness, but the VMware spin, you had to give up your gross margin binky as kidding, and, and of course the macro environment. I'm so sick of talking about the macro, but putting that aside for a moment, what's really remarkable is that for a company at your size, you've had some success at the top line, which I think surprised a lot of people. What are your reflections on the last 18 to 24 months? >>Well, Dave, it's been an incredible, not only last 18 months, but the whole transformation journey. If you think all the way back maybe to the LBO and forward from there, but, you know, stepping into the last 18 months, it's, you know, I, I think I remember talking with you and saying, Hey, you know, this scenario planning we did at the beginning of this pandemic journey was, you know, 30 different scenarios roughly, and none of which sort of panned out the way it actually did, which was a pretty incredible growth story as we think about how we helped customers, you know, drive workforce productivity, enabled their business model during the all remote work environment. That was the pandemic created. And couple that with the, you know, the, the rise then and the infrastructure spin as we got towards the tail end of the, of the pandemic coupled with, you know, the spin out of VMware, which culminated last November, as you know, as we completed that, which unlocked a pathway back to investment grade within unlocked, quite frankly shareholder value, capital allocation frameworks. It's really been a remarkable, you know, 18, 24 months. It's, it's never dull at Dell Technologies. Lemme put it that way. >>Well, well, I was impressed with you, Tom, before the leverage buyout and then what I've seen you guys navigate through is, is, is truly amazing. Well, let's talk about the challenging macro. I mean, I've been through a lot of downturns, but I've never seen anything quite like this with fed tightening and you're combating inflation, you got this recession looming, there's a bear market you got, but you got zero unemployment, you're rising wages, strong dollar, and it's very confusing. But it spending is, you know, it's somewhat softer, but it's still not bad. How are you seeing customers behave? How is Dell responding? >>Yeah, look, if you think about the markets we play in Dave, and we should start there as a grounding, you know, the, the total market, the core market that we think about is roughly 700 and, you know, 50 billion or so. If you think about our core IT services capability, you couple that with some of the, the growth initiatives that we're driving and the adjacent markets that that, that brings in, you're roughly talking a 1.4 to $1.5 trillion market opportunity, total addressable market. And so from from that perspective, we're extraordinarily bullish on where are we in the journey as we continue to grow and expand. You know, we have, we're number one share in just about every category that we plan, but yet when you look at that, you know, number one share in some of these, you know, our highest share position may be, you know, low thirties and maybe in the high end of storage you're at the upper end of thirties or 40%. >>But the opportunity there to continue to expand the core and, and continue to take share and outperform the market is truly extraordinary. So, so you step back and think about that, then you say, okay, what have we seen over the last number of months and quarters? It's been, you know, really great performance through the pandemic as, as you highlighted, we actually had a really strong first half of the year of our fiscal year 23 with revenue up 12% operating income up 12% for the first half. You know, what we talked about as you, if you might recall in our second quarter earnings, was the fact that we were starting to see softness. We had seen it in the consumer PC space, which is not a big area of focus for us in the sense of our, our total revenue stream, but we started to see commercial PC soften and we were starting to see server demand soften a bit and storage demand was, was holding quite frankly. >>And so we gave a a framework around guidance for the rest of the year as a, of what we were seeing. You know, the macro environment as you highlight it continues to be challenging. You know, if you look at inflation rates and the efforts by central banks across the globe to with through interest rate rise to press down and, and constrain growth and push down inflation, you couple that with supply chain challenges that continue principle, particularly in the ISG space. And then you couple that with the Ukraine war and the, and the energy crisis that that's created. And particularly in Europe, it's a pretty dynamic environment. And, but I'm confident, you know, I'm confident in the long term, but I do think that there is, you know, that there's navigation that we're going to have to do over the coming number of quarters, who knows quite how long, you know, to, to make sure the business is properly positioned and, you know, we've got a great portfolio and you're gonna talk to some of the team LA later on as you think your way through some of the solution capabilities we're driving what we're seeing around technology trends. >>So the opportunities there, there's some short term navigation that we're gonna need to do just to make sure that we address some of the, you know, some of the environmental things that we're seeing right >>Now. Yeah. And as a global company, of course you're converting local currencies back to appreciated dollars. That's, that's, that's another headwind. But as you say, I mean, that's math and you're navigating it. And again, I've seen a lot of downturns, but you know, the best companies not only weather the storm, but they invest in ways they that allow them to cut out, come out the other side stronger. So I wanna talk about that longer term opportunity, the relationship between the core, the the business growth. You mentioned the tam, I mean, even as a lower margin business, if, if you can penetrate that big of a tam, you could still throw off a lot of cash and you've got other levers to turn in potentially acquisitions and software. And, but so ultimately what gives you confidence in Dell's future? How should we think about Dell's future? >>Yeah, look, I, I think it comes down to we are extraordinarily excited about the opportunity over the long term digital transformation continues. I I am on numerous customer and CIO calls every week. Customers are continuing to invest in digital transformation and infrastructure to enable their business model. Yes, maybe it's gonna slow or, or pause or maybe they're not gonna invest quite at the same rate over the next number of quarters, but over the long term the needs are there. You look at what we're doing around the, the growth opportunities that we see, not only in our core space where we continue to invest, but also in the, what we call the strategic adjacencies. Things like 5G and modern telecom infrastructure as our, the telecom providers across the globe open up their, what a cl previous been closed ecosystems, you know, to open architecture. You think about, you know, what we're doing around the edge and the distribution now that we're seeing of compute and storage back to the edge given data gravity and latency matters. >>And so we're pretty bullish on the opportunity in front of us, you know, yes, we will and we're continuing to invest and you know, Jeff Boudreau talk about that I think later on in the program. So I'm excited about the opportunities and you look at our cash flow generation capability, you know, we are in, in, in normal times a, a cash flow generation machine and we'll continue to do so, You know, we've got a negative, you know, CCC in terms of, you know, how do we think about efficiency of working capital? And we look at our, you know, our capital allocation strategy, which has now returned, you know, somewhere in near 60% of our free cash flow back to shareholders. And so, you know, there's lots to, lots of reasons to think about why this, you know, we are a great sort of, I think value creation opportunity and a over the long term that the long term trends are with us, and I expect them to continue to be so, >>Yeah, and you guys, you, you, you do what you say you're gonna do. I mean, I said in my, in my other piece that I did recently, I think you guys put 46 billion on the, on the, on the balance sheet in terms of debt. That's down to I think 16 billion in the core, which that's quite remarking and that gives you some other opportunities. Give us your, your closing thoughts. I mean, you kind of just addressed why Dell is a good long term play, but I'll give you an opportunity to bring us home. >>Hey, Dave. Yeah, look, I, I just think if you look at the good, the market opportunity, the size and scale of Dell and how we think about the competitive advantages that we have, we com you know, if you look at, say we're a hundred billion revenue company, which we were a year, you know, last year, that as we reported roughly 60, 65 billion of that in the client, in in PC space, roughly, you know, 35 to 40 billion in the ISG or infrastructure space, those markets are gonna continue the opportunity to grow, share, grow at a premium to the market, drive, cash flow, drive, share gain is clearly there. You couple that with, you know, what we think the opportunity is in these adjacent markets, whether it's telecom, the edge, what we're thinking around data services, data management, you know, we, and you cut, you put that together with the long term trends around, you know, data creation and digital transformation. We are extraordinarily well positioned. We have the largest direct selling organization in in the technology space. We have the largest supply chain, our services footprint, you know, well positioned in my mind to take advantage of the opportunities as we move forward. >>Well Tom, really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us. Good to see you again. >>Nice seeing you. Thanks Dave. >>All right. You're watching the Cubes exclusive behind the scenes coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. In a moment, I'll be back with Jeff Boudreau. He's the president of Dell's ISG Infrastructure Solutions Group. He's responsible for all the important enterprise business at Dell, and we're excited to get his thoughts, keep it right there. >>Welcome back to the cube's exclusive coverage of the Dell Technology Summit. I'm Dave Ante and we're going inside with Dell execs to extract the signal from the noise. And right now we're gonna dig into customer requirements in a data intensive world and how cross cloud complexities get resolved from a product development perspective and how the ecosystem fits in to that mosaic to close the gaps and accelerate innovation. And with me now as friend of the cube, Jeff Boudreau, he's the president of the Infrastructure Solutions Group, ISG at Dell Technologies. Jeff, always good to see you. Welcome. >>You too. Thank you for having me. It's great to see you and thanks for having me back on the cube. I'm thrilled to be here. >>Yeah, it's our pleasure. Okay, so let's talk about what you're observing from customers today. You know, we talk all the time about operating in a data driven multi-cloud world, blah, blah, blah, blah. But what does that all mean to you when you have to translate that noise into products that solve specific customer problems, Jeff? >>Sure. Hey, great question. And everything always starts with our customers. There are motivation, they're top of mind, everything we do, my leadership team and I spend a lot of time with our customers. We're listening, we're learning, we're really understanding their pain points, and we wanna get their feedback in regards to our solutions, both turn and future offerings, really ensure that we're aligned to meeting their business objectives. I would say from these conversations, I'd say customers are telling us several things. First, it's all about data for no surprise going back to your opening. And second, it's about the multi-cloud world. And I'd say the big thing coming from all of this is that both of those are driving a ton of complexity for our customers. And I'll unpack that just a bit, which is first the data. As we all know, data is growing at unprecedented rates with more than 90% of the world's data being produced in the last two years alone. >>And you can just think of that in it's everywhere, right? And so as it as the IT world shifts towards distributed compute to support that data growth and that data gravity to really extract more value from that data in real time environments become inherently more and more hybrid and more and more multi-cloud. Which leads me to the second key point that I've been hearing from our customers, which it's a multi-cloud world, not new news. Customers by default have multiple clouds running across multiple locations that's on-prem and off-prem, it's running at the edge and it's serving a variety of different needs. Unfortunately, for most of our CU customers, multi-cloud is actually added to their complexity. As we've discussed. It's been a lot more of multi-cloud by default versus multi-cloud by design. And if you really think about our customers, I mean, I, I, I've talking to 'EM all the time, you think about the data complexity, that's the growth and the gravity. >>You think about their infrastructure complexity shifting from central to decentralized it, you think about multi-cloud complexity. So you have these walled gardens, if you will. So you have multiple vendors and you have these multiple contracts that all creates operational complexity for their teams around their processes of their tools. And then you think about security complexity that that dries with the, just the increased tax service and the list goes on. So what are we seeing for our customers? They, what they really want from us, and what they're asking us for is simplicity, not complexity. The immediacy, not latency. They're asking for open and aligned versus I'd say siloed and closed. And they're looking for a lot more agility and not rigidity in what we do. So they really wanna simplify everything. They're looking for a simpler IT and a more agile it. And they want more control of their data, right? >>And so, and they want to extract more of the value to enrich their business or their customer engagements, which all sounds pretty obvious and we've probably all heard it a bunch, but it's really hard to achieve. And that's where I believe, and we believe as Dell that we, it creates a big opportunity for us to really help our customers as that great simplifier of it. We're already doing this today on just a couple quick examples. First is Salesforce. We've supported recently, we've supported their global expansion with a multi-cloud solution to help them drive their business growth. Our solution delivered a reliable and consistent IT experience. We go back to that complexity and it was across a very distributed environment, including more than 60 data centers, 230 countries and hundreds of thousands of customers. It really provided Salesforce with the flexibility of placing workloads and data in an environment based on the right service level. >>Objective things like cost complexity or even security compliance considerations. The second customer A is a big New England Patriot fan. And Dan, Dave, I know you are as well. Oh yeah, this one's near, near data to my heart, it's the craft group. We just created a platform to span all the businesses that create more, I'd say data driven, immersive, secure experience, which is allowing them to capture data at the edge and use it for real time insights for things like cyber resiliency, but also like safety of the facilities. And as being a PA fan like I am, did they truly are meeting us where we are in our seats on their mobile devices and also in the parking lot. So just keep that in mind next time you're there. The bottom line, everything we're doing is really to make it simpler for our customers and to help them get the most of their data. I'd say we're gonna do this, is it through a multi-cloud by design approach, which we talked a lot about with you and and others at Dell Tech world earlier this year, >>Right? And we had Salesforce on, actually at Dell Tech group. The craft group is interesting because, you know, when you get to the stadium, you know, everybody's trying to get, get, get out to the internet and, and, but then the experience is so much better if you can actually, you know, deal with that edge. So I wanna talk about complexity though. You got data, you got, you know, the, the edge, you got multiple clouds, you got a different operating model across security model, different. So a lot of times in this industry we solve complexity with more complexity and it's like a bandaid. So I wanna, I wanna talk to, to how you're innovating around simplicity in ISG to address this complexity and what this means for Dell's long term strategy. >>Sure, I'd love to. So first I, I'd like to state the obvious, which are our investments in our innovations really focused on advancing, you know, our, our our customers needs, right? So we are really, our investments are gonna be targeted. We, we believe customers can have the most value. And some of that's gonna be around how we create strategic partnerships as well connected to what we just spoke about. Much of the complexity of customers have or experiencing is in the orchestration and management of all the data in all these different places and customers, you know, they must be able to quickly deploy and operate across cloud environments. They need to increase their developer productivity, really enabling those developers that do what they do best, which is creating more value for their customers than for their businesses. Our innovation efforts are really focused on addressing this by delivering an open and modern IT architecture that allows customers to run and manage any workload in any cloud anywhere. >>Data lives we're focused on, also focused on consumption based solutions, which allow for a greater degree of simplicity and flexibility, which they're really asking for as well. The foundation for this is our software to define common storage layer, that common storage layer. You can think about this Dave, as our ias if you will. It underpins our data access in mobility across all data types and locations. So you can think private, public, telecom, colo, edge, and it's delivered in a secure, holistic, and consistent cloud experience through Apex. We are making a ton of progress to let you just to be, just to be clear, we've made headway in things like Project Alpine, which you're very well aware of. This is our storage as a service. We announce this back in in January, which brings our unique software IP from our flagship storage platform to all the major public clouds. >>Really delivering the best of both worlds, allowing our customers to take advantage of Dell's enterprise class data services and storage software, such as performance at scale, resiliency, efficiency and security. But in addition to that, we're leveraging the breadth of the public cloud services, right? They're on demand scaling capabilities and access to analytical services. So in addition, we're really, we're, we're on our way to win at the edge as well with Project Frontier, which reduces complexity at the edge by creating an open and secure software platform to help our customers simplify their edge operations, optimize their edge environments and investments, secure that edge environment as well. I believe you're gonna be discussing Project Frontier here with Sam Gro Crop, the very near future. So I won't give up too many more details there. And lastly, we're also scaling Apex, which, oh, well, shifting from our vision, really shifting from vision to reality and introducing several new Apex service offerings, which are coming to market over the next month or so. And the intent is really supporting our customers on their as a service transitions by modernize the consumption experience and providing that flexible as a service model. Ultimately, we're trying to help our customers achieve that multi-cloud by design to really simplify it and unlock the power of their data. >>So some good examples there. I I like to talk about the super Cloud as you, you know, you're building on top of the, you know, hyperscale infrastructure and you got Apex is your cloud, the common storage layer, you call it your is. And that's, that's a ingredient in what we call the super cloud out to the edge. You have to have a common platform there and one of the hallmarks of a cloud company. And as you become a cloud company, everybody's a cloud company ecosystem becomes really, really important in terms of product development and, and innovation. Matt Baker always loves to stress it's not a zero zero sum game. And, and I think Super Cloud recognizes that, that there's value to be built on top of other clouds and, and, and of course on top of your infrastructure so that your ecosystem can add value. So what role does the ecosystem play there? >>For me, it's, it's pretty clear. It's, it's, it's critical. I can't say that enough above the having an open ecosystem. Think about everything we just discussed, and I agree with your super cloud analogy. I agree with what Matt Baker had said to you, I would certain no one company can actually address all the pain points and all the issues and challenges our customers are having on their own, not one. I think customers really want and deserve an open technology ecosystem, one that works together. So not these close stacks that discourages interoperability or stifles innovation and productivity of our, of each of our teams. We del I guess have a long history of supporting open ecosystems that really put customers first. And to be clear, we're gonna be at the center of the multi-cloud ecosystem and we're working with partners today to make that a reality. >>I mean, just think of what we're doing with VMware. We continue to build on our first and best alliances with them in August at their VMware explorer, which I know you were at, we announced several joint engineering initiatives to really help customers more easily manage and gain value from their data and their infrastructure. For multi-cloud specifically, we strength our relationship with VMware and with Tansu as part of that. In addition, just a few weeks ago we announced our partnership with Red Hat to simplify our multi-cloud deployments for managing containerized workloads. I'd say, and using your analogy, I could think of that as our multicloud platform. So that's kind of our PAs layer, if you will. And as you're aware, we have a very long standing and strategic partnership with Microsoft and I'd say stay tuned. There's a lot more to come with them and also others in this multicloud space. >>Shifting a bit to some of the growth engines that my team's responsible for the edge, right? As you think about data being everywhere, we've established partnerships for the Edge as well with folks like PTC and Litmus for the manufacturing edge, but also folks like Deep North for the retail edge analytics and data management. Using your Supercloud analogy, Dave the sa, right? This is our Sasa, we've announced that we're collaborating, partnering with folks like Snowflake and, and there's other data management companies as well to really simplify data access and accelerate those data insights. And then given customers choice of where they'd like to have their IT and their infrastructure, we've we're expanding our colo partnerships as well with folks like eex and, and they're allowing us to broaden our availability of Apex, providing customers the flexibility to take advantage of those as a service offerings wherever it's delivered and where they can get the most value. So those are just some you can hear from me. I think it's critical not only for, for us, I think it's critical for our customers. I think it's been critical, critical for the entire, you know, industry as a whole to really have that open technology ecosystem as we work with our customers on our multi-cloud solutions really to meet their needs. We'll continue to collaborate with whoever customers choose and you know, and who they want us to do business with. So I'd say a lot more coming in that space. >>So it's been an interesting three years for you, just, just over three years now since you've been made the president of the IS isg. And so you had to dig in and, and it was obviously a strange time around the world, but, but you really had to look at, okay, how do we modernize the platform? How do we make it, you know, cloud first, You've mentioned the edge, we're expanding. So what are the big takeaways? What do you want customers and our audience to understand? Just some closing thoughts and if you could summarize. >>Sure. So I'd say first, you know, we discussed we're working in a very fast paced, ever-changing market with massive amounts of data that needs to be managed. It's very complex and our customers need help with that complexity. I believe that Dell Technologies is uniquely positioned to help as their multicloud champion. No one else can solve the breadth and depth of the challenges like we can. And we're gonna help our customers move forward when they basically moving from a multi-cloud by default, as we've discussed before, to multicloud by design. And I'm really excited for the opportunity to work with our customers to help them expand that ecosystem as they truly realize the future of it and, and what they're trying to accomplish. >>Jeff, thanks so much. Really appreciate your time. Always a pleasure. Go pats and we'll see you on the blog. >>Thanks Dave. >>All right, you're watching exclusive insight insights from Dell Technology Summit on the cube, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage. >>Hello everyone, this is Dave Lanta and you're watching the Cubes coverage of the Dell Technology Summit 2022 with exclusive behind the scenes interviews featuring Dell executive perspectives. And right now we're gonna explore Apex, which is Dell's as a service offering Dell's multi-cloud and edge strategies and the momentum around those. And we have news around Project Frontier, which is Dell's vision for its edge platform. And there's so much happening here. And don't forget it's cyber security Awareness month. Sam Grot is here, he's the senior vice president of marketing at Dell Technologies. Sam, always great to see you. How you doing? >>Always great to be here, Dave. >>All right, let's look at cloud. Everybody's talking about cloud Apex, multi-cloud, what's the update? How's it going? Where's the innovation and focal points of the strategy? >>Yeah, yeah. Look Dave, if you think back over the course of this year, you've really heard, heard us pivot as a company and discussing more and more about how multi-cloud is becoming a reality for our customers today. And when we listen and talk with our customers, they really describe multi-cloud challenges and a few key threads. One, the complexity is growing very, very quickly. Two, they're having a harder time controlling how their users are accessing the various different clouds. And then of course, finally the cloud costs are growing unchecked as well. So we, we like to describe this phenomenon as multi-cloud by design. We're essentially, organizations are waking up and seeing cloud sprawl around their organization every day. And this is creating more and more of those challenges. So of course at Dell we've got a strong point of view that you don't need to build multicloud by by default, rather it's multicloud by design where you're very intentional in how you do multicloud. >>And how we deliver multicloud by design is through apex. Apex is our modern cloud and our modern consumption experience. So when you think about the innovation as well, Dave, like we've been on a pretty quick track record here in that, you know, the beginning of this year we introduced brand new Apex backup services that provides that SAS based backup service. We've introduced or announced project outline, which is bringing our storage software, intellectual property from on-prem and putting it and running it natively in the public cloud. We've also introduced new Apex cyber recovery services that is simplifying how customers protect against cyber attacks. They can run an Amazon Azure, aw, I'm sorry, Amazon, aws, Azure or Google. And then, you know, we are really focused on this multi-cloud ecosystem. We announce key partnerships with SaaS providers such as Snowflake, where you can now access our information or our data from on-prem through the Snow Snowflake cloud. >>Or if needed, we can actually move the data to the Snowflake cloud if required. So we're continuing to build out that ecosystem SaaS providers. And then finally I would say, you know, we made a big strategic announcement just recently with Red Hat, where we're not only delivering new Apex container services, but we announce the strategic partnership to build jointly engineered solutions to address hybrid and multi-cloud solutions going forward. You know, VMware is gonna always continue to be a key partner of ours at the la at the recent VMware explorer we announced new Tansu integration. So, So Dave, I, I think in a nutshell we've been innovating at a very, very fast pace. We think there is a better way to do multi-cloud and that's multi-cloud by design. >>Yeah, we heard that at Dell Technologies world. First time I had heard that multi-cloud by design versus sort of default, which is great Alpine, which is sort of our, what we called super cloud in the making. And then of course the ecosystem is critical for any cloud company. VMware of course, you know, top partner, but the Snowflake announcement was very interesting Red Hat. So seeing that expand, now let's go out to the edge. How's it going with the edge expansion? There's gotta be new speaking of ecosystem, the edge is like a whole different, you know, OT type, that's right, ecosystem, that's telcos what and what's this new frontier platform all about? >>Yeah, yeah. So we've talked a lot about cloud and multi clouds, we've talked about private and hybrid cloud, we've talked about public clouds, clouds and cos, telcos, et cetera. There's really been one key piece of our multi-cloud and technology strategy that we haven't spent a lot of time on. And that's the edge. And we do see that as that next frontier for our customers to really gain that competitive advantage that is created from their data and get closer to the point of creation where the data lives. And that's at the edge. We see the edge infrastructure space growing very, very quickly. We see upwards of 300% year of year growth in terms of amount of data being created at the edge. That's almost 3000 exabytes of data by 2026. So just incredible growth. And the edge is not really new for Dell. We've been at it for over 20 years of delivering edge solutions. >>81% of the Fortune 100 companies in the US use Dell solutions today at the Edge. And we are the number one OEM provider of Edge solutions with over 44,000 customers across over 40 industries and things like manufacturing, retail, edge healthcare, and more. So Dave, while we've been at it for a long time, we have such a, a deep understanding of how our customers are using Edge solutions. Say the bottom line is the game has gotta change. With that growth that we talked about, the new use cases that are emerging, we've got to un unlock this new frontier for customers to take advantage of the edge. And that's why we are announcing and revealing Project Frontier. And Project Frontier in its most simplest form, is a software platform that's gonna help customers and organizations really radically simplify their edge deployments by automating their edge operations. You know, with Project Frontier organizations are really gonna be able to manage, OP, and operate their edge infrastructure and applications securely, efficiently and at scale. >>Okay, so it is, first of all, I like the name, it is software, it's a software architecture. So presumably a lot of API capabilities. That's right. Integration's. Is there hardware involved? >>Yeah, so of course you'll run it on Dell infrastructure. We'll be able to do both infrastructure orchestration, orchestration through the platform, but as well as application orchestration. And you know, really there's, there's a handful of key drivers that have been really pushing our customers to take on and look at building a better way to do the edge with Project Frontier. And I think I would just highlight a handful of 'em, you know, freedom of choice. We definitely see this as an open ecosystem out there, even more so at the Edge than any other part of the IT stack. You know, being able to provide that freedom of choice for software applications or I O T frameworks, operational technology or OT for any of their edge use cases, that's really, really important. Another key area that we're helping to solve with Project Frontier is, you know, being able to expect zero trust security across all their edge applications from design to deployment, you know, and of course backed by an end and secure supply chain is really, really important to customers. >>And then getting that greater efficiency and reliability of operations with the centralized management through Project Frontier and Zero Touch deployments. You know, one of the biggest challenges, especially when you get out to the far, far reach of the frontier is really IT resources and being able to have the IT expertise and we built in an enormous amount of automation helps streamline the edge deployments where you might be deploying a single edge solution, which is highly unlikely or hundreds or thousands, which is becoming more and more likely. So Dave, we do think Project Frontier is the right edge platform for customers to build their edge applications on now and certain, excuse me, certainly, and into the future. >>Yeah. Sam, no truck rolls. I like it. And you, you mentioned, you mentioned Zero trust. So we have Mother's Day, we have Father's Day. The kids always ask When's kids' day? And we of course we say every day is kids' day and every day should be cybersecurity awareness day. So, but we have cybersecurity awareness month. What does it mean for Dell? What are you hearing from customers and, and how are you responding? >>Yeah, yeah. No, there isn't a more prevalent pop of mind conversation, whether it's the boardroom or the IT departments or every company is really have been forced to reckon with the cybersecurity and ransom secure issues out there. You know, every decision in IT department makes impacts your security profile. Those decisions can certainly, positively, hopefully impact it, but also can negatively impact it as well. So data security is, is really not a new area of focus for Dell. It's been an area that we've been focused on for a long time, but there are really three core elements to cyber security and data security as we go forward. The first is really setting the foundation of trust is really, really important across any IT system. And having the right supply chain and the right partner to partner with to deliver that is kind of the foundation in step one. >>Second, you need to of course go with technology that is trustworthy. It doesn't mean you are putting it together correctly. It means that you're essentially assembling the right piece parts together. That, that coexist together in the right way. You know, to truly change that landscape of the attackers out there that are gonna potentially create risk for your environment. We are definitely pushing and helping to embrace the zero trust principles and architectures that are out there. So finally, while when you think about security, it certainly is not absolute all correct. Security architectures assume that, you know, there are going to be challenges, there are going to be pain points, but you've gotta be able to plan for recovery. And I think that's the holistic approach that we're taking with Dell. >>Well, and I think too, it's obviously security is a complicated situation now with cloud you've got, you know, shared responsibility models, you've got that a multi-cloud, you've got that across clouds, you're asking developers to do more. So I think the, the key takeaway is as a security pro, I'm looking for my technology partner through their r and d and their, you mentioned supply chain processes to take that off my plate so I can go plug holes elsewhere. Okay, Sam, put a bow on Dell Technology Summit for us and give us your closing thoughts. >>Yeah, look, I I think we're at a transformative point in it. You know, customers are moving more and more quickly to multi-cloud environments. They're looking to consume it in different ways, such as as a service, a lot of customers edge is new and an untapped opportunity for them to get closer to their customers and to their data. And of course there's more and more cyber threats out there every day. You know, our customers when we talk with them, they really want simple, consistent infrastructure options that are built on an open ecosystem that allows them to accomplish their goals quickly and successfully. And look, I think at Dell we've got the right strategy, we've got the right portfolio, we are the trusted partner of choice, help them lead, lead their, their future transformations into the future. So Dave, look, I think it's, it's absolutely one of the most exciting times in it and I can't wait to see where it goes from here. >>Sam, always fun catching up with you. Appreciate your time. >>Thanks Dave. >>All right. A Dell tech world in Vegas this past year, one of the most interesting conversations I personally had was around hybrid work and the future of work and the protocols associated with that and the mindset of, you know, the younger generation. And that conversation was with Jen Savira and we're gonna speak to Jen about this and other people and culture topics. Keep it right there. You're watching the cube's exclusive coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. Okay, we're back with Jen Vera, who's the chief human resource officer of Dell, and we're gonna discuss people, culture and hybrid work and leadership in the post isolation economy. Jen, the conversations that we had at Dell Tech World this past May around the new work environment were some of the most interesting and engaging that I had personally. So I'm really eager to, to get the update. It's great to see you again. Thanks for coming on the cube. >>Thanks for having me Dave. There's been a lot of change in just a short amount of time, so I'm excited to, to share some of our learnings >>With you. I, I mean, I bet there has, I mean, post pandemic companies, they're trying, everybody's trying to figure out the return to work and, and what it looks like. You know, last May there was really a theme of flexibility, but depending, we talked about, well, millennial or not young old, and it's just really was mixed, but, so how have you approached the topic? What, what are your policies? What's changed since we last talked? You know, what's working, you know, what's still being worked? What would you recommend to other companies to over to you? >>Yeah, well, you know, this isn't a topic that's necessarily new to Dell technology. So we've been doing hybrid before. Hybrid was a thing. So for over a decade we've been doing what we called connected workplace. So we have kind of a, a history and we have some great learnings from that. Although things did change for the entire world. You know, March of 2020, we went from kind of this hybrid to everybody being remote for a while. But what we wanted to do is, we're such a data driven company, there's so many headlines out there, you know, about all these things that people think could happen will happen, but there wasn't a lot of data behind it. So we took a step back and we asked our team members, How do you think we're doing? And we asked very kind of strong language because we've been doing this for a while. >>We asked them, Do you think we're leading in the world of hybrid in 86% of our team members said that we were, which is great, but we always know there's nuance right behind that macro level. So we, we asked 'em a lot of different questions and we just went on this kind of myth busting journey and we decided to test some of those things. We're hearing about Culture Willow Road or new team members will have trouble being connected or millennials will be different. And we really just collected a lot of data, asked our team members what their experience is. And what we have found is really, you don't have to be together in the office all the time to have a strong culture, a sense of connection, to be productive and to have it really healthy business. >>Well, I like that you were data driven around it in the data business here. So, but, but there is a lot of debate around your culture and how it suffers in a hybrid environment, how remote workers won't get, you know, promoted. And so I'm curious, you know, and I've, and I've seen some like-minded companies like Dell say, Hey, we, we want you guys to work the way you wanna work. But then they've, I've seen them adjust and say, Well yeah, but we also want you to know in the office be so we can collaborate a little bit more. So what are you seeing at Dell and, and, and how do you maintain that cultural advantage that you're alluding to in this kind of strange, new ever changing world? >>Yeah, well I think, look, one approach doesn't fit all. So I don't think that the approach that works for Dell Technologies isn't necessarily the approach that works for every company. It works with our strategy and culture. It is really important that we listen to our team members and that we support them through this journey. You know, they tell us time and time again, one of the most special things about our culture is that we provide flexibility and choice. So we're not a mandate culture. We really want to make sure that our team members know that we want them to be their best and do their best. And not every individual role has the same requirements. Not every individual person has the same needs. And so we really wanna meet them where they are so that they can be productive. They feel connected to the team and to the company and engaged and inspired. >>So, you know, for, for us, it really does make sense to go forward with this. And so we haven't, we haven't taken a step back. We've been doing hybrid, we'll continue to do hybrid, but just like if you, you know, we talk about not being a mandate. I think the companies that say nobody will come in or you have to come in three days a week, all of that feels more limiting. And so what we really say is, work out with your team, work out with your role, workout with your leader, what really makes the most sense to drive things forward. >>I >>You were, so >>That's what we, you were talking before about myths and you know, I wanna talk about team member performance cuz there's a lot of people believe that if, if you're not in the office, you have disadvantages, people in the office have the advantage cuz they get FaceTime. Is is that a myth? You know, is there some truth to that? What, what do you think about that? >>Well, for us, you know, we look, again, we just looked at the data. So we said we don't wanna create a have and have not culture that you're talking about. We really wanna have an inclusive culture. We wanna be outcome driven, we're meritocracy. But we went and we looked at the data. So pre pandemic, we looked at things like performance, we looked at rewards and recognition, we looked at attrition rates, we looked at sentiment, Do you feel like your leader is inspiring? And we found no meaningful differences in any of that or in engagement between those who worked fully remote, fully in the office or some combination between. So our data would bust that myth and say, it doesn't, you don't have to be in an office and be seen to get ahead. We have equitable opportunity. Now, having said that, you always have to be watching that data. And that's something that we'll continue to do and make sure that we are creating equal opportunity regardless of where you work. >>And it's personal too, I think, I think some people can be really productive at home. I happen to be one that I'm way more productive in the office cause the dogs aren't barking. I have less distractions. And so I think we think, and, and I think the takeaway that in just in talking to, to, to you Jen and, and folks at Dell is, you know, whatever works for you, we're we're gonna, we're gonna support. So I I wanted to switch gears a little bit, talk about leadership and, and very specifically empathic leadership has been said to be, have a big impact on attracting talent, retaining talent, but, but it's hard to have empathy sometimes. And I know I saw some stats in a recent Dell study. It was like two thirds the people felt like their organization underestimates the people requirements. And I, I ask myself, I'm like, what am I missing? I hope, you know, with our folks, so especially as it relates to, to transformation programs. So how can human resource practitioners support business leaders generally, specifically as it relates to leading with empathy? >>I think empathy's always been important. You have to develop trust. You can have the best strategy in the world, right? But if you don't feel like your leader understands who you are, appreciates the the value that you bring to the company, then you're not gonna get very far. So I think empathetic leadership has always been part of the foundation of a trusting, strong relationship between a leader and a team member. But if I think we look back on the last two years, and I imagine it'll be even more so as we go forward, empathetic leadership will be even more important. There's so much going on in the world, politically, socially, economically, that taking that time to say you want your team members to see you as credible, that you and confident that you can take us forward, but also that, you know, and understand me as a human being. >>And that to me is really what it's about. And I think with regard to transformation that you brought up, I think one of the things we forget about is leaders. We've probably been thinking about a decision or transformation for months or weeks and we're ready to go execute, we're ready to go operationalize that thing. And so sometimes when we get to that point, because we've been talking about it for so long, we send out the email, we have the all hands and we just say we're ready to go. But our team members haven't always been on that journey for those months that we have. And so I think that empathetic moment to say, Okay, not everybody is on a change curve where I am. Let's take a pause, let me put myself in their shoes and really think about how we bring everybody along. >>You know, Jen, in the spirit of myth busting, I mean I'm one of those people who felt like that a business is gonna have a hard time, harder time fostering this culture of collaboration and innovation post isolation economy as they, they could pre covid. But you know, I noticed there's a, there's an announcement today that came across my desk, I think it's from Newsweek. Yes. And, and it's the list of top hundred companies recognized for employee motivation satisfaction. And it was really interesting because you, you always see, oh, we're the top 10 or the top hundred, But this says as a survey of 1.4 million employees from companies ranging from 50 to 10,000 employees. And it recognizes the companies that put respect, caring, and appreciation for their employees at the center of their business model. And they doing so have earned the loyalty and respect of the people who work for them. >>Number one on the list is Dell sap. So congratulations SAP was number two. I mean, there really isn't any other tech company on there, certainly no large tech companies on there. So I always see these lists, they go, Yeah, okay, that's cool, top a hundred, whatever. But top one in, in, in an industry where there's only two in the top is, is pretty impressive. And how does that relate to fostering my earlier skepticism of a culture of collaboration? So first of all, congratulations, you know, how'd you do it? And how are you succeeding in, in this new world? >>Well thanks. It does feel great to be number one, but you know, it doesn't happen by accident. And I think while most companies have a, a culture and a spouse values, we have ours called the culture code. But it's really been very important to us that it's not just a poster on the wall or or words on paper. And so we embed our culture code into all of our HR practices, that whole ecosystem from recognition of rewards to performance evaluation, to interviewing, to development. We build it into everything. So it really reflects who we are and you experience it every day. And then to make sure that we're not, you know, fooling ourselves, we ask all of our employees, do you feel like the behaviors you see and the experience you have every day reflects the culture code? And 94% of our team members say that, in fact it does. So I think that that's really been kind of the secret to our success. If you, if you listen to Michael Dell, he'll always say, you know, the most special thing about Dell is our culture and our people. And that comes through being very thoughtful and deliberate to preserve and protect and continue to focus on our culture. >>Don't you think too that repetition and, well first of all, belief in that cultural philosophy is, is important. And then kind of repeating, like you said, Yeah, it's not just a poster in the wall, but I remember like, you know, when we're kids, your parents tell you, okay, power positive thinking, do one to others as others, you know, you have others do it to you. Don't make the say you're gonna do some dumb things but don't do the same dumb things twice and you sort of fluff it up. But then as you mature you say, Wow, actually those were, >>They might have had a >>Were instilled in me and now I'm bringing them forward and, you know, paying it forward. But, but so i, it, it, my, I guess my, my point is, and it's kind of a point observation, but I'll turn it into a question, is isn't isn't consistency and belief in your values really, really important? >>I couldn't agree with you more, right? I think that's one of those things that we talk about it all the time and as an HR professional, you know, it's not the HR people just talking about our culture, it's our business leaders, it's our ceo, it's our COOs ev, it's our partners. We share our culture code with our partners and our vendors and our suppliers and, and everybody, this is important. We say when you interact with anybody at Dell Technologies, you should expect that this is the experience that you're gonna get. And so it is something that we talk about that we embed in, into everything that we do. And I think it's, it's really important that you don't just think it's a one and done cuz that's not how things really, really work >>Well. And it's a culture of respect, you know, high performance, high expectations, accountability at having followed the company and worked with the company for many, many years. You always respect the dignity of your partners and your people. So really appreciate your time Jen. Again, congratulations on being number one. >>Thank you so much. >>You're very welcome. Okay. You've been watching a special presentation of the cube inside Dell Technology Summit 2022. Remember, these episodes are all available on demand@thecube.net and you can check out s silicon angle.com for all the news and analysis. And don't forget to check out wikibon.com each week for a new episode of breaking analysis. This is Dave Valante, thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.

(bright music) >> Hello everyone, this is Dave Vellante, and you're watching The Cube's coverage of the Dell Technology Summit 2022, with exclusive behind the scenes interviews featuring Dell executive perspectives. And right now we're going to explore Apex, which is Dell's As-a-Service offering, Dell's multi-cloud and Edge strategies, and the momentum around those. And we have news around Project Frontier, which is Dell's vision for its Edge platform. And there's so much happening here. And don't forget, it's Cyber Security Awareness Month. Sam Grocott is here. He's the Senior Vice President of Marketing at Dell Technologies. Sam, always great to see you. How you doing? >> Always great to be here, Dave. >> All right, let's look at cloud. Everybody's talking about cloud Apex, multi-cloud. What's the update? How's it going? Where's the innovation and focal points of the strategy? >> Yeah, yeah. Look, Dave, if you think back over the course of this year, you've really heard us pivot as a company and discussing more and more about how multi-cloud is becoming a reality for our customers today. And when we listen and talk with our customers, they really describe multi-cloud challenges in a few key threads. One, the complexity is growing very, very quickly. Two, they're having a harder time controlling how their users are accessing the various different clouds. And then of course, finally, the cloud costs are growing unchecked, as well. So we like to describe this phenomenon as multi-cloud by design, where essentially organizations are waking up and seeing cloud sprawl around their organization every day. And this is creating more and more of those challenges. So of course at Dell we've got a strong point of view that you don't need to build multi-cloud by default, rather it's multi-cloud by design, where you're very intentional in how you do multi-cloud. And how we deliver multi-cloud by design is through Apex. Apex is our modern cloud and our modern consumption experience. So when you think about the innovation as well, Dave like, we've been on a pretty quick track record here in that, you know, the beginning of this year we introduced brand new Apex backup services that provides that SAS-based backup service. We've introduced, or announced, Project Alpine which is bringing our storage software intellectual property from on-prem, and putting it and running it natively in the public cloud. We've also introduced new Apex cyber recovery services that is simplifying how customers protect against cyber attacks. They can run in Amazon, Azure, AW I'm sorry, Amazon, AWS, Azure, or Google. And then, you know, we are really focused on this multi-cloud ecosystem. We announced key partnerships with SAS providers such as Snowflake, where you can now access our information, or our data, from on-prem through the Snowflake cloud. Or if needed, we can actually move the data to the Snowflake cloud, if required. So we're continuing to build out that ecosystem SAS providers. And then finally I would say, you know, we made a big strategic announcement just recently with Red Hat, where we're not only delivering new Apex container services, but we announced a strategic partnership to build jointly engineered solutions to address hybrid and multi-cloud solutions going forward. You know VMware is going to always continue to be a key partner of ours. At the more recent VMware explorer, we announced new Tansu integration. So Dave, I think in a nutshell, we've been innovating at a very, very fast pace. We think there is a better way to do multi-cloud and that's multi-cloud by design. >> Yeah, we heard that at Dell Technologies World. First time I had heard that multi-cloud by design versus to the default, which is great. Alpine, which is sort of our, what we call, "super cloud in the making." And then of course the ecosystem is critical for any cloud company. VMware of course, you know, top partner. But the Snowflake announcement was very interesting. Red Hat, so seeing that expand. Now let's go out to the Edge. How's it going with the Edge expansion? There's got to be new, speaking of ecosystem, the Edge is like a whole different you know, OT type of ecosystem, >> That's right. Telcos. And what's this new Frontier platform all about? >> Yeah, yeah. So we've talked a lot about cloud and multi-clouds. We've talked about private and hybrid clouds. We've talked about public clouds, clouds and Kronos, Telcos, et cetera. There's really been one key piece of our multi-cloud and technology strategy that we haven't spent a lot of time on. And that's the Edge. And we do see that as that next frontier for our customers to really gain that competitive advantage that is created from their data and get closer to the point of creation where the data lives, and that's at the Edge. We see the Edge infrastructure space growing very, very quickly. We've seen upwards of 300% year-of-year growth in terms of amount of data being created at the Edge. That's almost 3000 exabytes of data by 2026. So just incredible growth. And the Edge is not really new for Dell. We've been at it for over 20 years of delivering Edge solutions. 81% of the Fortune 100 companies in the US use Dell Solutions today at the Edge. And we are the number one OEM provider of Edge Solutions with over 44,000 customers across over 40 industries in things like manufacturing, retail, Edge, healthcare, and more. So Dave, while we've been at it for a long time, we have such a deep understanding of how our customers are using Edge Solutions. Say, the bottom line is the game has got to change. With that growth that we talked about, the new use cases that are emerging, we've got to unlock this new Frontier for customers to take advantage of the Edge. And that's why we are announcing and revealing Project Frontier. And with Project Frontier in its most simplest form is a software platform that's going to help customers and organizations really radically simplify their edge deployments by automating their edge operations. You know, with Project Frontier organizations are really going to be able to manage, and operate their edge infrastructure and application securely, efficiently, and at scale. >> Okay, so it is, first of all, I like the name. It is software, it's a software architecture. So presumably a lot of API capabilities. >> That's right. >> Integration. Is there hardware involved? >> Yeah, so of course you'll run it on a Dell infrastructure. We'll be able to do both infrastructure orchestration through the platform, but as well as application orchestration. And you know, really there's a handful of key drivers that have been really pushing our customers to take on and look at building a better way to do the edge with Project Frontier. And I think I would just highlight a handful of them. You know, freedom of choice. We definitely see this as an open ecosystem out there even more so at the Edge than any other part of the IT stack. You know, being able to provide that freedom of choice for software applications or IoT frameworks, operational technology, or OT for any of their edge use cases, that's really, really important. Another key area that we're helping to solve with Project Frontier is, you know, being able to expect zero trust security across all their Edge applications, from design to deployment, you know, and of course backed by a secure supply chain is really, really important to customers. And then getting that greater efficiency and reliability of operations with a centralized management through Project Frontier and Zero Touch deployments. You know, one of the biggest challenges especially when you get out to the far, far reach of the Frontier, is really IT resources and being able to have that IT expertise. And we built in an enormous amount of automation to help streamline the Edge deployments where you might be deploying a single-edge solution which is highly unlikely, or hundreds or thousands, which is becoming more and more likely. So Dave, we do think Project Frontier is the right Edge platform for customers to build their Edge applications on now, and certain, excuse me, certainly and into the future. >> Yeah. Sam, no truck rolls. I like it. (laughing) And you, you mentioned, you mentioned Zero trust. So we have Mother's Day, you know, we have Father's Day. The kids always ask, "When's Kids' day?" And we of course we say, "Every day is Kids' Day," and every day should be Cybersecurity Awareness Day. So, (laughs) but we have Cybersecurity Awareness Month. What does it mean for Dell? What are you hearing from customers and how are you responding? >> Yeah, yeah. No, there isn't a more prevalent top-of-mind conversation, whether it's the boardroom or the IT departments, or every company is really have been forced to reckon with the cyber security and ransom secure issues out there. You know, every decision in IT department makes, impacts your security profile. Those decisions can certainly, positively, hopefully impact it, but also can negatively impact it, as well. So, data security is really not a new area of focus for Dell. It's been an area that we've been focused on for a long time. But there are really three core elements to cybersecurity and data security as we go forward. The first is really setting the foundation of trust is really, really important across any IT system and having the right supply chain and the right partner to partner with to deliver that. It's kind of the foundation in step one. Second, you need to, of course, go with technology that is trustworthy. It doesn't mean you are putting it together correctly. It means that you're essentially assembling the right piece parts together, that coexist together in the right way. You know, to truly change that landscape of the attackers out there that are going to potentially create risk for your environment, we are definitely pushing and helping to embrace the zero trust principles and architectures that are out there. So finally, while when you think about security it certainly is not absolute all correct. Security architectures assume that, you know, there are going to be challenges, there are going to be pain points, but you've got to be able to plan for recovery. And I think that's the holistic approach that we're taking with Dell. >> Well, and I think too, it's obviously security is a complicated situation. Now with cloud you've got, you know, shared responsibility models, you got that multi-cloud, you got that across clouds, you're asking developers to do more. So I think the key takeaway is as a security pro, I'm looking for my technology partner through their R&D and their, you mentioned, supply chain processes to take that off my plate so I can go plug holes elsewhere. Okay. Sam, put a bow- >> That's right. >> on Dell Technology Summit for us and give us your closing thoughts. >> Yeah, look, I think we're at a transformative point in IT. You know, customers are moving more and more quickly to multi-cloud environments. They're looking to consume IT in different ways, such as as a service. A lot of customers, Edge is new and an untapped opportunity for them to get closer to their customers and to their data. And of course there's more and more cyber threats out there every day. You know, our customers when we talk with them, they really want simple, consistent infrastructure options that are built on an open ecosystem that allows them to accomplish their goals quickly and successfully. And look, I think at Dell we've got the right strategy we've got the right portfolio. We are the trusted partner of choice to help them lead their future transformations into the future. So, Dave, look, I think it's, it's absolutely one of the most exciting times in IT, and I can't wait to see where it goes from here. >> Sam, always fun catching up with you. Appreciate your time. >> Thanks, Dave. >> All right. At Dell Tech World in Vegas this past year, one of the most interesting conversations I personally had was around hybrid work and the future of work, and the protocols associated with that, and the mindset of, you know, the younger generation. And that conversation was with Jenn Saavedra, and we're going to speak to Jenn about this and other people and culture topics. Keep it right there. You're watching The Cube's exclusive coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. (bright music)

>> Announcer: theCUBE presents "Kubecon and Cloudnativecon Europe 2022" brought to you by Red Hat, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome to theCUBE coverage of Kubecon 2022, E.U. I'm here with my cohost, Paul Gillin. >> Pleased to work with you, Keith. >> Nice to work with you, Paul. And we have our first two guests. "theCUBE" is hot. I'm telling you we are having interviews before the start of even the show floor. I have with me, we got to start with the customers first. Enterprise Architect Adnan Khan, welcome to the show. >> Thank you so much. >> Keith: CUBE time first, now you're at CUBE-alumni. >> Yup. >> And Haseeb Budhani, CEO Arathi, welcome back. >> Nice to talk to you again today. >> So, we're talking all things Kubernetes and we're super excited to talk to MoneyGram about their journey to Kubernetes. First question I have for Adnan. Talk to us about what your pre-Kubernetes landscape looked like? >> Yeah. Certainly, Keith. So, we had a traditional mix of legacy applications and modern applications. A few years ago we made the decision to move to a microservices architecture, and this was all happening while we were still on-prem. So, your traditional VMs. And we started 20, 30 microservices but with the microservices packing. You quickly expand to hundreds of microservices. And we started getting to that stage where managing them without sort of an orchestration platform, and just as traditional VMs, was getting to be really challenging, especially from a day two operational. You can manage 10, 15 microservices, but when you start having 50, and so forth, all those concerns around high availability, operational performance. So, we started looking at some open-source projects. Spring cloud, we are predominantly a Java shop. So, we looked at the spring cloud projects. They give you a number of initiatives for doing some of those management. And what we realized again, to manage those components without sort of a platform, was really challenging. So, that kind of led us to sort of Kubernetes where along with our journey new cloud, it was the platform that could help us with a lot of those management operational concerns. >> So, as you talk about some of those challenges, pre-Kubernetes, what were some of the operational issues that you folks experienced? >> Yeah, certain things like auto scaling is number one. I mean, that's a fundamental concept of cloud native, right? Is how do you auto scale VMs, right? You can put in some old methods and stuff, but it was really hard to do that automatically. So, Kubernetes with like HPA gives you those out of the box. Provided you set the right policies, you can have auto scaling where it can scale up and scale back, so we were doing that manually. So, before, you know, MoneyGram, obviously, holiday season, people are sending more money, Mother's Day. Our Ops team would go and basically manually scale VMs. So, we'd go from four instances to maybe eight instances, but that entailed outages. And just to plan around doing that manually, and then sort of scale them back was a lot of overhead, a lot of administration overhead. So, we wanted something that could help us do that automatically in an efficient and intrusive way. That was one of the things, monitoring and and management operations, just kind of visibility into how those applications were during what were the status of your workloads, was also a challenge to do that. >> So, Haseeb, I got to ask the question. If someone would've came to me with that problem, I'd just say, "You know what? Go to the plug to cloud." How does your group help solve some of these challenges? What do you guys do? >> Yeah. What do we do? Here's my perspective on the market as it's playing out. So, I see a bifurcation happening in the Kubernetes space. But there's the Kubernetes run time, so Amazon has EKS, Azure as AKS. There's enough of these available, they're not managed services, they're actually really good, frankly. In fact, retail customers, if you're an Amazon why would you spin up your own? Just use EKS, it's awesome. But then, there's an operational layer that is needed to run Kubernetes. My perspective is that, 50,000 enterprises are adopting Kubernetes over the next 5 to 10 years. And they're all going to go through the same exact journey, and they're all going to end up potentially making the same mistake, which is, they're going to assume that Kubernetes is easy. They're going to say, "Well, this is not hard. I got this up and running on my laptop. This is so easy, no worries. I can do EKS." But then, okay, can you consistently spin up these things? Can you scale them consistently? Do you have the right blueprints in place? Do you have the right access management in place? Do you have the right policies in place? Can you deploy applications consistently? Do you have monitoring and visibility into those things? Do your developers have access when they need it? Do you have the right networking layer in place? Do you have the right chargebacks in place? Remember you have multiple teams. And by the way, nobody has a single cluster, so you got to do this across multiple clusters. And some of them have multiple clouds. Not because they want to be multiple clouds, because, but sometimes you buy a company, and they happen to be in Azure. How many dashboards do you have now across all the open-source technologies that you have identified to solve these problems? This is where pain lies. So, I think that Kubernetes is fundamentally a solve problem. Like our friends at AWS and Azure, they've solved this problem. It's like a AKS, EKS, et cetera, EGK for that matter. They're great, and you should use them, and don't even think about spinning up QB best clusters. Don't do it, use the platforms that exist. And commensurately on-premises, OpenShift is pretty awesome. If you like it, use it. But then when it comes to the operations layer, that's where today, we end up investing in a DevOps team, and then an SRE organization that need to become experts in Kubernetes, and that is not tenable. Can you, let's say unlimited capital, unlimited budgets. Can you hire 20 people to do Kubernetes today? >> If you could find them. >> If you can find 'em, right? So, even if you could, the point is that, see five years ago when your competitors were not doing Kubernetes, it was a competitive advantage to go build a team to do Kubernetes so you could move faster. Today, you know, there's a high chance that your competitors are already buying from a Rafay or somebody like Rafay. So, now, it's better to take these really, really sharp engineers and have them work on things that make the company money. Writing operations for Kubernetes, this is a commodity now. >> How confident are you that the cloud providers won't get in and do what you do and put you out of business? >> Yeah, I mean, absolutely. In fact, I had a conversation with somebody from HBS this morning and I was telling them, I don't think you have a choice, you have to do this. Competition is not a bad thing. If we are the only company in a space, this is not a space, right? The bet we are making is that every enterprise, they have an on-prem strategy, they have at least a handful of, everybody's got at least two clouds that they're thinking about. Everybody starts with one cloud, and then they have some other cloud that they're also thinking about. For them to only rely on one cloud's tools to solve for on-prem, plus that second cloud, they potentially they may have, that's a tough thing to do. And at the same time, we as a vendor, I mean, the only real reason why startups survive, is because you have technology that is truly differentiator. Otherwise, I mean, you got to build something that is materially interesting, right? We seem to have- >> Keith: Now. Sorry, go ahead. >> No, I was going to, you actually have me thinking about something. Adnan? >> Yes. >> MoneyGram, big, well known company. a startup, adding, working in a space with Google, VMware, all the biggest names. What brought you to Rafay to solve this operational challenge? >> Yeah. A good question. So, when we started out sort of in our Kubernetes, we had heard about EKS and we are an AWS shop, so that was the most natural path. And we looked at EKS and used that to create our clusters. But then we realized very quickly, that, yes, to Haseeb's point, AWS manages the control plane for you, it gives you the high availability. So, you're not managing those components which is some really heavy lifting. But then what about all the other things like centralized dashboard? What about, we need to provision Kubernetes clusters on multicloud, right? We have other clouds that we use, or also on-prem, right? How do you do some of that stuff? We also, at that time were looking at other tools also. And I had, I remember come up with an MVP list that we needed to have in place for day one or day two operations before we even launch any single applications into production. And my Ops team looked at that list and literally, there was only one or two items that they could check off with EKS. They've got the control plane, they've got the cluster provision, but what about all those other components? And some of that kind of led us down the path of, you know, looking at, "Hey, what's out there in this space?" And we realized pretty quickly that there weren't too many. There were some large providers and capabilities like Antos, but we felt that it was a little too much for what we were trying to do at that point in time. We wanted to scale slowly. We wanted to minimize our footprint, and Rafay seemed to sort of, was a nice mix from all those different angles. >> How was the situation affecting your developer experience? >> So, that's a really good question also. So, operations was one aspect to it. The other part is the application development. We've got MoneyGram is when a lot of organizations have a plethora of technologies from Java, to .net, to node.js, what have you, right? Now, as you start saying, okay, now we're going cloud native and we're going to start deploying to Kubernetes. There's a fair amount of overhead because a tech stack, all of a sudden goes from, just being Java or just being .net, to things like Docker. All these container orchestration and deployment concerns, Kubernetes deployment artifacts, (chuckles) I got to write all this YAML as my developer say, "YAML hell." (panel laughing) I got to learn Docker files. I need to figure out a package manager like HELM on top of learning all the Kubernetes artifacts. So, initially, we went with sort of, okay, you know, we can just train our developers. And that was wrong. I mean, you can't assume that everyone is going to sort of learn all these deployment concerns and we'll adopt them. There's a lot of stuff that's outside of their sort of core dev domain, that you're putting all this burden on them. So, we could not rely on them in to be sort of CUBE cuddle experts, right? That's a fair amount overhead learning curve there. So, Rafay again, from their dashboard perspective, saw the managed CUBE cuddle, gives you that easy access for devs, where they can go and monitor the status of their workloads. They don't have to figure out, configuring all these tools locally, just to get it to work. We did some things from a DevOps perspective to basically streamline and automate that process. But then, also Rafay came in and helped us out on kind of that providing that dashboard. They don't have to break, they can basically get on through single sign on and have visibility into the status of their deployment. They can do troubleshooting diagnostics all through a single pane of glass, which was a key key item. Initially, before Rafay, we were doing that command line. And again, just getting some of the tools configured was huge, it took us days just to get that. And then the learning curve for development teams "Oh, now you got the tools, now you got to figure out how to use it." >> So, Haseeb talk to me about the cloud native infrastructure. When I look at that entire landscape number, I'm just overwhelmed by it. As a customer, I look at it, I'm like, "I don't know where to start." I'm sure, Adnan, you folks looked at it and said, "Wow, there's so many solutions." How do you engage with the ecosystem? You have to be at some level opinionated but flexible enough to meet every customer's needs. How do you approach that? >> So, it's a really tough problem to solve because... So, the thing about abstraction layers, we all know how that plays out, right? So, abstraction layers are fundamentally never the right answer because they will never catch up, because you're trying to write a layer on top. So, then we had to solve the problem, which was, well, we can't be an abstraction layer, but then at the same time, we need to provide some, sort of like centralization standardization. So, we sort of have this the following dissonance in our platform, which is actually really important to solve the problem. So, we think of a stack as floor things. There's the Kubernetes layer, infrastructure layer, and EKS is different from AKS, and it's okay. If we try to now bring them all together and make them behave as one, our customers are going to suffer. Because there are features in EKS that I really want, but then if you write an abstraction then I'm not going to get 'em so not okay. So, treat them as individual things that we logic that we now curate. So, every time EKS, for example, goes from 1.22 to 1.23, we write a new product, just so my customer can press a button and upgrade these clusters. Similarly, we do this for AKS, we do this for GK. It's a really, really hard job, but that's the job, we got to do it. On top of that, you have these things called add-ons, like my network policy, my access management policy, my et cetera. These things are all actually the same. So, whether I'm EKS or AKS, I want the same access for Keith versus Adnan, right? So, then those components are sort of the same across, doesn't matter how many clusters, doesn't matter how many clouds. On top of that, you have applications. And when it comes to the developer, in fact I do the following demo a lot of times. Because people ask the question. People say things like, "I want to run the same Kubernetes distribution everywhere because this is like Linux." Actually, it's not. So, I do a demo where I spin up access to an OpenShift cluster, and an EKS cluster, and then AKS cluster. And I say, "Log in, show me which one is which?" They're all the same. >> So, Adnan, make that real for me. I'm sure after this amount of time, developers groups have come to you with things that are snowflakes. And as a enterprise architect, you have to make it work within your framework. How has working with Rafay made that possible? >> Yeah, so I think one of the very common concerns is the whole deployment to Haseeb's point, is you are from a deployment perspective, it's still using HELM, it's still using some of the same tooling. How do you? Rafay gives us some tools. You know, they have a command line Add Cuddle API that essentially we use. We wanted parity across all our different environments, different clusters, it doesn't matter where you're running. So, that gives us basically a consistent API for deployment. We've also had challenges with just some of the tooling in general that we worked with Rafay actually, to actually extend their, Add Cuddle API for us so that we have a better deployment experience for our developers. >> Haseeb, how long does this opportunity exist for you? At some point, do the cloud providers figure this out, or does the open-source community figure out how to do what you've done and this opportunity is gone? >> So, I think back to a platform that I think very highly of, which has been around a long time and continues to live, vCenter. I think vCenter is awesome. And it's beautiful, VMware did an incredible job. What is the job? It's job is to manage VMs, right? But then it's for access, it's also storage. It's also networking in a sec, right? All these things got done because to solve a real problem, you have to think about all the things that come together to help you solve that problem from an operations perspective. My view is that this market needs essentially a vCenter, but for Kubernetes, right? And that is a very broad problem. And it's going to spend, it's not about a cloud. I mean, every cloud should build this. I mean, why would they not? It makes sense. Anto exist, right? Everybody should have one. But then, the clarity in thinking that the Rafay team seems to have exhibited, till date, seems to merit an independent company, in my opinion, I think like, I mean, from a technical perspective, this product's awesome, right? I mean, we seem to have no real competition when it comes to this broad breadth of capabilities. Will it last? We'll see, right? I mean, I keep doing "CUBE" shows, right? So, every year you can ask me that question again, and we'll see. >> You make a good point though. I mean, you're up against VMware, You're up against Google. They're both trying to do sort of the same thing you're doing. Why are you succeeding? >> Maybe it's focused. Maybe it's because of the right experience. I think startups, only in hindsight, can one tell why a startup was successful. In all honesty, I've been in a one or two startups in the past, and there's a lot of luck to this, there's a lot of timing to this. I think this timing for a product like this is perfect. Like three, four years ago, nobody would've cared. Like honesty, nobody would've cared. This is the right time to have a product like this in the market because so many enterprises are now thinking of modernization. And because everybody's doing this, this is like the boots strong problem in HCI. Everybody's doing it, but there's only so many people in the industry who actually understand this problem, so they can't even hire the people. And the CTO said, "I got to go. I don't have the people, I can't fill the seats." And then they look for solutions, and via that solution, that we're going to get embedded. And when you have infrastructure software like this embedded in your solution, we're going to be around with the... Assuming, obviously, we don't score up, right? We're going to be around with these companies for some time. We're going to have strong partners for the long term. >> Well, vCenter for Kubernetes I love to end on that note. Intriguing conversation, we could go on forever on this topic, 'cause there's a lot of work to do. I don't think this will over be a solved problem for the Kubernetes as cloud native solutions, so I think there's a lot of opportunities in that space. Haseeb Budhani, thank you for rejoining "theCUBE." Adnan Khan, welcome becoming a CUBE-alum. >> (laughs) Awesome. Thank you so much. >> Check your own profile on the sound's website, it's really cool. From Valencia, Spain, I'm Keith Townsend, along with my Host Paul Gillin . And you're watching "theCUBE," the leader in high tech coverage. (bright upbeat music)

>>The cube presents, Coon and cloud native con Europe 22, brought to you by the cloud native computing foundation. >>Welcome to the cube coverage of CubeCon 2022 EU. I'm here with my cohost Paul Gill. Please work with you, Keith. Nice to work with you, Paul. And we have our first two guests. The cube is hot. I'm telling you we are having interviews before the start of even the show floor I have with me. We gotta start with the customers first enterprise architect, a non-con Aon con. Welcome to the show. >>Thank you so >>Much. Cube time cube time. First now you're at cube alumni. Yep. <laugh> and, and, uh, has Havani CEO. Arai welcome back. Nice to, >>Uh, >>Talk to you again today. So we're talking all things Kubernetes and we're super excited to talk to MoneyGram about their journey to Kubernetes. First question I have for Anon. Talk to us about what your pre Kubernetes landscape looked like. >>Yeah, certainly. Uh, Keith, so, um, we had a, uh, you know, a traditional mix of legacy applications and modern applications. Uh, you know, a few years ago we made the decision to move to a microservices architecture. Um, and this was all happening while we were still on prem. Right? So your traditional VMs, um, and you know, we started 20, 30 microservices, but with the microservices packing, you know, you quickly expand to hundreds of microservices. Um, and we started getting to that stage where managing them without sort of an orchestration platform, uh, and just as traditional VMs was getting to be really challenging, right. Uh, especially from a day two operational, uh, you know, you can manage 10, 15 microservices, but when you start having 50 and so forth, um, all those concerns around, uh, you know, high availability, operational performance. Um, so we started looking at some open source projects, you know, spring cloud. Uh, we are predominantly a Java, um, shop. So we looked at the spring cloud projects. Uh, they give you a number, uh, you know, of initiatives, um, for doing some of those, um, management and what we realized again, to manage those components, um, without sort of a platform was really challenging. So that, that kind of led us to sort of Kubernetes where, um, along with our journey cloud, uh, it was the platform that could help us with a lot of those management operational concerns. >>So as you talk about some of those challenges, pre Kubernetes, what were some of the operational issues that you folks experienced? >>Yeah. You know, uh, certain things like auto scaling is, is number one, right? I mean, that's a fundamental concept of cloud native, right. Is, um, how do you auto scale VMs? Right. Uh, you can put in some old methods and stuff, but, uh, it was really hard to do that automatically. Right. So, uh, Kubernetes with like HPA gives you those out of the box, right? Provided you set the right policies. Uh, you can have auto scaling, uh, where it can scale up and scale back. So we were doing that manually. Right. So before, uh, you know, MoneyGram, obviously, you know, holiday season, people are sending more money mother's day. Um, our ops team would go in basically manually scale, uh, VMs. Right. So we'd go from four instances to maybe eight instances. Right. Uh, but, but that entailed outages. Right. Um, and just to plan around doing that manually and then sort of scale them back was a lot of overhead, a lot of administration overhead. Right. So, uh, we wanted something that could help us do that automatically right. In a, in an efficient, uh, unintrusive way. So, so, you know, that was one of the things, uh, monitoring, um, and, and management, uh, operations, you know, just kind of visibility into how those applications were during, what were the status of your, um, workloads was also a challenge, right. Uh, to do that. >>So, cause see, I gotta ask the question. If someone would've came to me with that problem, I'd just say, you know, what, go to the plug, the cloud, what, how does, uh, your group help solve some of these challenges? What do you guys do? >>Yeah. What, what do we do? So here's my perspective on the market as it's playing out. So I see a bifurcation happening in the Kubernetes space, but there's the Kubernetes run time. So Amazon is EKS Azure as EKS, you know, there's enough of these available. They're not managed services. They're actually really good, frankly. Right? In fact, retail customers, if you're an Amazon, why would you spin up your own? Just use EK. It's awesome. But then there's an operational layer that is needed to run Kubernetes. Uh, my perspective is that, you know, 50,000 enterprises are adopting Kubernetes over the next five to 10 years. And they're all gonna go through the same exact journey and they're all gonna end up, you know, potentially making the same mistake, which is, they're gonna assume that Kubernetes is easy. <laugh> they're gonna say, well, this is not hard. I got this up and running on my laptop. >>This is so easy. No worries. Right. I can do key gas, but then, okay. Can you consistently spin up these things? Can you scale them consistently? Do you have the right blueprints in place? Do you have the right access management in place? Do you have the right policies in place? Can you deploy applications consistently? Do you have monitoring and visibility into those things? Do your developers have access to when they need it? Do you have the right networking layer in place? Do you have the right chargebacks in place? Remember you have multiple teams and by the way, nobody has a single cluster. So you gotta do this across multiple clusters. And some of them have multiple clouds, not because they wanna be multiple clouds because, but sometimes you buy a company and they happen to be in Azure. How many dashboards do you have now across all the open source technologies that you have identified to solve these problems? >>This is where pain lies. So I think that Kubernetes is fundamentally a solve problem. Like our friends at AWS and Azure they've solved this problem. It's like a KSKS et cetera, GK for that matter. They're they're great. And you should use them and don't even think about spinning up Q B and a best clusters. Don't do it. Use the platforms that exist and commensurately on premises. OpenShift is pretty awesome, right? If you like it, use it. But then when it comes to the operations layer, right, that's where today we end up investing in a DevOps team and then an SRE organization that need to become experts in Kubernetes. And that is not tenable, right? Can you let's say unlimited capital unlimited budgets. Can you hire 20 people to do Kubernetes today? >>If you could find them, if >>You can find 'em right. So even if you could, the point is that see, five years ago, when your competitors were not doing Kubernetes, it was a competitive advantage to go build a team to do Kubernetes. So you could move faster today. You know, there's a high chance that your competitors are already buying from a Rafa or somebody like Rafa. So now it's better to take these really, really sharp engineers and have them work on things that make the company money, writing operations for Kubernetes. This is a commodity. Now >>How confident are you that the cloud providers won't get in and do what you do and put you out of business? >>Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think, I mean, in fact, I, I had a conversation with somebody from HBS this morning and I was telling them, I don't think you have a choice. You have to do this right. Competition is not a bad thing. Right? This, the, >>If we are the only company in a space, this is not a space, right. The bet we are making is that every enterprise has, you know, they have an on-prem strategy. They have at least a handful of, everybody's got at least two clouds that they're thinking about. Everybody starts with one cloud and then they have some other cloud that they're also thinking about, um, for them to only rely on one cloud's tools to solve for on-prem plus that second cloud, they potentially, they may have, that's a tough thing to do. Um, and at the same time we as a vendor, I mean the only real reason why startups survive is because you have technology that is truly differentiated, right. Otherwise, right. I mean, you gotta build something that is materially. Interesting. Right. We seem to have, sorry, go ahead. >>No, I was gonna ask you, you actually had me thinking about something, a non yes. MoneyGram big, well known company, a startup, adding, working in a space with Google, VMware, all the biggest names. What brought you to Rafi to solve this operational challenge? >>Yeah. Good question. So when we started out sort of in our Kubernetes, um, you know, we had heard about EKS, uh, and, and we are an AWS shop. So, uh, that was the most natural path. And, and we looked at, um, EKS and, and used that to, you know, create our clusters. Um, but then we realized very quickly that yes, toe's point AWS manages the control plane for you. It gives you the high availability. So you're not managing those components, which is some really heavy lifting. Right. Uh, but then what about all the other things like, you know, centralized dashboard, what about, we need to provision, uh, Kubernetes clusters on multi-cloud right. We have other clouds that we use, uh, or also on prem. Right. Um, how do you do some of that stuff? Right. Um, we, we also, at that time were looking at, uh, other, uh, tools also. >>And I had, I remember come up with an MVP list that we needed to have in place for day one or day two, uh, operations, right. To before we even launch any single applications into production. Um, and my ops team looked at that list. Um, and literally there was only one or two items that they could check, check off with S you know, they they've got the control plane, they've got the cluster provision, but what about all those other components? Uh, and some of that kind of led us down the path of, uh, you know, looking at, Hey, what's out there in this space. And, and we realized pretty quickly that there weren't too many, there were some large providers and capabilities like Antos, but we felt that it was, uh, a little too much for what we were trying to do. You know, at that point in time, we wanted to scale slowly. We wanted to minimize our footprint. Um, and, and Rafa seemed to sort of, uh, was, was a nice mix, uh, you know, uh, from all those different angles, how >>Was, how was the situation affecting your developer experience? >>So, um, so that's a really good question also. So operations was one aspect of, to it, right? The other part is the application development, right? We've got, uh, you know, Moneygrams when a lot of organizations have a plethora of technologies, right? From, from Java to.net to no GS, what have you, right. Um, now as you start saying, okay, now we're going cloud native, and we're gonna start deploying to Kubernetes. Um, there's a fair amount of overhead because a tech stack, all of a sudden goes from, you know, just being Java or just being.net to things like Docker, right? All these container orchestration and deployment concerns, Kubernetes, uh, deployment artifacts, right. I gotta write all this YAML, uh, as my developer say, YAML, hell right. <laugh>, uh, I gotta learn Docker files. I need to figure out, um, a package manager like helm, uh, on top of learning all the Kubernetes artifacts. >>Right. So, um, initially we went with sort of, okay, you know, we can just train our developers. Right. Um, and that was wrong. Right. I mean, you can't assume that everyone is gonna sort of learn all these deployment concerns, uh, and we'll adopt them. Right. Um, uh, there's a lot of stuff that's outside of their sort of core dev domain, uh, that you're putting all this burden on them. Right. So, um, we could not rely on them and to be sort of cube cuddle experts, right. That that's a fair amount, overhead learning curve there. Um, so Rafa again, from their dashboard perspective, right? So the managed cube cuddle gives you that easy access for devs, right. Where they can go and monitor the status of their workloads. Um, they can, they don't have to figure out, you know, configuring all these tools locally just to get it to work. >>Uh, we did some things from a DevOps perspective to basically streamline and automate that process. But then also office order came in and helped us out, uh, on kind of that providing that dashboard. They don't have to worry. They can basically get on through single sign on and have visibility into the status of their deployment. Uh, they can do troubleshooting diagnostics all through a single pane of glass. Right. Which was a key key item. Uh, initially before Rafa, we were doing that command line. Right. And again, just getting some of the tools configured was, was huge. Right. Took us days just to get that. And then the learning curve for development teams, right? Oh, now you gotta, you got the tools now you gotta figure out how to use it. Right. Um, so >>See, talk to me about the, the cloud native infrastructure. When I look at that entire landscaping number, I'm just overwhelmed by it. As a customer, I look at it, I'm like, I, I don't know where to start I'm sure. Or not, you, you folks looked at it and said, wow, there's so many solutions. How do you engage with the ecosystem? You have to be at some level opinionated, but flexible enough to, uh, meet every customer's needs. How, how do you approach that? >>Yeah. So it's a, it's a really tough problem to solve because, so, so the thing about abstraction layers, you know, we all know how that plays out, right? So abstraction layers are fundamentally never the right answer because they will never catch up. Right. Because you're trying to write and layer on top. So then we had to solve the problem, which was, well, we can't be an abstraction layer, but then at the same time, we need to provide some sort of, sort of like centralization standardization. Right. So, so we sort of have this, the following dissonance in our platform, which is actually really important to solve the problem. So we think of a, of a stack as sort of four things. There's the, there's the Kubernetes layer infrastructure layer, um, and EKS is different from ES and it's okay. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, if we try to now bring them all together and make them behave as one, our customers are gonna suffer because there are features in ESS that I really want. >>But then if you write an AB obsession layer, I'm not gonna get 'em so not. Okay. So treat them as individual things. And we logic that we now curate. So every time S for example, goes from 1 22 to 1 23, rewrite a new product, just so my customer can press a button and upgrade these clusters. Similarly, we do this fors, we do this for GK. We it's a really, really hard job, but that's the job. We gotta do it on top of that, you have these things called. Add-ons like my network policy, my access management policy, my et cetera. Right. These things are all actually the same. So whether I'm Anek or a Ks, I want the same access for Keith versus a none. Right. So then those components are sort of the same across doesn't matter how many clusters does money clouds on top of that? You have applications. And when it comes to the developer, in fact, I do the following demo a lot of times because people ask the question, right? Mean, I, I, I, people say things like, I wanna run the same Kubernetes distribution everywhere, because this is like Linux, actually, it's not. So I, I do a demo where I spin up a access to an OpenShift cluster and an EKS cluster and an AKs cluster. And I say, log in, show me which one is, which they're all the same. >>So Anan get, put, make that real for me, I'm sure after this amount of time, developers groups have come to you with things that are snowflakes and you, and as a enterprise architect, you have to make it work within your framework. How has working with RAI made that possible? >>Yeah. So, um, you know, I think one of the very common concerns is right. The whole deployment, right. Uh, toe's point, right. Is you are from an, from a deployment perspective. Uh, it's still using helm. It's still using some of the same tooling, um, right. But, um, how do you Rafa gives us, uh, some tools, you know, they have a, a command line, art cuddle API that essentially we use. Um, we wanted parody, um, across all our different environments, different clusters, you know, it doesn't matter where you're running. Um, so that gives us basically a consistent API for deployment. Um, we've also had, um, challenges, uh, with just some of the tooling in general, that we worked with RA actually to actually extend their, our cuddle API for us, so that we have a better deployment experience for our developers. So, >>Uh Huie how long does this opportunity exist for you? At some point, do the cloud providers figure this out or does the open source community figure out how to do what you've done and, and this opportunity is gone. >>So, so I think back to a platform that I, I think very highly of, which is a highly off, which has been around a long time and continues to live vCenter, I think vCenter is awesome. And it's, it's beautiful. VMware did an incredible job. Uh, what is the job? Its job is to manage VMs, right? But then it's for access. It's also storage. It's also networking and a sex, right? All these things got done because to solve a real problem, you have to think about all the things that come together to solve, help you solve that problem from an operations perspective. Right? My view is that this market needs essentially a vCenter, but for Kubernetes, right. Um, and that is a very broad problem, right. And it's gonna spend, it's not about a cloud, right? I mean, every cloud should build this. I mean, why would they not? It makes sense, Anto success, right. Everybody should have one. But then, you know, the clarity in thinking that the Rafa team seems to have exhibited till date seems to merit an independent company. In my opinion, I think like, I mean, from a technical perspective, this products awesome. Right? I mean, you know, we seem to have, you know, no real competition when it comes to this broad breadth of capabilities, will it last, we'll see, right. I mean, I keep doing Q shows, right? So every year you can ask me that question again. Well, you're >>You make a good point though. I mean, you're up against VMware, you're up against Google. They're both trying to do sort of the same thing you're doing. What's why are you succeeding? >>Maybe it's focus. Maybe it's because of the right experience. I think startups only in hindsight, can one tell why a startup was successful? In all honesty. I, I, I've been in a one or two service in the past. Um, and there's a lot of luck to this. There's a lot of timing to this. I think this timing for a com product like this is perfect. Like three, four years ago, nobody would've cared. Like honestly, nobody would've cared. This is the right time to have a product like this in the market because so many enterprises are now thinking of modernization. And because everybody's doing this, this is like the boots storm problem in HCI. Everybody's doing it. But there's only so many people in the industry who actually understand this problem. So they can't even hire the people. And the CTO said, I gotta go. I don't have the people. I can't fill the, the seats. And then they look for solutions and we are that solution that we're gonna get embedded. And when you have infrastructure software like this embedded in your solution, we're gonna be around with the assuming, obviously we don't score up, right. We're gonna be around with these companies for some time. We're gonna have strong partners for the long term. >>Well, vCenter for Kubernetes, I love to end on that note, intriguing conversation. We could go on forever on this topic, cuz there's a lot of work to do. I think, uh, I don't think this will over be a solve problem for the Kubernetes of cloud native solution. So I think there's a lot of opportunity in that space. Hi, thank you for rejoining the cube. I non con welcome becoming a cube alum. <laugh> I awesome. Thank you. Get your much your profile on the, on the Ken's. Website's really cool from Valencia Spain. I'm Keith Townsend, along with my whole Paul Gillon and you're watching the cube, the leader in high tech coverage.

(upbeat music) >> Hey everyone. Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of Women In Tech, International Women's Day 2022. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. I have two guests from AWS here with me. Carolina Pina joins us, the head of Enterprise Enablement for LATAM and Laura Alvarez Modernel is here as well, Public Sector Programs Manager at AWS. Ladies, it's great to have you on theCUBE. >> Nice to meet you. >> Thank you for having us. >> Carolina, let's start with you. Talk to me a little bit about your role, what it is that you're doing there. >> So my role in AWS is to actually create mechanisms of massive training to try to close the talent gap that we have in the region. And when I mentioned talent gap, I'm talking about obviously digital and cloud-computing skills. So that's, that's, in a nutshell what my role entails. >> Lisa: Got it. How long have you been in that role? Just curious. >> So I've been at AWS a little bit over, over two years. I was actually in the public sector team when I joined, leading the education vertical for Latin American Canada. And I recently joined the commercial sector now leading these massive training efforts for the region for LATAM. >> And Laura, you're in public sector. Talk to me a little bit about your role. >> Yes, I'm in public sector. I'm also based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. So yeah, I'm from Latin America, and I lead educational and community impact programs in the Southern cone of Latin America. I also lead diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and I'm part of the Women at Amazon global board. That's our affinity group to make sure we make efforts towards building a more equal world. And on a personal note I'm really passionate about the topic of gender equality because I truly think it affects us all as women and as Latins. So that's something that I'm always interested in collaborating with. >> Lisa: Excellent. Carolina back to you. If we think about from an enablement perspective how is AWS partnering with its customers and its partners to train and employ women particularly in technology? >> Oh, sure. Lisa, so it's not a surprise. We, like I mentioned, you know we have a big cloud skills, talent gap in the region. In fact, you know, 69% of companies have reported talent shortages and difficulty hiring. So, and this represents a 15 year high. So, many of these companies are actually, you know, our own commercial customers. So they approach us saying, you know, asking for for support training and developing their talent. So like I mentioned, in my role I create massive training efforts and initiatives. So we always take into consideration women, minorities, underrepresented community, and not just for the current talent, meaning like the people that are currently employed, but also to ensure that we are proactively implementing initiatives to develop a talent of younger you know, a younger generation and a talent. So we can, you know, to inspire them and, and ensure that they, that we're seeing them represented in companies like AWS, you know and our customers, and in our partners. And obviously we, when we sit down with customers to craft these massive trainings you know, leveraging their ecosystems and communities, we actually try to use all our AWS training and certification portfolio which includes, you know, in live in class with live in structures, in classroom trainings. We also have our AWS Skill Builder platform which is the platform that allows us to, you know to reach a broader audience because it has, you know over 500 free and on-demand classes. And we also have a lot of different other programs that touches in different audiences. You know, we have AWS re/Start for underrepresented, and underemployed minorities. We also have AWS Academy, which is the program that we have for higher education institutions. And we have AWS, you know, Educate which also touches, you know, cloud beginners. So in every single of these programs, we ensure that we are encompassing and really speaking to women and developing training and developing women. >> Lisa: That's a great focus there. Laura, talk to me about upskilling. I know AWS is very much about promoting from within. What are some of the things that it's doing to help women in Latin America develop those tech skills and upskill from where, maybe where they are now? >> Well, Lisa, I think that is super interesting because there's definitely a skills gap problem, right? We have all heard about. And what's funny is also that we have this huge opportunity in Latin America to train people and to help further develop the countries. And we have the companies that need the talent. So why is there still a gap, right? And I think that's because there's no magic solution to solving this problem. No, like epic Hollywood movie scene that it's going to show how we close the gap. And it takes stepping out of our comfort zone. And as Carolina mentioned, collaborating. So, we at AWS have a commitment to help 29 million people globally to grow their technical skills with free cloud-computing skills training by 2025. I know that sounds a lot through educational programs but we do have as Carolina mentioned, a Skill Builder you can go into the website for free, enter, choose your path, get trained. We have Academy that we implement with universities. Re/Start that is a program that's already available in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Costa Rica. So there are a lot of opportunities, but you also mentioned something else that I would like to dive a bit deeper that is Latin American women. And yesterday we had the opportunity to record a panel about intersectionality with three amazing Latin women. And what we have to learn from that is that these are two minorities that intersect, right. We're talking about females that are minority. Latinas are minority. And in tech, that is also something that is even bigger minority. So there are more difficulties there and we need to make sure that we are meeting that talent that is there that is in Latin America, that exists. We know for sure we have unicorns in Latin America that are even AWS customers like Mercado Libre, and we have to meet them with the opportunities. And that's why we created a program that came from identifying how this problem evolves in Latin America, that there is a lack of confidence in women also that they don't feel prepared or equipped. There is a cultural component why we don't choose tech careers. And we partner with universities, more than 12 universities in Latin America with the International American Development Bank as well to create tech skills that's a free five weeks program in order to get students and get female in Latin America, into the tech world. And we also have them with mentorship. So I think that is an opportunity to truly collaborate because we as AWS are not going to solve these by ourselves, right? We need everyone pitching in on that. >> Lisa: Right. It's absolutely a team effort. You mentioned something important in terms of helping women, and especially minorities get out of their comfort zone. Carolina, I'm curious when you're talking with women and getting them into the program and sharing with them all of the enablement programs that you have, how do you help them be confident to get out of that comfort zone? That's a hard thing to do. >> Yeah, no, for sure. For sure, Lisa, well, I, you know, a lot of times actually I use myself as an example because, you know, I studied engineering and industrial systems engineering many years ago. And you know, a lot of my career has been in in higher education and innovation and startups. And as I mentioned in the intro I've been at AWS for a little bit over two years. So I, my career has not been in cloud and I recently joined the cloud. So I actually had to go through our own trainings and get our own certifications. So I, that's, you know a lot of times I actually, I use my own example, so people understand that you don't have to come from tech, you don't have to come, you can actually be a non-tech person and, and also see the the benefits of the cloud. And you don't have to only, you know, learn cloud if you're in the IT department or in an IT team. So sometimes, I also emphasize that the cloud and the future is absolutely the cloud. In fact, the world economic foreign, you know teaches us that cloud-computing is that the technology that's going to be mostly adopted by 2025. So that's why we need to ensure that every single person, women and others are really knowledgeable in the cloud. So that's why, you know, technical and untechnical. But I, you know, I use myself as an example for them to say, you know, you can actually do it. And obviously also I collaborate with Laura and a lot of the women at Amazon Latin America Group to also you know, ensure that we're doing webinars and panels. So we show them ourselves as role model like, Laura is an incredible role model for our community. And so it's also to to show examples of what the possibilities are. And that's what we do. >> Lisa: I love that you're sharing >> And can I make a note there also? >> Please, yes. >> To add to that. I think it also requires the companies and the, and the private sector to get out of their comfort zone, right? Because we are not going to find solutions doing what we are already doing. We truly need to go and get near these persons with a new message. Their interest is there in these programs we have reached more than 3,000 women already in Latin America with tech skills. So it's not that women are not interested. It's like, how do we reach them with a message that resounds with them, right? Like how we can explain the power of technology to transform the world and to actually improve their communities. I think there's something there also that we need to think further of. >> It's so important. You know, we say often when we're talking about women in tech, that she needs to see what she can be or if she can't see it, she can't be it. So having those role models and those mentors and sponsors is absolutely critical for women to get, I call it getting comfortably uncomfortable out of that comfort zone and recognizing there's so many opportunities. Carolina, to your point, you know, these days every company is a tech company, a data company whether you're talking about a car dealer, a grocery market. So your point about, you know, and obviously the future being cloud there's so much opportunity that that opens up, for everybody really, but that's an important thing for people to recognize how they can be a part of that get out of their comfort zone and try something that they maybe hadn't considered before. >> Yes. And, actually, Lisa I would love to share an example. So we have a group, O Boticário, which is one of our customers one of the, the lead retails in Brazil. And they've been a customer of AWS since 2013 when they realized that, you know the urgency and the importance of embracing state of the art technology, to your point, like, you know this is a retail company that understands that needs to be, you know embrace digital transformation, especially because, you know they get very busy during mother's days and other holidays during the year. So they realized that they, instead of outsourcing their IT requirements to technology experts they decided to actually start developing and bringing the talent, you know within itself, within, you know, technology in-house. So they decided to start training within. And that's when we, obviously we partnered with them to also create a very comprehensive training and certification plan that started with, you know a lot of the infrastructure and security teams but then it was actually then implemented in the rest of the company. So going back to the point like everybody really needs to know. And what we also love about O Boticário is they they really care about the diversion and inclusion aspect of this equation. And we actually collaborated with them as well through this program called Desenvolve with the Brazilian government. And Desenvolve means developing Portuguese and they this program really ensures that we are also closing that gender and that race gap and ensuring that they're actually, you know, developing talent in cloud for Brazil. So we, you know, obviously have been very successful with them and we will continue to do even more things with them particular for this topic. >> Lisa: I've always known how customer focused AWS is every time we get to go to re:Invent or some of the events but it's so nice to hear these the educational programs that you're doing with customers to help them improve DEI to help them enable their own women in their organizations to learn skills. I didn't realize that. I think that's fantastic very much a symbiotic part of AWS. If we think about the theme for this year's International Women's Day, Breaking The Bias I want to get both of your opinions and Laura we'll start with you, what that means to you, and where do you think we are in Latin America with breaking the bias? >> Well, I think breaking the bias is the first step to truly being who we are every day and being able to bring that to our work as well. I think we are in a learning curve of that. The companies are changing culturally, as Carolina mentioned we have customers that are aware of the importance of having women. And as we say at AWS not only because there is a good business reason because there is, because there are studies that show that we can increase the country's CPD, but also because it's important and it's the right thing to do. So in terms of breaking the bias I think we are learning and we have a long way to go. I talked a bit earlier about intersectionality and that is something that is also important to highlight, right? Because we are talking about females but we are also talking about another minorities. We're talking about underrepresented communities, Indigenous People, Latins. So when these overlap, we face even bigger challenges to get where we want to get, right? And to get to decision making places because technology is transforming the ways we take decisions, we live, and we need someone like us taking those decisions. So I think it's important at first to be aware and to see that you can get there and eventually to start the conversation going and to build the conversation, not to just leave it but to make sure we hear people and their input and what they're going through. >> Lisa: Yes. We definitely need to hear them. Carolina, what's your take on breaking the bias and where do you from your experience, where do you think we are with it? >> Yeah, no, I'm as passionate as Laura on this topic. And that's why we, you know we're collaborating in the Women at Amazon Latin America Chapter, because we're both very, I think breaking the bias starts with us and ourselves. And we are very proactive within AWS and externally. And I feel it's also, I mean, Lisa, what we've been doing is not only, obviously gathering you know, the troops and really making sure that, that we have very aggressive goals internally, but also bringing you know, bringing our male counterparts, and other, you know, other members of the other communities, because the change, we're not going to make it alone. Like the change where it is not women only talking to women is going to make the change. We actually need to make sure the male and other groups are represented. And the dialogue that they're that we're very conscious about that. And I feel like we're seeing more and more that the topic is becoming more of a priority not only within AWS and Amazon but we also see it because now that I meet with when I meet with customers around the region they really want to see how we can collaborate in these diversion and inclusion initiatives. So I think we are breaking the bias because now this topic is more top of mind. And then we are being more proactively addressing it and and training people and educating people. And I feel we're really in a pivoted point where the change that we've really been wanting to we will see in the next you know, few years which is very exciting. >> Lisa: Excellent, and we'll see that with the help of women like you guys. Thank you so much for joining me today, talking about what you're doing, how you're helping organizations across AWS's ecosystem, customers, partners, and helping, of course, folks from within you, right. It's a holistic effort, but we are on our way to breaking that bias and again, I thank you both for your insights. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Lisa, for the opportunity. >> My pleasure. For Carolina Pina and Laura Alvarez Modernel, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of Women in Tech, International Women's Day 2022. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to "theCube's" coverage of Mobile World Congress 2021. We're here in person and remote. This is a physical and virtual. It's a hybrid event, and "theCube's" got wall-to-wall coverage. I'm John Furrier, your host of "theCube." We've got a great guest here, Adolfo Hernandez, Vice-President, Global Telco Business Unit for Amazon Web Services, AWS. Adolfo, thank you for coming on remotely for this virtual hybrid Mobile World Congress. >> Thanks for having me, John, exciting. >> You have an impressive background in telecom industry. Over the years the technology industry has been great innovation. We've seen, I mean, how many Gs have been we've gone through, but I remember the days when wifi wasn't even around. So (laughing) You got a complete change in the past couple decades. This year, more than ever with the pandemic coming through this, you're starting to see some clear visibility on the trends, and also, this is the first Mobile World Congress in person since 2019, so a lot has changed. What is your view on the marketplace, and what is your message you're telling the telecom industry from Amazon's and your perspective? What do you see? >> Yeah, you're absolutely right, John. This is a fascinating time to be on the cloud, to be at Mobile World Congress. I remember Mobile World Congress 2020 was the first event that actually got canceled. So that was the beginning of the pandemic. And now, here we are, a year and a bit later, working with the leading telecommunications operators with the leading telecommunication sides based on solution providers and what better place that would be in doing that with AWS in this very transformational time in this space. We are supporting telecom operators around the world, as they reinvent communications in many different ways. This is not just one more G, we are definitely transforming the industry. Like any industry, we see telecom operators having to get simplification on their operations and transforming the IT side of the house. So they've go the internal IT, that needs a big transformation, they also got the network IT, everything related with OSS and BSS, and they need to migrate that to the cloud. And we've got a lot of experience by doing that with telcos around the world, to really help them accelerate that journey to the cloud. And we can help them with data center consolidation, migrations and a number of things. So we've got examples like GiffGaff, which is one of the largest MVNOs, and one of the first ones in Europe to go all in on the AWS cloud and they move all the data and the heart of the business there. So once you're sort of dealing with the network, the IT transformation, then you've got to go and look at how do you reinvent and accelerate the delivery of 5G connectivity? Well, that's very current as we're doing now. And we really want to help them because when they accelerate to the cloud, they get more flexibility, they get more agility, they get more cost effectiveness. And if you think about how traditional telco networks were built, where you have to provision a lot of systems you have to provision a lot on the base stations, and then you needed to provision a lot of systems on the Ram side, and then you needed to put aggregation centers, traffic centers, and then you would have the headquarters, and then you would have all the network functions, going from the radio all the way into the center. All of the systems needed to be provision for peak capacity. They sort of famous Mother's Day moment. As you move to the cloud, you can provision on the different parts of the cloud, you can provision on the AWS Outpost, you can provision on locals phone, you can provision on regions, and you leverage right away the experience that we've got on all of our infrastructure, reducing costs, getting a lot of flexibility and being able to embark, just and consume what you need. And, an example of that, it's been a Telefonica Vivo in Brazil. We talked about that a couple of weeks ago, and they've accelerated their move by deploying a 5G standalone cloud native platform. And that gives them a lot of automation capabilities. It gives them faster CI/CD/CT. So really cool stuff that you couldn't do in the old ways of building networks- >> It's interesting you mentioned CI/CD pipeline and developers. To me that's what comes to my mind when I think of AWS, the enablement of developers, now the enterprise. Now you've got the telco cloud and Amazon is not known for being a 5G player, but you guys are enabling a lot of 5G. Could you address that question? How is Amazon web services enabling 5G? What's your answer to that? >> So first of all, I have to say that 5G is an absolutely great example that this is a lot about moving to the cloud. 5G is cloud native, it's cloud friendly. You can virtualize pretty much every function. You can separate every function from the hardware and the software move everything to the cloud. And that is really lending itself to move to a cloud delivery model. As we were talking about earlier, we are enabling people to go and take the AWS infrastructure like AWS Outpost and bringing all the AWS infrastructure, all the services, all the APIs and all the tools that you have on AWS, virtually to any single location. And that allows you to really deploy themes like thousands of cell sites across a run, you couldn't do that before. On the AWS local zones, you can take everything that compute storage databases and a lot of different services. And those are perfect for large metro areas where you need to do a lot of network traffic aggregation, and this makes them really good to deploy in parts of the network core. Again, that's another re-innovation. And then you can look at then the regions and the regions have everything that you need from a compute storage and services perspective. And that those are really well suited for BSS for OSS to keeping the network running and to do all of that. And you can do that today, leveraging existing infrastructure. You don't have to acquire that, you don't have to provision, that you don't have to provision for the peak capacity and then you don't have to install and manage, and I think that's a serious breakthrough for the industry. >> Okay, so let me just capture that, 'cause I heard a bunch of things that I really like, cloud native 5G. What does cloud native 5G mean for the telco industry specifically? >> Well, I think if I had to put it down to one thing, it's just about making it really easy to roll out. And it's about being able to deploy easily to automate easily, so you can free up investment and you can free up resources and you can free up overhead. You can really start taking advantage of all that flexibility and scalability and automation that you get with the cloud and you apply that to a network, and that is the very first time we're able to do that in wireless. And it's just going to give you a lot of advantages. Look at Dish. We made this announcement with Dish that they are moving with one of the industry first 5G cloud native networks out there. Look at the example I talked about earlier, Telefonica Vivo, we're doing that 5G standalone solution. So you're going to be seeing, this is just the beginning, but this is going to be not the end because there's a lot of interest in getting these benefits. >> I saw the Dave Brown announcement with Dish a while back just recently. So I want to ask you, does Graviton processors play a role on the Dish deal? Do you mind answering that? If you comment on that? >> Yeah, I think you might remember Dave Brown being very proud of everything that Graviton2 processors can do in terms of increase in the price performance, helping telco operators, not only with the price performance factor, but also with the energy equation. So it's just really exciting to have that differentiation and being able to deliver that innovation and that value to telco operators in a cloud native 5G network. >> I got to ask you about some of the open source and cloud scale things coming together. That's a big trend I'm seeing here at Mobile World Congress. Openness, multi-vendor, scaling up quickly, provisioning stuff fast and easy, leveraging existing technologies and of course, developer friendly. So with that, I got to ask you, what's all the big deal about with this Open RAN. Obviously radios are key and wireless. What does Open RAN mean? Can you take us through, what's the importance of this? >> Yeah, Open RAN is an industry wide or mostly industry-wide initiative to look into effectively trying to apply some of these open and sharing models to the RAN. You've got vendors and you've got telco operators participating. But what we do and you know as well John, 'cause you've been working with AWS for a while, you know, that we're very customer focused, and 90% of what we do is what we hear that they are trying to solve because it's the things that matter to them. So what we engage with them, what we engage with somebody like Dish, and they tell us that they are interested in Open RAN, we will go and partner with the right partners who can provide the right solution to deliver on that Open RAN. And you've seen we signed agreements with the likes of Nokia to do research and solutions on cloud RAN. You also saw a couple of weeks ago, we did another collaboration announcement with Mavenir, to deliver not only cloud run, but I said of 5G solutions like IMS, the 4G 5G converge packet, or messaging and others. So we are engaging with the complete ecosystem on our customer's behalf to deliver whatever thereafter, and Open RAN is one of these topics and that we're delivering to operators like Deutsche and others in the market. >> Do you think that this new shift with cloud is going to increase the surface area? 'Cause that to me is the big theme I'm seeing what this new shift, as we look at, even telco cloud and the Edge, it's the classic surface area. And this is well known in the security world, but the there's no perimeter anymore. The surface area for security is everywhere. So things have changed. But telco just seems like the edge is expanding, you got satellite, you got space, you got more 5G, more commercial, so much more surface area. What's the impact going to be to the industry and to applications? >> Well, I think what we're seeing is 5G comes out there because there is a need for more data, more bandwidth obviously increased security, new standards, but there is also about latency, latency reduction. And I think that's really going to change the paradigm as we inject these increased responsiveness, these low latency, closer to the edge, and we bring the applications and we bring the compute and we bring storage as we do with wavelength right through to the edge as we are doing with Verizon, Vodafone, KDDI, SK Telecom and operators around the world. This is going to enable a number of transformational use cases for society, whether they are in virtual reality, whether they are with autonomous driving, whether it's about automating and getting more intelligence into manufacturing processes, there is just so much potential to transform society. And it all comes back with these sort of new 5G and some of the themes that enables moving closer to the edge. So as I said, really interesting times. >> Adolfo Hernandez, Vice President of Global Telco Business Unit with Amazon Web Services. Thanks for the great insight here on "theCube" for our Mobile World Congress coverage. Really, really great insight. Thanks so much. >> Thanks, John, delighted to be here. >> If you don't mind, I'd like to just quickly shift gears to something while I got you here on the industry. Adolfo you're very well known in the industry for someone who knows how to turn things around. You've done that in the past. You've been part of growth companies, you've been part of companies that have refocused. Telco has been a big change over people looking at this new opportunity as a growth opportunity. And people are looking at divesting some non-critical divisions and looking at acquisitions. I mean the private equity's on fire right now, and you're starting to see a lot more formation because there's more visibility into territory to take, there's more opportunities to be had. So there's more potential revenue than there is you can do on the cost cutting side. So everyone I talked to who's been in the industry has got their eyes are really popping out of their head, they're saying there's more opportunities if we can reconfigure our resources to take advantage of cloud. You're an expert in this area. For the folks out there who are in the boardrooms, cranking away thinking through how to organize for the cloud scale, what would be your advice to those teams? >> Well, I mean, there's a lot of insight to be had from the experience that AWS we've gained through the years, of doing this IT. And you definitely have to get a top down vision. Obviously it's really got to start at the C-suite, is moving to the cloud for what it bring. Either faster pace of innovation, the cost reduction, the agility. And that's you've got to be thinking about going to the cloud top down. Then the next thing you've got to go and say, "Okay, what are the parts of my operation "that I can go after with cloud? "Where do I start? "Do I start with the IT applications? "Do I start with some new go-to market initiatives? "Do I start by infusing some machine learning capabilities "into existing operations? "Do I start by building a data links "that I can go and monetize, "or I can go on and use to generate "best at customer service, "or I can go and fundamentally transform my networks?" Now, every telco's going to start in in different place, but I would say is you've got to start looking at that agility, that faster innovation, that better use of resources that cloud brings to telco for the very first time in a time in, in decades. And then if you're going to do that, I would strongly recommend people to talk to the provider that's got the capabilities, the broader set of services, the deepest set of services, and the most relevant experience to do that, 'cause we've been doing that in IT, and we've been working on telcos now for five plus years. And we've got pretty much every relationship. And as you know, John, this is really important. In telco you depend on collaborations on ISBs on software vendors, and every vendor out there, every software company out there will develop certainly on AWS. So we would be delighted to engage with them and help them move forward. >> Yeah, and Andy Jassy the CEO of AWS last year at re:Invent really made that the hallmark of his keynote around get those teams together, the executives top-down be a builder, think like a builder. McKinsey just put out a report, trillion dollar opportunities that no one sees yet that's coming. So a lot of emphasis on revenue, new revenue opportunities that are coming. And certainly this has been something that telcos been looking for for a long time. So great opportunity and thank you for sharing your insight. Appreciate it. >> Thanks, John. >> Okay this is "theCube's" coverage of ABS Mobile World Congress, 2021, I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube presenting accelerating automation with definite brought to you by Cisco. Hey, welcome back. You're ready, Jeff Freak here with the Cube coming to you from our Palo Alto studios with ongoing coverage of Cisco Definite create. We've been going to definite create, I think, since the very beginning. This year, of course. Like everything else, it's it's virtual. So we're excited to cover it virtually and digitally like we have a lot of other shows here in 2020 and we're excited to have our next guest. We've got Kun Jacobs. He's the director of systems engineering. Francisco, Good to see you. Coun. Thank >>you for having me. >>And joining him is Eric Nippy is the VP of system systems Engineering. Francisco. Good to see Eric. >>Good to be here. Thank you. >>Pleasure. So before we jump into kind of what's going on now, in this new great world of program ability and control, I want to kind of go back to the future for a minute. Because when I was doing some research for this interview, it was kun. I saw an old presentation that you were giving from 2006 about the changing evolution of the changing evolution of networking and moving from. I think the theme was a human centered, human centered network, and you were just starting to touch a little bit on video and online video. Oh my goodness, how far we have come. But but I would love to get kind of historical perspective because we've been talking a lot. And I know Eric Son plays football about the football analogy of the network is kind of like an offensive lineman where if they're doing a good job, you don't hear much about them. But they're really important to everything, and the only time you hear about him was when the flag is thrown. So if you look back with the historical perspective load and the numbers and the evolution of the network as we've moved to this modern time and you know thank goodness, because if Cove it hit five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you know all of us in the information space would not have been able to make this transition, so I just I just love to get some historical perspective because you've been kind of charting this and mapping this for a very long time. >>Yeah, we absolutely have. I think you know what you're referring to was back in the day the human network campaign and to your point that the load, the number of hosts, the traffic just overall, the intelligence of the network has just evolved tremendously over the last decade and a half, 15 years or so. And you look at where we are now in terms of the programmable nature of the network and what that enables in terms of new degrees of relevance that we can create for the customers on how you know the role of I t. Has changed entirely again, especially during this pandemic. You know, the fact that it's now as a service and elastic eyes is absolutely fundamental to being able to ensure, on an ongoing basis a great customer experience. And so it's been It's been a very interesting right, indeed. Yeah, >>And then and then just to close the loop, the one of your more later interviews talking to Sylvia. You're the question is, are you developer an engineer? So And your whole advice to all these network engineers is just Just don't jump in and start doing some coding and learning. So you know, the focus and really the emphasis and where the opportunity to differentiate is a complete is completely 15 years over to the, you know, really software to find side. >>Oh, absolutely. So, I mean, you look at how the software world and the network has come together and how we're applying now, you know, basically the same construct of C I C D pipeline to network infrastructure. Look at network really as code and get all of the benefits from that in the familiarity of it, the way that our engineers have had to evolve in that is just, you know, quite quite significant in like the skill set. And the best thing is jump in, you know, dip your toe in the water, but continue to evolve that skill set. And, you know, don't don't be shy. It's It's a leap of faith for some of us who've been in the industry a bit longer. You know, we like to look at ourselves as the craftsman of the network, but now it's definitely software Centris City and the, um, program ability. >>Right? So, Eric, you've got some digital exhaust out there, too, that I was able to dig up Going back to 2000 and 2 752 page book in the very back corner of a dark, dirty, dusty Amazon warehouse is managing Cisco Network Security 752 pages. Wow. How has security changed? From a time where before I could just read a book, a big book, you know, throw some protocols in and probably block a bunch of ports to the world that we live in today, where everything is connected, everything is a p. I driven. Everything is software defined. You've got pieces of workload spread out all over the place. And, Oh, by the way, you need to bake security in at every single level of the application stack. >>Yeah, No eso Wow. Kudos that you you found that book. I'm really impressed there, so thank you. Little street credit. So I want to get on something that you you talked about because I think it's very important to to this overall conversation if we think about the scale of the network and coun hit on it briefly. You talked about it as well. We're seeing a massive explosion of devices by the you know it's estimated By the end of this year, there's gonna be about 27 billion devices on the global Internet. That's about 3.7 devices for every man, woman and child life. And if we extrapolate that out over the course of the next decade on the growth trajectory, we're on. And if you look at some of the published research on this, it's estimated there could be upwards of 500 billion devices accessing the global Internet on a on a daily basis in the primarily that that that is I o T devices. That's digitally connected devices. Anything that can be connected will be connect, but then introduces a really interesting security challenge because every one of those devices that is accessing the global Internet is within a company's infrastructure. Accessing pieces of corporate data is a potential attack factor, so we really need Thio and I think the right expression for this is we need to reimagine security because security is, as you said, not about perimeters. You know, I wrote that book back in 2002. I was talking about firewalls and a cutting edge technology was intrusion, prevention and intrusion detection. Now we need to look at security. Really? In the in the guise of under the under the under the realm of really two aspects the identity. Who is accessing the data in the context, What data is being access and that is going to require a level of intelligence, a level of automation and technologies like machine learning, an automated intelligence. They're going to be our artificial intelligence. Rather are gonna be table stakes because the sheer scale of what we're trying to secure is going to be untenable under current. You know, just current security practices mean the network is gonna have to be incredibly intelligent and leverage again, a lot of that AI type of data to match patterns of potential attacks and ideally, shut them down before they ever cause any type of damage. >>Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, one thing That cove it has done a bunk many things is kind of re taught us all about the power of exponential curves and how extremely large those things are and how fast they grow. We had Dave Rennes in on it Google Cloud a couple years ago, and I remember him talking about early days of Google when they were starting to map out kind of, as you describe kind of map out their growth curves, and they just figured out they could not hire if they hired everybody, they couldn't hire enough people to deal with it, right? So really kind of rethinking automation and re thinking about the way that you manage these things and and the level right, the old Is it a pet or is it or is it, um, part of the herd? And I think it's interesting what you talked about coun really human powered Internet and being driven by a lot of this video. But to what you just said, Erik, the next big wave right is I, O. T and five G. And I think you know, you talk about 3.7 of devices per person. That's nothing compared toa right, all these sensors and all these devices and all these factories because five G is really targeted to machine to machines, which there's ah lot of them, and they trade a lot of information really, really quickly. So, you know, I want to go back to Yukun thinking about this next great wave in a five G i o t kind of driven world where it's kind of like one voice kind of fell off compared to I p traffic on the network, I think you're going to see the same thing. Kind of human generated data relative to machine generated data is also gonna fall off dramatically. Is the machine generated data just skyrockets through the roof? >>Yeah. No, absolutely. And I think thio also what Eric touched on the visibility on that and they'll be able to process that data at the edge that's going to catalyze cloud adoption even further. And it's gonna, you know, make the role of the network the connectivity of it all, and the security within that crucially important. And then you look at the role of program ability. Within that, we're see the evolution going so fast. You look at the element of the software defined network in an I. O. T. Speed space. We see that we have hosts there that are not necessarily, you know, behaving like other hosts would on a network, for example, manufacturing floor production, robot or security camera. And what we're seeing is we're seeing you know, partners and customers employing program ability to make sure that we overcome some of the shortcomings, uh, in terms of where the network is at. But then how do you customize it in terms of the relevance that it can provide, bringing on board those those hosts in a very transparent way on then, you know, keep keep the agility of it and keep the speed of innovation going right, >>right. So, Eric, I want to come back to you and shift gears kind of back to the people will leave the A. D and the machines along along for middle minute. But I'm curious about what does beat the boss. I mean, I I go to your LinkedIn profile and it's just filled with congratulatory statements, but everyone's talking about beating the boss. You know, it's it's a really, you know, kind of interesting and different way toe to motivate people to build this new skill set in terms of getting software certifications within the Cisco world. And I just thought it was really cute the way that you clearly got people motivated because there's posts all over the place and they've all got their their nice big badge of their certification. But, you know, at a higher level, it is a different motivation to be a developer versus and engineering a technician. And it's a, you know, kind of a different point of view. And I just wonder if you could share, you know, some of the ways that you're kind of encouraging, you know, kind of this transformation within your own workforce as well as the partners, etcetera and really adopting kind of almost a software first in this program kind of point of view versus, you know, I'm just wiring stuff up. >>Apparently, a lot of people like to beat me. So I mean, that in of itself was was a was a great success. But, you know, if we think we take a step back, you know, what is Cisco about as an organization? I mean, obviously, he looked back to the very early days of our vision, right? It was. It was to change the way the world, you know, worked, played, live and learn. And if you think about and you hit on this when we were you know, your discussion with with With Kun in the early days of Cove it. We really saw that play out as so much shifted from, you know, in person type of interactions to virtual interactions in the network that that our customers, our partners, our employees built over the course of the last several last three decades really help the world continue Thio to to do business for students to continue to go thio school or, you know, clinicians to connect with patients. If I think about that mission to meet program ability is just the next generation of that mission, uh, continuing to enable the world to communicate, continuing to enable customers, employees, partners to, uh, essentially leverage the network for more than just connectivity. Now the leverage it for critical insight again, If we look at some of the some of the use cases that we're seeing for social distancing and contact tracing, the network has a really important place to play there because we can pull insight from the but it isn't necessarily and out of the box type of integration. So I look at program ability and and what we're doing with debt net to give relevance to the network for those types of really critical conversations that every organization is having right now. It's a way to extrapolate its away thio full critical data so that I can make a decision and I if that decisions automated or if that decision requires some type of a manual intervention, regardless, we're still about connecting, or in this case, we're connecting insight with the people who need it most. The definite pounds we ran is really in respect for how critical this new skills that's going to be. It's not enough. Like I said, just to connect the world anymore. We need to leverage that network, the network for that critical insight. And when we dropped were created to beat the boss challenge, it was really simple. Hey, guys, I think this is important and I am going to go out, and I'm gonna achieve the certification myself because I want to continue to be very relevant. I'm gonna continue to be able to provide that insight for my customers and partners. So therefore I'm going for it. Anybody can get there before me. Maybe there's a little incentive tied to and the incentive, although it's funny, we interviewed a lot of ah, a lot of our team who achieved it Incentive with secondary. They just wanted have bragging rights like, Yeah, I beat Eric, Right, Right. >>Absolutely. No, that Z you know, put your money where your mouth is, right? If it's important than what you know, you should do it too. And you know, the whole not asking people to do what you wouldn't do yourself. So I think there's a lot of good leadership, uh, leadership lessons there as well. But I wanna extend kind of the conversation on the Koven impact. Right? Because I'm sure you've seen all the social media means you know who's driving your digital transformation, the CEO of the CMO or cove it. And we all know the answer to the question. But you know, you guys have already been dealing with kind of increased complexity around enterprise infrastructure, world in terms of cloud and public cloud and hybrid cloud and multi cloud, and people are trying to move stuff all the way around. Now suddenly had this co vid moment right in March, which is really a light switch moment. People didn't have time to plan or prepare for suddenly everybody working from home and it's not only you but your spouse and your kids and everybody else. So but now we're six months plus into this thing, and I would just love to get your perspective, you know, and kind of the change from Oh, my goodness, we have to react to the light switch moment. What do we do to make sure people can can get get what they need when they need it from where they are? But but then really moving from this is an emergency situation. Stopgap situation toe. This is going to extend for some period of time. And even when it's the acute crisis is over, you know this is going to drive. Ah, riel change in the way that people communicate in the way that people where they sit and do their job and kind of how customers are responding accordingly as the you know, kind of the narrative has changed from an emergency stop gap to this is the new normal that we really need thio to plan for. >>So I think I think you said it very well. I think anything that could be digitized any any interaction that could be driven virtually waas. And what's interesting is we, as you said. We went from that light switch moment where, and I believe the status this and I'll probably get the number wrong. But like in the United States here at the beginning, at the end of February, about 2% of the knowledge worker population was virtual, you know, working from home or in a remote work environment. And over the course of about 11 days, that number went from 2% to 70% in interesting that it worked. You know, there was a lot of hiccups along the way, and there was a lot of organizations making really quick decisions on How do I enable VPN scale of mass? How doe I, you know, leverage. You know, things like WebEx for virtual meetings in virtual connectivity much faster now that as you said that we've kind of gotten out of the fog of war or frog fog of battle organizations, we're looking at what they accomplished. And it was nothing short of Herculean and looking at this now from a transition. Thio Oh my gosh, we need to change, too. We have an opportunity to change and we're looking. We see a lot of organizations specifically around financial services, health care through the K through 20 educational environment, all looking at how can they doom or virtually for a couple of reasons? Obviously, there is a significant safety factor, and again, we're still in that we're still in the height of this pandemic. They want to make sure their employees, their customers, students patients remain safe. But second, we've found in discussions with a lot of senior I T executives and our customers that people are happier working from home. People are more productive working from home. And that again, the network that's been built over the course of the last few decades has been resilient enough to allow that to happen. And then, third, there is a potential cost savings here outside of people. The next most expensive resource that organizations are paying for is real estate. If they can shrink that real estate footprint while providing a better user experience at the locations that they're maintaining again leveraging things like location services, leveraging things like, uh, unified collaboration that's very personalized to the end users experience, they're going to do that and again they're going to save money. They're gonna have happier employees, and ultimately they're gonna make their their employees in their customers a lot safer. So we see, we believe that there is in some parts of the economy, a shift that is going to be more permanent. And some estimates put it as high as 15% of the current workforce is going to stay today in a virtual or a semi virtual working environment for the foreseeable future. >>Interesting. And I would say I'd say 15% is low, especially if you if you qualify it with, you know, part time, right? There was a great interview were doing and, you know, talk about working from home. He used to work from home as the exception, right? Because the cable person was coming or you get a new washing machine or something, where now that's probably get, you know, in many cases will shift to the other where I'm generally gonna work from home unless you know somebody's in town or have an important meeting or there's some special collaboration. Uh, that drives me to be in. But, you know, I wanna go back to Yukun and and really doubled down on. You know, I think most people spend too much time focusing, especially. We'll just say within the virtual events base where we play on the things you can't do virtually. We can't meet in the hall. We can't grab a quick coffee to drink instead of focusing on the positive things like we're accomplishing right here. You're in Belgium, right? Eric is in Ohio, were in California. Um, and you know, we didn't take three days to travel and and check into a hotel and and all that stuff to get together for this period of time. So there's a lot of stuff that digital enables. And I think, you know, people need to focus more on that versus continuing to focus on the two or three things that that it doesn't replace, and it doesn't replace those. So let's just get that off the table and move on with our lives because those are coming back anytime soon. >>No, totally. I think it's the balance of those things. It's guarding the fact that you're not necessarily working for home. I think the trick there is you could be sleeping at the office, but I think the positives airway way more out spoken. I you know, I look at myself I got much more exercise time in these last couple of months than I usually do because you don't travel. You don't have the jet lag and the connection. And then you talked about those face to face moments. I think a lot of people are, in a way, wanting to go back to the office part time, as Eric also explained. But a lot of it you could do virtually. We have virtual coffees with team or, you know, even here in Belgium are are local. General manager has, ah, virtual aperitif. Every Friday obviously skipped the one this week. But you know, there's there's ways to be very creative with the technology and the quality of the technology that the network enables, Um, you know, to to get the basketball world right, >>So I just we're gonna wrap the segment. I wanna give you guys both the last word. You both Francisco for a while and you know, Susie, we and the team on Definite has really grown this thing. I think we were there at the very beginning couple of 456 years ago. I can't keep track of time anymore, but you know, it's really really grown. And, you know, the timing is terrific to get into this more software defined world, which is where we are. I wonder if you could just, you know, kind of share a couple of thoughts is, you know, with a little bit of perspective. And you know what you're excited about today and kind of what you see coming down the road. Since you guys have been there for a while, you've been in the space. Uh, let's start with Yukun. >>Okay? I think the possibility it creates, I think, really program ability, software defined is really about the art of the possible. It's what you can dream up and then go code Eric talked about the relevance of it and how it maximizes that relevance. And a customer base is, um, you know, and then it is the evolution off the teams in terms of the creativity that they can bring to it. We're seeing really people dive into that in customers, um, co creating with us on. I think that's where we're going in terms of like the evolution off the value proposition there in terms of what technology can provide, but also how it impacts people as we discussed and and redefines process. >>I love that the art of the possible, which is a lot harder to execute in, uh, hardware than software certainly takes a lot longer. >>America, I >>love to get your thoughts. >>Absolutely. So I started my career in Cisco turning, putting I P phones onto the network. And back then, you know, it was, you know, 1 4002 when three idea of putting telephones onto the network was such a of just such an objectionable idea. And so many purists were telling us all the reasons it wouldn't work. Now, if we go forward again 19 years, the idea of not having them plugging into the network is a ridiculous idea. So we have a We're looking at an inflection point in this industry, and it's really it's not about programming is not necessarily about programming. It's about doing it smarter. It's about being more efficient. It's about driving automation. But again, it's about unlocking the value of what the network is. We've moved so far past what you know, just connectivity. The network touches everything and is more workload. Moves to the cloud is more workload moves to things like containers. The network is the really the only common element that ties all of these things together. The network needs to take its rightful place, uh, in the in the i t. Lexicon as being that critical for that critical insight provider for for how users are interacting with the network. How users air interacting with applications, how applications are interacting with one another. Program ability is a way to do that more efficiently with greater, greater degree of certainty, with much greater relevance into the overall delivery of I t services and digitization. So to me, I think we're gonna look back 20 years from now, probably even 10 and say, Man, we used to configure things manually. What was that like? I think I think really, this is This is the future, and I think we want to be aligned with where we're going versus where we've been. >>Well, coun Eric. Thank you for sharing your perspective. You know, it's it's really nice to have, you know, some historical reference on. It's also nice to be living in a new age where you can you can, you know, stay at the same company and and still refresh. You know, new challenges, new opportunities and grow this thing because a zoo said I remember those i p first i p phone days and I thought, Well, Ma Bell must be happy because the old Mother's Day problem is finally solved when we don't have to have a >>dedicated connection >>between every mother and every child in the middle of May. So good news. So thank you very much for sharing your, uh, your insights and really, really enjoyed the conversation. >>Thank you. >>Yeah. All >>right. He's kun. He was Eric. I'm Jeff. You're watching the Cube for continuing coverage of Cisco Definite Connect. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube presenting accelerating automation with definite brought to you by Cisco. >>Hey, welcome back. You're ready, Jeff Freak here with the Cube coming to you from our Palo Alto studios with ongoing coverage of Cisco Definite create. We've been going to definite create, I think, since the very beginning. This year, of course. Like everything else, it's it's virtual. So we're excited to cover it virtually and digitally like we have a lot of other shows here in 2020 and we're excited to have our next guest. We've got Kun Jacobs. He's the director of systems engineering. Francisco, Good to see you. Coun. >>Thank you for having me. >>And joining him is Eric Nappy is the VP of systems systems Engineering. Francisco. Good to see Eric. >>Good to be here. Thank you. >>Pleasure. So before we jump into kind of what's going on now, in this new great world of program ability and control, I want to kind of go back to the future for a minute. Because when I was doing some research for this interview, it was kun. I saw an old presentation that you were giving from 2006 about the changing evolution of the changing evolution of networking and moving from. I think the theme was a human centered, human centered network, and you were just starting to touch a little bit on video and online video. Oh my goodness, how far we have come. But but I would love to get kind of historical perspective because we've been talking a lot. And I know Eric Son plays football about the football analogy of the network is kind of like an offensive lineman where if they're doing a good job, you don't hear much about them. But they're really important to everything, and the only time you hear about him was when the flag is thrown. So if you look back with the historical perspective load and the numbers and the evolution of the network as we've moved to this modern time and you know thank goodness, because if Cove it hit five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you know all of us in the information space would not have been able to make this transition, so I just I just love to get some historical perspective because you've been kind of charting this and mapping this for a very long time. >>Yeah, we absolutely have. I think you know what you're referring to was back in the day the human network campaign and to your point that the load, the number of hosts, the traffic just overall, the intelligence of the network has just evolved tremendously over the last decade and a half, 15 years or so. And you look at where we are now in terms of the programmable nature of the network and what that enables in terms of new degrees of relevance that we can create for the customers on how you know the role of I t. Has changed entirely again, especially during this pandemic. You know, the fact that it's now as a service and elastic eyes is absolutely fundamental to being able to ensure, on an ongoing basis a great customer experience. And so it's been It's been a very interesting right, indeed. Yeah, >>And then and then just to close the loop, the one of your more later interviews talking to Sylvia. You're the question is, are you developer an engineer? So And your whole advice to all these network engineers is just Just don't jump in and start doing some coding and learning. So you know, the focus and really the emphasis and where the opportunity to differentiate is a complete is completely 15 years over to the, you know, really software to find side. >>Oh, absolutely. So, I mean, you look at how the software world and the network has come together and how we're applying now, you know, basically the same construct of C I C D pipeline to network infrastructure. Look at network really as code and get all of the benefits from that in the familiarity of it, the way that our engineers have had to evolve in that is just, you know, quite quite significant in like the skill set. And the best thing is jump in, you know, dip your toe in the water, but continue to evolve that skill set. And, you know, don't don't be shy. It's It's a leap of faith for some of us who've been in the industry a bit longer. You know, we like to look at ourselves as the craftsman of the network, but now it's definitely software Centris City and the, um, program ability. >>Right? So, Eric, you've got some digital exhaust out there, too, that I was able to dig up Going back to 2000 and 2 752 page book in the very back corner of a dark, dirty, dusty Amazon warehouse is managing Cisco Network Security 752 pages. Wow. How has security changed? From a time where before I could just read a book, a big book, you know, throw some protocols in and probably block a bunch of ports to the world that we live in today, where everything is connected, everything is a p. I driven. Everything is software defined. You've got pieces of workload spread out all over the place. And, Oh, by the way, you need to bake security in at every single level of the application stack. >>Yeah, No eso Wow. Kudos that you you found that book. I'm really impressed there, so thank you. Little street credit. So I want to get on something that you you talked about because I think it's very important to to this overall conversation if we think about the scale of the network and coun hit on it briefly. You talked about it as well. We're seeing a massive explosion of devices by the you know it's estimated By the end of this year, there's gonna be about 27 billion devices on the global Internet. That's about 3.7 devices for every man, woman and child life. And if we extrapolate that out over the course of the next decade on the growth trajectory, we're on. And if you look at some of the published research on this, it's estimated there could be upwards of 500 billion devices accessing the global Internet on a on a daily basis in the primarily that that that is I o T devices. That's digitally connected devices. Anything that can be connected will be connect, but then introduces a really interesting security challenge because every one of those devices that is accessing the global Internet is within a company's infrastructure. Accessing pieces of corporate data is a potential attack factor, so we really need Thio and I think the right expression for this is we need to reimagine security because security is, as you said, not about perimeters. You know, I wrote that book back in 2002. I was talking about firewalls and a cutting edge technology was intrusion, prevention and intrusion detection. Now we need to look at security. Really? In the in the guise of under the under the under the realm of really two aspects the identity. Who is accessing the data in the context, What data is being access and that is going to require a level of intelligence, a level of automation and technologies like machine learning, an automated intelligence. They're going to be our artificial intelligence. Rather are gonna be table stakes because the sheer scale of what we're trying to secure is going to be untenable under current. You know, just current security practices mean the network is gonna have to be incredibly intelligent and leverage again, a lot of that AI type of data to match patterns of potential attacks and ideally, shut them down before they ever cause any type of damage. >>Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, one thing That cove it has done a bunk many things is kind of re taught us all about the power of exponential curves and how extremely large those things are and how fast they grow. We had Dave Rennes in on it Google Cloud a couple years ago, and I remember him talking about early days of Google when they were starting to map out kind of, as you describe kind of map out their growth curves, and they just figured out they could not hire if they hired everybody, they couldn't hire enough people to deal with it, right? So really kind of rethinking automation and re thinking about the way that you manage these things and and the level right, the old Is it a pet or is it or is it, um, part of the herd? And I think it's interesting what you talked about coun really human powered Internet and being driven by a lot of this video. But to what you just said, Erik, the next big wave right is I, O. T and five G. And I think you know, you talk about 3.7 of devices per person. That's nothing compared toa right, all these sensors and all these devices and all these factories because five G is really targeted to machine to machines, which there's ah lot of them, and they trade a lot of information really, really quickly. So, you know, I want to go back to Yukun thinking about this next great wave in a five G i o t kind of driven world where it's kind of like one voice kind of fell off compared to I p traffic on the network, I think you're going to see the same thing. Kind of human generated data relative to machine generated data is also gonna fall off dramatically. Is the machine generated data just skyrockets through the roof? >>Yeah. No, absolutely. And I think thio also what Eric touched on the visibility on that and they'll be able to process that data at the edge that's going to catalyze cloud adoption even further. And it's gonna, you know, make the role of the network the connectivity of it all, and the security within that crucially important. And then you look at the role of program ability. Within that, we're see the evolution going so fast. You look at the element of the software defined network in an I. O. T. Speed space. We see that we have hosts there that are not necessarily, you know, behaving like other hosts would on a network, for example, manufacturing floor production, robot or security camera. And what we're seeing is we're seeing you know, partners and customers employing program ability to make sure that we overcome some of the shortcomings, uh, in terms of where the network is at. But then how do you customize it in terms of the relevance that it can provide, bringing on board those those hosts in a very transparent way on then, you know, keep keep the agility of it and keep the speed of innovation going right, >>right. So, Eric, I want to come back to you and shift gears kind of back to the people will leave the A. D and the machines along along for middle minute. But I'm curious about what does beat the boss. I mean, I I go to your LinkedIn profile and it's just filled with congratulatory statements, but everyone's talking about beating the boss. You know, it's it's a really, you know, kind of interesting and different way toe to motivate people to build this new skill set in terms of getting software certifications within the Cisco world. And I just thought it was really cute the way that you clearly got people motivated because there's posts all over the place and they've all got their their nice big badge of their certification. But, you know, at a higher level, it is a different motivation to be a developer versus and engineering a technician. And it's a, you know, kind of a different point of view. And I just wonder if you could share, you know, some of the ways that you're kind of encouraging, you know, kind of this transformation within your own workforce as well as the partners, etcetera and really adopting kind of almost a software first in this program kind of point of view versus, you know, I'm just wiring stuff up. >>Apparently, a lot of people like to beat me. So I mean, that in of itself was was a was a great success. But, you know, if we think we take a step back, you know, what is Cisco about as an organization? I mean, obviously, he looked back to the very early days of our vision, right? It was. It was to change the way the world, you know, worked, played, live and learn. And if you think about and you hit on this when we were you know, your discussion with with With Kun in the early days of Cove it. We really saw that play out as so much shifted from, you know, in person type of interactions to virtual interactions in the network that that our customers, our partners, our employees built over the course of the last several last three decades really help the world continue Thio to to do business for students to continue to go thio school or, you know, clinicians to connect with patients. If I think about that mission to meet program ability is just the next generation of that mission, uh, continuing to enable the world to communicate, continuing to enable customers, employees, partners to, uh, essentially leverage the network for more than just connectivity. Now the leverage it for critical insight again, If we look at some of the some of the use cases that we're seeing for social distancing and contact tracing, the network has a really important place to play there because we can pull insight from the but it isn't necessarily and out of the box type of integration. So I look at program ability and and what we're doing with debt net to give relevance to the network for those types of really critical conversations that every organization is having right now. It's a way to extrapolate its away thio full critical data so that I can make a decision and I if that decisions automated or if that decision requires some type of a manual intervention, regardless, we're still about connecting, or in this case, we're connecting insight with the people who need it most. The definite pounds we ran is really in respect for how critical this new skills that's going to be. It's not enough. Like I said, just to connect the world anymore. We need to leverage that network, the network for that critical insight. And when we dropped were created to beat the boss challenge, it was really simple. Hey, guys, I think this is important and I am going to go out, and I'm gonna achieve the certification myself because I want to continue to be very relevant. I'm gonna continue to be able to provide that insight for my customers and partners. So therefore I'm going for it. Anybody can get there before me. Maybe there's a little incentive tied to and the incentive, although it's funny, we interviewed a lot of ah, a lot of our team who achieved it Incentive with secondary. They just wanted have bragging rights like, Yeah, I beat Eric, Right, Right. >>Absolutely. No, that Z you know, put your money where your mouth is, right? If it's important than what you know, you should do it too. And you know, the whole not asking people to do what you wouldn't do yourself. So I think there's a lot of good leadership, uh, leadership lessons there as well. But I wanna extend kind of the conversation on the Koven impact. Right? Because I'm sure you've seen all the social media means you know who's driving your digital transformation, the CEO of the CMO or cove it. And we all know the answer to the question. But you know, you guys have already been dealing with kind of increased complexity around enterprise infrastructure, world in terms of cloud and public cloud and hybrid cloud and multi cloud, and people are trying to move stuff all the way around. Now suddenly had this co vid moment right in March, which is really a light switch moment. People didn't have time to plan or prepare for suddenly everybody working from home and it's not only you but your spouse and your kids and everybody else. So but now we're six months plus into this thing, and I would just love to get your perspective, you know, and kind of the change from Oh, my goodness, we have to react to the light switch moment. What do we do to make sure people can can get get what they need when they need it from where they are? But but then really moving from this is an emergency situation. Stopgap situation toe. This is going to extend for some period of time. And even when it's the acute crisis is over, you know this is going to drive. Ah, riel change in the way that people communicate in the way that people where they sit and do their job and kind of how customers are responding accordingly as the you know, kind of the narrative has changed from an emergency stop gap to this is the new normal that we really need thio to plan for. >>So I think I think you said it very well. I think anything that could be digitized any any interaction that could be driven virtually waas. And what's interesting is we, as you said. We went from that light switch moment where, and I believe the status this and I'll probably get the number wrong. But like in the United States here at the beginning, at the end of February, about 2% of the knowledge worker population was virtual, you know, working from home or in a remote work environment. And over the course of about 11 days, that number went from 2% to 70% in interesting that it worked. You know, there was a lot of hiccups along the way, and there was a lot of organizations making really quick decisions on How do I enable VPN scale of mass? How doe I, you know, leverage. You know, things like WebEx for virtual meetings in virtual connectivity much faster now that as you said that we've kind of gotten out of the fog of war or frog fog of battle organizations, we're looking at what they accomplished. And it was nothing short of Herculean and looking at this now from a transition. Thio Oh my gosh, we need to change, too. We have an opportunity to change and we're looking. We see a lot of organizations specifically around financial services, health care through the K through 20 educational environment, all looking at how can they doom or virtually for a couple of reasons? Obviously, there is a significant safety factor, and again, we're still in that we're still in the height of this pandemic. They want to make sure their employees, their customers, students patients remain safe. But second, we've found in discussions with a lot of senior I T executives and our customers that people are happier working from home. People are more productive working from home. And that again, the network that's been built over the course of the last few decades has been resilient enough to allow that to happen. And then, third, there is a potential cost savings here outside of people. The next most expensive resource that organizations are paying for is real estate. If they can shrink that real estate footprint while providing a better user experience at the locations that they're maintaining again leveraging things like location services, leveraging things like, uh, unified collaboration that's very personalized to the end users experience, they're going to do that and again they're going to save money. They're gonna have happier employees, and ultimately they're gonna make their their employees in their customers a lot safer. So we see, we believe that there is in some parts of the economy, a shift that is going to be more permanent. And some estimates put it as high as 15% of the current workforce is going to stay today in a virtual or a semi virtual working environment for the foreseeable future. >>Interesting. And I would say I'd say 15% is low, especially if you if you qualify it with, you know, part time, right? There was a great interview were doing and, you know, talk about working from home. He used to work from home as the exception, right? Because the cable person was coming or you get a new washing machine or something, where now that's probably get, you know, in many cases will shift to the other where I'm generally gonna work from home unless you know somebody's in town or have an important meeting or there's some special collaboration. Uh, that drives me to be in. But, you know, I wanna go back to Yukun and and really doubled down on. You know, I think most people spend too much time focusing, especially. We'll just say within the virtual events base where we play on the things you can't do virtually. We can't meet in the hall. We can't grab a quick coffee to drink instead of focusing on the positive things like we're accomplishing right here. You're in Belgium, right? Eric is in Ohio, were in California. Um, and you know, we didn't take three days to travel and and check into a hotel and and all that stuff to get together for this period of time. So there's a lot of stuff that digital enables. And I think, you know, people need to focus more on that versus continuing to focus on the two or three things that that it doesn't replace, and it doesn't replace those. So let's just get that off the table and move on with our lives because those are coming back anytime soon. >>No, totally. I think it's the balance of those things. It's guarding the fact that you're not necessarily working for home. I think the trick there is you could be sleeping at the office, but I think the positives airway way more out spoken. I you know, I look at myself I got much more exercise time in these last couple of months than I usually do because you don't travel. You don't have the jet lag and the connection. And then you talked about those face to face moments. I think a lot of people are, in a way, wanting to go back to the office part time, as Eric also explained. But a lot of it you could do virtually. We have virtual coffees with team or, you know, even here in Belgium are are local. General manager has, ah, virtual aperitif. Every Friday obviously skipped the one this week. But you know, there's there's ways to be very creative with the technology and the quality of the technology that the network enables, Um, you know, to to get the basketball world right, >>So I just we're gonna wrap the segment. I wanna give you guys both the last word. You both Francisco for a while and you know, Susie, we and the team on Definite has really grown this thing. I think we were there at the very beginning couple of 456 years ago. I can't keep track of time anymore, but you know, it's really really grown. And, you know, the timing is terrific to get into this more software defined world, which is where we are. I wonder if you could just, you know, kind of share a couple of thoughts is, you know, with a little bit of perspective. And you know what you're excited about today and kind of what you see coming down the road. Since you guys have been there for a while, you've been in the space. Uh, let's start with Yukun. >>Okay? I think the possibility it creates, I think, really program ability, software defined is really about the art of the possible. It's what you can dream up and then go code Eric talked about the relevance of it and how it maximizes that relevance. And a customer base is, um, you know, and then it is the evolution off the teams in terms of the creativity that they can bring to it. We're seeing really people dive into that in customers, um, co creating with us on. I think that's where we're going in terms of like the evolution off the value proposition there in terms of what technology can provide, but also how it impacts people as we discussed and and redefines process. >>I love that the art of the possible, which is a lot harder to execute in, uh, hardware than software certainly takes a lot longer. >>America, I >>love to get your thoughts. >>Absolutely. So I started my career in Cisco turning, putting I P phones onto the network. And back then, you know, it was, you know, 1 4002 when three idea of putting telephones onto the network was such a of just such an objectionable idea. And so many purists were telling us all the reasons it wouldn't work. Now, if we go forward again 19 years, the idea of not having them plugging into the network is a ridiculous idea. So we have a We're looking at an inflection point in this industry, and it's really it's not about programming is not necessarily about programming. It's about doing it smarter. It's about being more efficient. It's about driving automation. But again, it's about unlocking the value of what the network is. We've moved so far past what you know, just connectivity. The network touches everything and is more workload. Moves to the cloud is more workload moves to things like containers. The network is the really the only common element that ties all of these things together. The network needs to take its rightful place, uh, in the in the i t. Lexicon as being that critical for that critical insight provider for for how users are interacting with the network. How users air interacting with applications, how applications are interacting with one another. Program ability is a way to do that more efficiently with greater, greater degree of certainty, with much greater relevance into the overall delivery of I t services and digitization. So to me, I think we're gonna look back 20 years from now, probably even 10 and say, Man, we used to configure things manually. What was that like? I think I think really, this is This is the future, and I think we want to be aligned with where we're going versus where we've been. >>Well, coun Eric. Thank you for sharing your perspective. You know, it's it's really nice to have, you know, some historical reference on. It's also nice to be living in a new age where you can you can, you know, stay at the same company and and still refresh. You know, new challenges, new opportunities and grow this thing because a zoo said I remember those i p first i p phone days and I thought, Well, Ma Bell must be happy because the old Mother's Day problem is finally solved when we don't have to have a >>dedicated connection >>between every mother and every child in the middle of May. So good news. So thank you very much for sharing your, uh, your insights and really, really enjoyed the conversation. >>Thank you. >>Yeah. All >>right. He's kun. He was Eric. I'm Jeff. You're watching the Cube for continuing coverage of Cisco Definite Connect. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

>>Around the globe. It's the presenting accelerating automation brought to you by Cisco. >>Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with the cube coming to you from our Palo Alto studios with ongoing coverage of Cisco dev net create, we've been going to dev net create, I think since the very beginning this year, of course, like everything else is virtual. So we're excited to cover it virtually and digitally. Like we have a lot of other shows here in 2020, and we're excited to have our next guest. We've got a Coon Jacobs. He's the director of systems engineering for Cisco. Good to see Kuhn. >>Thank you for having me >>And joining him as Eric nappy is the VP of system systems engineering for Cisco. Good to see Eric. Good to be here. Thank you. Pleasure. So before we jump into kind of what's going on now in this new great world of programmability and in control, I want to kind of go back to the future for a minute because when I was doing some research for this interview, it was Coon. I saw an old presentation that you were giving from 2006 about the changing evolution of the, uh, the changing evolution of networking and moving from. I think that theme was a human centered, a human centered network. And you were just starting to touch a little bit on video and online video. Oh my goodness, how far we have come, but, but I would love to get kind of a historical perspective because we've been talking a lot in, I know Eric son plays football about the football analogy of the network is kind of like an offensive lineman where if they're doing a good job, you don't hear much about them, but they're really important to everything. >>And the only time you hear about them is when a flag gets thrown. So if you look back with the historical perspective, the load and the numbers and the evolution of the network, as we've moved to this modern time and, you know, thank goodness cause of COVID hit five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you know, all of us in the information space would not have been able to make this transition. So I just, I just love to get some historical perspective cause you've been kind of charting this and mapping this for a very long time. >>Yeah, we absolutely have. I think, you know, what you're referring to was back in the day, the human network campaign, and to your point, the load, the number of hosts that traffic that just overall the intelligence of the network has just evolved tremendously over these last decade and a half, uh, 15 years or so. And you look at where we are now in terms of the programmable nature of the network and what that enables in terms of new degrees of relevance that we can create for the customers. Um, and how, you know, the role of it has changed entirely again, especially during this pandemic. You know, the fact that it's now as a service and elastic, uh, is, is absolutely fundamental to being able to ensure, uh, on an ongoing basis, a great customer experience. And so, uh, it's been, it's been, uh, a very interesting ride. >>And then, and then just to close the loop, that one of your more later interviews talking to Sylvia, your question is, are you a developer or an engineer? So it was, and, and your whole advice to all these network engineers is just, just don't jump in and start doing some coding and learning. So, you know, the focus and really the emphasis and where the opportunity to differentiate this is a company is completely shifting gears over to the, you know, really software defined side. >>Oh, absolutely. So I mean, you look at how the software world and the network has come together and how we're applying now, you know, basically the same construct of CIC D pipeline to network, uh, infrastructure, look at network really as code and get all of the benefits from that. And the familiarity of it, the way that our engineers have had to evolve. And that is just, you know, quite, quite significant in, in, in like the skill set. And the best thing is jump in, right. You know, dip your toe in the water, but continue to evolve that skill set. And, you know, don't, don't be shy. It's, it's a leap of faith for some of us who've been in the industry a bit longer. Uh, you know, we like to look at ourselves as the craftsman of the network, but now it's definitely a software centricity and programmability, right? >>So Eric, you've got some digital exhaust out there too, that I was able to dig up going back to 2002 752 page book and the very back corner of a dark dirty dusty Amazon warehouse is managing Cisco network security, 752 pages. Wow. How has security changed from a time where before I could just read a book, a big book, you know, throw some protocols in and probably block a bunch of ports to the world that we live in today, where everything is connected. Everything is API driven, everything is software defined. You've got pieces of workload spread out all over the place and Oh, by the way, you need to bake security in at every single level of the application stack. >>Yeah, no I'm so wow. Cocoon is that you, you found that book on the I'm really impressed. There was a thank you a little street, correct. So I want to hit on something that you, you talked about. Cause I think it's very important to, to this overall conversation. If we think about the scale of the network and Coon hit on it briefly, you talked about as well, we're seeing a massive explosion of devices by the I, you know, it's estimated by the end of this year, there's going to be about 27 billion devices on the global internet. That's about 3.7 devices for every man woman and child life. And if we extrapolate that out over the course of the next decade on the growth trajectory we're on. And if you look at some of the published research on this, it's estimated there could be upwards of 500 billion devices accessing the global internet on a, on a daily basis in primarily that, that, that is a IOT devices, that's digitally connected devices. >>Anything that can be connected will be connected, but then introduces a really interesting security challenge because every one of those devices that is accessing the global internet is within a company's infrastructure or accessing pieces of corporate data is a potential factor. So we need to, and I think the right expression for this is we need to reimagine security because security is, as you said, not about parameters. You know, I wrote that book back in 2002, I was talking about firewalls and, and a cutting edge technology was intrusion prevention and intrusion detection. Now we need to look at security really in the, in the guise of, or under the, under the, under the realm of really two aspects, the identity who is accessing the data in the context, what data is being accessed. And that is going to require a level of intelligence, a level of automation and the technologies like machine learning and automated intelligence are going to be our artificial intelligence rather are going to be table stakes because the sheer scale of what we're trying to secure is going to be untenable under current, you know, just current security practices. I mean, the network is going to have to be incredibly intelligent and leverage again, a lot of that, uh, that AI type of data to match patterns of potential attacks and ideally shut them down before they ever cause any type of damage. >>Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, one thing that COVID has done a bunk many things is kind of retaught us all about the power of exponential curves and how extremely large those things are and how fast they grow. We had Dave runs it on a Google cloud a couple of years ago. And I remember him talking about early days of Google when they were starting to map out kind of, as you described kind of map out their growth curves, and they just figured out they could not hire if they hired everybody, they couldn't hire enough people to deal with it. Right. So really kind of rethinking automation and rethinking about the way that you manage these things and the level, right. The old, is it a pet or is it, or is it, um, uh, part of a herd? And I think it's interesting what you talked about, uh, can really the human powered internet and being driven by a lot of this video, but to what you just said, Eric, the next big wave, right. >>Is IOT and five G. And I think, you know, you talked about 3.7 of, uh, devices per person. That's nothing compared to right. All these sensors and all these devices and all these factories, because five G is really targeted to machine the machines, which there's a lot of them and they trade a lot of information really, really quickly. So, you know, I want to go back to you Kuhn thinking about this next great wave in a five G IOT kind of driven world where it's kind of like when voice kind of fell off compared to IP traffic on the network. I think you're going to see the same thing, kind of human generated data relative to machine generated data is also going to fall off dramatically as a machine generated data, just skyrocket through the roof. >>Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think too, also what Eric touched on the visibility on that, and they've been able to process that data at the edge. That's going to catalyze cloud adoption even further, and it's going to, you know, make the role of the network, the connectivity of it all and the security within that crucially important. And then you look at the role of programmability within that. We're seeing the evolution going so fast. You look at the element of the software defined network in an IOT speed space. We see that we have hosts there that are not necessarily, um, you know, behaving like other hosts would, uh, on a network, for example, manufacturing floor production robot, or a security camera. And what we're seeing is we're seeing, you know, partners and customers employing programmability to make sure that we overcome some of the shortcomings, uh, in terms of where the network is at, but then how do you customize it in terms of the relevance that it can provide, uh, bringing on board, uh, those, uh, those hosts in a very transparent way, and then, you know, keep, keep the agility of it and keep the, the speed of innovation going, >>Right. So Eric, I want to come back to you and shift gears kind of back to the people will leave the IOT and the machines along, along for a minute, but I'm curious about what does beat the boss. I mean, I go to your LinkedIn profile and it's just filled with congratulatory statements, but everyone's talking about beating the boss. You know, it's, it's a really, you know, kind of interesting and different way to, to motivate people, to build this new skillset in terms of getting software certifications, uh, within the Cisco world. And I just thought it was really cute the way that you clearly got people motivated, cause there's posts all over the place and they've all got their, their nice big badge of their certification. But, you know, at a higher level, it is a different motivation to be a developer versus an engineer and a technician. And it's kind of a different point of view. And I just wonder if you could share, you know, some of the ways that you're, you're kind of encouraging, you know, kind of this transformation within your own workforce, as well as the partners, et cetera, and really adopting kind of almost a software first and this program kind of point of view versus, you know, I'm just wiring stuff up. >>Apparently a lot of people like to beat me and of itself was a, was a, it was a great success, but you know, if we think we take a step back, you know, what is Cisco about as an organization? Uh, I mean, obviously if you look back to the very early days of our vision, right, it was, it was to change the way the world worked, played, live and learn. And that you think about, and you hit on this when we were, you know, you were discussion with co with Kuhn in the early days of COVID. We really saw that play out as so much shifted from, you know, in-person type of interactions to virtual interactions in the network that, uh, that our, our customers, our partners, our employees built over the course of the last several years, the last three decades really helped the world continue to, um, to, to do business for students to continue to go to a school or clinicians to connect with patients. >>If I think about that mission to me, programmability is just the next iteration of that mission, continuing to enable the world to communicate, continuing, to enable customers, employees, uh, partners, uh, to essentially leverage the network for more than just now to leverage it for critical insight. Again, if we look at some of the, uh, some of the use cases that we're seeing for social distancing and contact tracing, the network has a really important place to play there because we can pull insight from it, but it isn't necessarily an out of the box type of integration. So I look at programmability and in what we're doing with, with dev net to give relevance to the network for those types of really critical conversations that every organization is having right now, it's a way to extrapolate. It's a way to pull critical data so that I can make a decision. >>And if that decision is automated, or if that decision requires some type of a manual intervention, regardless, we're still about connecting. And in this case, we're connecting insight with the people who need it most, right. The debit challenge we ran is really in respect for how critical this new skill set is going to be. It's not enough. Like I said, just to connect the world anymore. We need to leverage that network, the network for that critical insight. And when we drove, we were, we created the beat, the boss challenge. It was really simple. Hey guys, I think this is important and I am going to go out and I'm going to achieve the certification myself, because I want to continue to be very relevant. I want to continue to be able to provide that insight for my customers and partners. So therefore I'm going for it. Anybody can get there before me, maybe there's a little incentive tied to it and the incentive, although it's funny, we interviewed a lot of, a lot of our team who, uh, who achieved it when incentive was secondary, they just wanted to have the bragging rights, like, yeah, I beat Eric, >>You know, putting your money where your mouth is, right. If it's important, then why you should do it too. And, and you know, the whole, you're not asking people to do what you wouldn't do yourself. So I think there's a lot of good leadership, uh, leadership lessons there as well, but I want to extend kind of the conversation on the covert impact, right? Cause I'm sure you've seen all the social media means, you know, who's driving your digital transformation, the CEO, the CMO or COVID. And we all know the answer to the question, but you know, you guys have already been dealing with kind of an increased complexity around enterprise infrastructure world in terms of cloud and public cloud and hybrid cloud and multi cloud. And people are trying to move stuff all, all the way around now suddenly had this COVID moment right in, in March, which is really a light switch moment. >>People didn't have time to plan or prepare for suddenly everybody working from home. And it's not only you, but your spouse and your kids and everybody else. So, but now we're six months plus into this thing. And I would just love to get your perspective and kind of the change from, Oh my goodness, we have to react to the light switch moment. What did we do to make sure people can, can get, get what they need when they need it from where they are. Uh, but, but then really moving from this is a, an emergency situation, a stop gap situation to, Hmm, this is going to extend for some period of time. And even when it's the acute crisis is over, you know, this is going to drive a real change in the way that people communicate in the way that people, where they sit and do their jobs and kind of how customers are responding accordingly as the, you know, kind of the narrative has changed from an emergency stop gap to this is the new normal that we really need to plan for. >>So, uh, I think, I think you said it very well. I think anything that could be digitized, any, any interaction that could be driven virtually was, and what's interesting is we, as you said, we went from that light switch moment where I believe the stat is this, and I'll probably get the number wrong, but like in the United States here at the beginning, at the end of February, about 2% of the knowledge worker population was virtual, you know, working from home or in a, in a remote work environment. And over the course of about 11 days, that number went from 2% to 70%. Wow. Interesting that it worked, you know, there was a lot of hiccups along the way, and there was a lot of organizations making really quick decisions on how do I enable VPN scale at mass? How do I leverage, uh, you know, things like WebEx for virtual meetings and virtual connectivity, uh, much faster now that as you said, that we kinda gotten out of the fog of, of, of, of war or for our fog of battle organizations are looking at what they accomplished. >>And it was nothing short of Herculean and looking at this now from a transition to, Oh my gosh, we need to change too. We have an opportunity to change. And we're looking, we see a lot of organizations specifically around, uh, financial services, healthcare, uh, the, uh, the K through 20, uh, educational environment, all looking at how can they do more virtually for a couple of reasons. Obviously there is a significant safety factor. And again, we're still in that we're still on the height of this pandemic. They want to make sure their employees, their customers, students, patients remain safe. But second, um, we've found in, in discussions with a lot of senior it executives that our customers, that people are happier working from home, people are more productive working from home. And that, again, the network that's been built over the course of the last few decades has been resilient enough to allow that to happen. >>And then third, there is a potential cost savings here outside of people. The next most expensive resource that organizations are paying for is real estate. If they can shrink that real estate footprint while providing a better user experience at the locations that they're maintaining, again, leveraging things like location services, leveraging things like a unified collaboration. That's very personalized to the end user's experience. They're going to do that. And again, they're going to save money. They're going to have happier employees and ultimately they're going to make their, uh, their employees and their customers a lot safer. So we see, we believe that there is in some parts of the economy, a shift that is going to be more permanent and some estimates put it as high as 15 of the current workforce is going to stay in there in a virtual or a semi virtual working environment for the foreseeable future. >>And I, and I, and I would say, I'd say 15% is low, especially if you, if you qualify it with, you know, part-time right. I, there was a great interview we were doing and know talking about working from home. We used to work from home as the exception, right? Cause the cable person was coming, are you getting a new washing machine or something? We're now that's probably getting, you know, in many cases we'll shift to the other where I'm generally going to work from home, unless, you know, somebody is in town or having an important meeting or there's some special collaboration, uh, that drives me to be in. But you know, I want to go back to Yukon and, and really doubled down on, you know, I think most people spent too much time focusing, especially at, we'll just say within the virtual event space where we play on the things you can't do virtually, we can't meet in the hall. >>We can't grab a quick coffee and a drink instead of focusing on the positive things like we're accomplishing right here. You're in Belgium, right. Eric is in Ohio, we're in California. Um, and you know, we didn't take three days to travel and, and check into a hotel and all that stuff to get together, uh, for this period of time. So there's a lot of stuff that digital enables. And I think, you know, people need to focus more on that versus continuing to focus on the two or three things that it doesn't replace and it doesn't replace those. So let's just get that off the table and move on with our lives. Cause those aren't coming back anytime soon. >>No, totally. I think it's the balance of those things. It's guarding the fact that you're not necessarily working for home. I think the trick there is you could be sleeping at the office, but I think the positives are way, way more outspoken. Um, I, you know, I look at myself, I got much more exercise time in these last couple of months than I usually do because you don't travel. You don't have the jet lag and the connection. And then you talked about those face to face moments. I think a lot of people are in a way, um, wanting to go back to the office part-time as, as Eric also explain, but a lot of it you can do virtually we have virtual coffees with team or, you know, even here in Belgium, our, our local general manager has a virtual aperitif every Friday, obviously skip the one this week. But, uh, you know, there's, there's ways to be very creative with the technology and the quality of the technology that the network enables, um, you know, to, to get the best of both worlds. >>Right? So I just, we're going to wrap the segment. I want to give you guys both the last word you both been at Cisco for a while and, you know, Susie, we, and the team on dev net has really grown this thing. I think we were there at the very beginning couple of four or five, six years ago. I can't keep track of time anymore, but you know, it's really, really grown and, you know, the timing is terrific to get into this more software defined world, which is where we are. I wonder if you could just kind of share a couple of thoughts as you know, with a little bit of perspective and you know, what you're excited about today and kind of what you see coming down the road since you guys have been there for a while you've been in this space, uh, let's start with you Yukon. >>Okay. I think the possibility creates, I think really programmability software defined is really about the art of the possible it's what you can dream up and then go code. Um, Eric talked about the relevance of it and how it maximizes the relevance on a customer basis. Um, you know, and then it is the evolution of the teams in terms of the creativity that they can bring to us. We've seen really people dive into that and customers, um, co-creating with us. And I think that's where we're going in terms of the evolution of the value proposition there in terms of what technology can provide, but also how it impacts people. Has it been discussed and, and redefines process. I love that >>The art of the possible, which is a lot harder to execute in a, in hardware than software certainly takes a lot longer. I'd love to get your, uh, your thoughts. >>Absolutely. So I started my career at Cisco, uh, turning, uh, putting IP phones onto the network. And back then, you know, it was, you know, 2001, 2002, when, uh, the idea of putting telephones onto the network was such a, um, just such an objectionable idea. And so many purists were telling us all the reasons it wouldn't work. Now, if we go forward again, 19 years, the idea of not having them plugging into the network is a ridiculous idea. So we have a, we're looking at an inflection point in this industry, and it's really, it's not about programming. It's not necessarily about programming. It's about doing it smarter. It's about being more efficient. It's about driving automation, but again, it's, it's about unlocking the value of what the network is. We've moved so far past. What can, you know, just connectivity, the network touches everything and there's more workload moves to the cloud is more workload moves to things like containers. >>Um, the network is the really, the only common element that ties all of these things together. The network needs to take his rightful place. Now in the end, the it lexicon as being that critical or that critical insight provider, um, for, for how users are interacting with the network, how users are interacting with applications, how applications are interacting with one, another program ability is a way to do that more efficiently, uh, with greater, a greater degree of certainty with much greater relevance into the overall delivery of it services and digitization. So to me, I think we're going to look back 20 years from now, probably even 10 and say, man, we used to configure things manually. What was that like? And I think, I think really this is, this is the future. And I think we want to be aligned with where we're going versus where we've been. >>Right. Well, Coon, Eric, thank you for, for sharing your perspective. You know, it's, it's really nice to have, you know, some historical reference, uh, and it's also nice to be living in a new age where you can, you can, you know, stay at the same company and still refresh, you know, new challenges, new opportunities and grow this thing. Cause as you said, I remember those IP, the first IP phone days. And I thought, well, my bell must be happy because the old mother's day problem is finally solved. And when we don't have to have a dedicated connection between every mother and every child in the middle of may. So good news. So thank you very much for sharing your, uh, your insights and really, really enjoyed the conversation. >>Yeah. >>Right. He's cool. He was Eric I'm Jeff. You're watching the cube for continuing coverage of Cisco dev net connect. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

>> Narrator: From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hello everyone, welcome to this special CUBE interview. We are here at theCUBE Virtual covering AWS Summit Virtual Online. This is Amazon's Summits that they normally do all around the world. They're doing them now virtually. We are here in the Palo Alto COVID-19 quarantine crew getting all the interviews here with a special guest, Vice President of Machine Learning, we have Swami, CUBE Alumni, who's been involved in not only the machine learning, but all of the major activity around AWS around how machine learning's evolved, and all the services around machine learning workflows from transcribe, recognition, you name it. Swami, you've been at the helm for many years, and we've also chatted about that before. Welcome to the virtual CUBE covering AWS Summit. >> Hey, pleasure to be here, John. >> Great to see you. I know times are tough. Everything okay at Amazon? You guys are certainly cloud scaled, not too unfamiliar of working remotely. You do a lot of travel, but what's it like now for you guys right now? >> We're actually doing well. We have been I mean, this many of, we are working hard to make sure we continue to serve our customers. Even from their site, we have done, yeah, we had taken measures to prepare, and we are confident that we will be able to meet customer demands per capacity during this time. So we're also helping customers to react quickly and nimbly, current challenges, yeah. Various examples from amazing startups working in this area to reorganize themselves to serve customer. We can talk about that common layer. >> Large scale, you guys have done a great job and fun watching and chronicling the journey of AWS, as it now goes to a whole 'nother level with the post pandemic were expecting even more surge in everything from VPNs, workspaces, you name it, and all these workloads are going to be under a lot of pressure to do more and more value. You've been at the heart of one of the key areas, which is the tooling, and the scale around machine learning workflows. And this is where customers are really trying to figure out what are the adequate tools? How do my teams effectively deploy machine learning? Because now, more than ever, the data is going to start flowing in as virtualization, if you will, of life, is happening. We're going to be in a hybrid world with life. We're going to be online most of the time. And I think COVID-19 has proven that this new trajectory of virtualization, virtual work, applications are going to have to flex, and adjust, and scale, and be reinvented. This is a key thing. What's going on with machine learning, what's new? Tell us what are you guys doing right now. >> Yeah, I see now, in AWS, we offer broadest-- (poor audio capture obscures speech) All the way from like expert practitioners, we offer our frameworks and infrastructure layer support for all popular frameworks from like TensorFlow, Apache MXNet, and PyTorch, PowerShell, (poor audio capture obscures speech) custom chips like inference share. And then, for aspiring ML developers, who want to build their own custom machine learning models, we're actually building, we offer SageMaker, which is our end-to-end machine learning service that makes it easy for customers to be able to build, train, tune, and debug machine learning models, and it is one of our fastest growing machine learning services, and many startups and enterprises are starting to standardize their machine learning building on it. And then, the final tier is geared towards actually application developers, who did not want to go into model-building, just want an easy API to build capabilities to transcribe, run voice recognition, and so forth. And I wanted to talk about one of the new capabilities we are about to launch, enterprise search called Kendra, and-- >> So actually, so just from a news standpoint, that's GA now, that's being announced at the Summit. >> Yeah. >> That was a big hit at re:Invent, Kendra. >> Yeah. >> A lot of buzz! It's available. >> Yep, so I'm excited to say that Kendra is our new machine learning powered, highly accurate enterprise search service that has been made generally available. And if you look at what Kendra is, we have actually reimagined the traditional enterprise search service, which has historically been an underserved market segment, so to speak. If you look at it, on the public search, on the web search front, it is a relatively well-served area, whereas the enterprise search has been an area where data in enterprise, there are a huge amount of data silos, that is spread in file systems, SharePoint, or Salesforce, or various other areas. And deploying a traditional search index has always that even simple persons like when there's an ID desk open or when what is the security policy, or so forth. These kind of things have been historically, people have to find within an enterprise, let alone if I'm actually in a material science company or so forth like what 3M was trying to do. Enable collaboration of researchers spread across the world, to search their experiment archives and so forth. It has been super hard for them to be able to things, and this is one of those areas where Kendra has enabled the new, of course, where Kendra is a deep learning powered search service for enterprises, which breaks down data silos, and collects actually data across various things all the way from S3, or file system, or SharePoint, and various other data sources, and uses state-of-art NLP techniques to be able to actually index them, and then, you can query using natural language queries such as like when there's my ID desk-scoping, and the answer, it won't just give you a bunch of random, right? It'll tell you it opens at 8:30 a.m. in the morning. >> Yeah. >> Or what is the credit card cashback returns for my corporate credit card? It won't give you like a long list of links related to it. Instead it'll give you answer to be 2%. So it's that much highly accurate. (poor audio capture obscures speech) >> People who have been in the enterprise search or data business know how hard this is. And it is super, it's been a super hard problem, the old in the old guard models because databases were limiting to schemas and whatnot. Now, you have a data-driven world, and this becomes interesting. I think the big takeaway I took away from Kendra was not only the new kind of discovery navigation that's possible, in terms of low latency, getting relevant content, but it's really the under-the-covers impact, and I think I'd like to get your perspective on this because this has been an active conversation inside the community, in cloud scale, which is data silos have been a problem. People have had built these data silos, and they really talk about breaking them down but it's really again hard, there's legacy problems, and well, applications that are tied to them. How do I break my silos down? Or how do I leverage either silos? So I think you guys really solve a problem here around data silos and scale. >> Yeah. >> So talk about the data silos. And then, I'm going to follow up and get your take on the kind of size of of data, megabytes, petabytes, I mean, talk about data silos, and the scale behind it. >> Perfect, so if you look at actually how to set up something like a Kendra search cluster, even as simple as from your Management Console in the AWS, you'll be able to point Kendra to various data sources, such as Amazon S3, or SharePoint, and Salesforce, and various others. And say, these are kind of data I want to index. And Kendra automatically pulls in this data, index these using its deep learning and NLP models, and then, automatically builds a corpus. Then, I, as in user of the search index, can actually start querying it using natural language, and don't have to worry where it comes from, and Kendra takes care of things like access control, and it uses finely-tuned machine learning algorithms under the hood to understand the context of natural language query and return the most relevant. I'll give a real-world example of some of the field customers who are using Kendra. For instance, if you take a look at 3M, 3M is using Kendra to support search, support its material science R&D by enabling natural language search of their expansive repositories of past research documents that may be relevant to a new product. Imagine what this does to a company like 3M. Instead of researchers who are spread around the world, repeating the same experiments on material research over and over again, now, their engineers and researchers will allow everybody to quickly search through documents. And they can innovate faster instead of trying to literally reinvent the wheel all the time. So it is better acceleration to the market. Even we are in this situation, one of the interesting work that you might be interested in is the Semantic Scholar team at Allen Institute for AI, recently opened up what is a repository of scientific research called COVID-19 Open Research Dataset. These are expert research articles. (poor audio capture obscures speech) And now, the index is using Kendra, and it helps scientists, academics, and technologists to quickly find information in a sea of scientific literature. So you can even ask questions like, "Hey, how different is convalescent plasma "treatment compared to a vaccine?" And various in that question and Kendra automatically understand the context, and gets the summary answer to these questions for the customers, so. And this is one of the things where when we talk about breaking the data silos, it takes care of getting back the data, and putting it in a central location. Understanding the context behind each of these documents, and then, being able to also then, quickly answer the queries of customers using simple query natural language as well. >> So what's the scale? Talk about the scale behind this. What's the scale numbers? What are you guys seeing? I see you guys always do a good job, I've run a great announcement, and then following up with general availability, which means I know you've got some customers using it. What are we talking about in terms of scales? Petabytes, can you give some insight into the kind of data scale you're talking about here? >> So the nice thing about Kendra is it is easily linearly scalable. So I, as a developer, I can keep adding more and more data, and that is it linearly scales to whatever scale our customers want. So and that is one of the underpinnings of Kendra search engine. So this is where even if you see like customers like PricewaterhouseCoopers is using Kendra to power its regulatory application to help customers search through regulatory information quickly and easily. So instead of sifting through hundreds of pages of documents manually to answer certain questions, now, Kendra allows them to answer natural language question. I'll give another example, which is speaks to the scale. One is Baker Tilly, a leading advisory, tax, and assurance firm, is using Kendra to index documents. Compared to a traditional SharePoint-based full-text search, now, they are using Kendra to quickly search product manuals and so forth. And they're able to get answers up to 10x faster. Look at that kind of impact what Kendra has, being able to index vast amount of data, with in a linearly scalable fashion, keep adding in the order of terabytes, and keep going, and being able to search 10x faster than traditional, I mean traditional keyword search based algorithm is actually a big deal for these customers. They're very excited. >> So what is the main problem that you're solving with Kendra? What's the use case? If I'm the customer, what's my problem that you're solving? Is it just response to data, whether it's a call center, or support, or is it an app? I mean, what's the main focus that you guys came out? What was the vector of problem that you're solving here? >> So when we talked to customers before we started building Kendra, one of the things that constantly came back for us was that they wanted the same ease of use and the ability to search the world wide web, and customers like us to search within an enterprise. So it can be in the form of like an internal search to search within like the HR documents or internal wiki pages and so forth, or it can be to search like internal technical documentation or the public documentation to help the contact centers or is it the external search in terms of customer support and so forth, or to enable collaboration by sharing knowledge base and so forth. So each of these is really dissected. Why is this a problem? Why is it not being solved by traditional search techniques? One of the things that became obvious was that unlike the external world where the web pages are linked that easily with very well-defined structure, internal world is very messy within an enterprise. The documents are put in a SharePoint, or in a file system, or in a storage service like S3, or on naturally, tell-stores or Box, or various other things. And what really customers wanted was a system which knows how to actually pull the data from various these data silos, still understand the access control behind this, and enforce them in the search. And then, understand the real data behind it, and not just do simple keyword search, so that we can build remarkable search service that really answers queries in a natural language. And this has been the theme, premise of Kendra, and this is what had started to resonate with our customers. I talked with some of the other examples even in areas like contact centers. For instance, Magellan Health is using Kendra for its contact centers. So they are able to seamlessly tie like member, provider, or client specific information with other inside information about health care to its agents so that they can quickly resolve the call. Or it can be on internally to do things like external search as well. So very satisfied client. >> So you guys took the basic concept of discovery navigation, which is the consumer web, find what you're looking for as fast as possible, but also took advantage of building intelligence around understanding all the nuances and configuration, schemas, access, under the covers and allowing things to be discovered in a new way. So you basically makes data be discoverable, and then, provide an interface. >> Yeah. >> For discovery and navigation. So it's a broad use cat, then. >> Right, yeah that's sounds somewhat right except we did one thing more. We actually understood not just, we didn't just do discovery and also made it easy for people to find the information but they are sifting through like terabytes or hundreds of terabytes of internal documentation. Sometimes, one other things that happens is throwing a bunch of hundreds of links to these documents is not good enough. For instance, if I'm actually trying to find out for instance, what is the ALS marker in an health care setting, and for a particular research project, then, I don't want to actually sift through like thousands of links. Instead, I want to be able to correctly pinpoint which document contains answer to it. So that is the final element, which is to really understand the context behind each and every document using natural language processing techniques so that you not only find discover the information that is relevant but you also get like highly accurate possible precise answers to some of your questions. >> Well, that's great stuff, big fan. I was really liking the announcement of Kendra. Congratulations on the GA of that. We'll make some room on our CUBE Virtual site for your team to put more Kendra information up. I think it's fascinating. I think that's going to be the beginning of how the world changes, where this, this certainly with the voice activation and API-based applications integrating this in. I just see a ton of activity that this is going to have a lot of headroom. So appreciate that. The other thing I want to get to while I have you here is the news around the augmented artificial intelligence has been brought out as well. >> Yeah. >> So the GA of that is out. You guys are GA-ing everything, which is right on track with your cadence of AWS laws, I'd say. What is this about? Give us the headline story. What's the main thing to pay attention to of the GA? What have you learned? What's the learning curve, what's the results? >> So augmented artificial intelligence service, I called it A2I but Amazon A2I service, we made it generally available. And it is a very unique service that makes it easy for developers to augment human intelligence with machine learning predictions. And this is historically, has been a very challenging problem. We look at, so let me take a step back and explain the general idea behind it. You look at any developer building a machine learning application, there are use cases where even actually in 99% accuracy in machine learning is not going to be good enough to directly use that result as the response to back to the customer. Instead, you want to be able to augment that with human intelligence to make sure, hey, if my machine learning model is returning, saying hey, my confidence interval for this prediction is less than 70%, I would like it to be augmented with human intelligence. Then, A2I makes it super easy for customers to be, developers to use actually, a human reviewer workflow that comes in between. So then, I can actually send it either to the public pool using Mechanical Turk, where we have more than 500,000 Turkers, or I can use a private workflow as a vendor workflow. So now, A2I seamlessly integrates with our Textract, Rekognition, or SageMaker custom models. So now, for instance, NHS is integrated A2I with Textract, so that, and they are building these document processing workflows. The areas where the machine learning model confidence load is not as high, they will be able augment that with their human reviewer workflows so that they can actually build in highly accurate document processing workflow as well. So this, we think is a powerful capability. >> So this really kind of gets to what I've been feeling in some of the stuff we worked with you guys on our machine learning piece. It's hard for companies to hire machine learning people. This has been a real challenge. So I like this idea of human augmentation because humans and machines have to have that relationship, and if you build good abstraction layers, and you abstract away the complexity, which is what you guys do, and that's the vision of cloud, then, you're going to need to have that relationship solidified. So at what point do you think we're going to be ready for theCUBE team, or any customer that doesn't have the or can't find a machine learning person? Or may not want to pay the wages that's required? I mean it's hard to find a machine learning engineer, and when does the data science piece come in with visualization, the spectrum of pure computer science, math, machine learning guru to full end user productivity? Machine learning is where you guys are doing a lot of work. Can you just share your opinion on that evolution of where we are on that? Because people want to get to the point where they don't have to hire machine learning folks. >> Yeah. >> And have that kind support too. >> If you look at the history of technology, I actually always believe that many of these highly disruptive technology started as a way that it is available only to experts, and then, they quickly go through the cycles, where it becomes almost common place. I'll give an example with something totally outside the IT space. Let's take photography. I think more than probably 150 years ago, the first professional camera was invented, and built like three to four years still actually take a really good picture. And there were only very few expert photographers in the world. And then, fast forward to time where we are now, now, even my five-year-old daughter takes actually very good portraits, and actually gives it as a gift to her mom for Mother's Day. So now, if you look at Instagram, everyone is a professional photographer. I kind of think the same thing is about to, it will happen in machine learning too. Compared to 2012, where there were very few deep learning experts, who can really build these amazing applications, now, we are starting to see like tens of thousands of actually customers using machine learning in production in AWS, not just proof of concepts but in production. And this number is rapidly growing. I'll give one example. Internally, if you see Amazon, to aid our entire company to transform and make machine learning as a natural part of the business, six years ago, we started a Machine Learning University. And since then, we have been training all our engineers to take machine learning courses in this ML University, and a year ago, we actually made these coursework available through our Training and Certification platform in AWS, and within 48 hours, more than 100,000 people registered. Think about it, that's like a big all-time record. That's why I always like to believe that developers are always eager to learn, they're very hungry to pick up new technology, and I wouldn't be surprised if four or five years from now, machine learning is kind of becomes a normal feature of the app, the same with databases are, and that becomes less special. If that day happens, then, I would see it as my job is done, so. >> Well, you've got a lot more work to do because I know from the conversations I've been having around this COVID-19 pandemic is it's that there's general consensus and validation that the future got pulled forward, and what used to be an inside industry conversation that we used to have around machine learning and some of the visions that you're talking about has been accelerated on the pace of the new cloud scale, but now that people now recognize that virtual and experiencing it firsthand globally, everyone, there are now going to be an acceleration of applications. So we believe there's going to be a Cambrian explosion of new applications that got to reimagine and reinvent some of the plumbing or abstractions in cloud to deliver new experiences, because the expectations have changed. And I think one of the things we're seeing is that machine learning combined with cloud scale will create a whole new trajectory of a Cambrian explosion of applications. So this has kind of been validated. What's your reaction to that? I mean do you see something similar? What are some of the things that you're seeing as we come into this world, this virtualization of our lives, it's every vertical, it's not one vertical anymore that's maybe moving faster. I think everyone sees the impact. They see where the gaps are in this new reality here. What's your thoughts? >> Yeah, if you see the history from machine learning specifically around deep learning, while the technology is really not new, especially because the early deep learning paper was probably written like almost 30 years ago. And why didn't we see deep learning take us sooner? It is because historically, deep learning technologies have been hungry for computer resources, and hungry for like huge amount of data. And then, the abstractions were not easy enough. As you rightfully pointed out that cloud has come in made it super easy to get like access to huge amount of compute and huge amount of data, and you can literally pay by the hour or by the minute. And with new tools being made available to developers like SageMaker and all the AI services, we are talking about now, there is an explosion of options available that are easy to use for developers that we are starting to see, almost like a huge amount of like innovations starting to pop up. And unlike traditional disruptive technologies, which you usually see crashing in like one or two industry segments, and then, it crosses the chasm, and then goes mainstream, but machine learning, we are starting to see traction almost in like every industry segment, all the way from like in financial sector, where fintech companies like Intuit is using it to forecast its call center volume and then, personalization. In the health care sector, companies like Aidoc are using computer vision to assist radiologists. And then, we are seeing in areas like public sector. NASA has partnered with AWS to use machine learning to do anomaly detection, algorithms to detect solar flares in the space. And yeah, examples are plenty. It is because now, machine learning has become such common place that and almost every industry segment and every CIO is actually already looking at how can they reimagine, and reinvent, and make their customer experience better covered by machine learning. In the same way, Amazon actually asked itself, like eight or 10 years ago, so very exciting. >> Well, you guys continue to do the work, and I agree it's not just machine learning by itself, it's the integration and the perfect storm of elements that have come together at this time. Although pretty disastrous, but I think ultimately, it's going to come out, we're going to come out of this on a whole 'nother trajectory. It's going to be creativity will be emerged. You're going to start seeing really those builders thinking, "Okay hey, I got to get out there. "I can deliver, solve the gaps we are exposed. "Solve the problems, "pre-create new expectations, new experience." I think it's going to be great for software developers. I think it's going to change the computer science field, and it's really bringing the lifestyle aspect of things. Applications have to have a recognition of this convergence, this virtualization of life. >> Yeah. >> The applications are going to have to have that. So and remember virtualization helped Amazon formed the cloud. Maybe, we'll get some new kinds of virtualization, Swami. (laughs) Thanks for coming on, really appreciate it. Always great to see you. Thanks for taking the time. >> Okay, great to see you, John, also. Thank you, thanks again. >> We're with Swami, the Vice President of Machine Learning at AWS. Been on before theCUBE Alumni. Really sharing his insights around what we see around this virtualization, this online event at the Amazon Summit, we're covering with the Virtual CUBE. But as we go forward, more important than ever, the data is going to be important, searching it, finding it, and more importantly, having the humans use it building an application. So theCUBE coverage continues, for AWS Summit Virtual Online, I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (enlightening music)

from the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world this is a cube conversation hey welcome back all righty Jeff Rick here with the cube we are in our Palo Alto studios today and as we continue to go through week after week after week of the kovat crisis the kovat situation you know we've been focusing on leadership and we've been reaching out to the community to get their take on you know what's happening best practices things that they can share to help and to share knowledge with the rest of the community and we're really excited to have our next guest Rebecca Knight you know her as a guest host on the cube she's actually been a freelance journalist for decades and writes for all the top pubs it's how we met her in the first first place doing some working at mighty so Rebecca first off great to see you it's been too long we were supposed to be together this week but situation kind of changed the schedule a little bit indeed it's so it's so good to see your face Jeff and it's so fun to be working with the cube gang again even though we are we are many miles apart right now we should all be together but but I'm really happy to be you're happy to be talking to you great well I am too and let's let's jump into it because you know you've been writing about leadership but really why I wanted to reach out with you is instead of you kind of co-hosting our guests really get get your perspective on things because you've been writing about leadership for a very long time so now that we're I don't know six weeks into this thing what are you writing about what you know it has it has the the topics kind of shifted you know over the last several weeks what's kind of top of mind what do you publish in this week absolutely the topics have shifted in the sense that there is only one topic and that is hope at 19 and that is how our managers coping with this with this health crisis this pandemic that is all over the world of course and a huge part of our workplace right now managers are just dealing with this unprecedented event industry and trying to be a sense of strength for their colleagues and for their direct report at a time where they themselves don't really know what the future holds none of us know what the future holds and so this is a very our managers right now and so that's that's a lot of what I'm doing for her for Harvard Business trivia now there's so many pieces to that one you know we've been talking a lot about it as being kind of this light switch digital transformation moment because even if you had planned and people have been planning and things have been slowly moving whether it be working from home for jobs or remote education in higher education or a lot of these things they were kind of you know moving along and all sudden boom full stop ready set go everyone has to stay home so that there wasn't really a plan a rollout plan and it's quite a challenge and the other thing is not only for you the individual who's going through this but their significant other or spouses also home the kids are also home and again nobody really got an opportunity to plan and try to think some of these things through so it's it's it's not only just working from home but now it says pandemic that adds all these extra layers of complexity and to you to your point uncertainty which is always the hardest thing to deal with you know Jeff I've actually been working from home for over a decade now I work for the Financial Times for about four ten years and that and I even and then I was Boston corresponding for the FT working from home I was following a bunch of writers on trip Twitter people are writing and saying working from home is the worst and I'm constantly please like concentrate this I will never want to work from home and then all these writers were chiming if they hold up theirs working from home and then there's working from home during a global pandemic two totally different things um but you're absolutely right this is a time where our families are underfoot we're trying to homeschool our children we are quarantined with our spouse trying to make our marriages work and also trying to do the job that we're being paid to do if we're lucky enough they'll be employed or still have assignment I in the hoppers though you're right this is this is a very this is not necessarily the test of remote work and remote learning that I think we all deserve and we will some day have and we're showing this is obviously an experiment and in some ways that's showing that it can work in ways but there is also this is this isn't exact this is more oh hey you have eight days to get all your employees online right now or eight days to roll out your curriculum so this is not quite exactly what we'd all had in my remember talking about the future of online education or the digital organization but but it certainly interested the watch all happen so it's funny as part of this we had Martin make us on and he has been running distributed teams for decades and it was really funny his take on it which was that it's so much easier to fake it at the office right and and to many people we had Amy Hayworth on from Citrix and in a blog that she referenced you know eventually people will start judging people based on outcome versus behavior and activities and it just it strikes me that in 2020 you know is this what it's taken to get people to actually judge people by their output and I think you know Martin's other take was that when you work from home all you have is your output you know you don't have kind of looking busy or saying hi to the boss or the car looks really great today you know you only have your output in his take was it's actually a much easier way to decide who's doing the job and who's not doing the job yeah you know I'm of two minds with that because I think that there is so much to be said for the teamwork there so I mean you may not be the person who is definitely always pedal to the metal getting every single thing done checking all the boxes you you know I mean obviously you have to be sort of have a baseline of productivity and engagement but there's also just you're someone that other people like to work with you're someone who offers good ideas who can be a really good sounding board who just will have those moments of creativity that are really important for a theme to be to succeed and to get to get to the finish line and I can get again I'm not saying the people who are just have just been coasting oh yeah this is it for you but I'm just saying that there's a lot of different personalities and a lot of skills that then go into making a great high-functioning team it takes all type and so and so I think that we are missing that we are missing the camaraderie the collegiality of the watercooler chat and and that where teams do a lot of problem solving is is sort of that informal conversation that right now a lot of us are missing because we've all had way too much zoom and no one wants to just sort of shoot the breeze on zoom with anyone so what so what are you telling people so unfortunately you know this is not how we would have planned it and we would have probably transitioned it a little bit smoother matter but here we are and were actually now five six weeks into it and the I think the the Monday was I think March 16th was the big day here in the Bay Area when it all kind of got got official so what are some things that you're sharing with with leaders and managers you know some specific things they can do some specific tasks that they can do to help get through this better the first thing I would say and this is what I'm hearing from the experts that I'm talking to the people who really study crisis management is first of all it's deal yourself this is this is a challenge of a lifetime and you are leading through something that is hard and you need to understand that and and first of all don't be too hard on yourself because this is this is this is really difficult this is what they're going to be writing case studies about in business schools for decades for to come these are really big management challenges steal yourself be ready for the challenge make sure you are taking care of yourself getting enough sleep getting rest on the weekends time with your family and friends do exercise eat right don't just snack on Cheetos all day long make sure you are taking care of yourself in terms of interacting with your employees and your team obviously like I just said everyone everyone cannot everyone's zum fatigue is real um but at the same time you do need to make time to talk to your team and say hey how are you how are things make sure that people are you wait no baby we need to make sure that you have your your finger on the pulse of your team and make sure everyone's mental health it is they okay so yeah empathy humility it share with your team problems that your the your face singing yourself I mean obviously they should not be the repository for all of your fears and insecurities and worries about whoa I don't know if I got a turn am I gonna have a job next week but um but at the same time II talked about the challenges you're facing too your team needs to know that you aren't a superhuman you know you you're a human too you're going through this just like they are right that's what's such a weird thing about it - you know having been through a couple of events like the earthquake or Mount st. Helens blowing up you know the people that were into that area when something like that goes down have a common story right where were you in the earthquake where are you and mount st. Helens blew up but now this is a global thing where everyone will have a story where are you in March 20 20 so the fact that we're all going through it together and there's so many stories and impacts you know the more people you talk to you know the layers of The Onion's just keep on peeling - more and more and more impact but I'm curious to get your take on kind of how you see once we do get out of this because whether it's 12 months or 18 months or 24 months to get to a vaccine you know now it seems like forever and the grand scheme of things it's going to be a relatively short period of window but but over that time you know behaviors become habits and I'm just curious to get your take as to when it's okay to go back to work whenever that is I don't see it going back the way that it was because who's gonna want to sit on highway 101 for two hours every morning once you've figured out a pretty good routine and a pretty good workflow without doing that how do you see it kind of shaken out so I couldn't agree more and this is a night like I said I've worked from home for many many years and so I do think that people this is dispelling the myth that you need to work where you live you have a lot more agency and a lot more freedom to get your job done anywhere you want to live and if that's in a city because I mean God willing sports will come back and pewter will come back music and all the reasons we love living in cities but will one day be able to do that again but if you like living near the mountains or near the ocean you can do that and get your job done so I think we're I think you're absolutely right about that we're going to see many more people making a decision about you know this is the life I want to live and I can still might do my job and yet people still like being around other people I mean I think that's why we're all going a little stir-crazy right now is because we just we missed other people we miss interacting and so I think that we will have to think about some ways to create different kinds of offices and crap we work type things but I think they could just be different offices all over and they can be in the suburbs they can be in the mountains and it could just be a place where people come together and sometimes they're in the same industry field sometimes may be the same company but I think that they don't even necessarily need to be that way I think that some people will want to work from home and I think other people will want to go someplace even if it's not what we think of as the typical American office right but I even think in and I used to think this before right as you know I ride my bikes and do all my little eToys but you know even if people didn't commute one day a week or didn't commute one day every two weeks or two days a week you know the impact on the infrastructure to me some of these second-order effects is you know looking at empty freeways and empty streets demonstrate that we actually have a lot of infrastructure it just gets overwhelmed when everybody's on it at the same time so just the whole concept of going in the same time every day of course if you're in construction or you're in trades and you got a truck full of gear that you have to take that's one thing but for so many people now that our informational workers and they're just working on a laptop whether it be home that we work or we're at the office you know even shifting a couple of days a week I think has just a huge impact on infrastructure or quality of life you know the environment in terms of pollution gas consumption and on and on and on so yeah I don't think it will go a hundred percent one way or the other but I certainly don't think it'll go 100 percent back to you know going in the office every day from 8:00 to 5:00 I I couldn't agree more and just be the idea of the quality of life I mean you know I'm I have two children 9 and 12 and they are doing their school work from home and they're they're doing all right they're hanging in my older one in particular I say that she's sort of this mix between a graduate student and a young MBA because she's got her little devices already zooming with her science teacher than play rehearsal there but but um you know why I think that the slowing down has actually been kind of good for them too because they're busy kids and they have a lot going on and actually having family dinners having board games watching family movies going for family hikes in the weekends that has been really good but in her forever I mean obviously we're also indebted and grateful to the frontline workers and and we we also see there is a lot of loss around us people losing loved ones to this horrible disease and then losing livelihood but I think and then we are seeing a few silver linings than this too so I think sometimes our quality of life it has for some people this has been quarantines getting a little old but at the same time I think that there has been some bright for a lot of for a lot of people yeah I think I think you're right in again it's a horrible human toll people getting sick and dying and in the economic toll is gargantuan especially for people with no safety net and are in industries it's just don't exist in right now like travel and leisure and and and and things that are in the business of bringing people together when you can't bring people together but just final question before I let you go is is really on higher education so it's one thing with the kids and in k-12 and you know how sophisticated are an ability to learn online but I'm I'm really more interested to get your take on higher education because you know you've already got to kind of this scale back in terms of the number of physical classes that people attend when they're and when they're an undergrad and the actual amount of time that they spend you know in an lecture I mean this is this now knocking that right off of the table and I'm just really curious to get your take on higher education with distributed learning because it's it's something that's been talked about for a long time I think there's been a lot of resistance but again this light switch moment and if it goes on for into the next school year what's what what's that going to do to the kind in higher education and the stance of of how much infrastructure they actually need to support educating these kids well I am a Wesleyan grad and the president of Wesleyan was quoted in the New York Times this weekend talking about that this very topic thing that this has really shown us the value of a residential or not necessarily for year but residential education where people are together and they are able to Bure be creative have fierce debate in the classroom that is just frankly not possible with remote learning or at least not to the same degree since the same extent and the kind of accessibility you have with professors particularly at a small liberal arts school like the one that I went through I think that Jeff a lot of a lot of colleges are not going to be able to survive this because they're just they are so different tuition dependent and a lot of kids are going to defer if they if they say you know if I can't be at college in the fall I'm gonna take a year off and go to Community College or I'm going to you know do something else take a gap year and then reassess my options once this health crisis passes and I think that for a lot of colleges that's just that's just not tenable for them and for their for their operations so I'm afraid that a lot of businesses and a lot of colleges their point of closed yeah it's just it's just crazy the the impact and just showing you know as you said we are social beings we like to be together and when you when you stop people from being together it makes you really realize how often we are together whether it's you know weddings and funerals and and bar mitzvahs and and those kind of things in church and family stuff or whether it's business things conventions concerts sporting events means so many things street fairs you know are really about bringing people together and we do like to be together so this too will pass and and and hopefully you know the Warriors in this battle thankfully are super smart you know we're hopefully using a lot of modern compute that we didn't have in the past thankfully we have things like like the Internet and zoom that you and I can talk from 3,000 miles away so I'm glad you're hopeful I'm hopeful we'll get through it and and then we can get together on a set and do some interviews together I can't wait exactly all right Rebecca well thanks for checking in be safe look forward to seeing you in person and and until then have a great I guess May we're into May Mother's Day coming up so happy Mother's Day a few days early thank you very much Jeff it was a pleasure working with you again all right we'll take care she's Rebecca I'm Jeff you are watching the cube thanks for checking in wolf see you next time [Music]

>> Live from Barcelona, Spain it's theCUBE! Covering Cisco Live! Europe brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. >> Hello everyone, welcome back to theCube's live coverage here in Barcelona, Spain for Cisco Live! Europe 2019. We're at day three of three days of coverage I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante Our next two guests we're going to talk about privacy data Michelle Dennnedy, VP and Chief Privacy officer at Cisco and Robert Waitman who is the Director of Security and Trust. Welcome back, we had them last year and everything we talked about kinda's happening on steroids here this year >> Yep. >> Welcome back >> Thank you glad to be here >> Thanks for having us >> So security, privacy all go hand in hand. A lot going on. You're seeing more breaches you're seeing more privacy challenges Certainly GDPR's going to the next level. People are, quote, complying here's a gig of data go figure it out. So there's a lot happening, give us the update. >> Well, as we suggested last year it was privacypalooza all year long running up to the enforcement deadline of May 25, 2018. There were sort of two kinds of companies. There's one that ran up to that deadline and said woohoo we're ready to drive this baby forward! And then there's a whole nother set of people who are still sort of oh my gosh. And then there's a third category of people who still don't understand. I had someone come up to me several weeks ago and say what do I do? When is this GDPR going to be a law? I thought oh honey you need a hug >> Two years ago, you need some help. >> And some companies in the US, at least were turning off their websites. Some media companies were in the news for actually shutting down their site and not making it available because they weren't ready. So a lot of people were caught off guard, some were prepared but still, you said people would be compliant, kind of and they did that but still more work to do. >> Lots more work to do and as we said when the law was first promulgated two and a half years ago GDPR and the deadline A, It's just one region but as you'll hear as we talk about our study it's impacting the globe but it's also not the end of anything it's the beginning of the information economy at long last. So, I think we all have a lot to do even if you feel rather confident of your base-level compliance now it's time to step up your game and keep on top of it. >> Before we get into some of the details of the new finding you guys have I want you to take a minute to explain how your role is now centered in the middle of Cisco because if you look at the keynotes data's in the center of a lot of things in this intent based network on one side and you've got cloud and edge on the other. Data is the new ingredient that's feeding applications and certainly collective intelligence for security. So the role of data is critical. This is a big part of the Cisco tech plan nevermind policy and or privacy and these other things you're in the middle of it. Explain your role within Cisco and how that shapes you. >> How we sort of fit in. Well it's such a good question and actually if you watch our story through theCUBE we announced, actually on data privacy day several years ago that data is the new currency and this is exactly what we're talking about the only way that you can operationalize your data currency is to really think about it throughout the platform. You're not just pleasing a regulator you're not just pleasing your shareholders you're not just pleasing your employee base. So, as such, the way we organize our group is my role sits under the COO's office our Chief Operations Office under the office of John Stewart who is our Chief Trust officer. So security, trust, advanced research all live together in operations. We have sister organizations in places like public policy, legal, marketing, the sales groups the people who are actually operationalizing come together for a group. My role really is to provide two types of strategy. One, rolling out privacy engineering and getting across inside and outside of the company as quickly as possible. It's something new. As soon as we have set processes I put them into my sister organization and they send them out as routine and hopefully automated things. The other side is the work Robert and I do together is looking at data valuation models. Working about the economics of data where does it drive up revenue and business and speed time to closure and how do we use data to not just be compliant in the privacy risk but really control our overall risk and the quality of our information overall. It's a mouth full >> So that's interesting and Robert, that leads me to a question when we've seen these unfunded mandates before we saw it with Y2K, the Enron backlash certainly the United States the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. And the folks in the corner office would say oh, here we go again. Is there any way to get more value beyond just reducing risk and complying and have you seen companies be able to take data and value and apply it based on the compliance and governance and privacy policies? >> Dave that's a great question. It's sort of the thought that we had and the hypothesis was that this was going to be more valuable than just for the compliance reasons and one of the big findings of the study that we just released this week was that in fact those investments you know we're saying that good privacy is very good for business. It was painful, some firms stuck their head in the sand and said I don't want to even do this but still, going through the GDPR preparation process or for any of the privacy regulations has taken people to get their data house in order and it's important to communicate. We wanted to find out what benefits were coming from those organizations that had made those investments and that's really what came out in our study this week for international data privacy day we got into that quite a bit. >> What is this study? can you give us some details on it? >> It's the Data Privacy Benchmark study we published this week for international data privacy day. It's sort of an opportunity to focus on data privacy issues both for consumers and for businesses sort of the one day a year kind of like mother's day that you should always think of your mom but mother's day's a good day so you should always think of privacy when you're making decisions about your data but it's a chance to raise awareness. So we published our study this year and it was based on over thirty-two hundred responses from companies around the world from 18 countries all sorts of sizes of companies and the big findings were in fact around that. Privacy has become a serious and a boardroom level issue that the awareness has really skyrocketed for companies who are saying before I do business with you I want to know how you're using my data. What we saw this year is that seven out of eight companies are actually seeing some sales delay from their customers asking those kinds of questions. But those that have made the investment getting ready for GDPR or being more mature on privacy are seeing shorter delays. If you haven't gotten ready you're seeing 60% longer delays. And even more interestingly for us too is when you have data breaches and a lot of companies have them as we've talked about those breaches are not nearly as impactful. The organizations that aren't ready for GDPR are seeing three times as many records impacted by the breach. They're seeing system downtime that's 50% longer and so the cost of the whole thing is much more. So, kind of the question of is this still something good to do? Not only because you have to do it when you want to avoid 4% penalties from GDPR and everything else but it's something that's so important for my business that drives value. >> So the upshot there is that you do the compliance. Okay, check the box, we don't want to get fined So you're taking your medicine basically. Turns into an upside with the data you're seeing from your board. Sales benefit and then just preparedness readiness for breaches. >> Right, I mean it's a nice-- >> Is that right? >> That's exactly right John you've got it right. Then you've got your data house in order I mean there's a logic to this. So then if you figured out where your data is how to protect it, who has access to it you're able to deal with these questions. When customers ask you questions about that you're ready to answer it. And when something bad goes wrong let's say there is a breach you've already done the right things to control your data. You've got rid of the data you don't need anymore. I mean 50% of your data isn't used for anything and of course we suggest that people get rid of that that makes it less available when and if a breach occurs. >> So I got to ask you a question on the data valuation because a lot of the data geeks and data nerds like myself saw this coming. We saw data, mostly on the tech side if you invested in data it was going to feed applications and I think I wrote a blog post in 2007 data's going to be part of the development kits or development environment you're seeing that now here. Data's now part of application development it's part of network intelligence for security. Okay, so yes, check, that's happening. At the CFO level, can you value the data so it's a balance sheet item? Can you say we're investing in this? So you start to see movement you almost project, maybe, in a few years, or now how do you guys see the valuation? Is it going to be another kind of financial metric? >> Well John, it's a great point. Seeing where we're developing around this. So I think we're still in somewhat early days of that issue. I think the organizations that are thinking about data as an asset and monetizing its value are certainly ahead of this we're trying to do that ourselves. We probed on that a little bit in the survey just to get a sense of where organizations are and only about a third of organizations are doing those data mature things. Do they have a complete data map of where their stuff is? Do they have a Chief Data Officer? Are they starting to monetize in appropriate ways, their data? So, there's a long way to go before organizations are really getting the value out of that data. >> But the signals are showing that there's value in the data. Obviously the number of sales there's some upside to compliance not just doin it to check the box there's actually business benefits. So how are you guys thinking about this cause you guys are early adopters or leaders in this how are you thinking about the data measurement of it? Can you share your insights on that? >> Yeah, so you know, data on the balance sheet Grace Hopper 1965, right? data will one day be on the corporate balance sheet because it's in most cases more valuable than the hardware that processes. This is the woman who's making software and hardware work for us, in 1965! Here we are in 2019. It's coming on the balance sheet. She was right then, I believe in it now. What we're doing is, even starting this is a study of correlation rather than causation. So now we have at least the artifacts to say to our legal teams go back and look at when you have one of our new improved streamline privacy sheets and you're telling in a more transparent fashion a deal. Mark the time that you're getting the question. Mark the time that you're finishing. Let's really be much more stilletto-like measuring time to close and efficiency. Then we're adding that capability across our businesses. >> Well one use case we heard on theCUBE this week was around privacy and security in the network versus on top of the network and one point that was referenced was when a salesperson leaves they take the contacts with them. So that's an asset and people get sued over it. So this again, this is a business policy thing. so business policy sounds like... >> Well in a lot of the solutions that exist in the marketplace or have existed I've sat on three encrypted email companies before encrypted email was something the market desired. I've sat on two advisory boards of-- a hope that you could sell your own data to the marketers. Every time someone gets an impression you get a micro cent or a bitcoin. We haven't really got that because we're looking on the periphery. What we're really trying to do is let's look at what the actual business flow and processes are in general and say things like can we put a metric on having less records higher impact, and higher quality. The old data quality in the CDO is rising up again get that higher quality now correlate it with speed to innovation speed to close, launch times the things that make your business run anyway. Now correlate it and eventually find causal connections to data. That's how we're going to get that data on the balance sheet. >> You know, that's a great point the data quality issue used to be kind of a back office records management function and now it's coming to the fore and I just make an observation if you look at what were before Facebook fake news what were the top five companies in the United States in terms of market value Amazon, Google, Facebook was up there, Microsoft, Apple. They're all data companies and so the market has valued them beyond the banks, beyond the oil companies. So you're starting to see clearer evidence quantifiable evidence that there's value there. I want to ask you about we have Guillermo Diaz coming up shortly, Michelle and I want to ask you your thoughts on the technical function. You mentioned it's a board level issue now, privacy. How should the CIO be communicating to the board about privacy? What should that conversation be like? >> Oh my gosh. So we now report quarterly to the board so we're getting a lot of practice We'll put it that way. I think we're on the same journey as the security teams used to you used to walk into the board and go here's what ransomware is and all of these former CFOs and sales guys would look at you and go ah, okay, onto the financials because there wasn't anything for them to do strategically. Today's board metrics are a little soft. It's more activity driven. Have you done your PIAs? Have you passed some sort of a third party audit? Are you getting rejected for third party value chain in your partner communities? That's the have not and da da da. To me I don't want my board telling us how to do operations that's how we do. To really give the board a more strategic view what we're really trying to do is study things like time to close and then showing trending impacts. The one conversation with John Chambers that's always stuck in my head is he doesn't want to know what today's snapshot is cause today's already over give me something over time, Michelle, that will trend. And so even though it sounds like, you know who cares if your sales force is a little annoyed that it takes longer to get this deal through legal well it turns out when you multiply that in a multi-billion dollar environment you're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars probably a week, lost to inefficiency. So, if we believe in efficiency in the tangible supply chain that's the more strategic view I want to take and then you add on things like here's a risk portfolio a potential fair risk reporting type of thing if we want to do a new business Do we light up a business in the Ukraine right now versus Barcelona? That is a strategic conversation that is board level. We've forgotten that by giving them activity. >> Interesting what you say about Chambers. John you just interviewed John Chambers and he was the first person, in the mid 90s to talk about a virtual close, if you remember that. So, obviously, what you're talking about is way beyond that. >> Yeah and you're exactly right. Let's go back to those financial roots. One of the things we talk about in privacy engineering is getting people's heads-- the concept that the data changes. So, the day before your earnings that data will send Chuck Robbins to jail if someone is leaking it and causing people to invest accordingly. The day after, it's news, we want everyone to have it. Look at how you have to process and handle and operationalize in 24 hours. Figuring out those data stories helps it turn it on its head and make it more valuable. >> You know, you mentioned John Chambers one of the things that I noticed was he really represented Silicon Valley well in Washington DC and there's been a real void there since he retired. You guys still have a presence there and are doing stuff there and you see Amazon with Theresa Carlson doing some great work there and you still got Oracle and IBM in there doing their thing. How is your presence and leadership translating into DC now? Can you give us an update of what's happening at-- >> So, I don't know if you caught a little tweet from a little guy named Chuck Robbins this week but Chuck is actually actively engaged in the debate for US federal legislation for privacy. The last thing we want is only the lobbyists as you say and I love my lobbyists wherever you are we need them to help give information but the strategic advisors to what a federal bill looks like for an economy as large and complex and dependent on international structure we have to have the network in there. And so one of the things that we are doing in privacy is really looking at what does a solid bill look like so at long last we can get a solid piece of federal legislation and Chuck is talking about it at Davos as was everyone else, which was amazing and now you're going to hear his voice very loudly ringing through the halls of DC >> So he's upping his game in leadership in DC >> Have you seen the size of Chuck Robbins? Game upped, privacy on! >> It's a great opportunity because we need leadership in technology in DC so-- >> To affect public policy, no doubt >> Absolutely. >> And globally too. It's not just DC and America but also globally. >> Yeah, we need to serve our customers. We win when they win. >> Final question, we got to get wrapped up here but I want to get you guys a chance to talk about what you guys announced here at the show what's going on get the plug in for what's going on Cisco Trust. What's happening? >> Do you want to plug first? >> Well, I think a few things we can add. So, in addition to releasing our benchmark study this week and talking about that with customers and with the public we've also announced a new version of our privacy data sheets. This was a big tool to enable salespeople and customers to see exactly how data is being used in all of our products and so the new innovation this week is we've released these very nice, color created like subway maps, you know? They make it easy for you to navigate around it just makes it easy for people to see exactly how data flows. So again, something up on our site at trust.cisco.com where people can go and get that information and sort of make it easy. We're pushing towards simplicity and transparency in everything we do from a privacy standpoint and this is really that trajectory of making it as easy as possible for anyone to see exactly how things go and I think that's the trajectory we're on that's where the legislation both where GDPR is heading and federal legislation as well to try to make this as easy as reading the nutrition label on the food item. To say what's actually here? Do I want to buy it? Do I want to eat it? And we want to make that that easy >> Trust, transparency accountability comes into play too because if you have those things you know who's accountable. >> It's terrifying. I challenge all of my competitors go to trust.cisco.com not just my customers, love you to be there too go and look at our data subway maps. You have to be radically transparent to say here's what you get customer here's what I get, Cisco, here's where my third party's. It's not as detailed as a long report but you can get the trajectory and have a real conversation. I hope everybody gets on board with this kind of simplification. >> Trust.cisco.com we're going to keep track of it. Great work you guys are doing. I think you guys are leading the industry, Congratulations. >> Thank you. >> This is not going to end, this conversation continues will continue globally. >> Excellent >> Thanks for coming on Michelle, appreciate it. Robert thanks for coming on. CUBE coverage here day three in Barcelona. We'll be back with more coverage after this break.

>> Narrator: From San Francisco, it's theCUBE covering OSIsoft PI World 2018 brought to you by OSIsoft. >> Hey welcome back, everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Francisco at OSIsoft PI World 2018 getting to the end of the day, it's been a very busy day, a lot of great conversations and about 3,000 people here talking about the industrial Internet of Things and IoT and really process improvement using data. They've been at it for almost four decades and we're excited to have a practitioner. He's Tara Rana, he is the Digital Transformation Process Control in Systems Engineering for Barrick Gold. Tara, good to see you. >> Oh, nice to meet you as well. >> Absolutely. >> Thank you. >> So, little bit of basics on Barrick Gold, kind of who are you guys, what's your business? >> All right, so, Barrick Gold Corporation, it's the largest gold producer as of today in the world. And we have about thirteen operating sites across the world. We are headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. >> Jeff: Okay. >> We are hugely focused in the Americas. About 75% of our revenue comes from the Americas, so that's North America and South America, and then we have other projects and mining operations across the world, to Australia, Chile, Zambia in Africa, Saudi Arabia, so it's global. >> So you are, you're basically getting the gold out of the dirt. >> Tara: From the rocks. >> From the rocks. >> Yeah. >> And it's pretty interesting right, we always think, we're here in San Francisco, right, in 1849 is when it all started, there was a guy with a pan, >> Tara: Oh yeah. (laughs) >> But that's not how it works anymore, right? >> Tara: No. >> Now it's a big industrial process that starts with lots of truckloads of ore, and then at the end of many many steps, out comes the gold. >> Tara: Yeah. >> And we've heard a number of times that there's so many process improvements that basically can increase the percentage of gold that you can extract out of that ore. >> So and to that note, there are a couple of things that we're actually looking at. So not only that but also as we're moving into the future, the gold grades from the ore is diminishing. And that's where I think we're at the right place, because we are looking at technology, we are looking at the buzzwords, like "artificial intelligence" to help us in that phase because all the good grades are almost gone, so to get that little gold that's in a big mass of rock, we definitely need to look at technologies. >> So the grade is the percentage of gold per unit of ore, right? Because the gold itself is the same gold, once you get it out. >> Correct, it's the ounce of gold in that mass of rock. >> So gold mining's been going on for a long time. What are some of the opportunities for you guys to use software to basically get your yield up? >> Okay, so there are a couple of things where we can look at technology. So number one is safety. So as the gold grade is going down, which also means we are actually going deeper in the mine, so as we go deeper in the mine, that means it's becoming unsafe for people operating underground. So we're looking at technology, we are looking at things like autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence algorithms that can help us in exploration, and then other things like robotics, drones, all kinds of stuff. So, the technology space is huge for us to explore, to use. And then to go to safety, of course we're looking at reducing our operating costs, increasing productivity as much as we can, and hence, lower our AISC, which is the All-In Sustaining Cost. >> So the autonomous vehicles is an interesting one. I don't think most people are aware how many autonomous vehicles operate in mines. I don't know if it's gold mines specifically, but I think we've talked to Caterpillar before, and there's a lot of autonomous vehicles running around mining operations. >> That's the future definitely, so right now we are actually taking a couple of projects to run these autonomous mines. But yes, you're right, it's not only the gold industry, but across mining and metals industry. >> Right, and what is digital transformation in mining? 'Cause we think of big lumpy assets that are made out of rocks and steel and rubber, and you know, heavy heavy industry, heavy heavy machinery. So what does digital transformation look like in the gold industry? >> So, again, this is very interesting and also dangerous. Why I say that, because... I'll tackle the dangerous piece first. Because digital transformation is again a buzzword, we have gone through different ones in the past. What we are targeting to do through digital transformation is not new. We have attempted to do this in the past with some degree of success, but as you know, the mining industry's a very cyclical industry. So when we were in the peak of the cycle, we invested a lot of money, we did a lot of cool projects, but as soon as we moved into the downward cycle, the budgets were tighter, so some of those projects were taken off the table. But now what's happening is, we are taking it back, but we're looking at this as an enabler. What that means is we are democratizing the digital transformation laterally and vertically, which means, within the site, and also across the organization. So we are educating our operators, we are educating the metallurgists and all that, because digital transformation is more cultural transformation. You know, we all have these cool gadgets and a lot of these we use in our daily lives. But how we can use these effectively in the mining world, how we can use things like iPads, wireless technology, and bring that information, as I mentioned to you before, on the table of the operators so that they are empowered now to make decisions rather than waiting forever for their frontline supervisors to give them that information. So now with the use of digital transformation as an enabler we're hoping that A, we are making it safer, we are democratizing this, as well as making decisions faster efficient. >> So it's pretty interesting on the democratization. 'Cause we see that in a lot of industries. So basically, giving the power, the tools, and the data to a broader group of people so they can make better decisions on the line. >> Correct. >> That's really the operator side. But you said something interesting, too, before we turned the cameras on, about transparency, not only at the site, but across the company, so that more people have more visibility into more pieces of the puzzle. >> Tara: Correct. >> So how's that been going? >> It has been going great so far. So what I meant by that was that the communities that we operate in, so Nevada in the States, Veladero, San Juan community in Argentina, communities like that... So now with the help of digital transformation we can also take this information to the community. Now they're more excited about what we're doing rather than being skeptical about us not sharing with them. >> Jeff: Right. >> So I think that is going great. The other aspect I should bring out is environmental. Environmental is a big piece. So, safety, health, and environment, we live by that because that's our license to operate. So with the help of digital transformation, and by sharing this information with our communities, I think we can reach our goal and bring everybody on board along this journey. >> Right, and I would imagine that ties directly back into trust. >> Correct, yeah. >> With the transparency, which I'm sure can be a big point of friction if you don't have that transparency. >> Tara: Absolutely. >> Especially on the environmental side, yeah. >> Tara: Yep, yeah. >> So what are you here for, what are you finding here at PI World? >> Okay, so I don't think I mentioned this, but along this journey, we are also looking for strategic partners. Because we cannot do this all by ourselves, right? And that was one of the reasons why digital transformation failed before, is we created silos, we didn't want to collaborate, we wanted to keep all the information within ourselves, and we were not sharing the information, not only publicly, but also within the organization. So what my role here in this conference is to share with all our peers in the industry what we have been doing, and also learn from others what they have been doing so that we can collaborate and make mining industry in general a very lucrative industry for everybody and make it safer and productive. >> So I would imagine there's probably a lot of sensitivity in sharing some of the operating processes, and I would imagine there's some proprietary technology in the way that you get your yield out of the ore. At the same time I would imagine safety and environmental can only benefit the industry if you share that information. >> Yes, absolutely. >> I would imagine that's not what you're going to build your competitive advantage on. >> No. >> And there's really more of an opportunity for industry sharing, if you will. >> Correct, so the point about... Sharing information about production. Yes, that is definitely sensitive, but I think what we are interested in sharing is the concepts, you know how we can do this digital transformation together, rather than the numbers that we're looking at. We're looking at percentage improvement. So even if I can share what we are doing with my peers in the industry in general, and if they are benefited, I think that's great. >> Jeff: Yeah... >> For the mining industry in general. >> Is the industry more receptive to that sharing than it has been in the past? >> Definitely there is more sharing now. But of course there are still some hurdles, and I'm hoping that attending conferences like this will make those hurdles smaller and smaller and we can do better. >> All right, well, Tara, thanks for taking a few minutes and sharing your story, and wish you obviously a lot of success on the safety and getting gold cheaper so we can all buy our wives bigger necklaces for Mother's Day, it's coming up, right? (laughs) >> Sure, absolutely, yeah. Thank you very much, and it's my pleasure to share, and let's enjoy the rest of the conference. >> Well, thanks a lot. He's Tara, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE from OSIsoft PI World 2018 San Francisco, thanks for watching. (mellow techno music)