(upbeat music) >> Man: We're good. >> Hey everyone. Welcome back to theCube's live coverage of AWS Summit NYC. We're in New York City, been here all day. Lisa Martin, John Furrier, talking with AWS partners ecosystem folks, customers, AWS folks, you name it. Next up, one of our alumni, rejoins us. Please welcome Anshu Sharma the co-founder and CEO of Skyflow. Anshu great to have you back on theCube. >> Likewise, I'm excited to be back. >> So I love how you guys founded this company. Your inspiration was the zero trust data privacy vault pioneered by two of our favorites, Apple and Netflix. You started with a simple question. What if privacy had an API? So you built a data privacy vault delivered as an API. Talk to us, and it's only in the last three and a half years. Talk to us about a data privacy vault and what's so unique about it. >> Sure. I think if you think about all the key challenges we are seeing in our personal lives when we are dealing with technology companies a lot of anxiety is around what happens to my data, right? If you want to go to a pharmacy they want to know not just your health ID number but they want to know your social security number your credit card number, your phone number and all of that information is actually useful because they need to be able to engage with you. And it's true for hospitals, health systems. It's true for your bank. It's true for pretty much anybody you do business with even an event like this. But then question that keeps coming up is where does this data go? And how is it protected? And the state of the art here has always been to keep kind of, keep it protected when it's in storage but almost all the breaches, all the hacks happen not because you've steal somebody's disc, but because someone enters through an API or a portal. So the question we asked was we've been building different shapes of containers for different types of data. You don't store your logs in a data warehouse. You don't store your analytical data in a regular RDBMS. Similarly, you don't store your passwords and usernames you store them in identity systems. So if PI is so special why isn't it a container that's used for storing PII? So that's how the idea of Pii.World came up. >> So you guys just got a recent funding, a series B financing which means for the folks out there that don't know the inside baseball, must people do, means you're doing well. It's hard to get that round of funding means you're up and growing to the right. What's the differentiator? Why are you guys so successful? Why the investment growth, what's the momentum driver? >> So I think in some ways we took one of the most complex problems, data privacy, like half the people can't even describe like, does data privacy mean like I have to be GDPR compliant or does it actually mean I'm protecting the data? So you have multiple stakeholders in any company. If you're a pharma company, you may have a chief privacy officer, a data officer, this officer, that officer, and all of these people were talking and the answer was buy more tools. So if you look around behind our back, there's probably dozens of companies out there. One protecting data in an API call another protecting data in a database, another one data warehouse. But as a CEO, CTO, I want to know what happens to my social security number from a customer end to end. So we said, if you can radically simplify the whole thing and the key insight was you can simplify it by actually isolating and protecting this data. And this architecture evolved on its own at companies like Apple and other places, but it takes dozens of engineers for those companies to build it out. So we like, well, the pattern will makes sense. It logically kind is just common sense. So instead of selling dozens of tools, we can just give you a very simple product, which is like one API call, you know, protect this data... >> So like Stripe is for a plugin for a financial transaction you plug it into the app, similar dynamic here, right? >> Exactly. So it's Stripe for payments, Twilio for Telephony. We have API for everything, but if you have social security numbers or pan numbers you still are like relying on DIY. So I think what differentiated us and attracted the investors was, if this works, >> It's huge. every company needs it. >> Well, that's the integration has become the key thing. I got to ask you because you mentioned GDPR and all the complexities around the laws and the different regulations. That could be a real blocker in a wet blanket for innovation. >> Anshu: Yes. >> And with the market we're seeing here at, at your Summit New York, small event. 10,000 people, more people here than were at Snowflake Summit as an example. And they're the hottest company in data. So this small little New York event is proven that that world is growing. So why should this wet blanket, these rules slow it down? How do you balance it? 'Cause that's a concern. If you checking all the boxes you're never actually building anything. >> So, you know, we just ran into a couple of customers who still are struggling with moving from the data center to AWS Cloud. Now the fact that here means they want to but something is holding them back. I also met the AI team of Amazon. They're doing some amazing work and they're like, the biggest hindrance for them is making customers feel safe when they do the machine learning. Because now you're opening up the data sets to more people. And in all of those cases your innovation basically stops because CSO is like, look you can't put PII in the cloud unprotected. And with the vault architecture we call it privacy by architecture. So there's a term called privacy by design. I'm like what the, is privacy by design, right? >> John: It's an architecture. (John laughing) >> But if you are an architecture and a developer like me I was like, I know what architecture is. I don't know what privacy by design is. >> So you guys are basically have that architecture by design which means foundational based services. So you're providing that as a service. So other people don't have to build the complex. >> Anshu: Exactly. >> You know that you will be Apple's backend team to build that privacy with you you get all that benefit. >> Exactly. And traditionally, people have had to make compromises. If you encrypt the data and secure it, then you can't use it. Using a proprietary polymorphic encryption technology you can actually have your cake and eat it to. So what that means for customers is, if you want to protect data in Snowflake or REDshare, use Skyflow with it. We have integrations to databases, to data lakes, all the common workflow tools. >> Can you give us a customer example that you think really articulates the value of what Skyflow is delivering? >> Well, I'll give you two examples. One in the FinTech space, one in the health space. So in the FinTech space this is a company called Nomi Health. They're a large payments processor for the health insurance market. And funnily enough, their CTO actually came from Goldman Sachs. He actually built apple card. (John laughing) Right? That if we all have in our phones. And he saw our product and he's like, for my new company, I'm going to just use you guys because I don't want to go hire 20 engineers. So for them, we had a HIPAA compliant environment a PCI compliant environment, SOC 2 compliant environment. And he can sleep better at night because he doesn't have to worry what is my engineer in Poland or Ukraine doing right now? I have a vault. I have rules set up. I can audit it. Everything is logged. Similarly for Science 37, they run clinical trials globally. They wanted to solve data residency. So for them the problem was, how do I run one common global instance? When the rules say you have to break everything up and that's very expensive. >> And so I love this. I'm a customer. For them a customer. I love it. You had me at hello, API integration. I love it. How much does it cost? What's it going to cost me? How do I need to think about my operationalizing? 'Cause I know with an API, I can do that. Am I paying by the usage, by the drink? How do I figure out? >> So we have programs for startups where it's really really inexpensive. We get them credits. And then for enterprises, we basically have a platform fee. And then based on the amount of data PII, we charge them. We don't nickel and dime the customers. We don't like the usage based model because, you don't know how many times you're going to hit an API. So we usually just based on the number of customer records that you have and you can hit them as many time as you want. There's no API limits. >> So unlimited record based. >> Exactly. that's your variable. >> Exactly. We think about you buying odd zero, for example, for authentication you pay them by the number of active users you have. So something similar. >> So you run on AWS, but you just announced a couple of new GTM partners, MuleSoft and plan. Can you talk to us about, start with MuleSoft? What are you doing and why? And the same with VLA? >> Sure. I mean, MuleSoft was very interesting customers who were adopting our products at, you know, we are buying this product for our new applications but what about our legacy code? We can't go in there and add APIs there. So the simplest way to do integration in the legacy world is to use an integration broker. So that's where MuleSoft integration came out and we announced that. It's a logical place for you to swap out real social security numbers with, you know, fake ones. And then we also announced a partnership with SnowFlake, same thing. I think every workload as it's moving to the cloud needs some kind of data protection with it. So I think going forward we are going to be announcing even more partnerships. So you can imagine all the places you're storing PII today whether it's in a call center solution or analytics solution, there's a PII story there. >> Talk about the integration aspect because I love the momentum. I get everything makes secure the customers all these environments, integrations are super important to plug into. And then how do I essentially operate you on my side? Do I import the records? How do you connect to my environment in my databases? >> So it's really, really easy when you encrypt the data and use Skyflow wall, we create what is called a format preserving token, which is essentially replacing a social security number with something that looks like an SSN but it's not. So that there's no schema changes involved. You just have to do that one time swap over and then in terms of integrations, most of these integrations are prebuilt. So Snowflake integration is prebuilt. MuleSoft integration is prebuilt. We're going to announce some new ones. So the goal is for off the table in platforms like Snowflake and MuleSoft, we prebuilt all the integrations. You can build your own. It takes about like a day. And then in terms of data import basically it's the same standard process that you would use with any other data store. >> Got to ask you about data breaches. Obviously the numbers in 2021 were huge. We're seeing so much change in the cyber security landscape ransomware becoming a household word, a matter of when but not if... How does Skyflow help organizations protect themselves or reduce the number of breaches so that they are not the next headline? >> You know, the funny thing about breaches is again and again, we see people doing the same mistakes, right? So Equifax had a breach four years ago where a customer portal, you know, no customer support rep should have access to a 100 million people's data. Like is that customer agent really accessing 100 million? But because we've been using legacy security tools they either give you access or don't give you access. And that's not how it's going to work. Because if I'm going to engage with the pharmacy and airline they need to be able to use my data in multiple different places. So you need to have fine grain controls around it. So I think the reason we keep getting breaches is cybersecurity industry is selling, 10s of billions of dollars worth of tools in the name of security but they cannot be applied at a fine grain level enough. I can't say things like for my call center agent that's living in Phoenix, Arizona they can only verify last four digits, but the same call center worker in Philippines can't even see that. So how do you get all that granular control in place? Is really why we keep seeing data breaches. So the Equifax breach, the Shopify breach the Twitter breaches, they're all the same. Like again and again, it's either an inside person or an external person who's gotten in. And once you're in and this is the whole idea of zero trust as you know. Once you're in, you can access all the data. Zero trust means that you don't assume that you actually isolate PII separately. >> A lot of the cybersecurity issues as you were talking about, are people based. Somebody clicking on something or gaining access. And I always talk to security experts about how do you control for the people aspect besides training, awareness, education. Is Skyflow a facilitator of that in a way that we haven't seen before? >> Yeah. So I think what ends up happening is, people even after they have breaches, they will lock down the system that had the breach, but then they have the same data sitting in a partner database, maybe a customer database maybe a billing system. So by centralizing and isolating PII in one system you can then post roles based access control rules. You can put limitations around it. But if you try to do that across hundreds of DS bases, you're just not going to be able to do it because it's basically just literally impossible, so... >> My final question for you is on, for me is you're here at AWS Summits, 10,000 people like I said. More people here than some big events and we're just in New York city. Okay. You actually work with AWS. What's next for you guys as you got the fresh funding, you guys looking for more talent, what's your next mountain you're going to climb? Tell us what's next for the company. Share your vision, put a plug in for the company. >> Well, it's actually very simple. Today we actually announced that we have a new chief revenue officer who's joining us. Tammy, she's joined us from LaunchDarkly which is it grew from like, you know, single digits to like over nine digits in revenue. And the reason she's joining Skyflow is because she sees the same inflection point hitting us. And for us that means more marketing, more sales, more growth in more geographies and more partnerships. And we think there's never been a better time to solve privacy. Literally everything that we deal with even things like rove evade issues eventually ties back into a issue around privacy. >> Lisa: Yes. >> AWS gets the model API, you know, come on, right? That's their model. >> Exactly. So I think if you look at the largest best companies that have been built in the last 20 years they took something that should have been simple but was not. There used to be Avayas of the world, selling Telephony intel, Twilio came and said, look an API. And we are trying to do the same to the entire security compliance and privacy industry is to narrow the problem down and solve it once. >> (indistinct) have it. We're going to get theCube API. (Lisa laughing) That's what we're going to do. All right. >> Thank you so much. >> Awesome. Anshu, thank you for joining us, talking to us about what's new at Skyflow. It sounds like you got that big funding investment. Probably lots of strategic innovation about to happen. So you'll have to come back in a few months and maybe at next reinvent in six months and tell us what's new, what's going on. >> Last theCube interview was very well received. People really like the kind of questions you guys asked. So I love this show and I think... >> It's great when you're a star like you, you got good market, great team, smart. I mean, look at this. I mean, what slow down are we talking about here? >> Yeah. I don't see... >> There is no slow down on the enterprise. >> Privacy's hot and it's incredibly important and we're only going to be seeing more and more of it. >> You can talk to any CIO, CSO, CTO or the board and they will tell you there is no limit to the budget they have for solving the core privacy issues. We love that. >> John: So you want to move on to building? >> Lisa: Obviously that must make you smile. >> John: You solved a big problem. >> Thank you. >> Awesome. Anshu, thank you again. Congrats on the momentum and we'll see you next time and hear more on the evolution of Skyflow. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you. >> For John furrier, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCube live from New York City at AWS Summit NYC 22. We'll be right back with our next guest. So stick around. (upbeat music)

>>Okay, welcome back everyone to San Francisco, live coverage here with the cube 80, be summit 2022. We're back in person. I'm John furry host of the cube. We'll be at the 80 us summit in New York city. This summer, check us out then. But right now, two days in San Francisco, getting all the coverage what's going on in the cloud, we got a cube, alumni and friend of the cube. I dos car CEO, investor, a Sierra, and also an investor and a bunch of startups, angel investor. I'm gonna do great to see you. Thanks for coming on the cube. Good to see you. Good to see. See you, sir. Chris pump. Cool. How are you? >>Good. How are you? >>So congratulations on all your investments. Uh, you've made a lot of great successes over the past couple years and your company raising some good cash as Sarah. So give us the update. How much cash have you guys raised? What's the status of the company product what's going on? >>First of all, thank you for having me. We're back to be business with you never while after. Great to see you. Um, so I, as the company started around four years back, I invested with a few of the investors and now I'm the CEO. Um, we have raised close to a hundred million there. The investors are people like nor west Menlo, true ventures, coast, lo ventures, Ram Shera, and all those people all well known guys, Andy Beel chime Paul Mo Mayard web. So a whole bunch of operating people and, uh, Silicon valley vs are involved >>And has it gone? >>It's going well. We are doing really well. We are going almost 300% year over year. Uh, for last three years, the space ISRA is going after is what I call the applying AI for customer service. It operations, it help desk, uh, the same place I used to work at ServiceNow. We are partners with ServiceNow to take, how can we argument for employees and customers, Salesforce, and service now to take it the next stage? Well >>Of having you on the cube, Dave and I, David ante as well loves having you on too, because you not only bring the entrepreneurial CEO experience, you're an investor. You're like a, you're like a guest analyst. <laugh> >>You know who done? You >>Get the comment, this fun to talk to you though, you >>Get the commentary, you you're your finger on the pulse. Um, so I gotta ask you obviously, AI and machine learning, machine learning AI, or you want to phrase isn't every application. Now, AI first, uh, you're seeing a lot of that going on. You're starting to see companies build the modern applications at the top of the stack. So the cloud scale has hit. We're seeing cloud scale. You predicted that we talked about in the cube many times. Now you have that past layer with a lot more services and cloud native becoming a standard layer. Containerizations growing Docker just raised a hundred million on a 2 billion valuation back from the debt after they pivoted from an enterprise services. So open source developers are booming. Um, where's the action. I mean, is there data control, plane emerging, AI needs data. There's a lot of challenges around this. There's a lot of discussions and a lot of companies being funded, observability there's 10 million observability companies. Data is the key. What's your angle on this? What's your take? Yeah, >>No, look, I think I'll give you the view that I see right from my side. Obviously data is very clear. So the things that system of recorded you and me talked about the next layer is called system of intelligence. That's where the AI will play. Like we talk cloud native, it'll be called AI. Native NATO is a new buzzword and using the AI for customer service it operations. We talk about observability. I call it AI ops, applying ops for good old it operations management, cloud management. So you'll see the AOPs applied for whole list of, uh, application from observability doing the CMDB, predicting the events incidents. So I see a lot of work clicking for AIOps and AI service desk. What used to be help desk with ServiceNow BMC <inaudible> you see a new, a layer emerging as a system of intelligence. Uh, the next would be is applying AI with workflow automation. So that's where you'll see a lot of things called customer workflows, employee workflows. So think of what UI path automation, anywhere ServiceNow are doing, that area will be driven with AI workflows. So you'll see AI going off >>Is RPA a company is AI, is RPA a feed of something bigger? Or can someone have a company on RPA UI pass? One will be at their event this summer? Um, is it a product company? I mean, I mean, RPA is almost, should be embedded in everything. It's a feature. >>It is very good point. Very, very good thing. So one is, it's the category for sure. Like it's a category, it's an area where RPA maybe change the name. I call it much more about automation, workflow automation, but RPA and automation is a category. Um, it's a company also, but that automation should be ed in every area. Yeah. Like we call cloud NATO and AI NATO. It'll become automation. NATO. Yeah. And that's your thinking? So >>It's most interesting me. I think about the, what you're talking about. What's coming to my is I'm kinda having flashbacks to the old software model of middleware. Remember at middleware, it was very easy to understand it was middleware. It sat between two things and then the middle and it was software abstraction. Now you have all kinds of workflows abstractions everywhere. So multiple databases, it's not a monolithic thing. Right? Right. So as you break that down, is this the new modern middleware? Because what you're talking about is data workflows, but they might be siloed. Are they integrated? I mean, these are the challenges. This is crazy. What's the, >>So don't put the database became called polyglot databases. Yeah. I call this one polyglot automation. So you need automation as a layer, as a category, but you also need to put automation in every area like you you're talking about. It should be part of service. Now it should be part of ISRA, like every company, every Salesforce. So that's why you see it. MuleSoft and Salesforce buying RPA companies. So you'll see all the SaaS companies, cloud companies having an automation as a core. So it's like how you have a database and compute and sales and networking. You'll also have an automation as a layer <inaudible> inside every stack. >>All right. So I wanna shift gears a little bit and get your perspective on what's going on behind us. You can see, uh, behind us, you got the expo hall, got, um, we're back to vents, but you got, you know, AMD, Clum, Ove, uh, Dynatrace data, dog, innovative all the companies out here that we know. And we interview them all. They're trying to be suppliers to this growing enterprise market. Right. Okay. But now you also got the entrepreneurial equation. Okay. We're gonna have John Sado on from Deibel later today. He's a former NEA guy and we always talk to Jerry, Jen. We know all the, the VCs. What does the startups look like? What does the, to of the, in your mind, cuz you, I know you invest the entrepreneurial founder situation. Cloud's bigger. Mm-hmm <affirmative> global, right? Data's part of it. You mentioned data's code. Yes. Basically. Data's everything. What's it like for a first an entrepreneur right now who's starting a company. What's the white space. What's the attack plan. How do they get in the market? How do they engineer everything? >>Very good. So I'll give it to two things that I'm seeing out there. Remember days of Amazon created the startups 15 years back, everybody built on Amazon now Azure and GCP. The next layer would be is people don't just build on Amazon. They're going build it on top of snowflake. Companies are snowflake becomes the data platform, right? People will build on snowflake. Right? So I, my old boss Blankman trying to build companies on snowflake. So you don't build it just on Amazon. You build it on Amazon and snowflake. Snowflake will become your data store. Snowflake will become your data layer. Right? So I think that's the next level of <inaudible> trying to do that. So if I'm doing observability AI ops, if I'm doing next level of Splunk SIM, I'm gonna build it on snowflake, on Salesforce, on Amazon, on Azure, et cetera. >>It's interesting. You know, Jerry Chan has it put out a thesis a couple months ago called castles in the cloud where your moat is, what you do in the cloud. Not necessarily in the, in the IP. Um, Dave LAN and I had last reinvent, coined the term super cloud. Right's got a lot of traction and a lot of people throwing, throwing mud at us, but we were, our thesis was, is that what Snowflake's doing? What Goldmans Sachs is doing. You're starting to see these clouds on top of clouds. So Amazon's got this huge CapEx advantage. And guys like Charles Fitzgerald out there who we like was kind of shitting on us saying, Hey, you guys terrible, they didn't get him. Like, yeah, I don't think he gets it, but that's a whole, can't wait to debate him publicly on this. He's cool. Um, but snowflake is on Amazon. Yes. Now they say they're on Azure now. Cause they've got a bigger market and they're public, but ultimately without a AWS snowflake doesn't exist and, and they're reimagining the data warehouse with the cloud, right? That's the billion dollar opportunity. >>It is. It is. They both are very tight. So imagine what Frank has done at snowflake and Amazon. So if I'm a startup today, I want to everything on Amazon where possible whatever is, I cannot build, I'll make the pass layer. Remember the middle layer pass will be snowflake so I can build it on snowflake. I can use them for data layer. If I really need do size, I'll build it on force.com Salesforce. Yeah. Right. So I think that's where you'll. >>So basically the, the, if you're an entrepreneur, the, the north star in terms of the, the outcome is be a super cloud. It is, That's the application on another big CapEx ride, the CapEx of AWS or >>Cloud, and that reduce your product development, your go to market and you get use the snowflake marketplace to drive your engagement. >>Yeah. Yeah. How are, how is Amazon and the clouds dealing with these big whales, the snowflakes of the world? I mean, I know they got a great relationship, uh, but snowflake now has to run a company they're public. Yeah. So, I mean, I'll say, I think they had Redshift. Amazon has got Redshift, um, but snowflakes, a big customer and the they're probably paying AWS, I think bills too. So >>John video it's like whole Netflix is, and Amazon prime Netflix runs on Amazon, but Amazon has Amazon prime that co-optation will be there. So Amazon will have Redshift, but Amazon is also partnering with, uh, snowflake to have native snowflake data warehouses, a data layer. So I think depending on the applic use case, you have to use each of the above. I think snowflake is here for a long term. So if I'm building an application, I want to use snowflake then, right. Think from stats. >>Well, I think that it comes back down to entrepreneurial hustle. Do you have a better product? Right. Product value will ultimately determine it as long as the cloud doesn't, You know, foreclose your value. That's right. With some sort of internal hack. But I think, I think the general question that I have is that I, I think it's okay to have a super cloud like that because the rising tide is still happening. Some point, when does the rising tide stop >>And >>The people shopping up their knives, it gets more competitive or is it just an infinite growth cycle? >>I think it's growth. You call it cloud scale. You invented the word cloud scale. So I think, look, cloud will continually agree, increase. I think there's, as long as there are more movement from on, uh, on-prem to the classical data center, I think there's no reason at this point, the rumor, the old lift and shift that's happening in like my business. I see people lift and shifting from the it operations, it helpless, even the customer service service now and, uh, ticket data from BMCs CAS like Microfocus, all those workloads are shifted to the cloud, right? So ticketing system is happening. Cloud system of record is happening. So I think this train has still a long way to go >>Made. I wanna get your thoughts for the folks watching that are, uh, enterprise buyers or practitioners, not suppliers to the market, feel free to text me or DMing next. Question's really about the buying side, which is if I'm a customer, what's the current, um, appetite for startup products, cuz you know, the big enterprises now and you know, small, medium, large, and large enterprise, they're all buying new companies cuz a startup can go from zero to relevant very quickly. So that means now enterprises are engaging heavily with startups. What's it like what's is there a change in order of magnitude of the relationship between startup selling to, or growing startup selling to an enterprise? Um, have you seen changes there? I mean I'm seeing some stuff, but why don't we get your thoughts on that? What, no, it >>Is. If I remember going back to our 2007 or eight, when I used to talk to you back then and Amazon started very small, right? We an Amazon summit here. So I think enterprises on the average used to spend nothing with startups. It's almost like 0% or one person today. Most companies are already spending 20, 30% with startups. Like if I look at a CIO, a line of business it's gone. Yeah. Can it go more? I think it can double in the next four, five years. Yeah. Spending on the startups. >>Yeah. And check our, uh, AWS startups.com. That's a site that we built for the startup community for buyers and startups. And I want get your reaction because I, I reference the URL cause it's like, there's like a bunch of companies we've been promoting because the solutions that startups have actually are new stuff. Yes. It's bending, it's shifting left for security or using data differently or are um, building tools and platforms for data engineering. Right. Which is a new persona that's emerging. So you know, a lot of good resources there. Um, and goes back now to the data question. Now, getting back to your, what you're working on now is what's your thoughts around this new, um, data engineering persona. You mentioned a AIOps we've been seeing AOPs IOPS blue booming and that's creating a new developer paradigm that's right. Which we call and coin data as code data as code is like infrastructure as code, but it's for data, right? It's developing with data, right? Retraining machine learnings, going back to the data lake, getting data to make, to do analysis, to make the machine learning better post event or post action. So this, this to engineers like an SRE for data, it's a new, scalable role we're seeing. Do you see the same things? Do you agree? Um, do you disagree or can you share >>Yourself? I, no, I have a lot of thoughts that first is I see the AOP solutions in the future should be not looking back. I need to be like we are in San Francisco bay. That means earthquake prediction. Right? I want AOPs to predict when the outages are gonna happen. When there's a performance issue. I don't think most AOPs vendors have not gone through it. Like I spend a lot of time with data dog, Cisco app dynamic, right? Dynatrace, all this solution will go future towards predict to proactive solution with AOPs. But what you bring of a very good point on the data side, I think like we have a Amazon marketplace and for startup, there should be data exchange where you want to create for AOPs and AI service desk customers that give the data, share the data because we thought the data algorithms are useless. I can come the best algorithm, but I gotta train them, modify them, tweak them, make >>Them >>Better, make them better. Yeah. And I think there are a whole data exchange is the industry has not thought through something you and me talk many times. Yeah. Yeah. I think the whole, that data is very important. >>You've always been on, on the Vanguard of data because, uh, it's been really fun. Yeah. >>Going back to big data days back in 2009, you know, >>Look at, look how much data bricks has grown. >>It is double, the >>Key cloud air kinda went private, so good stuff. But what are you working on right now? Give a, give a, um, plug for what you're working on. You'll still invest strength. >>I do still invest, but look, I'm a hundred percent on ISRA right now. I'm the CEO there. Yeah. Okay. >>So >>Right. ISRA is my number one baby right now. So I'm looking at that growing customers and my customers. Some of them you like it's zoom auto desk, MacAfee, uh, grantor. So all the top customers, um, mainly for it help desk customer service ops. Those are three product lines and going after enterprise and commercial deals. >>And when should someone buy your product? What what's their need? What category is it? >>I think the look whenever somebody needs to buy the product is if you need AOP solution to predict, keep your lights on, predict ours one area. If you want to improve employee experience, you are using a slack teams and you want to automate all your workflows. That's another value. Prop. Third is customer service. You don't want to hire more people to do it. Some of the areas where you want to scale your company, grow your company, eliminate the cost customer service. >>Great stuff, man. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Congratulations on the success of your company and your investments. Thanks for coming on the key. Okay. I'm John fur here at the cube live in San Francisco for day one of two days of coverage of Aish summit 2022. And we're gonna be at a summit in San, uh, in New York in the summer. So look for that on this calendar, of course, go to Aish startups.com and mention that it's ay for all the hot startups and of course the cube.net and Silicon angle.com. Thanks for watching. We'll be back more coverage after this short break.

More bottoms up and have more technical early adopters. And generally speaking, they're free to use. They're free to try. They're very commonly community source or open source companies where you have a large technical community that's supporting them. So there's a, there's kind of a new normal now I think in great enterprise software and it starts with great technical founders with great products and great bottoms of emotions. And I think there's no better place to, uh, service those people than in the cloud and uh, in, in your community. >>Well, first of all, congratulations, and by the way, you got a great pedigree and great background, super smart, but Myer of your work and your, and, and your founding, but let's face it. Enterprise is hot because digital transformation is all companies there's no, I mean, consumer is enterprise now, everything is what was once a niche. No, I won't say niche category, but you know, not for the faint of heart, you know, investors, >>You know, it's so funny that you say that enterprise is hot because you, and I feel that way now. <laugh> but remember, like right now there's also a tech and VC conference in Miami <laugh> and it's covering cryptocurrencies and FCS and web three. So I think beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder <laugh> but no, I, I will tell you, >>Ts is one big enterprise, cuz you gotta have imutability you got performance issues. You have, I IOPS issues. >>Well, and, and I think all of us here that are, uh, may maybe students of history and have been involved in open source in the cloud would say that we're, you know, much of what we're doing is, uh, the predecessors of the web web three movement. And many of us I think are contributors to the web three >>Movement. The hype is definitely one web three. Yeah. >>But, >>But you know, >>For sure. Yeah, no, but now you're taking us further east of Miami. So, uh, you know, look, I think, I, I think, um, what is unquestioned with the case now? And maybe it's, it's more obvious the more time you spend in this world is this is the fastest growing part of enterprise software. And if you include cloud infrastructure and cloud infrastructure spend, you know, it is by many measures over, uh, $500 billion in growing, you know, 20 to 30% a year. So it it's a, it's a just incredibly fast, well, >>Let's get, let's get into some of the cultural and the, the shifts that are happening, cuz again, you, you have the luxury of being in enterprise when it was hard, it's getting easier and more cooler. I get it and more relevant <laugh> but there's also the hype of like the web three, for instance, but you know, for, uh, um, um, the CEO snowflake, okay. Has wrote a book and Dave Valenti and I were talking about it and uh, Frank Luman has says, there's no playbooks. We always ask the CEOs, what's your playbook. And he's like, there's no playbook, situational awareness, always Trump's playbooks. So in the enterprise playbook, oh, higher, a direct sales force and SAS kind of crushed that now SAS is being redefined, right. So what is SAS is snowflake assassin or is that a platform? So again, new unit economics are emerging, whole new situation, you got web three. So to me there's a cultural shift, the young entrepreneurs, the, uh, user experience, they look at Facebook and say, ah, you know, they own all my data and you know, we know that that cliche, um, they, you know, the product. So as this next gen, the gen Z and the millennials come in and our customers and the founders, they're looking at things a little bit differently and the tech better. >>Yeah. I mean, I mean, I think we can, we can see a lot of common across all successful startups and the overall adoption of technology. Um, and, and I would tell you, this is all one big giant revolution. I call it the user driven revolution. Right. It's the rise of the user. Yeah. And you might say product like growth is currently the hottest trend in enterprise software. It's actually like growth, right. They're one and the same. So sometimes people think the product, uh, is what is driving growth. >>You just pull the product >>Through. Exactly, exactly. And so that's that I, that I think is really this revolution that you see, and, and it does extend into things like cryptocurrencies and web three and, you know, sort of like the control that is taken back by the user. Um, but you know, many would say that, that the origins of this, but maybe started with open source where users were contributors, you know, contributors were users and looking back decades and seeing how it, how it fast forward to today. I think that's really the trend that we're all writing. It's enabling these end users. And these end users in our world are developers, data engineers, cybersecurity practitioners, right. They're really the, and they're really the, the beneficiaries and the most, you know, kind of valued people in >>This. I wanna come back to the data engineers in a second, but I wanna make a comment and get your reaction to, I have a, I'm a gen Xer technically. So for not a boomer, but I have some boomer friends who are a little bit older than me who have, you know, experienced the sixties. And I have what been saying on the cube for probably about eight years now that we are gonna hit digital hippie revolution, meaning a rebellion against in the sixties was rebellion against the fifties and the man and, you know, summer of love. That was a cultural differentiation from the other one other group, the predecessors. So we're kind of having that digital moment now where it's like, Hey boomers, Hey people, we're not gonna do that anymore. You, we hate how you organize shit. >>Right. But isn't this just technology. I mean, isn't it, isn't it like there used to be the old adage, like, you know, you would never get fired for buying IBM, but now it's like, you obviously probably would get fired if you bought IBM. And I mean, it's just like the, the, I think, I think >>During the mainframe days, those renegades were breaking into Stanford, starting the home group. So what I'm trying to get at is that, do you see the young cultural revolution also, culturally, just, this is my identity NFTs to me speak volumes about my, I wanna associate with NFTs, not single sign on. Well, >>Absolutely. And, and I think like, I think you're hitting on something, which is like this convergence of, of, you know, societal it'll trends with technology trends and how that manifests in our world is yes. I think like there is unquestionably almost a religion yeah. Around the way in which a product is built. Right. And we can use open source, one example of that religion. Some people will say, look, I'll just never try a product in the cloud if it's not open source. Yeah. I think cloud, native's another example of that, right? It's either it's, you know, it either is cloud native or it's not. And I think a lot of people will look at a product and say, look, you know, you were not designed in the cloud era. Therefore I just won't try you. And sometimes, um, like it or not, it's a religious decision, right? Yeah. It's so it's something that people just believe to be true almost without, uh, necessarily caring >>About data. Data drives all decision making. Let me ask you this next question. As a VC. Now you look at pitch, well, you've been a VC for many years, but you also have the founder entrepreneurial mindset, but you can get empathize with the founders. You know, hustle is a big part of the, that first founder check, right? You gotta convince someone to part with their ch their money and the first money in which you do a lot of it's about believing in the person. So faking it till you make it is hard. Now you, the data's there, you either have it cloud native, you either have the adaption or traction. So honesty is a big part of that pitch. You can't fake it. >>Oh, AB absolutely. You know, there used to be this concept of like the persona of an entrepreneur. Right. And the persona of the entrepreneur would be, you know, so somebody who was a great salesperson or somebody who tell a great story, and I still think that that's important, right. It still is a human need for people to believe in narratives and stories. Yeah. But having said that you're right. The proof is in the pudding, right. At some point you click download and you try the product and it does what it says it gonna it's gonna do, or it doesn't, or it either stands up to the load test or it doesn't. And so I, I feel like in the new economy that we live in, really, it's a shift from maybe the storytellers and the creators to, to the builders, right. The people that know how to build great product. And in some ways the people that can build great product yeah. Stand out from the crowd. And they're the ones that can build communities around their products. And, you know, in some ways can, um, you know, kind of own more of the narrative of because their product begins exactly >>The volume you back to the user led growth. >>Exactly. And it's the religion of, I just love your product. Right. And I, I, I, um, Doug song is the founder of du security used to say, Hey, like, you know, the, the really like in today's world of like consumption based software, like the user is only gonna give you 90 seconds to figure out whether or not you're a company that's easy to do business with. Right. And so you can say, and do all the things that you want about how easy you are to work with. But if the product isn't easy to install, if it's not easy to try, if it's not, if, if the it's gotta speak to the, >>Speak to the user, but let me ask a question now that for the people watching, who are maybe entrepreneurial entre, preneurs, um, masterclass here in session. So I have to ask you, do you prefer, um, an entrepreneur come in and say, look at John. Here's where I'm at. Okay. First of all, storytelling's fine with you an extrovert or introvert, have your style, sell the story in a way that's authentic, but do you, what do you prefer to say? Here's where I'm at? Look, I have an idea. Here's my traction. I think here's my MVP prototype. I need help. Or do, do you wanna just see more stats? What's the, what's the preferred way that you like to see entrepreneurs come in and engage? >>There's tons of different styles, man. I think the single most important thing that every founder should know is that we, we don't invest in what things are today. We invest in what we think something will become. Right. And I think that's why we all get up in the morning and try to build something different, right? It's that we see the world a different way. We want it to be a different way. And we wanna work every single moment of the day to try to make that vision a reality. So I think the more that you can show people where you want to be the, of more likely somebody is gonna align with your vision and, and wanna invest in you and wanna be along for the ride. So I, I wholeheartedly believe in showing off what you got today, because eventually we all get down to like, where are we and what are we gonna do together? But, um, no, I, you gotta >>Show the >>Path. I think the single most important thing for any founder and VC relationship is that they have the same vision. Uh, if you have the same vision, you can, you can get through bumps in the road, you can get through short term spills. You can all sorts of things in the middle. The journey can happen. Yeah. But it doesn't matter as much if you share the same long term vision, >>Don't flake out and, and be fashionable with the latest trends because it's over before you can get there. >>Exactly. I think many people that, that do what we do for a living, we'll say, you know, ultimately the future is relatively easy to predict, but it's the timing that's impossible to predict. <laugh> so you, you know, you sort of have to balance the, you know, we, we know that the world is going in this way and therefore we're gonna invest a lot of money to try to make this a reality. Uh, but some times it happens in six months. Sometimes it takes six years. Sometimes it takes 16 years. Uh, >>What's the hottest thing in enterprise that you see the biggest wave that people should pay attention to that you're looking at right now with Bel partners, Tebel dot your site. What's the big wave. What's your big >>Wave. There's three big trends that we invest in. And the they're the only things we do day in, day out one is the explosion and open source software. So I think many people think that all software is unquestionably moving to an open source model in some form or another yeah. Tons of reasons to debate whether or not that is gonna happen, an alwa timeline >>Happening forever. >>But, uh, it is, it is accelerating faster than we've ever seen. So I, I think it's, it's one big, massive wave that we continue to ride. Um, second is the rise of data engineering. Uh, I think data engineering is in and of itself now, a category of software. It's not just that we store data. It's now we move data and we develop applications on data. And, uh, I think data is in and of itself as big of a market as any of the other markets that we invest in. Uh, and finally, it's the gift that keeps on giving. I've spent my entire career in it. We still feel that security is a market that is underinvested. It is, it continues to be the place where people need to continue to invest and spend more money. Yeah. Uh, and those are the three major trends that we run >>And security, you think we all need a dessert do over, right? I mean, do we need you do over in security or is what's the core problem? I, >>I, I keep using this word underinvested because I think it's the right way to think about the problem. I think if you, I think people generally speaking, look at cybersecurity as an add-on. Yeah. But if you think about it, the whole economy is moving online. And so in, in some ways like security is core to protecting the digital economy. And so it's, it shouldn't be an afterthought, right? It should be core to what everyone is doing. And that's why I think relative to the trillions of dollars that are at stake, uh, I believe the market size for cybersecurity is run $150 billion. And it still is a fraction of what we're, >>What we're and national security even boom is booming now. So you get the convergence of national security, geopolitics, internet digital that's >>Right. You mean arguably, right? I mean, arguably again, it's the area of the world that people should be spending more time and more money given what to stake. >>I love your thesis. I gotta, I gotta say, you gotta love your firm. Love. You're doing we're big supporters, your mission. Congratulations on your entrepreneurial venture. And, uh, we'll be, we'll be talking and maybe see a Cuban. Uh, absolutely not. Certainly EU maybe even north Americans in Detroit this year. >>Huge fan of what you guys are doing here. Thank you so much for helping me on the show. >>Guess be VC Johnson here on the cube. Check him out. Founder for founders here on the cube, more coverage from San Francisco, California. After this short break, stay with us. Everyone. Welcome to the cue here. Live in San Francisco. K warn you for AWS summit 2022 we're live we're back with events. Also we're virtual. We got hybrid all kinds of events. This year, of course, summit in New York city is happening this summer. We'll be there with the cube as well. I'm John. Again, John host of the cube. Got a great guest here, Justin Kobe owner, and CEO of innovative solutions. Their booth is right behind us. Justin, welcome to the cube. >>Thank you. Thank you for having me. >>So we're just chatting, uh, uh, off camera about some of the work you're doing. You're the owner of and CEO. Yeah. Of innovative. Yeah. So tell us the story. What do you guys do? What's the elevator pitch. >>Yeah. <laugh> so the elevator pitch is we are, uh, a hundred percent focused on small to mid-size businesses that are moving to the cloud, or have already moved to the cloud and really trying to understand how to best control security, compliance, all the good stuff that comes along with it. Um, exclusively focused on AWS and, um, you know, about 110 people, uh, based in Rochester, New York, that's where our headquarters is, but now we have offices down in Austin, Texas, up in Toronto, uh, Canada, as well as Chicago. Um, and obviously in New York, uh, you know, the business was never like this, uh, five years ago, um, founded in 1989, made the decision in 2018 to pivot and go all in on the cloud. And, uh, I've been a part of the company for about 18 years, bought the company about five years ago. And it's been a great ride. >>It's interesting. The manages services are interesting with cloud cause a lot of the heavy liftings done by a of us. So we had Matt on your team on earlier talking about some of the edge stuff. Yeah. But you guys are a managed cloud service. You got cloud advisory, you know, the classic service that's needed, but the demands coming from cloud migrations and application modernization, but obviously data is a huge part of it. Huge. How is this factoring into what you guys do and your growth cuz you guys are the number one partner on the SMB side for edge. Yeah. For AWS, you got results coming in. Where's the, where's the forcing function. What's the pressure point. What's the demand like? >>Yeah. It's a great question. Every CEO I talk to, that's a small mids to size business. They're all trying to understand how to leverage technology better to help either drive a revenue target for their own business, uh, help with customer service as so much has gone remote now. And we're all having problems or troubles or issues trying to hire talent. And um, you know, tech is really at the, at the forefront and the center of that. So most customers are coming to us and they're of like, listen, we gotta move to the cloud or we move some things to the cloud and we want to do that better. And um, there's this big misnomer that when you move to the cloud, you gotta automatically modernize. Yeah. And what we try to help as many customers understand as possible is lifting and shifting, moving the stuff that you maybe currently have OnPrem and a data center to the cloud first is a first step. And then so, uh, progressively working through a modernization strategy is always the better approach. And so we spend a lot of time with small to mid-size businesses who don't have the technology talent on staff to be able to do >>That. Yeah. And they want to get set up. But the, the dynamic of like latency is huge. We're seeing that edge product is a big part of it. This is not a one-off happening around everywhere. It is not it's manufacturing, it's the physical plant or location >>Literally. >>And so, and you're seeing more IOT devices. What's that like right now from a challenge and problem statement standpoint, are the customers, not staff, is the it staff kind of old school? Is it new skills? What's the core problem. And you guys solve >>In the SMB space. The core issue nine outta 10 times is people get enamored with the latest and greatest. And the reality is not everything that's cloud based. Not all cloud services are the latest and greatest. Some things have been around for quite some time and our hardened solutions. And so, um, what we try to do with, to technology staff that has traditional on-prem, uh, let's just say skill sets and they're trying to move to a cloud-based workload is we try to help those customers through education and through some practical, let's just call it use case. Um, whether that's a proof of concept that we're doing or whether that's, we're gonna migrate a small workload over, we try to give them the confidence to be able to not, not necessarily go it alone, but, but to, to, to have the, uh, the Gusto and to really have the, um, the, the opportunity to, to do that in a wise way. Um, and what I find is that most CEOs that I talk to yeah. Feel like, listen, at the end of the day, I'm gonna be spending money in one place or another, whether that's on primer in the cloud, I just want know that I'm doing that way. That helps me grow as quickly as possible status quo. I think every, every business owner knows that COVID taught us anything that status quo is, uh, is, is no. No. Good. >>How about factoring in the, the agility and speed equation? Does that come up a lot? It >>Does. I think, um, I think there's also this idea that if, uh, if we do a deep dive analysis and we really take a surgical approach to things, um, we're gonna be better off. And the reality is the faster you move with anything cloud based, the better you are. And so there's this assumption that we gotta get it right the first time. Yeah. In the cloud, if you start down your journey in one way and you realize midway that it's not the right, let's just say the right place to go. It's not like buying a piece of iron that you put in the closet and now you own it in the cloud. You can turn those services on and off. It's a, gives you a much higher density for making decisions and failing >>Forward. Well actually shutting down the abandoning, the projects that early, not worrying about it, you got it mean most people don't abandon stuff cuz they're like, oh, I own it. >>Exactly. >>And they get, they get used to it. Like, and then they wait too long. >>That's exactly. >>Yeah. Frog and boiling water, as we used to say, oh, it's a great analogy. So I mean, this, this is a dynamic. That's interesting. I wanna get more thoughts on it because like I'm a, if I'm a CEO of a company, like, okay, I gotta make my number. Yeah. I gotta keep my people motivated. Yeah. And I gotta move faster. So this is where you guys come in. I get the whole thing. And by the way, great service, um, professional services in the cloud right now are so hot because so hot, you can build it and then have option optionality. You got path decisions, you got new services to take advantage of. It's almost too much for customers. It is. I mean, everyone I talked to at reinvent, that's a customer. Well, how many announcements did Andy jazzy announcer Adam? You know, the 5,000 announcement or whatever. They did huge amounts. Right. Keeping track of it all. Oh, is huge. So what's the, what's the, um, the mission of, of your company. How does, how do you talk to that alignment? Yeah. Not just processes. I can get that like values as companies, cuz they're betting on you and your people. >>They are, they are >>Values. >>Our mission is, is very simple. We want to help every small to midsize business leverage the power of the cloud. Here's the reality. We believe wholeheartedly. This is our vision that every company is going to become a technology company. So we go to market with this idea that every customer's trying to leverage the power of the cloud in some way, shape or form, whether they know it or don't know it. And number two, they're gonna become a 10 a company in the process of that because everything is so tech-centric. And so when you talk about speed and agility, when you talk about the, the endless options and the endless permutations of solutions that a customer can buy in the cloud, how are you gonna ask a team of one or two people in your it department to make all those decisions going it alone or trying to learn it as you go, it only gets you so far working with a partner. >>I'll just give you some perspective. We work with about a thousand small to midsize business customers. More than 50% of those customers are on our managed services. Meaning they know that we have their back and we're the safety net. So when a customer is saying, right, I'm gonna spend a couple thousand and dollars a month in the cloud. They know that that bill, isn't gonna jump to $10,000 a month going in alone. Who's there to help protect that. Number two, if you have a security posture and let's just say your high profile and you're gonna potentially be more vulnerable to security attacks. If you have a partner that's offering you some managed services. Now you, again, you've got that backstop and you've got those services and tooling. We, we offer, um, seven different products, uh, that are part of our managed services that give the customer the tooling, that for them to go out and buy on their own for a customer to go out today and go buy a new Relic solution on their own. It, it would cost 'em a four, >>The training alone would be insane. A risk factor. I mean the cost. Yes, absolutely opportunity cost is huge, >>Huge, absolutely enormous training and development. Something. I think that is often, you know, it's often overlooked technologists. Typically they want to get their skills up. They, they love to get the, the stickers and the badges and the pins, um, at innovative in 2018. When, uh, when we, he made the decision to go all in on the club, I said to the organization, you know, we have this idea that we're gonna pivot and be aligned with AWS in such a way that it's gonna really require us all to get certified. My executive assistant at the time looks at me. She said, even me, I said, yeah, even you, why can't you get certified? Yeah. And so we made, uh, a conscious, it wasn't requirement. It still isn't today to make sure everybody in the company has the opportunity to become certified. Even the people that are answering the phones at the front >>Desk and she could be running the Kubernetes clusters. I >>Love it. It's >>Amazing. >>But I'll tell you what, when that customer calls and they have a real Kubernetes issue, she'll be able to assist and get >>The right people with. And that's a cultural factor that you guys have. So, so again, this is back to my whole point out SMBs and businesses in general, small and large it staffs are turning over the gen Z and millennials are in the workforce. They were provisioning top of rack switches. Right. First of all. And so if you're a business, there's also the, I call the buildout, um, uh, return factor, ROI piece. At what point in time as an owner, SMB, do I get to ROI? Yeah. I gotta hire a person to manage it. That person's gonna have five zillion job offers. Yep. Uh, maybe who knows? Right. I got cyber security issues. Where am I gonna find a cyber person? Yeah. A data compliance. I need a data scientist and a compliance person. Right. Maybe one in the same. Right. Good luck. Trying to find a data scientist. Who's also a compliance person. Yep. And the list goes on. I can just continue. Absolutely. I need an SRE to manage the, the, uh, the sock report and we can pen test. Right. >>Right. >>These are, these are >>Like critical issues. >>This is just like, these are the table stakes. >>Yeah. And, and every, every business owner's thinking about this, >>That's, that's what, at least a million in loading, if not three or more Just to get that app going. Yeah. Then it's like, where's the app. Yeah. So there's no cloud migration. There's no modernization on the app side. No. And they remind AI and ML. >>That's right. That's right. So to try to go it alone, to me, it's hard. It it's incredibly difficult. And the other thing is, is there's not a lot of partners, so the partner, >>No one's raising their hand boss. I'll do all that exactly. In the it department. >>Exactly. >>So like, can we just call up, uh, you know, our old vendor that's >>Right. <laugh> right. Our old vendor. I like it, >>But that's so true. I mean, when I think about how, if I was a business owner starting a business today and I had to build my team, um, and the amount of investment that it would take to get those people skilled up and then the risk factor of those people now having the skills and being so much more in demand and being recruited away, that's a real, that's a real issue. And so how you build your culture around that is, is very important. It's something that we talk about every, with every one of our small to mid-size >>Businesses. So just, I want get, I want to get your story as CEO. Okay. Take us through your journey. You said you bought the company and your progression to, to being the owner and CEO of innovative yeah. Award winning guys doing great. Uh, great bet on a good call. Yeah. Things are good. Tell your story. What's your journey? >>It's real simple. I was, uh, I was a sophomore at the Rochester Institute of technology in 2003. And, uh, I knew that I, I was going to school for it and I, I knew I wanted to be in tech. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn't wanna code or configure routers and switches. So I had this great opportunity with the local it company that was doing managed services. We didn't call it at that time innovative solutions to come in and, uh, jump on the phone and dial for dollars. I was gonna cold call and introduced other, uh, small to midsize businesses locally in Rochester, New York go to Western New York, um, who innovative was now. We were 19 people at the time. Yeah. I came in, I did an internship for six months and I loved it. I learned more in those six months than I probably did in my first couple of years at, uh, at RT long story short. >>Um, for about seven years, I worked, uh, to really help develop, uh, sales process and methodology for the business so that we could grow and scale. And we grew to about 30 people. And, um, I went to the owners at the time in 2000 and I was like, Hey, I'm growing the value of this business. And who knows where you guys are gonna be another five years? What do you think about making me an owner? And they were like, listen, you got long ways before you're gonna be an owner. But if you stick it out in your patient, we'll, um, we'll work through a succession plan with you. And I said, okay, there were four other individuals at the time that were gonna also buy the business with me. >>And they were the owners, no outside capital, >>None zero, well, 2014 comes around. And, uh, the other folks that were gonna buy into the business with me that were also working at innovative for different reasons. They all decided that it wasn't for them. One started a family. The other didn't wanna put capital in. Didn't wanna write a check. Um, the other had a real big problem with having to write a check. If we couldn't make payroll, I'm like, well, that's kind of like, if we're own, we're gonna have to like cover that stuff. <laugh> so >>It's called the pucker factor. >>Exactly. So, uh, I sat down with the CEO in early 2015 and, uh, we made the decision that I was gonna buy the three partners out, um, go through an earn out process, uh, coupled with, uh, an interesting financial strategy that wouldn't strap the BI cuz they cared very much. The company still had the opportunity to keep going. So in 2016 I bought the business, um, became the sole owner. And, and at that point we, um, we really focused hard on what do we want this company to be? We had built this company to this point. Yeah. And, uh, and by 2018 we knew that pivoting all going all in on the cloud was important for us. And we haven't looked back. >>And at that time, the proof points were coming clearer and clearer 2012 through 15 was the early adopters, the builders, the startups and early enterprises. Yes. The capital ones of the world. Exactly the, uh, and those kinds of big enterprises. The GA I don't wanna say gamblers, but ones that were very savvy. The innovators, the FinTech folks. Yep. The hardcore glass eating enterprises >>Agreed, agreed to find a small to midsize business to migrate completely to the cloud is as infrastructure was considered, that just didn't happen as often. Um, what we were seeing where the, a lot of our small to midsize business customers, they wanted to leverage cloud based backup, or they wanted to leverage a cloud for disaster recovery because it lent itself. Well, early days, our most common cloud customer though, was the customer that wanted to move messaging and collaboration. The, the Microsoft suite to the cloud. And a lot of 'em dipped their toe in the water. But by 2017 we knew infrastructure was around the corner. Yeah. And so, uh, we only had two customers on AWS at the time. Um, and we, uh, we, we made the decision to go all in >>Justin. Great to have you on the cube. Thank you. Let's wrap up. Uh, tell me the hottest product that you have. Is it migrations? Is the app modernization? Is it data? What's the hot product and then put a plugin for the company. Awesome. >>So, uh, there's no question. Every customer is looking migrate workloads and try to figure out how to modernize for the future. We have very interesting, sophisticated yet elegant funding solutions to help customers with the cash flow, uh, constraints that come along with those migrations. So any SMB that's thinking about migrating into the cloud, they should be talking innovative solutions. We know how to do it in a way that allows those customer is not to be cash strapped and gives them an opportunity to move forward in a controlled, contained way so they can modernize. So >>Like insurance, basically for them not insurance class in the classic sense, but you help them out on the, on the cash exposure. >>Absolutely. We are known for that and we're known for being creative with those customers and being empathetic to where they are in their journey. >>And that's the cloud upside is all about doubling down on the variable win that's right. Seeing the value and ING down on it. Absolutely not praying for it. Yeah. <laugh> all right, Justin. Thanks for coming on. You really appreciate >>It. Thank you very much for having me. >>Okay. This is the cube coverage here live in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching. We're back with more great coverage for two days after this short break >>Live on the floor in San Francisco for Aus summit. I'm John for host of the cube here for the next two days, getting all the actual back in person we're at AWS reinvent a few months ago. Now we're back events are coming back and we're happy to be here with the cube. Bring all the action. Also virtual. We have a hybrid cube, check out the cube.net, Silicon angle.com for all the coverage. After the event. We've got a great guest ticking off here. Matthew Park, director of solutions, architecture with innovation solutions. The booth is right here. Matthew, welcome to the cube. >>Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here. >>So we're back in person. You're from Tennessee. We were chatting before you came on camera. Um, it's great to be back through events. It's >>Amazing. This is the first, uh, summit I've been to, to in what two, three >>Years. That's awesome. We'll be at the, uh, a AWS summit in New York as well. A lot of developers and the big story this year is as developers look at cloud going distributed computing, you got on premises, you got public cloud, you got the edge. Essentially the cloud operations is running everything devs sec ops, everyone kind of sees that you got containers, you got Benet, he's got cloud native. So the, the game is pretty much laid out. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and the edge is with the actions you guys are number one, premier partner at SMB for edge. >>That's >>Right. Tell us about what you guys doing at innovative and, uh, what you do. >>That's right. Uh, so I'm the director of solutions architecture. Uh, me and my team are responsible for building out the solutions. The at our around, especially the edge public cloud for us edge is anything outside of an AWS availability zone. Uh, we are deploying that in countries that don't have AWS infrastructure in region. They don't have it. Uh, give >>An example, >>Uh, example would be Panama. We have a customer there that, uh, needs to deploy some financial tech data and compute is legally required to be in Panama, but they love AWS and they want to deploy AWS services in region. Uh, so they've taken E EKS anywhere. We've put storage gateway and, uh, snowball, uh, in region inside the country and they're running or FinTech on top of AWS services inside Panama. >>You know, what's interesting, Matthew is that we've been covering Aw since 2013 with the cube about their events. And we watched the progression and jazzy was, uh, was in charge and became the CEO. Now Adam slaps in charge, but the edge has always been that thing they've been trying to avoid. I don't wanna say trying to avoid, of course, Amazon would listens to the customer. They work backwards from the customer. We all know that. Uh, but the real issue was they were they're bread and butters EC two and S three. And then now they got tons of services and the cloud is obviously successful and seeing that, but the edge brings up a whole nother level. >>It does >>Computing. >>It >>Does. That's not centralized in the public cloud now they got regions. So what is the issue with the edge what's driving? The behavior. Outpost came out as a reaction to competitive threats and also customer momentum around OT, uh, operational technologies. And it merging. We see with the data at the edge, you got five GM having. So it's pretty obvious, but there was a slow transition. What was the driver for the edge? What's the driver now for edge action for AWS >>Data in is the driver for the edge. Data has gravity, right? And it's pulling compute back to where the customer's generating that data and that's happening over and over again. You said it best outpost was a reaction to a competitive situation. Whereas today we have over 15 AWS edge services and those are all reactions to things that customers need inside their data centers on location or in the field like with media companies. >>Outpost is interesting. We always use the riff on the cube, uh, cause it's basically Amazon in a box, pushed in the data center, running native, all this stuff, but now cloud native operations are kind of becoming standard. You're starting to see some standard. Deepak syncs group is doing some amazing work with opensource Raul's team on the AI side, obviously, uh, you got SW who's giving the keynote tomorrow. You got the big AI machine learning big part of that edge. Now you can say, okay, outpost, is it relevant today? In other words, did outpost do its job? Cause EKS anywhere seems to be getting a lot of momentum. You see local zones, the regions are kicking ass for Amazon. This edge piece is evolving. What's your take on EKS anywhere versus say outpost? >>Yeah, I think outpost did its job. It made customers that were looking at outpost really consider, do I wanna invest in this hardware? Do I, do I wanna have, um, this outpost in my datas center, do I want to manage this over the long term? A lot of those customers just transitioned to the public cloud. They went into AWS proper. Some of those customers stayed on prem because they did have use cases that were, uh, not a good fit for outpost. They weren't a good fit. Uh, in the customer's mind for the public AWS cloud inside an availability zone now happening is as AWS is pushing these services out and saying, we're gonna meet you where you are with 5g. We're gonna meet you where you are with wavelength. We're gonna meet you where you are with EKS anywhere. Uh, I think it has really reduced the amount of times that we have conversations about outposts and it's really increased. We can deploy fast. We don't have to spin up outpost hardware can go deploy EKS anywhere in your VMware environment. And it's increasing the speed of adoption >>For sure. Right? So you guys are making a lot of good business decisions around managed cloud service. That's right. Innovative. Does that get the cloud advisory, the classic professional services for the specific edge piece and, and doing that outside of the availability zones and regions for AWS, um, customers in these new areas that you're helping out are they want cloud, like they want to have modernization a modern applications. Obviously they got data machine learning and AI, all part of that. What's the main product or, or, or gap that you're filling for AWS, uh, outside of their availability zones or their regions that you guys are delivering. What's the key is that they don't have a footprint. Is it that it's not big enough for them? What's the real gap. What's why, why are you so successful? >>So what customers want when they look towards the cloud is they want to focus on what's making them money as a business. They wanna focus on their applications. They wanna focus on their customers. So they look towards AWS cloud and a AWS. You take the infrastructure, you take, uh, some of the higher layers and we'll focus on our revenue generating business, but there's a gap there between infrastructure and revenue generating business that innovative slides into, uh, we help manage the AWS environment. Uh, we help build out these things in local data centers for 32 plus year old company. We have traditional on-premises people that know about deploying hardware that know about deploying VMware to host EKS anywhere. But we also have most of our company totally focused on the AWS cloud. So we're that gap in helping deploy these AWS services, manage them over the long term. So our customers can go to just primarily and totally focusing on their revenue generating business. So >>Basically you guys are basically building AWS edges, >>Correct? >>For correct companies, correct? Mainly because the, the needs are there, you got data, you got certain products, whether it's, you know, low latency type requirements, right. And then they still work with the regions, right. It's all tied together, right. Is that how it >>Works? Right. And, and our customers, even the ones in the edge, they also want us to build out the AWS environment inside the availability zone, because we're always gonna have a failback scenario. If we're gonna deploy fin in the Caribbean, we're gonna talk about hurricanes. And we're gonna talk about failing back into the AWS availability zones. So innovative is filling that gap across the board, whether it be inside the AWS cloud or on the AWS edge. >>All right. So I gotta ask you on the, since you're at the edge in these areas, I won't say underserved, but developing areas where now have data and you have applications that are tapping into that, that requirement. It makes total sense. We're seeing that across the board. So it's not like it's a, it's an outlier it's actually growing. Yeah. There's also the crypto angle. You got the blockchain. Are you seeing any traction at the edge with blockchain? Because a lot of people are looking at the web three in these areas like Panama, you mentioned FinTech. And in, in the islands there a lot of, lot of, lot of web three happening. What's your, what your view on the web three world right now, relative >>To we, we have some customers actually deploying crypto, especially, um, especially in the Caribbean. I keep bringing the Caribbean up, but it's, it's top of my mind right now we have customers that are deploying crypto. A lot of, uh, countries are choosing crypto to underlie parts of their central banks. Yeah. Um, so it's, it's up and coming. Uh, I, I have some, you know, personal views that, that crypto is still searching for a use case. Yeah. And, uh, I think it's searching a lot and, and we're there to help customers search for that use case. Uh, but, but crypto, as a, as a, uh, technology, um, lives really well on the AWS edge. Yeah. Uh, and, and we're having more and more people talk to us about that. Yeah. And ask for assistance in the infrastructure, because they're developing new cryptocurrencies every day. Yeah. It's not like they're deploying Ethereum or anything specific. They're actually developing new currencies and, and putting them out there on >>It's interesting. I mean, first of all, we've been doing crypto for many, many years. We have our own little, um, you know, project going on. But if you look talk to all the crypto people that say, look, we do a smart contract, we use the blockchain. It's kind of over a lot of overhead and it's not really their technical already, but it's a cultural shift, but there's underserved use cases around use of money, but they're all using the blockchain just for like smart contracts, for instance, or certain transactions. And they go to Amazon for the database. Yeah. <laugh> they all don't tell anyone we're using a centralized service. Well, what happened to decentralized? >>Yeah. And that's, and that's the conversation performance issue. Yeah. And, and it's a cost issue. Yeah. And it's a development issue. Um, so I think more and more as, as some of these, uh, currencies maybe come up, some of the smart contracts get into, uh, they find their use cases. I think we'll start talking about how does that really live on, on AWS and, and what does it look like to build decentralized applications, but with AWS hardware and services. >>Right. So take me through, uh, a use case of a customer Matthew around the edge. Okay. So I'm a customer, pretend I'm a customer, Hey, you know, I'm, we're in an underserved area. I want to modernize my business. And I got my developers that are totally peaked up on cloud, but we've identified that it's just a lot of overhead latency issues. I need to have a local edge and serve my a, I also want all the benefit of the cloud. So I want the modern, and I wanna migrate to the cloud for all those cloud benefits and the goodness of the cloud. What's the answer. >>Yeah. Uh, big thing is, uh, industrial manufacturing, right? That's, that's one of the best use cases, uh, inside industrial manufacturing, we can pull in many of the AWS edge services we can bring in, uh, private 5g, uh, so that all the, uh, equipment that, that manufacturing plant can be hooked up, they don't have to pay huge overheads to deploy 5g it's, uh, better than wifi for the industrial space. Um, when we take computing down to that industrial area, uh, because we wanna do pre-procesing on the data. Yeah. We want to gather some analytics. We deploy that with a regular commercially available hardware running VMware, and we deploy EKS anywhere on that. Inside of that manufacturing plant, we can do pre-procesing on things coming out of the robotics, depending on what we're manufacturing. Right. And then we can take those refined analytics and for very low cost with maybe a little bit longer latency transmit those back, um, to the AWS availability zone, the, the standard >>For data, data lake, or whatever, >>To the data lake. Yeah. Data lake house, whatever it might be. Um, and we can do additional data science on that once it gets to the AWS cloud. Uh, but a lot of that, uh, just in time business decisions, just time manufacturing decisions can all take place on an AWS service or services inside that manufacturing plant. And that's, that's one of the best use cases that we're >>Seeing. And I think, I mean, we've been seeing this on the queue for many, many years, moving data around is very expensive. Yeah. But also compute going to the data that saves that cost yeah. On the data transfer also on the benefits of the latency. So I have to ask you, by the way, that's standard best practice now for the folks watching don't move the data unless you have to. Um, but those new things are developing. So I wanna ask you what new patterns are you seeing emerging once this new architecture's in place? Love that idea, localize everything right at the edge, manufacturing, industrial, whatever, the use case, retail, whatever it is. Right. But now what does that change in the, in the core cloud? There's a, there's a system element here. Yeah. What's the new pattern. There's >>Actually an organizational element as well, because once you have to start making the decision, do I put this compute at the point of use or do I put this compute in the cloud? Uh, now you start thinking about where business decisions should be taking place. Uh, so not only are you changing your architecture, you're actually changing your organization because you're thinking, you're thinking about a dichotomy you didn't have before. Uh, so now you say, okay, this can take place here. Uh, and maybe, maybe this decision can wait. Right. And then how do I visualize that? By >>The way, it could be a bot tube doing the work for management. Yeah. <laugh> exactly. You got observability going, right. But you gotta change the database architecture on the back. So there's new things developing. You've got more benefit. There >>Are, there are, and we have more and more people that, that want to talk less about databases and want to talk about data lakes because of this. They want to talk more about customers are starting to talk about throwing away data. Uh, you know, for the past maybe decade. Yeah. It's been store everything. And one day we will have a data science team that we hire in our organization to do analytics on this decade of data. And well, >>I mean, that's, that's a great point. We don't have time to drill into, maybe we do another session this, but the one pattern we're seeing come of the past year is that throwing away data's bad. Even data lakes that so-called turn into data swamps, actually, it's not the case. You look at data, brick, snowflake, and other successes out there. And even time series data, which may seem irrelevant efforts over actually matters when people start retrain their machine learning algorithms. Yep. So as data becomes co as we call it in our last showcase, we did a whole whole an event on this. The data's good in real time and in the lake. Yeah. Because the iteration of the data feeds the machine learning training. Things are getting better with the old data. So it's not throw away. It's not just business benefits. Yeah. There's all kinds of new scale. There >>Are. And, and we have, uh, many customers that are running petabyte level. Um, they're, they're essentially data factories on, on, on premises, right? They're, they're creating so much data and they're starting to say, okay, we could analyze this, uh, in the cloud, we could transition it. We could move petabytes of data to AWS cloud, or we can run, uh, computational workloads on premises. We can really do some analytics on this data transition, uh, those high level and sort of raw analytics back to AWS run 'em through machine learning. Um, and we don't have to transition 10, 12 petabytes of data into AWS. >>So I gotta end the segment on a, on a, kind of a, um, fun, I was told to ask you about your personal background on premise architect, Aus cloud, and skydiving instructor. How does that all work together? What tell, what does this mean? >>Yeah. Uh, I, >>You jumped out a plane and got a job. You got a customer to jump >>Out kind of. So I was, you jumped out. I was teaching Scott eing, uh, before I, before I started in the cloud space, this was 13, 14 years ago. I was a, I still am a Scott I instructor. Uh, I was teaching Scott eing and I heard out of the corner of my ear, uh, a guy that owned an MSP that was lamenting about, um, you know, storing data and how his customers are working. And he can't find enough people to operate all these workloads. So I walked over and said, Hey, this is, this is what I went to school for. Like, I'd love to, you know, I was living in a tent in the woods, teaching skydiving. I was like, I'd love to not live in a tent in the woods. So, uh, I started in the first day there, we had a, and, uh, EC two had just come out <laugh> um, and, uh, like, >>This is amazing. >>Yeah. And so we had this discussion, we should start moving customers here. And, uh, and that totally revolutionized that business, um, that, that led to, uh, that that guy actually still owns a skydiving airport. But, um, but through all of that, and through being in on premises, migrated me and myself, my career into the cloud, and now it feels like, uh, almost, almost looking back and saying, now let's take what we learned in the cloud and, and apply those lessons and those services to premises. >>So it's such a great story. You know, I was gonna, you know, you know, the, the, the, the whole, you know, growth mindset pack your own parachute, you know, uh, exactly. You know, the cloud in the early days was pretty much will the shoot open. Yeah. It was pretty much, you had to roll your own cloud at that time. And so, you know, you, you jump on a plane, you gotta make sure that parachute is gonna open. >>And so was Kubernetes by the way, 2015 or so when, uh, when that was coming out, it was, I mean, it was, it was still, and I, maybe it does still feel like that to some people, right. Yeah. But, uh, it was, it was the same kind of feeling that we had in the early days of AWS, the same feeling we have when we >>It's much now with you guys, it's more like a tandem jump. Yeah. You know, but, but it's a lot of, lot of this cutting stuff like jumping out of an airplane. Yeah. You guys, the right equipment, you gotta do the right things. Exactly. >>Right. >>Matthew, thanks for coming on the cube. Really appreciate it. Absolutely great conversation. Thanks for having me. Okay. The cubes here, lot in San Francisco for AWS summit, I'm John for your host of the cube. Uh, we'll be at a summit in New York coming up in the summer as well. Look up for that. Look at this calendar for all the cube, actually@thecube.net. We'll right back with our next segment after this break. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone to San Francisco live coverage here, we're at the cube, a summit 2022. We're back in person. I'm John furry host of the cube. We'll be at the, a us summit in New York city this summer, check us out then. But right now, two days in San Francisco getting all coverage, what's going on in the cloud, we got a cube alumni and friend of the cube, my dos car CEO, investor, a Sierra, and also an investor and a bunch of startups, angel investor. Gonna do great to see you. Thanks for coming on the cube. Good to see you. Good to see you, Pam. Cool. How are you? Good. >>How are you? >>So congratulations on all your investments. Uh, you've made a lot of great successes, uh, over the past couple years, uh, and your company raising, uh, some good cash as Sarah so give us the update. How much cash have you guys raised? What's the status of the company product what's going on? First >>Of all, thank you for having me. We're back to be business with you never while after. Great to see you. Um, so is a company started around four years back. I invested with a few of the investors and now I'm the CEO there. Um, we have raised close to a hundred million there. Uh, the investors are people like nor west Menlo, true ventures, coast, lo ventures, Ram Shera, and all those people, all known guys that Antibe chime Paul Mayard web. So a whole bunch of operating people and, uh, Silicon valley vs are involved. >>And has it gone? >>It's going well. We are doing really well. We are going almost 300% year over year. Uh, for last three years, the space ISR is going after is what I call the applying AI for customer service. It operations, it help desk the same place I used to work at ServiceNow. We are partners with ServiceNow to take, how can we argument for employees and customers, Salesforce, and ServiceNow to take it to the next stage? Well, >>I love having you on the cube, Dave and I, and Dave Valenti as well loves having you on too, because you not only bring the entrepreneurial CEO experience, you're an investor. You're like a, you're like a guest analyst. <laugh>, >>You know, >>You >>Get, the comment is fun to talk to you though. >>You get the commentary, you, your, your finger on the pulse. Um, so I gotta ask you obviously, AI and machine learning, machine learning AI, or you want to phrase it. Isn't every application. Now, AI first, uh, you're seeing a lot of that going on. You're starting to see companies build the modern applications at the top of the stack. So the cloud scale has hit. We're seeing cloud out scale. You predicted that we talked about in the cube many times. Now you have that past layer with a lot more services and cloud native becoming a standard layer. Containerizations growing Docker just raised a hundred million on our $2 billion valuation back from the dead after they pivoted from an enterprise services. So open source developers are booming. Um, where's the action. I mean, is there data control, plane emerging, AI needs data. There's a lot of challenges around this. There's a lot of discussions and a lot of companies being funded observability there's 10 million observability companies. Data is the key. This is what's your angle on this. What's your take. Yeah, >>No, look, I think I'll give you the view that I see, right? I, from my side, obviously data is very clear. So the things that room system of record that you and me talked about, the next layer is called system of intelligence. That's where the AI will play. Like we talk cloud native, it'll be called AI. NA NA is a new buzzword and using the AI for customer service, it operations. You talk about observability. I call it AI ops, applying AOPs for good old it operation management, cloud management. So you'll see the AOPs applied for whole list of, uh, application from observability doing the CMDB, predicting the events insurance. So I see a lot of work clicking for AIOps and AI service desk. What needs to be helped desk with ServiceNow BMC <inaudible> you see a new ALA emerging as a system of intelligence. Uh, the next would be is applying AI with workflow automation. So that's where you'll see a lot of things called customer workflows, employee workflows. So think of what UI path automation, anywhere ServiceNow are doing, that area will be driven with AI workflows. So you'll see AI going >>Off is RPA a company is AI, is RPA a feature of something bigger? Or can someone have a company on RPA UI S one will be at their event this summer? Um, or is it a product company? I mean, I mean, RPA is almost, should be embedded in everything. >>It's a feature. It is very good point. Very, very good thinking. So one is, it's a category for sure. Like, as we thought, it's a category, it's an area where RPA may change the name. I call it much more about automation, workflow automation, but RPA and automation is a category. Um, it's a company also, but that automation should be a, in every area. Yeah. Like we call cloud NA and AI NATO it'll become automation. NA yeah. And that's your thinking. >>It's almost interesting me. I think about the, what you're talking about what's coming to mind is I'm kind having flashbacks to the old software model of middleware. Remember at middleware, it was very easy to understand it was middleware. It sat between two things and then the middle and it was software was action. Now you have all kinds of workflows abstractions everywhere. Right? So multiple databases, it's not a monolithic thing. Right? Right. So as you break that down, is this the new modern middleware? Because what you're talking about is data workflows, but they might be siloed or they integrated. I mean, these are the challenges. This is crazy. What's the, >>So don't about the databases become all polyglot databases. I call this one polyglot automation. So you need automation as a layer, as a category, but you also need to put automation in every area, like, as you were talking about, it should be part of ServiceNow. It should be part of ISRA, like every company, every Salesforce. So that's why you see MuleSoft and Salesforce buying RPA companies. So you'll see all the SaaS companies could cloud companies having an automation as a core. So it's like how you have a database and compute and sales and networking. You'll also will have an automation as a layer <inaudible> inside every stack. >>All right. So I wanna shift gears a little bit and get your perspective on what's going on behind us. You can see, uh, behind us, you got the expo hall. You got, um, we're back to vents, but you got, you know, am Clume Ove, uh, Dynatrace data dog, innovative all the companies out here that we know, we interview them all. They're trying to be suppliers to this growing enterprise market. Right. Okay. But now you also got the entrepreneurial equation. Okay. We're gonna have John Sado on from Deibel later today. He's a former NEA guy and we always talk to Jerry, Jen, we know all the, the VCs. What does the startups look like? What does the state of the, in your mind, cause you, I know you invest the entrepreneurial founder situation. Cloud's bigger. Mm-hmm <affirmative> global, right? Data's part of it. You mentioned data's. Yes. Basically. Data's everything. What's it like for a first an entrepreneur right now who's starting a company. What's the white space. What's the attack plan. How do they get in the market? How do they engineer everything? >>Very good. So I'll give it to, uh, two things that I'm seeing out there. Remember leaders, how Amazon created the startups 15 years back, everybody built on Amazon now, Azure and GCP. The next layer would be is people don't just build on Amazon. They're gonna build it on top of snowflake. Companies are snowflake becomes a data platform, right? People will build on snowflake. Right? So I see my old boss flagman try to build companies on snowflake. So you don't build it just on Amazon. You build it on Amazon and snowflake. Snowflake will become your data store. Snowflake will become your data layer. Right? So I think that's the next level of <inaudible> trying to do that. So if I'm doing observability AI ops, if I'm doing next level of Splunk SIM, I'm gonna build it on snowflake, on Salesforce, on Amazon, on Azure, et cetera. >>It's interesting. You know, Jerry Chan has it put out a thesis of a couple months ago called castles in the cloud where your Mo is what you do in the cloud. Not necessarily in, in the, in the IP. Um, Dave LAN and I had last reinvent, coined the term super cloud, right? He's got a lot of traction and a lot of people throwing, throwing mud at us, but we were, our thesis was, is that what Snowflake's doing? What Goldman S Sachs is doing. You starting to see these clouds on top of clouds. So Amazon's got this huge CapEx advantage, and guys, Charles Fitzgerald out there who we like was kind of shitting on us saying, Hey, you guys terrible, they didn't get it. Like, yeah, I don't think he gets it, but that's a whole, can't wait to debate him publicly on this. <laugh> cause he's cool. Um, but snowflake is on Amazon. Now. They say they're on Azure now. Cause they've got a bigger market and they're public, but ultimately without a AWS snowflake doesn't exist. And, and they're reimagining the data warehouse with the cloud, right? That's the billion dollar opportunity. It >>Is. It is. They both are very tight. So imagine what Frank has done at snowflake and Amazon. So if I'm a startup today, I want to build everything on Amazon where possible whatever is, I cannot build. I'll make the pass layer. Remember the middle layer pass will be snowflake so I can build it on snowflake. I can use them for data layer if I really need to size build it on force.com Salesforce. Yeah. Right. So I think that's where you'll see. So >>Basically the, if you're an entrepreneur, the, the north star in terms of the, the outcome is be a super cloud. >>It is, >>That's the application on another big CapEx ride, the CapEx of AWS or cloud, >>And that reduce your product development, your go to market and you get use the snowflake marketplace to drive your engagement. Yeah. >>Yeah. How are, how is Amazon and the clouds dealing with these big whales, the snowflakes of the world? I mean, I know they got a great relationship, uh, but snowflake now has to run a company they're public. Yeah. So, I mean, I'll say, I think they had Redshift. Amazon has got Redshift. Um, but Snowflake's a big customer in the, they're probably paying AWS, I think big bills too. So >>Joe on very good. Cause it's like how Netflix is and Amazon prime, right. Netflix runs on Amazon, but Amazon has Amazon prime that co-optation will be there. So Amazon will have Redshift, but Amazon is also partnering with, uh, snowflake to have native snowflake data warehouses or data layer. So I think depending on the application use case, you have to use each of the above. I think snowflake is here for a long term. Yeah. Yeah. So if I'm building an application, I want to use snowflake then writing from stats. >>Well, I think that it comes back down to entrepreneurial hustle. Do you have a better product? Right. Product value will ultimately determine it as long as the cloud doesn't, you know, foreclose, your, you that's right with some sort of internal hack. Uh, but I think, I think the general question that I have is that I, I think it's okay to have a super cloud like that because the rising tide is still happening at some point, when does the rising tide stop and do the people shopping up their knives, it gets more competitive or is it just an infinite growth? So >>I think it's growth. You call it cloud scale, you invented the word cloud scale. So I think look, cloud will continually agree, increase. I think there's as long as there more movement from on, uh, OnPrem to the classical data center, I think there's no reason at this point, the rumor, the old lift and shift that's happening in like my business. I see people lift and shifting from the it operations. It helpless, even the customer service service now and, uh, ticket data from BMCs CAS like Microfocus, all those workloads are shifted to the cloud, right? So cloud ticketing system is happening. Cloud system of record is happening. So I think this train has still a long way to go >>Made. I wanna get your thoughts for the folks watching that are, uh, enterprise buyers are practitioners, not suppliers to the more market, feel free to text me or DMing. The next question's really about the buying side, which is if I'm a customer, what's the current, um, appetite for startup products, cuz you know, the big enterprises now and you know, small, medium, large and large enterprise are all buying new companies cuz a startup can go from zero to relevant very quickly. So that means now enterprises are engaging heavily with startups. What's it like what's is there a change in order of magnitude of the relationship between the startup selling to, or growing startup selling to an enterprise? Um, have you seen changes there? I mean I'm seeing some stuff, but why don't get your thoughts on that? What, >>No, it is. If I growing by or 2007 or eight, when I used to talk to you back then and Amazon started very small, right? We are an Amazon summit here. So I think enterprises on the average used to spend nothing with startups. It's almost like 0% or 1% today. Most companies are already spending 20, 30% with startups. Like if I look at a CIO or line of business, it's gone. Yeah. Can it go more? I think it can in the next four, five years. Yeah. Spending on the startups. >>Yeah. And check out, uh, AWS startups.com. That's a site that we built for the startup community for buyers and startups. And I want to get your reaction because I reference the URL cause it's like, there's like a bunch of companies we've been promoting because the solutions that startups have actually are new stuff. Yes. It's bending, it's shifting for security or using data differently or um, building tools and platforms for data engineering. Right. Which is a new persona that's emerging. So you know, a lot of good resources there. Um, and goes back now to the data question. Now, getting back to your, what you're working on now is what's your thoughts around this new, um, data engineering persona, you mentioned AIOps, we've been seeing AIOps IOPS booming and that's creating a new developer paradigm that's right. Which we call coin data as code data as code is like infrastructure is code, but it's for data, right? It's developing with data, right? Retraining machine learnings, going back to the data lake, getting data to make, to do analysis, to make the machine learning better post event or post action. So this, this data engineers like an SRE for data, it's a new, scalable role we're seeing. Do you see the same thing? Do you agree? Um, do you disagree or can you share >>Yourself a lot of first is I see the AIOP solutions in the future should be not looking back. I need to be like we are in San Francisco bay. That means earthquake prediction. Right? I want AOPs to predict when the outages are gonna happen. When there's a performance issue. I don't think most AOPs vendors have not gone there yet. Like I spend a lot of time with data dog, Cisco app Dyna, right? Dynatrace, all this solution. We will go future towards predict to proactive solution with AOPs. But what you bring up a very good point on the data side. I think like we have a Amazon marketplace and Amazon for startup, there should be data exchange where you want to create for AOPs and AI service desk. Customers are give the data, share the data because we thought the data algorithms are useless. I can them, but I gotta train them, modify them, tweak them, make them >>Better, >>Make them better. Yeah. And I think their whole data exchange is the industry has not thought through something you and me talk many times. Yeah. Yeah. I think the whole, that area is very important. >>You've always been on, um, on the Vanguard of data because, uh, it's been really fun. Yeah. >>Going back to big data days back in 2009, you know, >>Look at, look how much data Rick has grown. >>It is. They doubled the >>Key cloud air kinda went private. So good stuff, man. What are you working on right now? Give a, give a, um, plug for what you're working on. You'll still investing. >>I do still invest, but look, I'm a hundred percent on ISRA right now. I'm the CEO there. Yeah. Okay. So right. ISRA is my number one baby right now. So I'm looking at that growing customers and my customers are some of them, you like it's zoom auto desk McAfee, uh, grand to so all the top customers, um, mainly for it help desk customer service. AIOps those are three product lines and going after enterprise and commercial deals. >>And when should someone buy your product? What's what's their need? What category is it? >>I think they look whenever somebody needs to buy the product is if you need AOP solution to predict, keep your lights on predict is one area. If you want to improve employee experience, you are using a slack teams and you want to automate all your workflows. That's another value problem. Third is customer service. You don't want to hire more people to do it. Some of the areas where you want to scale your company, grow your company, eliminate the cost customer service. >>Great stuff, man. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Congratulations on the success of your company and your investments. Thanks for coming on the cube. Okay. I'm John fur here at the cube live in San Francisco for day one of two days of coverage of Aish summit 2022. And we're gonna be at Aus summit in San, uh, in New York in the summer. So look for that on this calendar, of course go to eight of us, startups.com. I mentioned that it's decipher all the hot startups and of course the cube.net and Silicon angle.com. Thanks for watching. We'll be back more coverage after this short break. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone. This the cubes coverage here in San Francisco, California, a Davis summit, 2022, the beginning of the event season, as it comes back, little bit smaller footprint, a lot of hybrid events going on, but this is actually a physical event, a summit in new York's coming in the summer. We'll be there too with the cube on the set. We're getting back in the groove psych to be back. We were at reinvent, uh, as well, and we'll see more and more cube, but you're can see a lot of virtual cube outta hybrid cube. We wanna get all those conversations, try to get more interviews, more flow going. But right now I'm excited to have Corey Quinn here on the back on the cube chief cloud economists with bill group. He's the founder, uh, and chief content person always got great angles, fun comedy, authoritative Corey. Great to see you. Thank >>You. Thanks. Coming on. Sure is a lot of words to describe is shit posting, which is how I describe what I tend to do. Most days, >>Shit posting is an art form now. And if you look at mark, Andrew's been doing a lot of shit posting lately. All a billionaires are shit hosting, but they don't know how to do it. Like they're not >>Doing it right? So there's something opportunity there. It's like here's how to be even more obnoxious and incisive. It's honestly the most terrifying scenario for anyone is if I have that kind of budget to throw at my endeavors, it's like, I get excited with a nonsense I can do with a $20 gift card for an AWS credit compared to, oh well, if I could buy a midsize island, do begin doing this from, oh, then we're having fun. >>This shit posting trend. Interesting. I was watching a thread go on about, saw someone didn't get a job because of their shit posting and the employer didn't get it. And then someone on this side I'll hire the guy cuz I get that's highly intelligent shit posting. So for the audience that doesn't know what shit posting is, what is shit posting? >>It's more or less talking about the world of enter prize technology, which even that sentence is hard to finish without falling asleep and toppling out of my chair in front of everyone on the livestream. But it's doing it in such a way that brings it to life that says the quiet part. A lot of the audience is thinking, but generally doesn't say either because they're polite or not a jackass or more prosaically are worried about getting fired for better or worse. I don't don't have that particular constraint, >>Which is why people love you. So let's talk about what you, what you think is, uh, worthy and not worthy in the industry right now, obviously, uh, coupons coming up in Spain, which they're having a physical event, you see the growth of cloud native Amazon's of all the Adams, especially new CEO. Andy's move on to be the chief of all Amazon. Just so I'm the cover of was it time met magazine? Um, he's under a lot of stress. Amazon's changed. Invoice has changed. What's working. What's not, what's rising, what's falling. What's hot. What's not, >>It's easy to sit here and criticize almost anything. These folks do. They're they're effectively in a fishbowl, but I have trouble imagining the logistics. It takes to wind up handling the catering for a relatively downscale event like this one this year, let alone running a 1.7 million employee company having to balance all the competing challenges and pressures and the rest. I, I just can't fathom what it would be like to look at all of AWS. And it's, it's sprawling immense that dominates our entire industry and say, okay, this is a good start, but I, I wanna focus on something with a broader remit. What is that? How do you even get into that position? And you can't win once you're there. All you can do is hold onto the tiger and hope you don't get mold. >>Well, there's a lot of force for good conversations. Seeing a lot of that going on, Amazon's trying to port eight of us is trying to portray themselves as you know, the Pathfinder, you know, you're the pioneer, um, force for good. And I get that and I think that's a good angle as cloud goes mainstream. There's still the question of, we had a guy on just earlier, who was a skydiving instructor and we were joking about the early days of cloud. Like that was like skydiving, build a parachute open, you know, and now same kind of thing. As you move to edge, things are like reliable in some areas, but still new, new fringe, new areas. That's crazy. Well, >>Since the last time we've spoken, uh, Steve Schmidt is now the CISO for all of Amazon and his backfill replacement. The AWS CISO is CJ. Moses who as a hobby races, a as a semi-pro race car driver to my understanding, which either, I don't know what direction to take that in either. This is what he does to relax or ultimately, or ultimately it's. Huh? That, that certainly says something about risk assessment. I'm not entirely sure what, but okay. <laugh> either way, sounds like more exciting. Like I better >>Have a replacement ready <laugh> I, in case something goes wrong on the track, highly >>Available >>CSOs. I gotta say one of the things I do like in the recent trend is that the tech companies are getting into the formula one, which I was never a fan of until I watched that Netflix series. But when you look at the formula one, it's pretty cool. Cause it's got some tech angles, I get the whole data instrumentation thing, but the most coolest thing about formula one is they have these new rigs out. Yeah. Where you can actually race in east sports with other people in pure simulation of the race car. You gotta get the latest and videographic card, but it's basically a tricked out PC with amazing monitors and you have all the equipment of F1 and you're basically simulating racing. >>Oh, it's great too. And I can see the appeal of these tech companies getting into it because these things are basically rocket shifts. When those cars go, like they're sitting there, we can instrument every last part of what is going on inside that vehicle. And then AWS crops up. And we can bill on every one of those dimensions too. And it's like slow down their hasty pudding one step at a time. But I do see the appeal. >>So I gotta ask you about, uh, what's going on in your world. I know you have a lot of great success. We've been following you in the queue for many, many years. Got a great newsletter, check out Corey Quinn's newsletter, uh, screaming in the cloud program. Uh, you're on the cutting edge and you've got a great balance between really being snarky and, and, and really being delivering content. That's exciting, uh, for people, uh, with a little bit of an edge, um, how's that going? Uh, what's the blowback, any blowback late? Has there been uptick? What was, what are some of the things you're hearing from your audience, more Corey, more Corey. And then of course the, the PR team's calling you >>The weird thing about having an audience beyond a certain size is far and away as a landslide. The most common response I get is silence where it's high. I'm emailing an awful lot of people at last week in AWS every week and okay. They must not have heard me it. That is not actually true. People just generally don't respond to email because who responds to email newsletters. That sounds like something, a lunatic might do same story with response to live streams and podcasts. It's like, I'm gonna call into that am radio show and give them a piece of my mind. People generally don't do >>That. We should do that. Actually. I think you're people would call in, oh, >>I, I think >>I guarantee we had that right now. People would call in and say, Corey, what do you think about X? >>Yeah. It not, everyone understands the full context of what I do. And in fact, increasingly few people do and that's fine. I, I keep forgetting that sometimes people do not see what I'm doing in the same light that I do. And that's fine. Blowback has been largely minimal. Honestly, I am surprised about anything by how little I have gotten over the last five years of doing this, but it would be easier to dismiss me if I weren't generally. Right. When, okay, so you launch this new service and it seems pretty crappy to me cuz when I try and build something, it falls over and begs for help. And people might not like hearing that, but it's what customers are finding too. Yeah. I really am the voice of the >>Customer. You know, I always joke with Dave Alane about how John Fort's always at, uh, um, reinvent getting the interview with jazzy now, Andy we're there, you're there. And so we have these rituals at the events. It's all cool. Um, one of the rituals I like about your, um, your content is you like to get on the naming product names. Um, and, and, and, and, and kind of goof on that. Now why I like is because I used to work at ETT Packard where they used to name things as like engineers, HP 1 0, 0 5, or we can't call, we >>Have a new monitor. How are we gonna name it? Throw the wireless keyboard down the stairs again. And then there you go. Yeah. >>It's and the old joke at HP was if they, if they invented SU sushi, they'd say, yeah, we can't call sushi. It's cold, dead fish. That's what it is. And so the joke was cold. Dead fish is a better name than sushi. So you know is fun. So what's the, what are the, how's the Amazon doing in there? Have they changed their naming, uh, strategy, uh, on some of their, their >>Producting. So they're going in different directions. When they named Amazon Aurora, they decided to explore a new theme of Disney princesses as they go down those paths. And some things are more descriptive. Some people are clearly getting bonused on number of words, they can shove into it. Like the better a service is the longer it's name. Like AWS systems manager, session manager is a great one. I love the service ridiculous name. They have a systems manager, parameter store, which is great. They have secrets manager, which does the same thing. It's two words less, but that one costs money in a way that systems manage your parameter store does not. It's fun. >>What's your, what's your favorite combination of acronyms >>Combination >>Of gots. You got EMR, you got EC two, you got S3 SQS. Well, RedShift's not an acronym you >>Gets is one of my personal favorites because it's either elastic block store or elastic bean stock, depending entirely on the context of the conversation, they >>Shook up bean stock or is that still around? Oh, >>They never turn anything off. They're like the anti Google, Google turns things off while they're still building it. Whereas Amazon is like, well, we built this thing in 2005 and everyone hates it, but while we certainly can't change it, now it has three customers on it. John three <laugh>. Okay. Simple BV still haunts our dreams. >>I, I actually got an email on, I saw one of my, uh, servers, all these C twos were being deprecated and I got an email I'm I couldn't figure out. Why can you just like roll it over? Why, why are you telling me? Just like, give me something else. All right. Okay. So let me talk about, uh, the other things I want to ask you, is that like, okay. So as Amazon better in some areas where do they need more work in your opinion? Because obviously they're all interested in new stuff and they tend to like put it out there for their end to end customers. But then they've got ecosystem partners who actually have the same product. Yes. And, and this has been well documented. So it's, it's not controversial. It's just that Amazon's got a database Snowflake's got out database service. So Redshift, snowflake data breach is out there. So you got this co-op petition. Yes. How's that going? And what do you hearing about the reaction to any of that stuff? >>Depends on who you ask. They love to basically trot out a bunch of their partners who will say nice things about them. And it very much has heirs of, let's be honest, a hostage video, but okay. Cuz these companies do partner with, and they cannot afford to rock the boat too far. I'm not partnered with anyone. I can say what I want. And they're basically restricted to taking away my birthday at worse so I can live with that. >>All right. So I gotta ask about multicloud. Cause obviously the other cloud shows are coming up. Amazon hated that word multicloud. Um, a lot of people though saying, you know, it's not a real good marketing word. Like multicloud sounds like, you know, root canal. Mm-hmm <affirmative> right. So is there a better description for multicloud? >>Multiple single >>Cloudant loves that term. Yeah. >>You know, you're building in multiple single points of failure, do it for the right reasons or don't do it as a default. I believe not doing it is probably the right answer. However, and if I were, if I were Amazon, I wouldn't want to talk about my multi-cloud either as the industry leader, let's talk about other clouds, bad direction to go in from a market cap perspective. It doesn't end well for you, but regardless of what they want to talk about, or don't want to talk about what they say, what they don't say, I tune all of it out. And I look at what customers are doing and multi-cloud exists in a variety of forms. Some brilliant, some brain dead. It depends a lot on, but my general response is when someone gets on stage from a company and tells me to do a thing that directly benefits their company. I am skeptical at best. Yeah. When customers get on stage and say, this is what we're doing because it solves problems. That's when I shut up and listen. >>Yeah, course. Awesome. Corey, I gotta ask you a question cause I know you we've been, you know, fellow journeyman and the, and the cloud journey going to all the events and then the pandemic hit. We now in the third year, who knows what it's gonna gonna end. Certainly events are gonna look different. They're gonna be either changing footprint with the virtual piece, new group formations. Community's gonna emerge. You've got a pretty big community growing and it's growing like crazy. What's the weirdest or coolest thing or just big changes you've seen with the pandemic, uh, from your perspective, cuz you've been in the you're in the middle of the whitewater rafting. You've seen the events you circle offline. You saw the online piece, come in, you're commentating, you're calling balls and strikes in the industry. You got a great team developing over there. Duck build group. What's the big aha moment that you saw with the pandemic. Weird, funny, serious, real in the industry and with customers what's >>Accessibility. Reinvent is a great example. When in the before times it's open to anyone who wants to attend, who can pony up two grand and a week in Las Vegas and get to Las Vegas from wherever they happen to be by moving virtually suddenly it, it embraces the reality that talent is evenly. Distributed. Opportunity is not. And that means that suddenly these things are accessible to a wide swath of audience and potential customer base and the rest that hadn't been invited to the table previously, it's imperative that we not lose that. It's nice to go out and talk to people and have people come up and try and smell my hair from time to time, I smelled delightful. Let me assure you. But it was, but it's also nice to be. >>I have a product for you if you want, you know? Oh, >>Oh excellent. I look forward to it. What is it? Pudding? Why not? <laugh> >>What else have you seen? So when accessibility for talent. Yes. Which by the way is totally home run. What weird things have happened that you've seen? Um, that's >>Uh, it's, it's weird, but it's good that an awful lot of people giving presentation have learned to tighten their message and get to the damn point because most people are not gonna get up from a front row seat in a conference hall, midway through your Aing talk and go somewhere else. But they will change a browser tab and you won't get them back. You've gotta be on point. You've gotta be compelling if it's going to be a virtual discussion. Yeah. >>And you turn off your iMessage too. >>Oh yes. It's always fun in the, in the meetings when you're ho to someone and their colleague is messaging them about, should we tell 'em about this? And I'm sitting there reading it and it's >>This guy is really weird. Like, >>Yes I am and I bring it into the conversation and then everyone's uncomfortable. It goes, wow. Why >>Not? I love when my wife yells at me over I message. When I'm on a business call, like, do you wanna take that about no, I'm good. >>No, no. It's better off. I don't the only entire sure. It's >>Fine. My kids text. Yeah, it's fine. Again, that's another weird thing. And, and then group behavior is weird. Now people are looking at, um, communities differently. Yes. Very much so, because if you're fatigued on content, people are looking for the personal aspect. You're starting to see much more of like yeah. Another virtual event. They gotta get better. One and two who's there. >>Yeah. >>The person >>That's a big part of it too is the human stories are what are being more and more interesting. Don't get up here and tell me about your product and how brilliant you are and how you built it. That's great. If I'm you, or if I wanna work with you or I want to compete with you or I want to put on my engineering hat and build it myself. Cause why would I buy anything? That's more than $8. But instead, tell me about the problem. Tell me about the painful spot that you specialize in. Yeah. Tell me a story there. >>I, I think >>That gets a glimpse in a hook and makes >>More, more, I think you nailed it. Scaling storytelling. Yes. And access to better people because they don't have to be there in person. I just did a thing. I never, we never would've done the queue. We did. Uh, Amazon stepped up in sponsors. Thank you, Amazon for sponsoring international women's day, we did 30 interviews, APAC. We did five regions and I interviewed this, these women in Asia, Pacific eight, PJ, they call for in this world. And they're amazing. I never would've done those interviews cuz I never, would've seen 'em at an event. I never would've been in pan or Singapore, uh, to access them. And now they're in the index, they're in the network. They're collaborating on LinkedIn. So a threads are developing around connections that I've never seen before. Yes. Around the content. >>Absolutely >>Content value plus and >>Effecting. And that is the next big revelation of this industry is going to realize you have different companies. And, and I Amazon's case different service teams all competing with each other, but you have the container group and you have the database group and you have the message cuing group. But customers don't really want to build things from spare parts. They want a solution to a problem. I want to build an app that does Twitter for pets or whatever it is I'm trying to do. I don't wanna basically have to pick and choose and fill my shopping cart with all these different things. I want something that's gonna basically give me what I'm trying to get as close to turnkey as possible. Moving up the stack. That is the future. And just how it gets here is gonna be >>Well we're here at Corey Quinn, the master of the master of content here in the a ecosystem. Of course we we've been following up from the beginning. His great guy, check out his blog, his site, his newsletter screaming podcast. Corey, final question for, uh, what are you here doing? What's on your agenda this week in San Francisco and give a plug for the duck build group. What are you guys doing? I know you're hiring some people what's on the table for the company. What's your focus this week and put a plug in for the group. >>I'm here as a customer and basically getting outta my cage cuz I do live here. It's nice to actually get out and talk to folks who are doing interesting things at the duck bill group. We solved one problem. We fixed the horrifying AWS bill, both from engineering and architecture, advising as well as negotiating AWS contracts because it turns out those things are big and complicated. And of course my side media projects last week in aws.com, we are, it it's more or less a content operation where I in my continual and ongoing love affair with the sound of my own voice. >><laugh> and you're good. It's good content it's on, on point fun, Starky and relevant. So thanks for coming to the cube and sharing with us. Appreciate it. No >>Thank you button. >>You. Okay. This the cube covers here in San Francisco, California, the cube is back going to events. These are the summits, Amazon web services summits. They happen all over the world. We'll be in New York and obviously we're here in San Francisco this week. I'm John fur. Keep, keep it right here. We'll be back with more coverage after this short break. Okay. Welcome back everyone. This's the cubes covers here in San Francisco, California, we're live on the show floor of AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for host of the cube and remember AWS summit in New York city coming up this summer, we'll be there as well. And of course reinvent the end of the year for all the cube coverage on cloud computing and AWS two great guests here from the APN global APN Sege chef Jenko and Jeff Grimes partner lead Jeff and Sege is doing partnerships global APN >>AWS global startup program. Yeah. >>Okay. Say that again. >>AWS. We'll start >>Program. That's the official name. >>I love >>It too long, too long for me. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, >>Of course. >>Appreciate it. Tell us about what's going on with you guys. What's the, how was you guys organized? You guys we're obviously we're in San Francisco bay area, Silicon valley, zillions of startups here, New York. It's got another one we're gonna be at tons of startups. A lot of 'em getting funded, big growth and cloud big growth and data secure hot in all sectors. >>Absolutely. >>So maybe, maybe we could just start with the global startup program. Um, it's essentially a white glove service that we provide to startups that are built on AWS. And the intention there is to help identify use cases that are being built on top of AWS. And for these startups, we want to pro vibe white glove support in co building products together. Right. Um, co-marketing and co-selling essentially, um, you know, the use cases that our customers need solved, um, that either they don't want to build themselves or are perhaps more innovative. Um, so the, a AWS global startup program provides white glove support. Dedicat at headcount for each one of those pillars. Um, and within our program, we've also provided incentives, programs go to market activities like the AWS startup showcase that we've built for these startups. >>Yeah. By the way, AWS startup, AWS startups.com is the URL, check it out. Okay. So partnerships are key. Jeff, what's your role? >>Yeah. So I'm responsible for leading the overall effort for the AWS global startup program. Um, so I've got a team of partner managers that are located throughout the us, uh, managing a few hundred startup ISVs right now. <laugh> >>Yeah, you got a >>Lot. We've got a lot. >>There's a lot. I gotta, I gotta ask a tough question. Okay. I'm I'm a startup founder. I got a team. I just got my series a we're grown. I'm trying to hire people. I'm super busy. What's in it for me. Yeah. What do you guys bring to the table? I love the white glove service, but translate that what's in it for what do I get out of it? What's >>A story. Good question. I focus, I think. Yeah, because we get, we get to see a lot of partners building their businesses on AWS. So, you know, from our perspective, helping these partners focus on what, what do we truly need to build by working backwards from customer feedback, right? How do we effectively go to market? Because we've seen startups do various things, um, through trial and error, um, and also just messaging, right? Because oftentimes partners or rather startups, um, try to boil the ocean with many different use cases. So we really help them, um, sort of laser focus on what are you really good at and how can we bring that to the customer as quickly as possible? >>Yeah. I mean, it's truly about helping that founder accelerate the growth of their company, right. And there's a lot that you can do with AWS, but focus is truly the key word there because they're gonna be able to find their little piece of real estate and absolutely deliver incredible outcomes for our customers. And then they can start their growth curve there. >>What are some of the coolest things you've seen with the APN that you can share publicly? I know you got a lot going on there, a lot of confidentiality. Um, but you know, we're here a lot of great partners on the floor here. I'm glad we're back at events. Uh, a lot of stuff going on digitally with virtual stuff and, and hybrid. What are some of the cool things you guys have seen in the APN that you can point to? >>Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can point to few, you can take them. So, um, I think what's been fun over the years for me personally, I came from a startup brand sales at an early stage startup and, and I went through the whole thing. So I have a deep appreciation for what these guys are going through. And what's been interesting to see for me is taking some of these early stage guys, watching them progress, go public, get acquired and see that big day mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, and being able to point to very specific items that we help them to get to that point. Uh, and it's just a really fun journey to watch. >>Yeah. I, and part of the reason why I really, um, love working at the AWS, uh, global startup program is working with passionate founders. Um, I just met with a founder today that it's gonna, he's gonna build a very big business one day, um, and watching them grow through these stages and supporting that growth. Um, I like to think of our program as a catalyst for enterprise is sort of scale. Yeah. Um, and through that we provide visibility, credibility and growth opportunities. >>Yeah. A lot, a lot of partners too. What I found talking to staff founders is when they have that milestone, they work so hard for it. Whether it's a B round C round Republic or get bought. Yeah. Um, then they take a deep breath and they look back at wow, what a journey it's been. So it's kind of emotional for sure. But still it's a grind. Right? You gotta, I mean, when you get funding, it's still day one. You don't stop. It's no celebrate, you got a big round or valuation. You still gotta execute >>And look it's hypercompetitive and it's brutally difficult. And our job is to try to make that a little less difficult and navigate those waters. Right. Where ever everyone's going after similar things. >>Yeah. And I think as a group element too, I observe that startups that I, I meet through the APN has been interesting because they feel part of AWS. Yeah, totally. As a group of community, as a vibe there. Um, I know they're hustling, they're trying to make things happen. But at the same time, Amazon throws a huge halo effect. I mean, that's a huge factor. I mean, you guys are the number one cloud in the business, the growth in every sector is booming. Yeah. And if you're a startup, you don't have that luxury yet. And look at companies like snowflake that built on top of AWS. I mean, people are winning by building on AWS. >>Yeah. And our, our, our program really validates their technology first. So we have, what's all the foundation's technical review that we put all of our startups through before we go to market. So that when enterprise customers are looking at startup technology, they know that it's already been vetted. And, um, to take that a step further and help these partners differentiate, we use programs like the competency programs, the DevOps competencies, the security competency, which continues to help, um, provide sort of a platform for these startups, help them differentiate. And also there's go to market benefits that are associated with that. >>Okay. So let me ask the, the question that's probably on everyone's mind, who's watching, certainly I asked this a lot. There's a lot of companies startups out there who makes the cut, is there a criteria cut? It's not like it's sports team or anything, but like sure. Like there's activate program, which is like, there's hundreds of thousands of startups out there. Not everyone is at the APN. Right? Correct. So ISVs again, that's a whole nother, that's a more mature partner that might have, you know, huge market cap or growth. How, how do you guys focus? How do you guys focus? I mean, you got a good question, you know, thousand flowers blooming all the time. Is there a new way you guys are looking at it? I know there's been some talk about restructure or, or new focus. What's the focus. >>Yeah. It's definitely not an easy task by any means. Um, but you know, I recently took over this role and we're really trying to establish focus areas, right. So obviously a lot of the ISVs that we look after are infrastructure ISVs. That's what we do. Uh, and so we have very specific pods that look after different type of partners. So we've got a security pod, we've got a DevOps pod, we've got core infrastructure, et cetera. And really, we're trying to find these ISVs that can solve, uh, really interesting AWS customer. >>You guys have a deliberate, uh, focus on these pillars. So what infrastructure, >>Security, DevOps, and data and analytics, and then line of business >>Line, business line business, like web >>Marketing, business apps, >>Owner type thing. Exactly. >>Yeah, exactly. >>So solutions there. Yeah. More solutions and the other ones are like hardcore. So infrastructure as well, like storage back up ransomware kind of stuff, or, >>Uh, storage, networking. >>Okay. Yeah. The classic >>Database, et cetera. Right. >>And so there's teams on each pillar. >>Yep. So I think what's, what's fascinating for the startups that we cover is that they've got, they truly have support from a build market sell perspective, right. So you've got someone who's technical to really help them get the technology, figured out someone to help them get the marketing message dialed and spread, and then someone to actually do the co-sell, uh, day to day activities to help them get in front of customers. >>Probably the number one request that we always ask for Amazon is can wish that sock report, oh, download it on the console, which we use all the time. <laugh> exactly. But security's a big deal. I mean, you know, ask the res are evolving, that role of DevOps is taking on dev SecOps. Um, I, I can see a lot of customers having that need for a relationship to move things faster. Do you guys provide like escalation or is that a part of a service or that not part of, uh, uh, >>Yeah, >>So the partner development manager can be an escalation for absolutely. Think of that. 'em as an extension of your business inside of AWS. >>Great. And you guys, how is that partner managers, uh, measure >>On those three pillars? Right. Got it. Are we billing, building valuable use cases? So product development go to market, so go to market activities, think blog, posts, webinars, case studies, so on and so forth. And then co-sell not only are we helping these partners win their current opportunities that they are sourcing, but can we also help them source net new deals? Yeah. Right. That's very, >>I mean, top asked from the partners is get me in front of customers. Right. Um, not an easy task, but that's a huge goal of ours to help them grow their top line. >>Right. Yeah. In fact, we had some interviews here on the cube earlier talking about that dynamic of how enterprise customers are buying. And it's interesting, a lot more POCs. I have one partner here that you guys work with, um, on observability, they got a huge POC with capital one mm-hmm <affirmative> and the enterprises are engaging the star ups and bringing them in. So the combination of open source software enterprises are leaning into that hard and bringing young growing startups in mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yep. So I could see that as a huge service that you guys can bring people in. >>Right. And they're bringing massively differentiated technology to the table. The challenge is they just might not have the brand recognition. The, at the big guys have mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so that's, our job is how do you get that great tech in front of the right situations? >>Okay. So my next question is about the show here, and then we'll talk globally. So here in San Francisco sure. You know, Silicon valley bay area, San Francisco bay area, a lot of startups, a lot of VCs, a lot of action. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so probably a big market for you guys. Yeah. So what's exciting here in SF. And then outside of SF, you guys have a global pro, have you see any trends that are geography based or is it sure areas more mature? There's certain regions that are better. I mean, I just interviewed a company here. That's doing, uh, a AWS edge really well in these cases. It's interesting that these, the partners are filling a lot of holes and gaps in the opportunities with a AWS. So what's exciting here. And then what's the global perspective. >>Yeah, totally. So obviously see a ton of partners from the bay area that we support. Um, but we're seeing a lot of really interesting technology come out of AMEA specifically. Yeah. Uh, and making a lot of noise here in the United States, which is great. Um, and so, you know, we definitely have that global presence and, and starting to see super differentiated technology come out of those regions. >>Yeah. Especially Tel Aviv. Yeah. >>Amy and real quick before you get into surge. It's interesting. The VC market in, in Europe is hot. They've got a lot of unicorns coming in. We've seen a lot of companies coming in. They're kind of rattling their own, you know, cage right now. Hey, look at us. Let's see if they crash, you know, but we don't see that happening. I mean, people have been predicting a crash now in, in the startup ecosystem for least a year. It's not crashing. In fact, funding's up. >>Yeah. The pandemic was hard on a lot of startups for sure. Yeah. Um, but what we've seen is many of these startups, they, as quickly as they can grow, they can also pivot as, as, as well. Um, and so I've actually seen many of our startups grow through the demo because their use cases are helping customers either save money, become more operationally efficient and provide value to leadership teams that need more visibility into their infrastructure during a pandemic. >>It's an interesting point. I talked to Andy jazzy and Adam Celski both say the same thing during the pandemic. Necessity's the mother of all invention. Yep. And startups can move fast. So with that, you guys are there to assist if I'm a startup and I gotta pivot cuz remember iterate and pivot, iterate and pivot. So you get your economics, that's the playbook of the ventures and the models. >>Exactly. How >>Do you guys help me do that? Give me an example of what me through. Pretend me, I'm a start up. Hey, I'm on the cloud. Oh my God. Pandemic. They need video conferencing. Hey cube. Yeah. What do I need? Search? What, what do >>I do? That's a good question. First thing is just listen. Yeah. I think what we have to do is a really good job of listening to the partner. Um, what are their needs? What is their problem statement? Where do they want to go at the end of the day? Um, and oftentimes because we've worked with, so how many successful startups that have come out of our program, we have, um, either through intuition or a playbook determined what is gonna be the best path forward and how do we get these partners to stop focusing on things that will eventually, um, just be a waste of time. Yeah. And, or not provide, or, you know, bring any fruit to the table, which, you know, essentially revenue. >>Well, we love startups here in the cube because one, um, they have good stories, they're oil and cutting edge, always pushing the envelope and they're kind of disrupting someone else. Yeah. And so they, they have an opinion. They don't mind sharing on camera. So love talking to startups. We love working with you guys on our startups. Showcases startups.com. Check out AWS startups.com and she got the showcase. So is, uh, final word. I'll give you guys the last word. What's the bottom line bumper sticker for AP globe. The global APN program summarize the opportunity for startups, what you guys bring to the table and we'll close it out. Totally. We'll start >>With you. Yeah. I think the AWS global startup programs here to help companies truly accelerate their business full stop. Right. And that's what we're here for. Love it. >>It's a good way to, it's a good way to put it. Dato yeah. >>All right. Thanks for coming out. Thanks John. Great to see you love working with you guys. Hey, startups need help. And the growing and huge market opportunities, the shift cloud scale data engineering, security infrastructure, all the markets are exploding in growth because of the digital transformation of realities here, open source and cloud. I'll making it happen here in the cube in San Francisco, California. I'm John furrier, your host. Thanks for >>Watching Cisco, John. >>Hello and welcome back to the Cube's live coverage here in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for host of the cube. Uh, two days of coverage, AWS summit, 2022 in New York city coming up this summer will be there as well. Events are back. The cube is back of course, with the cube virtual cube hybrid, the cube.net. Check it out a lot of content this year more than ever a lot more cloud data cloud native, modern applic is all happening. Got a great guest here. Jeremy Burton, Cub alumni, uh, CEO of observe Inc in the middle of all the cloud scale, big data observability, Jeremy. Great to see you. Thanks. >>Coming on. Always great to come and talk to you on the queue, man. It's been been a few years, so, >>Um, well you, you got your hands. You're in the trenches with great startup, uh, good funding, great board, great people involved in the observability Smith hot area, but also you've been a senior executive president of Dell EMC. Um, 11 years ago you had a vision and you actually had an event called cloud meets big data. Um, yeah. And it's here, you predicted it 11 years ago. Um, look around it's cloud meets big data. >>Yeah. I mean the, the cloud thing I think, you know, was, was probably already a thing, but the big data thing I do claim credit for, for sort of catching that bus early, um, you know, we, we were on the, the, the bus early and, and I think it was only inevitable. Like, you know, if you could bring the economics and the compute of cloud to big data, you, you could find out things you could never possibly imagine. >>So you're close to a lot of companies that we've been covering deeply snowflake, obviously you involved, uh, at the board level, the other found, you know, the people there, uh, cloud, you know, Amazon, you know, what's going on here? Yeah. You're doing a startup as the CEO at the helm, uh, chief of observ, Inc, which is an observability, which is to me in the center of this confluence of data engineering, large scale integrations, um, data as code integrating into applications. I mean, it's a whole nother world developing, like you see with snowflake, it means snowflakes is super cloud as we call it. So a whole nother wave is here. What's your, what's this wave we're on what's how would you describe the wave? >>Well, a couple of things, I mean, people are, I think right in more software than, than ever before are why? Because they've realized that if, if you don't take your business online and offer a service, then you become largely irrelevant. And so you you've got a whole set of new applications. I think, I think more applications now than any point. Um, not, not just ever, but the mid nineties, I always looked at as the golden age of application development. Now, back then people were building for windows. Well, well now they're building for things like AWS is now the platform. Um, so you've got all of that going on. And then at the same time, the, the side effect of these applications is they generate data and lots of data. And the, you know, there's sort of the transactions, you know, what you bought today are something like that. But then there's what we do, which is all the telemetry, all the exhaust fumes. And I think people really are realizing that their differentiation is not so much their application. It's their understanding of the data. Can, can I understand who my best customers are, what I sell today. If people came to my website and didn't buy, then why not? Where did they drop off all of that? They wanna analyze. And, and the answers are all in the data. The question is, can you understand it >>In our last startup showcase, we featured data as code one of the insights that we got out of that, and I wanna get your opinion on our reaction to is, is that data used to be put into a data lake and turns into a data swamp or throw into the data warehouse. And then we'll do some queries, maybe a report once in a while. And so data, once it was done, unless it was real time, even real time was not good anymore after real time. That was the old way. Now you're seeing more and more, uh, effort to say, let's go look at the data, cuz now machine learning is getting better. Not just train once mm-hmm <affirmative> they're iterating. Yeah. This notion of iterating and then pivoting, iterating and pivoting. Yeah, that's a Silicon valley story. That's like how startups work, but now you're seeing data being treated the same way. So now you have another, this data concept that's now yeah. Part of a new way to create more value for the apps. So this whole, this whole new cycle of >>Yeah. >>Data being reused and repurposed and figured out and yeah, >>Yeah. I'm a big fan of, um, years ago. Uh, uh, just an amazing guy, Andy McAfee at the MIT C cell labs I spent time with and he, he had this line, which still sticks to me this day, which is look I'm I'm. He said I'm part of a body, which believes that everything is a matter of data. Like if you have enough data, you can answer any question. And, and this is going back 10 years when he was saying these kind of things and, and certainly, you know, research is on the forefront. But I think, you know, starting to see that mindset of the, the sort of MIT research be mainstream, you know, in enterprises, they they're realizing that. Yeah, it is about the data. You know, if I can better understand my data better than my competitor, then I've got an advantage. And so the question is is, is how, what, what technologies and what skills do I need in my organization to, to allow me to do that. >>So let's talk about observing you the CEO of, okay. Given you've seen the ways before you're in the front lines of observability, which again is in the center of all this action what's going on with the company. Give a quick minute to explain, observe for the folks who don't know what you guys do. What's the company doing? What's the funding status, what's the product status and what's the customer status. Yeah. >>So, um, we realized, you know, a handful of years ago, let's say five years ago that, um, look, the way people are building applications is different. They they're way more functional. They change every day. Uh, but in some respects they're a lot more complicated. They're distributed. They, you know, microservices architectures and when something goes wrong, um, the old way of troubleshooting and solving problems was not gonna fly because you had SA so much change going into production on a daily basis. It was hard to tell like where the problem was. And so we thought, okay, it's about time. Somebody looks at the exhaust fumes from this application and all the telemetry data and helps people troubleshoot and make sense of the problems that they're seeing. So, I mean, that's observability, it's actually a term that goes back to the 1960s. It was a guy called, uh, Rudolph like, like everything in tech, you know, it's, it's a reinvention of something from years gone by. >>Um, there's a guy called, um, Rudy Coleman in 1960s coiner term and, and, and the term was being able to determine the state of a system by looking at its external outputs. And so we've been going on this for, uh, the best part of four years now. Um, it took us three years just to build the product. I think, I think what people don't appreciate these days often is the barrier to entry in a lot of these markets is quite high. You, you need a lot of functionality to have something that's credible with a customer. Um, so yeah, this last year we, we, we did our first year selling, uh, we've got about 40 customers now. Um, we just we've got great investors for the hill ventures. Uh, I mean, Mike SP who was, you know, the, the guy who was the, really, the first guy in it snowflake and the, the initial investor were fortunate enough to, to have Mike and our board. And, um, you know, part of the observed story is closely knit with snowflake all of that time with your data, you know, we, we store in there. >>So I want to get, uh, yeah. Pivot to that. Mike SP snowflake, Jeremy Burton, the cube kind of, kind of same thinking this idea of a super cloud or what snowflake became. Yeah. Snowflake is massively successful on top of AWS. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and now you're seeing startups and companies build on top of snowflake. Yeah. So that's become an entrepreneurial story that we think that to go big in the cloud, you can have a cloud on a cloud, uh, like as Jerry, Jerry Chan and Greylock calls it, castles in the cloud where there are moats in the cloud. So you're close to it. I know you, you're doing some stuff with snowflake. So as a startup, what's your view on building on top of say a snowflake or an AWS, because again, you gotta go where the data is. You need all the data. >>Yeah. So >>What's your take on that? I mean, >>Having enough gray hair now, um, you know, again, in tech, I think if you wanna predict the future, look at the past. And, uh, you know, 20 years ago, 25 years ago, I was at a, a smaller company called Oracle and an Oracle was the database company. And, uh, their, their ambition was to manage all of the world's transactional data. And they built on a platform or a couple of platforms, one, one windows, and the other main one was Solaris. And so at that time, the operating system was the platform. And, and then that was the, you know, ecosystem that you would compete on top of. And then there were companies like SAP that built applications on top of Oracle. So then wind the clock forward 25 years gray hairs. <laugh> the platform, isn't the operating system anymore. The platform is AWS, you know, Google cloud. I gotta probably look around if I say that in. Yeah, >>It's okay. Columbia, but hyperscale. Yeah. CapX built out >>That is the new platform. And then snowflake comes along. Well, their aspiration is to manage all of the, not just human generated data, but machine generated data in the world of cloud. And I think they they've done an amazing job are doing for the, I'd say, say the, the big data world, what Oracle did for the relational data world, you know, way back 25 years ago. And then there are folks like us come along and, and of course my ambition would be, look, if, if we can be as successful as an SAP building on top of snowflake, uh, as, as they were on top of Oracle, then, then we'd probably be quite happy, >>Happy. So you're building on top of snowflake, >>We're building on top of snowflake a hundred percent. And, um, you know, I've had folks say to me, well, aren't you worried about that? Isn't that a risk? It's like, well, that that's a risk. You're >>Still on the board. >>Yeah. I'm still on the board. Yeah. That's a risk I'm prepared to take. I am more on snowing. >>It sounds well, you're in a good spot. Stay on the board, then you'll know what's going on. Okay. No, yeah. Serious one. But the, this is a real dynamic. It is. It's not a one off its >>Well, and I do believe as well that the platform that you see now with AWS, if you look at the revenues of AWS is in order of magnitude, more than Microsoft was 25 years ago with windows mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so I've believe the opportunity for folks like snowflake and, and folks like observe it. It's an order of magnitude more than it was for the Oracle and the SAPs of the old world. >>Yeah. And I think this is really, I think this is something that this next generation of entrepreneurship is the go big scenario is you gotta be on a platform. Yeah. >>It's quite easy >>Or be the platform, but it's hard. There's only like how seats were at that table left >>Well value migrates up over time. So, you know, when the cloud thing got going, there were probably 10, 20, 30, you know, rack space and there's 1,000,001 infrastructure, a service platform as a service. My, my old, uh, um, employee EMC, we had pivotal, you know, pivotal was a platform as a service. Don't hear so much about it these days, but initially there's a lot of players and then it consolidates. And then to, to like extract, uh, a real business, you gotta move up, you gotta add value, you gotta build databases, then you gotta build applications. So >>It's interesting. Moving from the data center of the cloud was a dream for starters within if the provision, the CapEx. Yeah. Now the CapEx is in the cloud. Then you build on, on top of that, you got snowflake. Now you got on top of that. >>The assumption is almost that compute and storage is free. I know it's not quite free. Yeah. It's almost free, but you can, you know, as an application vendor, you think, well, what can I do if I assume compute and storage is free, that's the mindset you've gotta get >>Into. And I think the platform enablement to value. So if I'm an entrepreneur, I'm gonna get a series us multiple of value in what I'm paying. Yeah. Most people don't even blanket their Avis pills unless they're like massively huge. Yeah. Then it's a repatriation question or whatever discount question, but for most startups or any growing company, the Amazon bill should be a small factor. >>Yeah. I mean, a lot of people, um, ask me, uh, like, look you build in on snowflake. Um, you, you know, you, you, you're gonna be, you're gonna be paying their money. How, how, how, how does that work with your business model? If you're paying their money, you know, do, do you have a viable business? And it's like, well, okay. I, we could build a database as well and observe, but then I've got half the development team working on something that will never be as good as snowflake. And so we made the call early on that. No, no, we, we want a eight above the database. Yeah. Right. Snowflake are doing a great job of innovating on the database and, and the same is true of something like Amazon, like, like snowflake could have built their own cloud and their own platform, but they didn't. >>Yeah. And what's interesting is that Dave <inaudible> and I have been pointing this out and he's obviously a more on snowflake. I've been looking at data bricks, um, and the same dynamics happening, the proof is the ecosystem. Yeah. I mean, if you look at Snowflake's ecosystem right now and data bricks it's exploding. Right. I mean, the shows are selling out the floor. Space's book. That's the old days at VMware. Yeah. The old days at AWS. >>Well, and for snowflake and, and any platform from VI, it's a beautiful thing because, you know, we build on snowflake and we pay them money. They don't have to sell to us. Right. And we do a lot of the support. And so the, the economics work out really, really well. If you're a platform provider and you've got a lot of >>Ecosystems. Yeah. And then also you get, you get a, um, a trajectory of, uh, economies of scale with the institutional knowledge of snowflake integrations, right. New product, you're scaling a step function with them. >>Yeah. I mean, we manage 10 petabytes of data right now. Right. When I, when I, when I arrived at EMC in 2010, we had, we had one petabyte customer. And, and so at observe, we've been only selling the product for a year. We have 10 petabytes of data under management. And so been able to rely on a platform that can manage that is inve >>You know, well, Jeremy great conversation. Thanks for sharing your insights on the industry. Uh, we got a couple minutes left, um, put a plug in for observe. What do you guys know? You got some good funding, great partners. I don't know if you can talk about your, your, your POC customers, but you got a lot of high ends folks that are working with you. You getting in traction. >>Yeah. Yeah. Scales >>Around the corner. Sounds like, are you, is that where you are scale? >>We've got a big that that's when coming up in two or three weeks, we've got, we've got new funding, um, which is always great. Um, the product is, uh, really, really close. I think, as a startup, you always strive for market fit, you know, which is at which point can you just start hiring salespeople? And the revenue keeps going. We're getting pretty close to that right now. Um, we've got about 40 SaaS companies that run on the platform. They're almost all AWS Kubernetes, uh, which is our sweet spot to begin with, but we're starting to get some really interesting, um, enterprise type customers. We're, we're, you know, F five networks we're POC in right now with capital one, we got some interest in news around capital one coming up. I, I can't share too much, but it's gonna be exciting. And, and like I said, so hill continue to, to, >>I think capital one's a big snowflake customer as well. Right. >>They were early in one of the things that attracted me to capital one was they were very, very good with snowflake early on. And, and they put snowflake in a position in the bank where they thought that snowflake could be successful. And, and today that, that is one of Snowflake's biggest accounts, >>Capital, one, very innovative cloud, obviously Atos customer, and very innovative, certainly in the CISO and CIO, um, on another point on where you're at. So you're, Prescale meaning you're about to scale, >>Right? >>So you got POCs, what's that trajectory look like? Can you see around the corner? What's, what's going on? What's on, around the corner. That you're, that you're gonna hit this straight and narrow and, and gas it fast. >>Yeah. I mean, the, the, the, the key thing for us is we gotta get the product. Right. Um, the nice thing about having a guy like Mike Pfizer on the board is he doesn't obsess about revenue at this stage. His questions that the board are always about, like is the product, right? Is the product right? Is the product right? Have you got the product right? And cuz we know when the product's right, we can then scale the sales team and, and the revenue will take care of itself. Yeah. So right now all the attention is on the product. Um, the, this year, the exciting thing is we we're, we're adding all the tracing visualizations. So people will be able to the kind of things that by in the day you could do with the new relics and AppDynamics, the last generation of, of APM tools, you're gonna be able to do that within observe. And we've already got the logs and the metrics capability in there. So for us this year is a big one, cuz we sort of complete the trifecta, you know, the, the >>Logs, what's the secret sauce observe. What if you had the, put it into a, a, a sentence what's the secret sauce? >>I, I, I think, you know, an amazing founding engineering team, uh, number one, I mean, at the end of the day, you have to build an amazing product and you have to solve a problem in a different way. And we've got great long term investors and, and the biggest thing our investors give is it actually, it's not just money. It gives us time to get the product, right. Because if we get the product right, then we can get the growth. >>Got it. Final question. While I got you here, you've been on the enterprise business for a long time. What's the buyer landscape out there. You got people doing POCs on capital one scale. So we know that goes on. What's the appetite at the buyer side for startups and what are their requirements that you're seeing? Uh, obviously we're seeing people go in and dip into the startup pool because new ways to refactor their, this restructure. So, so a lot of happening in cloud, what's the criteria. How are enterprises engaging in with startups? >>Yeah. I mean, enterprises, they know they've gotta spend money transforming the business. I mean, this was, I almost feel like my old Dell or EMC self there, but, um, what, what we were saying five years ago is happening. Um, everybody needs to figure out a way to take their business to this digital world. Everybody has to do it. So the nice thing from a startup standpoint is they know at times they need to risk or, or take a bet on new technology in order to, to help them do that. So I think you've got buyers that a have money, uh, B it prepared to take risks and it's, it's a race against time to you'll get their, their offerings in this, a new digital footprint. >>Final, final question. What's the state of AWS. Where do you see them going next? Obviously they're continuing to be successful. How does cloud 3.0, or they always say it's day one, but it's more like day 10, but what's next for Aw. Where do they go from here? Obviously they're doing well. They're getting bigger and bigger. Yeah, >>Better. It's an amazing story. I mean, you know, we're, we're on AWS as well. And so I, I think if they keep nurturing the builders and the ecosystem, then that is their superpower. They, they have an early leads. And if you look at where, you know, maybe the likes of Microsoft lost the plot in the, in the late nineties, it was, they stopped, uh, really caring about developers in the folks who were building on top of their ecosystem. In fact, they started buying up their ecosystem and competing with people in their ecosystem. And I see with AWS, they, they have an amazing headstart and if they did more, you know, if they do more than that, that's, what's gonna keep this juggernaut rolling for many years to come. >>Yeah. They got the Silicon and got the stack. They're developing Jeremy Burton inside the cube, great resource for commentary, but also founding with the CEO of a company called observing in the middle of all the action on the board of snowflake as well. Um, great startup. Thanks for coming on the cube. Always a pleasure. Okay. Live from San Francisco. It's to cube. I'm John for your host. Stay with us more coverage from San Francisco, California after the short break. >>Hello. Welcome back to the cubes coverage here live in San Francisco, California. I'm John furrier, host of the cubes cube coverage of AWS summit 2022 here in San Francisco. We're all the developers are the bay air at Silicon valley. And of course, AWS summit in New York city is coming up in the summer. We'll be there as well. SF and NYC cube coverage. Look for us. Of course, reinforcing Boston and re Mars with the whole robotics, AI. They all coming together. Lots of coverage stay with us today. We've got a great guest from Bel VC. John founding partner, entrepreneurial venture is a venture firm. Your next act, welcome to the cube. Good to see you. >>Good to see you, man. I feel like it's been forever since we've been able to do something in person. Well, >>I'm glad you're here because we run into each other all the time. We've known each other for over decade. Um, >>It's been at least 10 years, >>At least 10 years more. And we don't wanna actually go back as bring back the old school web 1.0 days. But anyway, we're in web three now. So we'll get to that in a second. We, >>We are, it's a little bit of a throwback to the path though, in my opinion, >>It's all the same. It's all distributed computing and software. We ran each other in cube con. You're investing in a lot of tech startup founders. Okay. This next level, next gen entrepreneurs have a new makeup and it's software. It's hardcore tech in some cases, not hardcore tech, but using software to take an old something old and make it better new, faster. So tell us about Bel what's the firm. I know you're the founder, uh, which is cool. What's going on. Explain >>What you, I mean, you remember I'm a recovering entrepreneur, right? So of course I, I, >>No, you're never recovering. You're always entrepreneur >>Always, but we are also always recovering. So I, um, started my first company when I was 24. If you remember, before there was Facebook and friends, there was instant messaging. People were using that product at work every day, they were creating a security vulnerability between their network and the outside world. So I plugged that hole and built an instant messaging firewall. It was my first company. The company was called IM logic and we were required by Symantec. Uh, then spent 12 years investing in the next generation of software companies, uh, early investor in open source companies and cloud companies and spent a really wonderful years, uh, at a firm called NEA. So I, I feel like my whole life I've been either starting enterprise software companies or helping founders start enterprise software companies. And I'll tell you, there's never been a better time than right now to start an enterprise software company. >>So, uh, the passion for starting a new firm was really a recognition that founders today that are starting an enterprise software company, they, they tend to be, as you said, a more technical founder, right? Usually it's a software engineer or a builder mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, they are building that are serving a slightly different market than what we've traditionally seen in enterprise software. Right? I think traditionally we've seen it buyers or CIOs that have agendas and strategies, which, you know, purchase software that is traditionally bought and sold tops down. But you know, today I think the most successful enterprise software companies are the ones that are built more bottoms up and have more technical early adopters. And generally speaking, they're free to use. They're free to try. They're very commonly community source or open source companies where you have a large technical community that's supporting them. So there's a, there's kind of a new normal now I think in great enterprise software. And it starts with great technical founders with great products and great bottoms of motions. And I think there's no better place to, uh, service those people than in the cloud and uh, in, in your community. >>Well, first of all, congratulations, and by the way, you got a great pedigree and great background. You're super smart admire of your work and your, and, and your founding, but let's face it. Enterprise is hot because digital transformation is, is all companies there's no, I mean, consumer is enterprise now. Everything is what was once a niche, not, I won't say niche category, but you know, not for the faint of heart, you know, investors, >>You know, it's so funny that you say that enterprise is hot because you, and I feel that way now. But remember, like right now, there's also a giant tech in VC conference in Miami <laugh> and it's covering cryptocurrencies and FCS and web three. So I think beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder <laugh> but no, I, I will tell you, well, >>MFTs is one big enterprise, cuz you gotta have imutability you got performance issues. You have, I IOPS issues. >>Well, and, and I think all of us here that are of may, maybe students of his stream have been involved in open source in the cloud would say that we're, you know, much of what we're doing is, uh, the predecessors of the web web three movement. And many of us I think are contributors to the web three >>Movement. The hype is definitely web >>Three. Yeah. But, >>But you know, >>For sure. Yeah, no, but now you're taking us further east to Miami. So, uh, you know, look, I think, I, I think, um, what is unquestioned with the case and maybe it's, it's more obvious the more time you spend in this world is this is the fastest growing part of enterprise software. And if you include cloud infrastructure and cloud infrastructure spend, you know, it is by many measures over, uh, $500 billion in growing, you know, 20 to 30 a year. So it it's a, it's a just incredibly fast >>Let's getting, let's get into some of the cultural and the, the shifts that are happening, cuz again, you, you have the luxury of being in enterprise when it was hard, it's getting easier and more cooler. I get it and more relevant <laugh> but there's also the hype of like the web three, for instance, but you know, for, uh, um, um, the CEO snowflake, okay. Has wrote a book and Dave Valenti and I were talking about it and uh, Frank Lutman has says, there's no playbooks. We always ask the CEOs, what's your playbook. And he's like, there's no playbook, situational awareness, always Trump's playbooks. So in the enterprise playbook, oh, hire a direct sales force and sass kind of crushed that now SAS is being redefined, right. So what is SAS? Is snowflake a SAS or is that a platform? So again, new unit economics are emerging, whole new situation, you got web three. So to me there's a cultural shift, the young entrepreneurs, the, uh, user experience, they look at Facebook and say, ah, you know, and they own all my data. And you know, we know that that cliche, um, they, you know, the product. So as this next gen, the gen Z and the millennials come in and our customers and the founders, they're looking at things a little bit differently and the tech better. >>Yeah. I mean, I mean, I think we can, we can see a lot of commonalities across all six of startups and the overall adoption of technology. Uh, and, and I would tell you, this is all one big giant revolution. I call it the user driven revolution. Right. It's the rise of the user. Yeah. And you might say product like growth is currently the hottest trend in enterprise software. It's actually user like growth, right. They're one in the same. So sometimes people think the product, uh, is what is driving. >>You just pull the product >>Through. Exactly, exactly. And so that's that I, that I think is really this revolution that you see, and, and it does extend into things like cryptocurrencies and web three and, you know, sort of like the control that is taken back by the user. Um, but you know, many would say that, that the origins of this movement may be started with open source where users were contributors, you know, contributors were users and looking back decades and seeing how it, how it fast forward to today. I think that's really the trend that we're all writing and it's enabling these end users. And these end users in our world are developers, data engineers, cybersecurity practitioners, right. They're really the users. And they're really the, the offic and the most, you know, kind of valued people in >>This. I wanna come back to the data engineers in a second, but I wanna make a comment and get your reaction to, I have a, I'm a gen Xer technically. So for not a boomer, but I have some boomer friends who are a little bit older than me who have, you know, experienced the sixties. And I've, I've been saying on the cube for probably about eight years now that we are gonna hit a digital hippie Revolut, meaning a rebellion against in the sixties was rebellion against the fifties and the man and, you know, summer of love. That was a cultural differentiation from the other one of group, the predecessors. So we're kind of having that digital moment now where it's like, Hey boomers, Hey people, we're not gonna do that anymore. We hate how you organize shit. >>Right. But isn't this just technology. I mean, isn't it, isn't it like there used to be the old adage, like, you know, you would never get fired for buying IBM, but now it's like, you obviously probably would get fired if you bought IBM. And I mean, it's just like the, the, I think, I think >>During the mainframe days, those renegades were breaking into Stanford, starting the home brew club. So what I'm trying to get at is that, do you see the young cultural revolution also, culturally, just, this is my identity NFTs to me speak volumes about my, I wanna associate with NFTs, not single sign on like, well, >>Absolutely. And, and I think like, I think you're hitting on something, which is like this convergence of, of, you know, societal trends with technology trends and how that manifests in our world is yes. I think like there is unquestionably almost a religion around the way in which a product is built. Right. And we can use open source. One example of that religion. Some people say, look, I'll just never try a product in the cloud if it's not open source. Yeah. I think cloud, native's another example of that, right? It's either it's, you know, it either is cloud native or it's not. And I think a lot of people will look at a product and say, look, you know, you were not designed in the cloud era. Therefore I just won't try you. And sometimes, um, like it or not, it's a religious decision, right? It's, it's something that people just believe to be true almost without, uh, necessarily. I mean, >>The data drives all decision making. Let me ask you this next question. As a VC. Now you look at pitch, well, you've been a VC for many years, but you also have the founder entrepreneurial mindset, but you can empathize with the founders. You know, hustle is a big part of the, that first founder check, right? You gotta convince someone to part with their ch their money and the first money in which you do a lot of is about believing in the first. So faking it till you make it is hard. Now you, the data's there, you either have it cloud native, you either have the adaption or traction. So honesty is a big part of that pitch. You can't fake it. Oh, >>AB absolutely. You know, there used to be this concept of like the persona of an entrepreneur, right. And the persona of the entrepreneur would be, you know, somebody who was a great salesperson or somebody who tell a great story. And I still think that that's important, right. It still is a human need for people to believe in narratives and stories. Yeah. But having said that you're right. The proof is in the pudding, right. At some point you click download and you try the product and it does what it says it's gonna, it's gonna do, or it doesn't, or it either stands up to the load test or it doesn't. And so I, I feel like in this new economy, that're, we live in really, it's a shift from maybe the storytellers and the creators to, to the builders, right. The people that know how to build great product. And in some ways the people that can build great product yeah. Stand out from the crowd. And they're the ones that can build communities around their products. And, you know, in some ways can, um, you know, kind of own more of the narrative because their product begin for exactly >>The volume you back to the user led growth. >>Exactly. And it's the religion of, I just love your product. Right. And I, I, I, um, Doug song is the founder of du security used to say, Hey, like, you know, the, the really like in today's world of like consumption based software, like the user is only gonna give you 90 seconds to figure out whether or not you're a company that's easy to do business with for right. And so you can say, and do all the things that you want about how easy you are to work with. But if the product isn't easy to install, if it's not easy to try, if it's not, if, if the it's gotta speak to the, >>Exactly. Speak to the user. But let me ask a question now that for the people watching, who are maybe entrepreneurial entre entrepreneurs, um, masterclass here is in session. So I have to ask you, do you prefer, um, an entrepreneur to come in and say, look at John. Here's where I'm at. Okay. First of all, storytelling's fine. Whether you're an extrovert or introvert, have your style, sell the story in a way that's authentic, but do you, what do you prefer to say? Here's where I'm at? Look, I have an idea. Here's my traction. I think here's my MVP prototype. I need help. Or do you wanna just see more stats? What's the, what's the preferred way that you like to see entrepreneurs come in and engage? >>There's tons of different styles, man. I think the single most important thing that every founder should know is that we, we don't invest in what things are today. We invest in what we think will become, right. And I think that's why we all get up in the morning and try to build something different, right? It's that we see the world a different way. We want it to be a different way, and we wanna work every single moment of the day to try to make that vision a reality. So I think the more that you can show people where you want to be, the more likely somebody is gonna to align with your vision and, and want to invest in you and wanna be along for the ride. So I, I wholeheartedly believe in showing off what you got today, because eventually we all get down to like, where are we and what are we gonna do together? But, um, no, I, you gotta show the path. I think the single most important thing for any founder and VC relationship is that they have the same vision. Uh, if you have the same vision, you can, you can get through bumps in the road, you can get through short term spills. You can all sorts of things in the middle of the journey can happen. Yeah. But it doesn't matter as much if you share the same long term vision, >>Don't flake out and, and be fashionable with the, the latest trends because it's over before you even get there. >>Exactly. I think many people that, that do what we do for a living will say, you know, ultimately the future is relatively easy to predict, but it's the timing that's impossible to predict. So you, you know, you sort of have to balance the, you know, we, we know that the world is going this way and therefore we're gonna invest a lot of money to try to make this a reality. Uh, but sometimes it happens ins six months. Sometimes it takes six years. Sometimes it takes 16 years. Uh, >>What's the hottest thing in enterprise that you see the biggest wave that people should pay attention to that you're looking at right now with Tebel partners, Tebel dot your site. What's the big wave. What's your big >>Wave. There there's three big trends that we invest in. And then the, the only things we do day in day out one is the explosion at open source software. So I think many people think that all software is unquestionably moving to an open source model in some form or another yeah. Tons of reasons to debate whether or not that is gonna happen an alwa timeline happening forever, but it is, it is accelerating faster than we've ever seen. So I, I think it's its one big mass of wave that we continue to ride. Um, second is the rise of data engineering. Uh, I think data engineering is in and of itself now a category of software. It's not just that we store data. It's now we move data and we develop applications on data. And, uh, I think data is in and of itself as big of a market as any of the other markets that we invest in. Uh, and finally it's the gift that keeps on giving. I've spent my entire career in it. We still feel that security is a market that is underinvested. It is, it continues to be the place where people need to continue to invest and spend more money. Yeah. Uh, and those are the three major trends that we run >>And security, you think we all need a do over, right? I mean, do we need a do over in security or is what's the core problem? I, >>I, I keep using this word underinvested because I think it's the right way to think about the problem. I think if you, I think people generally speaking, look at cyber security as an add-on. Yeah. But if you think about it, the whole like economy is moving online. And so in, in some ways like security is core to protecting the digital economy. And so it's, it shouldn't be an afterthought, right? It should be core to what everyone is doing. And that's why I think relative to the trillions of dollars that are at stake, uh, I believe the market size for cybersecurity is around 150 billion and it still is a fraction of what >>We're, what we're and even boom is booming now. So you get the convergence of national security, geopolitics, internet digital >>That's right. You mean arguably, right. Arguably again, it's the area of the world that people should be spending more time and more money given what to stake. >>I love your thesis. I gotta, I gotta say you gotta love your firm. Love who you're doing. We're big supporters of your mission. Congrat is on your entrepreneurial venture. And uh, we'll be, we'll be talking and maybe see a Cuban. Uh, >>Absolutely >>Not. Certainly EU maybe even north America's in Detroit this year. >>Huge fan of what you guys are doing here. Thank you so much for helping me on the show. >>Des bell VC Johnson here on the cube. Check him out. Founder for founders here on the cube, more coverage from San Francisco, California, after the short break, stay with us. Hey everyone. Welcome to the cue here. Live in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022 we're live we're back with events. Also we're virtual. We got hybrid all kinds of events. This year, of course, 80% summit in New York city is happening this summer. We'll be there with the cube as well. I'm John. Again, John host of the cube. Got a great guest here. Justin Colby, owner and CEO of innovative solutions they booth is right behind us. Justin, welcome to the cube. >>Thank you. Thank you for having me. >>So we're just chatting, uh, off camera about some of the work you're doing. You're the owner of and CEO. Yeah. Of innovative. Yeah. So tell us the story. What do you guys do? What's the elevator pitch. Yeah. >><laugh> so the elevator pitch is we are, uh, a hundred percent focused on small to midsize businesses that are moving to the cloud or have already moved to the cloud and really trying to understand how to best control, cost, security, compliance, all the good stuff, uh, that comes along with it. Um, exclusively focused on AWS and, um, you know, about 110 people, uh, based in Rochester, New York, that's where our headquarters is. But now we have offices down in Austin, Texas up in Toronto, uh, Canada, as well as Chicago. Um, and obviously in New York, uh, you know, the, the business was never like this, uh, five years ago, um, founded in 1989, made the decision in 2018 to pivot and go all in on the cloud. And, uh, I've been a part of the company for about 18 years, bought the company about five years ago. And it's been a great ride. >>It's interesting. The manages services are interesting with cloud cause a lot of the heavy liftings done by AWS. So we had Matt on your team on earlier talking about some of the edge stuff. Yeah. But you guys are a managed cloud service. You got cloud advisory, you know, the classic service that's needed, but the demands coming from cloud migrations and application modernization and obviously data is a huge part of it. Huge. How is this factoring into what you guys do and your growth cuz you guys are the number one partner on the SMB side for edge. Yeah. For AWS, you got results coming in. Where's the, where's the forcing function. What's the pressure point. What's the demand like? Yeah. >>It's a great question. Every CEO I talk to, that's a small to mid-size business. I'll try and understand how to leverage technology better to help either drive a revenue target for their own business, uh, help with customer service as so much has gone remote now. And we're all having problems or troubles or issues trying to hire talent. And um, you know, tech is really at the, at the forefront and the center of that. So most customers are coming to us and they're like, listen, we gotta move to the out or we move some things to the cloud and we want to do that better. And um, there's this big misnomer that when you move to the cloud, you gotta automatically modernize. Yeah. And what we try to help as many customers understand as possible is lifting and shifting, moving the stuff that you maybe currently have OnPrem and a data center to the cloud first is a first step. And then, uh, progressively working through a modernization strategy is always the better approach. And so we spend a lot of time with small to midsize businesses who don't have the technology talent on staff to be able to do >>That. Yeah. They want to get set up. But the, the dynamic of like latency is huge. We're seeing that edge product is a big part of it. This is not a one-off happening around everywhere. It is. And it's not, it's manufacturing, it's the physical plant or location >>Literally. >>And so, and you're seeing more IOT devices. What's that like right now from a challenge and problem statement standpoint, are the customers, not staff, is the it staff kind of old school? Is it new skills? What's the core problem you guys solve >>The SMB space. The core issue nine outta 10 times is people get enamored with the latest and greatest. And the reality is not everything that's cloud based. Not all cloud services are the latest and greatest. Some things have been around for quite some time and are hardened solutions. And so, um, what we try to do with technology staff that has additional on-prem, uh, let's just say skill sets and they're trying to move to a cloud-based workload is we try to help those customers through education and through some practical, let's just call it use case. Um, whether that's a proof of concept that we're doing or whether that's, we're gonna migrate a small workload over, we try to give them the confidence to be able to not, not necessarily go it alone, but to, to, to have the, uh, the Gusto and to really have the, um, the, the opportunity to, to do that in a wise way. Um, and what I find is that most CEOs that I talk to, yeah, they're like, listen, the end of the day, I'm gonna be spending money in one place or another, whether that's OnPrem or in the cloud. I just want to know that I'm doing that in a way that helps me grow as quickly as possible status quo. I think every, every business owner knows that COVID taught us anything that status quo is, uh, is, is no. No. Good. >>How about factoring in the, the agility and speed equation? Does that come up a lot? It >>Does. I think, um, I think there's also this idea that if, uh, if we do a deep dive analysis and we really take a surgical approach to things, um, we're gonna be better off. And the reality is the faster you move with anything cloud based, the better you are. And so there's this assumption that we gotta get it right the first time. Yeah. In the cloud, if you start the, on your journey in one way, and you realize midway that it's not the right, let's just say the right place to go. It's not like buying a piece of iron that you put in the closet and now you own it in the cloud. You can turn those services on and off. It's a, gives you a much higher density for making decisions and failing >>Forward. Well actually shutting down the abandoning, the projects that early and not worrying about it, you got it. I mean, most people don't abandon stuff cuz they're like, oh, I own it. >>Exactly. >>And they get, they get used to it. Like, and then they wait too long. >>That's exactly. Yeah. >>Frog and boiling water as we used to say so, oh, it's a great analogy. So I mean this, this is a dynamic that's interesting. I wanna get more thoughts on it because like I'm a, if I'm a CEO of a company, like, okay, I gotta make my number. Yeah. I gotta keep my people motivated. Yeah. And I gotta move faster. So this is where you guys come in. I get the whole thing. And by the way, great service, um, professional services in the cloud right now are so hot because so hot, you can build it and then have option optionality. You got path decisions, you got new services to take advantage of. It's almost too much for customers. It is. I mean, everyone I talk to at reinvent, that's a customer. Well, how many announcements did Andy jazzy announcer Adam, you know, five, a thousand announcement or whatever they did with huge amounts. Right. Keeping track of it all. Oh, is huge. So what's the, what's the, um, the mission of, of your company. How does, how do you talk to that alignment? Yeah. Not just product. I can get that like values as companies, cuz they're betting on you and your people. >>They are, they are >>The values. >>Our mission is, is very simple. We want to help every small to mid-size business, leverage the power of the cloud. Here's the reality. We believe wholeheartedly. This is our vision that every company is going to become a technology company. So we go to market with this idea that every customer's trying to leverage the power of the cloud in some way, shape or form, whether they know it or don't know it. And number two, they're gonna become a tech company in the pro of that because everything is so tech-centric. And so when you talk about speed and agility, when you talk about the, the endless options and the endless permutations of solutions that a customer can buy in the cloud, how are you gonna ask a team of one or two people in your it department to make all those decisions going it alone or trying to learn it as you go, it only gets you so far working with a partner. >>I'll just give you some perspective. We work with about a thousand small to midsize business customers. More than 50% of those customers are on our managed services. Meaning know that we have their back and we're the safety net. So when a customer is saying, all right, I'm gonna spend a couple thousand dollars a month in the cloud. They know that that bill, isn't gonna jump to $10,000 a month going on loan. Who's there to help protect that. Number two, if you have a security posture and let's just say you're high profile and you're gonna potentially be more vulnerable to security attack. If you have a partner that's offering you some managed services. Now you, again, you've got that backstop and you've got those services and tooling. We, we offer, um, seven different products that are part of our managed services that give the customer the tooling, that for them to go out and buy on their own for a customer to go out today and go buy a new Relic solution on their own, it would cost 'em a fortune. If >>It's training alone would be insane. A risk factor not mean the cost. Yes, absolutely. Opportunity cost is huge, >>Huge, absolutely enormous training and development. Something. I think that is often, you know, it's often overlooked technologists. Typically they want to get their skills up. Yeah. They, they love to get the, the stickers and the badges and the pins, um, at innovative in 2018, when, uh, when we made the decision to go all on the club, I said to the organization, you know, we have this idea that we're gonna pivot and be aligned with AWS in such a way that it's gonna really require us all to get certified. My executive assistant at the time looks at me. She said, even me, I said, yeah, even you, why can't you get certified? Yeah. And so we made, uh, a conscious decision. It wasn't requirement isn't today to make sure everybody in the company has the opportunity to become certified. Even the people that are answering the phones at the front desk >>And she could be running the Kubernetes clusters. I >>Love it. It's amazing. So I'll tell you what, when that customer calls and they have a real Kubernetes issue, she'll be able to assist and get the right >>People involved. And that's a cultural factor that you guys have. So, so again, this is back to my whole point about SMBs and BIS is in general, small and large. It staffs are turning over the gen Z and millennials are in the workforce. They were provisioning top of rack switches. Right. First of all. And so if you're a business, there's also the, I call the build out, um, uh, return factor, ROI piece. At what point in time as an owner or SMB, do I get the why? Yeah. I gotta hire a person to manage it. That person's gonna have five zillion job offers. Yep. Uh, maybe who knows? Right. I got cyber security issues. Where am I gonna find a cyber person? Yeah. A data compliance. I need a data scientist and a compliance person. Right. Maybe one in the same. Right. Good luck. Trying to find a data scientist. Who's also a compliance person. Yep. And the list goes on. I can just continue. Absolutely. I need an SRE to manage the, the, uh, the sock report and we can pen test. Right. >>Right. >>These are, these are >>Like critical issues. This >>Is just like, these are the table stakes. >>Yeah. And, and every, every business owner's thinking about this, that's, >>That's what, at least a million in bloating, if not three or more Just to get that going. Yeah. Then it's like, where's the app. Yeah. So there's no cloud migration. There's no modernization on the app side now. Yeah. No. And nevermind AI and ML. That's >>Right. That's right. So to try to go it alone, to me, it's hard. It's incredibly difficult. And the other thing is, is there's not a lot of partners, so the partner, >>No one's raising their hand boss. I'll do all that exactly. In the it department. >>Exactly. >>Like, can we just call up, uh, you know, our old vendor that's >>Right. <laugh> right. Our old vendor. I like >>It, >>But that's so true. I mean, when I think about how, if I were a business owner starting a business today and I had to build my team, um, and the amount of investment that it would take to get those people skilled up and then the risk factor of those people now having the skills and being so much more in demand and being recruited away, that's a real, that's a real issue. And so how you build your culture around that is, is very important. And it's something that we tell, talk about every, with every one of our small to mid-size >>Businesses. So just, I wanna get, I want to get your story as CEO. Okay. Take us through your journey. You said you bought the company and your progression to, to being the owner and CEO of innovative yeah. Award winning guys doing great. Uh, great bet on a good call. Yeah. Things are good. Tell your story. What's your journey? >>It's real simple. I was, uh, I was a sophomore at the Rochester Institute of technology in 2003. And, uh, I knew that I, I was going to school for it and I, I knew I wanted to be in tech. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn't wanna code or configure routers and switches. So I had this great opportunity with the local it company that was doing managed services. We didn't call it at that time innovative solutions to come in and, uh, jump on the phone and dial for dollars. I was gonna cold call and introduce other, uh, small to midsize businesses locally in Rochester, New York go to Western New York, um, who innovative was now. We were 19 people at the time. And I came in, I did an internship for six months and I loved it. I learned more in those six months that I probably did in my first couple of years at, uh, at RT long story short. >>Um, for about seven years, I worked, uh, to really help develop, uh, sales process and methodology for the business so that we could grow and scale. And we grew to about 30 people. And, um, I went to the owners at the time in 2010 and I was like, Hey, on the value of this business and who knows where you guys are gonna be another five years, what do you think about making me an owner? And they were like, listen, you got long ways before you're gonna be an owner, but if you stick it out in your patient, we'll, um, we'll work through a succession plan with you. And I said, okay, there were four other individuals at the time that were gonna also buy into the business with me. >>And they were the owners, no outside capital, none >>Zero, well, 2014 comes around. And, uh, the other folks that were gonna buy into the business with me that were also working at innovative for different reasons, they all decided that it wasn't for them. One started a family. The other didn't wanna put capital in. Didn't wanna write a check. Um, the other had a real big problem with having to write a check. If we couldn't make payroll, I'm like, well, that's kind of like if we're owners, we're gonna have to like cover that stuff. <laugh> so >>It's called the pucker factor. >>Exactly. So, uh, I sat down with the CEO in early 2015, and, uh, we made the decision that I was gonna buy the three partners out, um, go through an early now process, uh, coupled with, uh, an interesting financial strategy that wouldn't strap the business, cuz they cared very much. The company still had the opportunity to keep going. So in 2016 I bought the business, um, became the sole owner. And, and at that point we, um, we really focused hard on what do we want this company to be? We had built this company to this point. Yeah. And, uh, and by 2018 we knew that pivoting going all in on the cloud was important for us and we haven't looked back. >>And at that time the proof points were coming clearer and clearer 2012 through 15 was the early adopters, the builders, the startups and early enterprises. Yes. The capital ones of the world. Exactly. And those kinds of big enterprises, the GA I don't wanna say gamblers, but ones that were very savvy. The innovators, the FinTech folks. Yep. The hardcore glass eating enterprises >>Agreed, agreed to find a small to mid-size business, to migrate completely to the cloud as, as infrastructure was considered. That just didn't happen as often. Um, what we were seeing where a lot of our small to mid-size as customers, they wanted to leverage cloud-based backup or they wanted to leverage a cloud for disaster recovery because it lent itself. Well, early days, our most common cloud customer though, was the customer that wanted to move messaging and collaboration, the Microsoft suite to the cloud. And a lot of 'em dipped their toe in the water. But by 2017 we knew infrastructure was around the corner. Yeah. And so, uh, we only had two customers on AWS at the time. Um, and we, uh, we, we made the decision to go all in >>Justin. Great to have you on the cube. Thank you. Let's wrap up. Uh, tell me the hottest product that you have. Is it migrations? Is it the app modernization? Is it data? What's the hot product and then put a plug in for the company. Awesome. >>So, uh, there's no question. Every customer is looking to migrate workloads and try to figure out how to modernize for the future. We have very interesting, sophisticated yet elegant funding solutions to help customers with the cash flow, uh, constraints that come along with those migrations. So any SMB that's thinking about migrating to the cloud, they should be talking innovative solutions. We know how to do it in a way that allows those customers not to be cash strap and gives them an opportunity to move forward in a controlled, contained way so that they can modernize. >>So like insurance, basically for them not insurance class in the classic sense, but you help them out on the, on the cash exposure. >>Absolutely. We are known for that and we're known for being creative with those customers and being empathetic to where they are in their journey. >>And that's the cloud upside is all about doubling down on the variable wind. That's right. Seeing the value and Ling down on it. Absolutely not praying for it. Yeah. <laugh> all right, Justin. Thanks for coming on. You really appreciate it. >>Thank you very much for having me. >>Okay. This is the cube coverage here live in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching. We're back with more great coverage for two days after this short break, >>Live on the floor and see San Francisco for a AWS summit. I'm John ferry, host of the cube here for the next two days, getting all the action we're back in person. We're at a AWS reinvent a few months ago. Now we're back. Events are coming back and we're happy to be here with the cube. Bring all the action. Also virtual. We have a hybrid cube. Check out the cube.net, Silicon angle.com for all the coverage. After the event. We've got a great guest ticking off here. Matthew Park, director of solutions, architecture with innovation solutions. The booth is right here. Matthew, welcome to the cube. >>Thank you very much. I'm glad to be >>Here. So we're back in person. You're from Tennessee. We were chatting before you came on camera. Um, it's great to have to be back through events. >>It's amazing. This is the first, uh, summit I've been to and what two, three years. >>It's awesome. We'll be at the UHS summit in New York as well. A lot of developers and a big story this year is as developers look at cloud going distributed computing, you got on premises, you got public cloud, you got the edge. Essentially the cloud operations is running everything dev sec ops, everyone kind of sees that you got containers, you got Kubernetes, you got cloud native. So the game is pretty much laid out mm-hmm <affirmative> and the edge is with the actions you guys are number one, premier partner at SMB for edge. >>That's right. >>Tell us about what you guys doing at innovative and, uh, what you do. >>That's right. Uh, so I'm the director of solutions architecture. Uh, me and my team are responsible for building out the solutions that are around, especially the edge public cloud for us edge is anything outside of an AWS availability zone. Uh, we are deploying that in countries that don't have AWS infrastructure in region. They don't have it. Uh, give an example, uh, example would be Panama. We have a customer there that, uh, needs to deploy some financial tech and compute is legally required to be in Panama, but they love AWS and they want to deploy AWS services in region. Uh, so they've taken E EKS anywhere. We've put storage gateway and, uh, snowball, uh, in region inside the country and they're running their FinTech on top of AWS services inside Panama. >>You know, it's interesting, Matthew is that we've been covering a, since 2013 with the cube about their events. And we watched the progression and jazzy was, uh, was in charge and became the CEO. Now Adam's in charge, but the edge has always been that thing they've been trying to avoid. I don't wanna say trying to avoid, of course, Amazon would listen to the customers. They work backwards from the customer. We all know that. Uh, but the real issue was they were they're bread and butters EC two and S three. And then now they got tons of services and the cloud is obviously successful and seeing that, but the edge brings up a whole nother level. >>It does computing. It >>Does. That's not centralized in the public cloud now they got regions. So what is the issue at the edge what's driving the behavior. Outpost came out as a reaction to competitive threats and also customer momentum around OT, uh, operational technologies. And it merging. We see that the data at the edge, you got 5g having. So it's pretty obvious, but there's a slow transition. What was the driver for the edge? What's the driver now for edge action for AWS >>Data is the driver for the edge. Data has gravity, right? And it's pulling compute back to where the customer's generating that data and that's happening over and over again. You said it best outpost was a reaction to a competitive situation where today we have over 15 AWS edge services and those are all reactions to things that customers need inside their data centers on location or in the field like with media companies. >>Outpost is interesting. We always used to riff on the cube cause it's basically Amazon and a box pushed in the data center, running native, all the stuff, but now cloud native operations are kind of becoming standard. You're starting to see some standard Deepak syncs. Group's doing some amazing work with open source Rauls team on the AI side, obviously, uh, you got SW, he was giving the keynote tomorrow. You got the big AI machine learning big part of that edge. Now you can say, okay, outpost, is it relevant today? In other words, did outpost do its job? Cause EKS anywhere seems to be getting a lot of momentum. You see local zones, the regions are kicking ass for Amazon. This edge piece is evolving. What's your take on EKS anywhere versus say outpost? >>Yeah, I think outpost did its job. It made customers that were looking at outpost really consider, do I wanna invest in this hardware? Do I, do I wanna have, um, this outpost in my data center, do I want to manage this over the long term? A lot of those customers just transitioned to the public cloud. They went into AWS proper. Some of those customers stayed on prem because they did have use cases that were, uh, not a good fit for outposts. They weren't a good fit. Uh, in the customer's mind for the public AWS cloud inside an availability zone. Now what's happening is as AWS is pushing these services out and saying, we're gonna meet you where you are with 5g. We're gonna meet you where you are with wavelength. We're gonna meet you where you are with EKS anywhere. Uh, I think it has really reduced the amount of times that we have conversations about outposts and it's really increased. We can deploy fast. We don't have to spin up outpost hardware. We can go deploy EKS anywhere or in your VMware environment. And it's increasing the speed of adoption >>For sure. Right? So you guys are making a lot of good business decisions around managed cloud service. That's right. Innovative as that you get the cloud advisory, the classic professional services for the specific edge piece and, and doing that outside of the availability zones and regions for AWS, um, customers in, in these new areas that you're helping out are, they want cloud, like they want to have modernization a modern applications. Obviously they got data machine learning and AI, all part of that. What's the main product or, or, or gap that you're filling for AWS, uh, outside of their availability zones or their regions that you guys are delivering. What's the key is it. They don't have a footprint. Is it that it's not big enough for them? What's the real gap. What's why, why are you so successful? >>So what customers want when they look towards the cloud is they want to focus on, what's making them money as a business. They want on their applications. They want to focus on their customers. So they look towards AWS cloud and say, AWS, you take the infrastructure. You take, uh, some of the higher layers and we'll focus on our revenue generating business, but there's a gap there between infrastructure and revenue generating business that innovative slides into, uh, we help manage the AWS environment. Uh, we help build out these things in local data centers for 32 plus year old company. We have traditional on-premises people that know about deploying hardware that know about deploying VMware to host EKS anywhere. But we also have most of our company totally focused on the AWS cloud. So we're filling that gap in helping of these AWS services, manage them over the long term. So our customers can go to just primarily and totally focusing on their revenue generating business. So >>Basically you guys are basically building AWS edges, >>Correct? >>For correct companies, correct? Mainly because the, the needs are there, you got data, you got certain products, whether it's, you know, low latency type requirements, right. And then they still work with the regions, right. It's all tied together, right. Is that how it works? Right. >>And, and our customers, even the ones in the edge, they also want us to build out the AWS environment inside the availability zone, because we're always gonna have a failback scenario. If we're gonna deploy FinTech in the Caribbean, we talk about hurricanes and we're gonna talk about failing back into the AWS availability zones. So innovative is filling that gap across the board, whether it be inside the AWS cloud or on the AWS edge. >>All right. So I gotta ask you on the, since you're at the edge in these areas, I won't say underserved, but developing areas where you now have data and you have applications that are tapping into that, that required. It makes total sense. We're seeing that across the board. So it's not like it's, it's an outlier it's actually growing. Yeah. There's also the crypto angle. You got the blockchain. Are you seeing any traction at the edge with blockchain? Because a lot of people are looking at the web three in these areas like Panama, you mentioned FinTech. And in, in the islands there a lot of, lot of, lot of web three happening. What's your, what's your view on the web three world right now, relative >>To we, we have some customers actually deploying crypto, especially, um, especially in the Caribbean. I keep bringing the Caribbean up, but it's, it's top of my mind right now we have customers that are deploying crypto. A lot of, uh, countries are choosing crypto to underlie parts of their central banks. Yeah. Um, so it's, it's up and coming a, uh, I, I have some, you know, personal views that, that crypto is still searching for a use case. Yeah. And, uh, I think it's searching a lot and, and we're there to help customers search for that use case. Uh, but, but crypto, as a, as a, uh, technology, um, lives really well on the AWS edge. Yeah. Uh, and, and we're having more and more people talk to us about that. Yeah. And ask for assistance in the infrastructure, because they're developing new cryptocurrencies every day. Yeah. It's not like they're deploying Ethereum or anything specific. They're actually developing new currencies and, and putting them out there on it's >>Interesting. I mean, first of all, we've been doing crypto for many, many years. We have our own little, um, you know, projects going on. But if you look talk to all the crypto people that say, look, we do a smart concept. We use the blockchain. It's kind of over a lot of overhead and it's not really their technical already, but it's a cultural shift, but there's underserved use cases around use of money, but they're all using the blockchain, just for this like smart contracts for instance, or certain transactions. And they go into Amazon for the database. Yeah. <laugh> they all don't tell anyone we're using a centralized service, but what happened to decentralized. >>Yeah. And that's, and that's the conversation performance issue. Yeah. And, and it's a cost issue. Yeah. And it's a development issue. Um, so I think more and more as, as some of these, uh, currencies maybe come up, some of the smart contracts get into, uh, they find their use cases. I think we'll start talking about how does that really live on, on AWS and, and what does it look like to build decentralized applications, but with AWS hardware and services. >>Right. So take me through, uh, a use case of a customer, um, Matthew around the edge. Okay. So I'm a customer, pretend I'm a customer, Hey, you know, I'm, we're in an underserved area. I want to modernize my business. And I got my developers that are totally peaked up on cloud. Um, but we've identified that it's just a lot of overhead latency issues. I need to have a local edge and serve my ad. And I also want all the benefit of the cloud. So I want the modernization and I wanna migrate to the cloud for all those cloud benefits and the goodness of the cloud. What's the answer. Yeah. >>Uh, big thing is, uh, industrial manufacturing, right? That's, that's one of the best use cases, uh, inside industrial manufacturing, we can pull in many of the AWS edge services we can bring in, uh, private 5g, uh, so that all the, uh, equipment inside that, that manufacturing plant can be hooked up. They don't have to pay huge overheads to deploy 5g it's, uh, better than wifi for the industrial space. Um, when we take computing down to that industrial area, uh, because we wanna do pre-procesing on the data. Yeah. We want to gather some analytics. We deploy that with, uh, regular commercial available hardware running VMware, and we deploy EKS anywhere on that. Uh, inside of that manufacturing plant, uh, we can do pre-procesing on things coming out of the, uh, the robotics that depending on what we're manufacturing, right. Uh, and then we can take those refined analytics and for very low cost with maybe a little bit longer latency transmit those back, um, to the AWS availability zone, the, the standard for >>Data, data lake, or whatever, to >>The data lake. Yeah. Data lake house, whatever it might be. Um, and we can do additional data science on that once it gets to the AWS cloud. Uh, but a lot of that, uh, just in time business decisions, just in time, manufacturing decisions can all take place on an AWS service or services inside that manufacturing plant. And that's, that's one of the best use cases that we're >>Seeing. And I think, I mean, we've been seeing this on the queue for many, many years, moving data around is very expensive. Yeah. But also compute going to the data that saves that cost yep. On the data transfer also on the benefits of the latency. So I have to ask you, by the way, that's standard best practice now for the folks watching don't move the data, unless you have to, um, those new things are developing. So I wanna ask you what new patterns are you seeing emerging once this new architecture's in place? Love that idea, localize everything right at the edge, manufacturing, industrial, whatever, the use case, retail, whatever it is. Right. But now what does that change in the, in the core cloud? This is a, there's a system element here. Yeah. What's the new pattern. There's >>Actually an organizational element as well, because once you have to start making the decision, do I put this compute at the point of use or do I put this compute in the cloud out? Uh, now you start thinking about where business decisions should be taking place. Uh, so not only are you changing your architecture, you're actually changing your organization because you're thinking, you're thinking about a dichotomy you didn't have before. Uh, so now you say, okay, this can take place here. Uh, and maybe maybe decision can wait. Right? Yeah. Uh, and then how do I visualize that? By >>The way, it could be a bot too, doing the work for management. Yeah. <laugh> exactly. You got observability going, right. But you gotta change the database architecture on the back. So there's new things developing. You've got more benefit. There >>Are, there are. And, and we have more and more people that, that want to talk less about databases and want to talk more about data lakes because of this. They want to talk more about customers are starting to talk about throwing away data, uh, you know, for the past maybe decade. Yeah. It's been store everything. And one day we will have a data science team that we hire in our organization to do analytics on this decade of data. And >>Well, I mean, that's, that's a great point. We don't have time to drill into, maybe we do another session on this, but the one pattern was income of the past year is that throwing away data's bad. Even data lakes that so-called turn into data swamps, actually, it's not the case. You look at data, brick, snowflake, and other successes out there. And even time series data, which may seem irrelevant efforts over actually matters when people start retrain their machine learning algorithms. Yep. So as data becomes code, as we call it our lab showcase, we did a whole, whole, that event on this. The data's good in real time and in the lake. Yeah. Because the iteration of the data feeds the machine learning training. Things are getting better with the old data. So it's not throw away. It's not just business benefits. Yeah. There's all kinds of new scale. There >>Are. And, and we have, uh, many customers that are run petabyte level. Um, they're, they're essentially data factories on, on, uh, on premises, right? They're, they're creating so much data and they're starting to say, okay, we could analyze this, uh, in the cloud, we could transition it. We could move petabytes of data to the AWS cloud, or we can run, uh, computational workloads on premises. We can really do some analytics on this data transition, uh, those high level and sort of raw analytics back to AWS run 'em through machine learning. Um, and we don't have to transition 10, 12 petabytes of data into AWS. >>So I gotta end the segment on a, on a kind of a, um, fun note. I was told to ask you about your personal background on premise architect, a cloud and skydiving instructor. <laugh> how does that all work together? What tell, what does this mean? Yeah. >>Uh, you >>Jumped out a plane and got a job. You, you got a customer to jump out >>Kind of. So I was jump, I was teaching Scott eing, uh, before I, before I started in the cloud space, this was 13, 14 years ago. I was a, I still am a Scott I instructor. Yeah. Uh, I was teaching Scott eing and I heard out of the corner of my ear, uh, a guy that owned an MSP that was lamenting about, um, you know, storing data and, and how his cus customers are working. And he can't find enough people to operate all these workloads. So I walked over and said, Hey, this is, this is what I went to school for. Like, I'd love to, you know, uh, I was living in a tent in the woods teaching scout. I think I was like, I'd love to not live in a tent in the woods. So, uh, uh, I started in the first day there, uh, we had a, a discussion, uh, EC two, just come out <laugh> um, and, uh, like, >>This is amazing. >>Yeah. And so we had this discussion, we should start moving customers here. And, uh, and that totally revolutionized that business, um, that, that led to, uh, that that guy actually still owns a skydiving airport. But, um, but through all of that and through being an on premises migrated me and myself, my career into the cloud, and now it feels like, uh, almost, almost looking back and saying, now let's take what we learned in the cloud and, and apply those lessons and those services to >>It's. So it's such a great story, you know, I was gonna, you know, you know, the, the, the, the whole, you know, growth mindset pack your own parachute, you know, uh, exactly. You know, the cloud in the early day was pretty much will the shoot open. Yeah. It was pretty much, you had to roll your own cloud at that time. And so, you know, you, you jump on a plane, you gotta make sure that parachute is gonna open. >>And so was Kubernetes by the way, 2015 or so when, um, when that was coming out, it was, I mean, it was, it was still, and I, maybe it does still feel like that to some people. Right. But, uh, it was, it was the same kind of feeling that we had in the early days, AWS, the same feeling we have when we >>It's pretty much now with you guys, it's more like a tandem jump. Yeah. You know, but, but it's a lot of, lot of this cutting edge stuff, like jumping out of an airplane. Yeah. You guys, the right equipment, you gotta do the right things. Exactly. >>Right. >>Matthew, thanks for coming on the cube. Really appreciate it. Absolutely great conversation. Thanks for having me. Okay. The cubes here live and San Francisco for summit. I'm John Forry host of the cube. Uh, we'll be at a summit in New York coming up in the summer as well. Look up for that. look@thiscalendarforallthecubeactionatthecube.net. We'll be right back with our next segment after this break. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone to San Francisco live coverage here, we're at the cube a be summit 2022. We're back in person. I'm John fury host to the cube. We'll be at the eight of his summit in New York city. This summer, check us out then. But right now, two days in San Francisco, getting all the coverage what's going on in the cloud, we got a cube alumni and friend of the cube, my dudes, car CEO, investor, a Sierra, and also an investor and a bunch of startups, angel investor. Gonna do great to see you. Thanks for coming on the cube. Good to see you. Good to see you, sir. Chris. Cool. How are, are you >>Good? How are you? >>So congratulations on all your investments. Uh, you've made a lot of great successes, uh, over the past couple years, uh, and your company raising, uh, some good cash as Sarah. So give us the update. How much cash have you guys raised? What's the status of the company product what's going on? First >>Of all, thank you for having me back to be business with you. Never great to see you. Um, so is a company started around four years back. I invested with a few of the investors and now I'm the CEO there. Um, we have raised close to a hundred million there. Uh, the investors are people like Norwes Menlo, Tru ventures, coast, lo ventures, Ram Sheam and all those people, all well known guys. The Andy Beckel chime, Paul Mo uh, main web. So a whole bunch of operating people and, uh, Silicon valley VCs are involved >>And has it come? >>It's going well. We are doing really well. We are going almost 300% year over year. Uh, for last three years, the space ISR is going after is what I call the applying AI for customer service. It operations, it help desk, uh, the same place I used to work at ServiceNow. We are partners with ServiceNow to take, how can we argument for employees and customers, Salesforce, and ServiceNow to take it to the next stage? >>Well, I love having you on the cube, Dave and I, Dave Valenti as well loves having you on too, because you not only bring the entrepreneurial CEO experience, you're an investor. You're like a GE, you're like a guest analyst. <laugh> >>You know who you >>Get to call this fun to talk. You though, >>You got the commentary, you, your, your finger on the pulse. Um, so I gotta ask you obviously, AI and machine learning, machine learning AI, or you want to phrase it. Isn't every application. Now, AI first, uh, you're seeing a lot of that going on. You're starting to see companies build the modern applications at the top of the stack. So the cloud scale has hit. We're seeing cloud scale. You predicted that we talked about on cube many times. Now you have that past layer with a lot more services and cloud native becoming a standard layer. Containerizations growing DACA just raised a hundred million on a 2 billion valuation back from the dead after they pivoted from an enterprise services. So open source developers are booming. Um, where's the action. I mean, is there data control, plane emerging, AI needs data. There's a lot of challenges around this. There's a lot of discussions and a lot of companies being funded, observability there's 10 million observability companies. Data is the key. What's your angle on this? What's your take. Yeah, >>No, look, I think I'll give you the view that I see right from my side. Obviously data is very clear. So the things that remember system of recorded you and me talked about the next layer is called system of intelligence. That's where the AI will play. Like we talk cloud NA it'll be called AI, NA AI native is a new buzzword and using the AI customer service it operations. You talk about observability. I call it, AIOps applying AOPs for good old it operation management, cloud management. So you'll see the AOPs applied for whole list of, uh, application from observability doing the CMDB, predicting the events insurance. So I see a lot of work clicking for AIOps and service desk. What needs to be helped us with ServiceNow BMC G you see a new ELA emerging as a system of intelligence. Uh, the next would be is applying AI with workflow automation. So that's where you'll see a lot of things called customer workflow, employee workflows. So think of what UI path automation, anywhere ServiceNow are doing, that area will be driven with a AI workflows. So you'll see AI going >>Off is RPA a company is AI, is RPA a feature of something bigger? Or can someone have a company on RPA UI pass? One will be at their event this summer? Um, is it a product company? I mean, I mean, RPA is almost, should be embedded in everything. It's >>A feature. It is very good point. Very, very good thinking. So one is, it's a category for sure. Like, as we thought, it's a category, it's an area where RPA may change the name. I call it much more about automation, workflow automation, but RPA and automation is a category. Um, it's a company, or, but that automation should be embedded in every area. Yeah. Like we call cloud NA and AI NATO it'll become automation. NA yeah. And that's your thinking. >>It's almost interesting me. I think about the, what you're talking about what's coming to mind is I'm kinda having flashbacks to the old software model of middleware. Remember at middleware, it was very easy to understand it. It was middleware. It sat between two things and then the middle, and it was software abstraction. Now you have all, all kinds of workflows, abstractions everywhere. So multiple databases, it's not a monolithic thing. Right? Right. So as you break that down, is this the new modern middleware? Because what you're talking about is data workflows, but they might be siloed or they integrated. I mean, these are the challenges. This is crazy. What's the, >>So don't about the databases become called poly databases. Yeah. I call this one polyglot automation. So you need automation as a layer, as a category, but you also need to put automation in every area like you were talking about. It should be part of service. Now it should be part of ISRA, like every company, every Salesforce. So that's why you see MuleSoft and Salesforce buying RPA companies. So you'll see all the SaaS companies, cloud companies having an automation as a core. So it's like how you have a database and compute and sales and networking. You'll also have an automation as a layer <inaudible> inside every stack. >>All right. So I wanna shift gears a little bit and get your perspective on what's going on behind us. You can see, uh, behind us, you've got the expo hall. We got, um, we're back to vents, but you got, you know, AMD, Clum, Ove, uh, Dynatrace data, dog, innovative, all the companies out here that we know, we interview them all. They're trying to be suppliers to this growing enterprise market. Right. Okay. But now you also got the entrepreneurial equation. Okay. We're gonna have John Sado on from Bel later today. He's a former NEA guy and we always talk to Jerry, Jen. We know all the, the VCs. What does the startups look like? What does the state of the, in your mind, cause you, I know you invest the entrepreneurial founder situation, clouds bigger. Mm-hmm <affirmative> global, right? Data's part of it. You mentioned data's code. Yes. Basically data is everything. What's it like for a first an entrepreneur right now who's starting a company. What's the white space. What's the attack plan. How do they get in the market? How do they engineer everything? >>Very good. So I'll give it to, uh, two things that I'm seeing out there. Remember leaders of Amazon created the startups 15 years back. Everybody built on Amazon now, Azure and GCP. The next layer would be is people don't just build on Amazon. They're going to build it on top of snowflake. Companies are snowflake becomes a data platform, right? People will build on snowflake. Right? So I see my old boss flagman try to build companies on snowflake. So you don't build it just on Amazon. You build it on Amazon and snowflake. Snowflake will become your data store. Snowflake will become your data layer. Right? So I think that's in the of, <inaudible> trying to do that. So if I'm doing observability AI ops, if I'm doing next level of Splunk SIM, I'm gonna build it on snowflake, on Salesforce, on Amazon, on Azure, et cetera. >>It's interesting. You know, Jerry Chan has it put out a thesis a couple months ago called castles in the cloud where your moat is, what you do in the cloud. Not necessarily in the, in the IP. Um, Dave LAN and I had last reinvent, coined the term super cloud, right? He's got a lot of traction and a lot of people throwing, throwing mud at us, but we were, our thesis was, is that what Snowflake's doing? What Goldman S Sachs is doing. You starting to see these clouds on top of clouds. So Amazon's got this huge CapEx advantage. And guys like Charles Fitzgeral out there, who we like was kind of shit on us saying, Hey, you guys terrible, they didn't get it. Like, yeah. I don't think he gets it, but that's a whole, can't wait to debate him publicly on this. <laugh> if he's cool. Um, but snowflake is on Amazon. Yes. Now they say they're on Azure now. Cause they've got a bigger market and they're public, but ultimately without a AWS snowflake doesn't exist. And, and they're reimagining the data warehouse with the cloud, right? That's the billion dollar opportunity. >>It is. It is. They both are very tight. So imagine what Frank has done at snowflake and Amazon. So if I'm a startup today, I want to build everything on Amazon where possible whatever is, I cannot build. I'll make the pass layer. Remember the middle layer pass will be snowflake. So can build it on snowflake. I can use them for data layer. If I really need to size, I'll build it on four.com Salesforce. So I think that's where you'll see. So >>Basically if you're an entrepreneur, the north star in terms of the outcome is be a super cloud. >>It is, >>That's the application on another big CapEx ride, the CapEx of AWS or cloud, >>And that reduce your product development, your go to market and you get use the snowflake marketplace to drive your engagement. >>Yeah. Yeah. How are, how is Amazon and the clouds dealing with these big whales? The snowflakes of the world? I mean, I know they got a great relationship, uh, but snowflake now has to run a company they're public. Yeah. So, I mean, I'll say, I think got Redshift. Amazon has got red, um, but Snowflake's a big customer. They're probably paying AWS think big bills too. >>So John, very good. Cause it's like how Netflix is and Amazon prime, right. Netflix runs on Amazon, but Amazon has Amazon prime that co-option will be there. So Amazon will have Redshift, but Amazon is also partnering with, uh, snowflake to have native snowflake data warehouse as a data layer. So I think depending on the application use case, you have to use each of the above. I think snowflake is here for a long term. Yeah. Yeah. So if I'm building an application, I want to use snowflake then writing from stats. >>Well, I think that comes back down to entrepreneurial hustle. Do you have a better product? Right. Product value will ultimately determine it as long as the cloud doesn't, You know, foreclose your value that's right. But some sort of internal hack, but I think, I think the general question that I have is that I think it's okay to have a super cloud like that because the rising tide is still happening at some point. When does the rising tide stop >>And >>Do the people shopping up their knives, it gets more competitive or is it just an infinite growth cycle? I >>Think it's growth. You call it cloud scale. You invented the word cloud scale. So I think look, cloud will continually agree, increase. I think there's, as long as there are more movement from on, uh, OnPrem to the classical data center, I think there's no reason at this point, the rumor, the old lift and shift that's happening in like my business. I see people lift and shifting from the it operations. It helpless, even the customer service service now and, uh, ticket data from BMCs CAS like Microfocus, all those workloads are shifted to the cloud, right? So cloud ticketing system is happening. Cloud system of record is happening. So I think this train has still a long way to go made. >>I wanna get your thoughts for the folks watching that are, uh, enterprise buyers or practitioners, not suppliers to the market, feel free to, to XME or DMing. Next question's really about the buying side, which is if I'm a customer, what's the current, um, appetite for startup products. Cause you know, the big enterprises now and, you know, small, medium, large, and large enterprise are all buying new companies cuz a startup can go from zero to relevant very quickly. So that means now enterprises are engaging heavily with startups. What's it like what's is there a change in order of magnitude of the relationship between the startup selling to, or a growing startup selling to an enterprise? Um, have you seen changes there? I mean I'm seeing some stuff, but why don't we get your thoughts on that? What, no, it is. >>If I remember going back to our 2007 or eight, it, when I used to talk to you back then when Amazon started very small, right? We are an Amazon summit here. So I think enterprises on the average used to spend nothing with startups. It's almost like 0% or 1% today. Most companies are already spending 20, 30% with startups. Like if I look at a CIO line business, it's gone. Yeah. Can it go more? I think it can double in the next four, five years. Yeah. Spending on the startups. >>Yeah. And check out, uh, AWS startups.com. That's a site that we built for the startup community for buyers and startups. And I want to get your reaction because I reference the URL cause it's like, there's like a bunch of companies we've been promoting because the solutions that startups have actually are new stuff. Yes. It's bending, it's shifting left for security or using data differently or um, building tools and platforms for data engineering. Right. Which is a new persona that's emerging. So you know, a lot of good resources there, um, and gives back now to the data question. Now, getting back to your, what you're working on now is what's your thoughts around this new, um, data engineering persona, you mentioned AIOps, we've been seeing AIOps IOPS booming and that's creating a new developer paradigm that's right. Which we call coin data as code data as code is like infrastructure as code, but it's for data, right? It's developing with data, right? Retraining machine learnings, going back to the data lake, getting data to make, to do analysis, to make the machine learning better post event or post action. So this, this data engineers like an SRE for data, it's a new, scalable role we're seeing. Do you see the same thing? Do you agree? Um, do you disagree or can you share >>Yourself? No, I have a lot of thoughts that plus I see AIOP solutions in the future should be not looking back. I need to be like we are in San Francisco bay. That means earthquake prediction. Right? I want AOPs to predict when the outages are gonna happen. When there's a performance issue. I don't think most AOPs vendors have not gone there yet. Like I spend a lot of time with data dog, Cisco app Dyna, right? Dynatrace, all this solution will go future towards to proactive solution with AOPs. But what you bring up a very good point on the data side. I think like we have a Amazon marketplace and Amazon for startup, there should be data exchange where you want to create for AOPs and AI service that customers are give the data, share the data because we thought the data algorithms are useless. I can come the best algorithm, but I gotta train them, modify them, tweak them, make them better, make them better. Yeah. And I think their whole data exchange is the industry has not thought through something you and me talk many times. Yeah. Yeah. I think the whole, that area is very important. >>You've always been on, um, on the Vanguard of data because, uh, it's been really fun. Yeah. >>Going back to our big data days back in 2009, you know, >>Look at, look how much data bricks has grown. >>It is uh, double, the key >>Cloud kinda went private, so good stuff. What are you working on right now? Give a, give a, um, plug for what you're working on. You'll still investing. >>I do still invest, but look, I'm a hundred percent on ISRA right now. I'm the CEO there. Yeah. Okay. So right. ISRA is my number one baby right now. So I'm looking at that growing customers and my customers are some of them, you like it's zoom auto desk, Mac of fee, uh, grandchildren, all the top customers. Um, mainly for it help desk customer service. AIOps those are three product lines and going after enterprise and commercial deals. >>And when should someone buy your product? What's what's their need? What category is it? >>I think they look whenever somebody needs to buy the product is if you need AOP solution to predict, keep your lights on predict S one area. If you want to improve employee experience, you are using a slack teams and you want to automate all your workflows. That's another value problem. Third is customer service. You don't want to hire more people to do it. Some of the areas where you want to scale your company, grow your company, eliminate the cost customer service, >>Great stuff, man. Doing great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Congratulations on the success of your company and your investments. Thanks for coming on the cube. Okay. I'm John fur here at the cube live in San Francisco for day one of two days of coverage of 80 summit, 2022. And we're gonna be at 80 summit in San, uh, in New York and the summer. So look for that on this calendar, of course go to eight of us, startups.com. I mentioned that it's a site for all the hot startups and of course the cube.net and Silicon angle.com. Thanks for watching. We'll be back more coverage after this short break. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone. This to cubes coverage here in San Francisco, California, a Davis summit, 2022, the beginning of the event season, as it comes back a little bit smaller footprint, a lot of hybrid events going on, but this is actually a physical event, a summit new York's coming in the summer. We'll be there too with the cube on the set. We're getting back in the groove, psyched to be back. We were at reinvent, uh, as well, and we'll see more and more cube, but you're gonna see a lot of virtual cube, a lot of hybrid cube. We wanna get all those conversations, try to get more interviews, more flow going. But right now I'm excited to have Corey Quinn here on the back on the cube chief cloud economists with duck, bill groove, he founder, uh, and chief content person always got great angles, fun comedy, authoritative Corey. Great to see you. Thank you. >>Thanks. Coming on. Sure is a lot of words to describe as shit posting, which is how I describe what I tend to do. Most days, >>Shit posting is an art form now. And if you look at Mark's been doing a lot of shit posting lately, all a billionaires are shit posting, but they don't know how to do it. Like they're not >>Doing it right. Something opportunity there. It's like, here's how to be even more obnoxious and incisive. It's honestly the most terrifying scenario for anyone is if I have that kind of budget to throw at my endeavors, it's like, I get excited with a nonsense I can do with a $20 gift card for an AWS credit compared to, oh well, if I could buy a mid-size island to begin doing this from, oh, then we're having fun. This >>Shit posting trend. Interesting. I was watching a thread go on about, saw someone didn't get a job because of their shit posting and the employer didn't get it. And then someone on the other side, I'll hire the guy cuz I get that's highly intelligent shit posting. So for the audience that doesn't know what shit posting is, what is shit posting? >>It's more or less talking about the world of enterprise tech, which even that sentence is hard to finish without falling asleep and toppling out of my chair in front of everyone on the livestream. But it's doing it in such a way that brings it to life that says the quiet part. A lot of the audience is thinking, but generally doesn't say either because they're polite or not a jackass or more prosaically are worried about getting fired for better or worse. I don't have that particular constraint, >>Which is why people love you. So let's talk about what you, what you think is, uh, worthy and not worthy in the industry right now, obviously, uh, coupons coming up in Spain, which they're having a physical event, you can see the growth of cloud native Amazons, all, all the Adams let see new CEO, Andy move on to be the chief of all. Amazon just saw him. The cover of was it time magazine. Um, he's under a lot of stress. Amazon's changed. Invoice has changed. What's working. What's not, what's rising, what's falling. What's hot. What's not, >>It's easy to sit here and criticize almost anything these folks do. They they're effectively in a fishbowl, but I have trouble imagining the logistics. It takes to wind up handling the catering for a relatively downscale event like this one this year, let alone running a 1.7 million employee company having to balance all the competing challenges and pressures and the rest. I, I just can't fathom what it would be like to look at all of AWS. It's, it's sprawling, immense that dominates our entire industry and say, okay, this is a good start, but I, I wanna focus on something with a broader remit. What is that? How do you even get into that position? And you can't win once you're there. All you can do is hold onto the tiger and hope you don't get mold. Well, >>There's a lot of force for good conversations, seeing a lot of that going on, Amazon's trying to port and he was trying to portray themselves as you know, the Pathfinder, you know, you're the pioneer, um, force for good. And I get that and I think that's a good angle as cloud goes mainstream. There's still the question of, we had a guy on just earlier, who was a skydiving instructor and we were joking about the early days of cloud. Like that was like skydiving, build a parachute open, you know, and now it same kind of thing. As you move to edge, things are like reliable in some areas, but still new, new fringe, new areas. That's crazy. Well, >>Since the last time we've spoken, uh, Steve Schmidt is now the CISO for all of Amazon and his backfill replacement. The AWS CISO is CJ. Moses who as a hobby races, a as a semi-pro race car driver to my understanding, which either, I don't know what direction to take that in either. This is what he does to relax or ultimately, or ultimately it's. Huh? That, that certainly says something about risk assessment. I'm not entirely sure what, but okay. Either way, sounds like more exciting >>Replacement ready <laugh> in case something goes wrong. I, the track highly >>Available >>CSOs. I gotta say one of the things I do like in the recent trend is that the tech companies are getting into the formula one, which I was never a fan of until I watched that Netflix series. But when you look at the formula one, it's pretty cool. Cause it's got some tech angles, I get the whole data instrumentation thing, but the most coolest thing about formula one is they have these new rigs out. Yeah. Where you can actually race in e-sports with other, in pure simulation of the race car. You gotta get the latest and video graphics card, but it's basically a tricked out PC with amazing monitors and you have all the equipment of F1 and you're basically simulating racing. >>Oh, it's great too. And I can see the appeal of these tech companies getting into it because these things are basically rocket shifts. When those cars go, like they're sitting there, we can instrument every last part of what is going on inside that vehicle. And then AWS crops up. And we can bill on every one of those dimensions too. And it's like slow down their hasty pudding one step at a time. But I do see the appeal. >>So I gotta ask you about, uh, what's going in your world. I know you have a lot of great success. We've been following you in the queue for many, many years. Got a great newsletter. Check out Corey Quinn's newsletter, uh, screaming in the cloud program. Uh, you're on the cutting edge and you've got a great balance between really being snarky and, and, and really being delivering content. That's exciting, uh, for people, uh, with a little bit of an edge, um, how's that going? Uh, what's back any blow back late there been uptick. What was, what are some of the things you're hearing from your audience, more Corey, more Corey. And then of course the, the PR team's calling you >>The weird thing about having an audience beyond a certain size is far and away as a landslide. The most common response I get is silence where it's high. I'm emailing an awful lot of people at last week in AWS every week and okay. They must not have heard me it. That is not actually true. People just generally don't respond to email because who responds to email newsletters. That sounds like something, a lunatic might do same story with response to live streams and podcasts. It's like, I'm gonna call into that am radio show and give them a piece of my mind. People generally don't do that. >>We should do that. Actually. I think sure would call in. Oh, I, >>I think >>Chief, we had that right now. People would call in and say, Corey, what do you think about X? >>Yeah. It not, everyone understands the full context of what I do. And in fact, increasingly few people do and that's fine. I, I keep forgetting that sometimes people do not see what I'm doing in the same light that I do. And that's fine. Blowback has been largely minimal. Honestly, I am surprised anything by how little I have gotten over the last five years of doing this, but it would be easier to dismiss me if I weren't generally. Right. When, okay, so you launch this new service and it seems pretty crappy to me cuz when I try and build something, it falls over and begs for help. And people might not like hearing that, but it's what customers are finding too. Yeah. I really am the voice of the customer. >>You know, I always joke with Dave ante about how John Fort's always at, uh, reinvent getting the interview with jazzy now, Andy we're there, you're there. And so we have these rituals at the events. It's all cool. Um, one of the rituals I like about your, um, your content is you like to get on the naming product names. Um, and, and, and, and, and kind of goof on that. Now why I like is because I used to work at ETT Packard where they used to name things as like engineers, HP 1 0 5, or we can't, >>We have a new monitor. How are we gonna name it? Throw the wireless keyboard down the stairs again. And there you go. Yeah. >>It's and the old joke at HP was if they, if they invented sushi, they'd say, yeah, we can't call sushi. It's cold, dead fish. That's what it is. And so the joke was cold. Dead fish is a better name than sushi. So you know is fun. So what's the, what are the, how's the Amazon doing in there? Have they changed their naming, uh, strategy, uh, on some of their, their >>Producting, they're going in different directions. When they named Amazon Aurora, they decided to explore a new theme of Disney princesses as they go down those paths. And some things are more descriptive. Some people are clearly getting bonused on a number of words. They can shove into it. Like the better a service is the longer it's name. Like AWS systems manager, session manager is a great one. I love the service, ridiculous name. They have systems manager, parameter store, which is great. They have secrets manager, which does the same thing. It's two words less, but that one costs money in a way that systems manage your parameter store does not. It's >>Fun. What's your, what's your favorite combination of acronyms >>Combination of you >>Got Ks. You got EMR, you got EC two. You got S three SQS. Well, Redshift the on an acronym, you >>Gots is one of my personal favorites because it's either elastic block store or elastic bean stock, depending entirely on the context of the conversation. >>They still up bean stalk. Or is that still around? Oh, >>They never turn anything off. They're like the anti Google, Google turns things off while they're still building it. Whereas Amazon is like, wow, we built this thing in 2005 and everyone hates it. But while we certainly can't change it, now it has three customers on it. John three <laugh>. >>Okay. >>Simple BV still haunts our dreams. >>I, I actually got an email. I saw one of my, uh, servers, all these C two S were being deprecated and I got an email I'm like, I couldn't figure out. Why can you just like roll it over? Why, why are you telling me just like, give me something else. Right. Okay. So let me talk about, uh, the other things I want to ask you is that like, okay. So as Amazon gets better in some areas, where do they need more work in your opinion? Because obviously they're all interested in new stuff and they tend to like put it out there for their end to end customers. But then they've got ecosystem partners who actually have the same product. Yes. And, and this has been well documented. So it's, it's not controversial. It's just that Amazon's got a database, Snowflake's got a database service. So Redshift, snowflake database is, so you got this co-op petition. Yes. How's that going? And what are you hearing about the reaction to any of that stuff? >>Depends on who you ask. They love to basically trot out a bunch of their partners who will say nice things about them. And it very much has heirs of, let's be honest, a hostage video, but okay. Cuz these companies do partner with Amazon and they cannot afford to rock the boat too far. I'm not partnered with anyone. I can say what I want and they're basically restricted to taking away my birthday at worse so I can live with that. >>All right. So I gotta ask about multi-cloud cause obviously the other cloud shows are coming up. Amazon hated that word. Multi-cloud um, a lot of people are saying, you know, it's not a real good marketing word, like multi sounds like, you know, root canal. Mm-hmm <affirmative> right. So is there a better description for multi-cloud >>Multiple single points? >>Dave loves that term. Yeah. >>Yeah. You're building in multiple single points of failure. Do it for the right reasons or don't do it as a default. I believe not doing it is probably the right answer. However, and if I were, if I were Amazon, I wouldn't want to talk about multi-cloud either as the industry leader, talk about other clouds, bad direction to go in from a market cap perspective, it doesn't end well for you, but regardless of what they want to talk about, or don't want to talk about what they say, what they don't say, I tune all of it out. And I look at what customers are doing and multi-cloud exists in a variety of forms. Some brilliant, some brain dead. It depends a lot on context. But my general response is when someone gets on stage from a company and tells me to do a thing that directly benefits their company. I am skeptical at best. Yeah. When customers get on stage and say, this is what we're doing, because it solves problems. That's when I shut up and listen. Yeah. >>Cool. Awesome. Corey, I gotta ask you a question, cause I know you, we you've been, you know, fellow journeymen and the, and the cloud journey going to all the events and then the pandemic hit where now in the third year, who knows what it's gonna gonna end. Certainly events are gonna look different. They're gonna be either changing footprint with the virtual piece, new group formations. Community's gonna emerge. You got a pretty big community growing and it's throwing like crazy. What's the weirdest or coolest thing, or just big chain angels. You've seen with the pandemic, uh, from your perspective, cuz you've been in the you're in the middle of the whitewater rafting. You've seen the events you circle offline. You saw the online piece, come in, you're commentating. You're calling balls and strikes in the industry. You got a great team developing over there. Duck bill group. What's the big aha moment that you saw with the pandemic. Weird, fun, serious, real in the industry and with customers what's >>Accessibility. Reinvent is a great example. When in the before times it's open to anyone who wants to attend, who can pony up two grand and a week in Las Vegas and get to Las Vegas from wherever they happen to be by moving virtually suddenly it, it embraces the reality that talent is even distributed. Opportunity is not. And that means that suddenly these things are accessible to a wide swath of audience and potential customer base and the rest that hadn't been invited to the table previously, it's imperative that we not lose that. It's nice to go out and talk to people and have people come up and try and smell my hair from time to time, I smell delightful. Let make assure you, but it was, but it's also nice to be. >>I have a product for you if you want, you know. >>Oh, excellent. I look forward to it. What is it putting? Why not? <laugh> >>What else have you seen? So when accessibility for talent, which by the way is totally home run. What weird things have happened that you've seen? Um, that's >>Uh, it's, it's weird, but it's good that an awful lot of people giving presentations have learned to tighten their message and get to the damn point because most people are not gonna get up from a front row seat in a conference hall, midway through your Aing talk and go somewhere else. But they will change a browser tab and you won't get them back. You've gotta be on point. You've gotta be compelling if it's going to be a virtual discussion. >>Yeah. And also turn off your IMEs too. >>Oh yes. It's always fun in the, in the meetings when you're talking to someone and their co is messaging them about, should we tell 'em about this? And I'm sitting there reading it and it's >>This guy is really weird. Like, >>Yes I am and I bring it into the conversation and then everyone's uncomfortable. It goes, wow. >>Why not? I love when my wife yells at me over I message. When I'm on a business call, like, do you wanna take that about no, I'm good. >>No, no. It's better off. I don't. No, the only encourager it's fine. >>My kids. Excellent. Yeah. That's fun again. That's another weird thing. And, and then group behavior is weird. Now people are looking at, um, communities differently. Yes. Very much so, because if you're fatigued on content, people are looking for the personal aspect. You're starting to see much more of like yeah. Another virtual event. They gotta get better. One and two who's there. >>Yeah. >>The person >>That's a big part of it too is the human stories are what are being more and more interesting. Don't get up here and tell me about your product and how brilliant you are and how you built it. That's great. If I'm you, or if I wanna work with you or I want to compete with you, or I wanna put on my engineering hat and build it myself. Cause why would I buy anything? That's more than $8. But instead, tell me about the problem. Tell me about the painful spot that you specialize in. Tell me a story there. >>I, I >>Think that gets a glimpse in a hook and >>Makes more, more, I think you nailed it. Scaling storytelling. Yes. And access to better people because they don't have to be there in person. I just did it thing. I never, we never would've done the queue. We did. Uh, Amazon stepped up in sponsors. Thank you, Amazon for sponsoring international women's day, we did 30 interviews, APAC. We did five regions and I interviewed this, these women in Asia, Pacific eight, PJ, they called for in this world. And they're amazing. I never would've done those interviews cuz I never, would've seen 'em at an event. I never would've been in Japan or Singapore to access them. And now they're in the index. They're in the network. They're collaborating on LinkedIn. So a threads are developing around connections that I've never seen before. Yes. Around the content, >>Absolutely >>Content value plus >>The networking. And that is the next big revelation of this industry is going to realize you have different companies. And in Amazon's case, different service teams, all, all competing with each other, but you have the container group and you have the database group and you have the message cuing group. But customers don't really want to build things from spare parts. They want a solution to a problem. I want to build an app that does Twitter for pets or whatever it is I'm trying to do. I don't wanna basically have to pick and choose and fill my shopping cart with all these different things. I want something that's gonna give me what I'm trying to get as close to turnkey as possible. Moving up the stack. That is the future. And just how it gets here is gonna be >>Well we're here with Corey Quinn, the master of the master of content here in the a ecosystem. Of course we we've been following up in the beginnings. Great guy. Check out his blog, his site, his newsletter screaming podcast. Cory, final question for you. Uh, what do you hear doing what's on your agenda this week in San Francisco and give a plug for the duck build group. What are you guys doing? I know you're hiring some people what's on the table for the company. What's your focus this week and put a plug in for the group. >>I'm here as a customer and basically getting outta my cage cuz I do live here. It's nice to actually get out and talk to folks who are doing interesting things at the duck build group. We solve one problem. We fixed the horrifying AWS bill, both from engineering and architecture, advising as well as negotiating AWS contracts because it turns out those things are big and complicated. And of course my side media projects last week in aws.com, we are, it it's more or less a content operation where I indulge my continual and ongoing law of affair with the sound of my own voice. >><laugh> and you good. It's good content. It's on, on point fun, Starky and relevant. So thanks for coming to the cube and sharing with us. Appreciate it. No, thank you. Fun. You. Okay. This the cube covers here in San Francisco, California, the cube is back at to events. These are the summits, Amazon web services summits. They happen all over the world. We'll be in New York and obviously we're here in San Francisco this week. I'm John furry. Keep, keep it right here. We'll be back with more coverage after this short break. Okay. Welcome back everyone. This's the cubes covers here in San Francisco, California, we're live on the show floor of AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for host of the cube and remember AWS summit in New York city coming up this summer, we'll be there as well. And of course reinvent the end of the year for all the cube coverage on cloud computing and AWS. The two great guests here from the APN global APN se Jenko and Jeff Grimes partner leader, Jeff and se is doing partnerships global APN >>AWS global startup program. Yeah. >>Okay. Say that again. >>AWS global startup program. >>That's the official name. >>I love >>It too long, too long for me. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, of course. Appreciate it. Tell us about what's going on with you guys. What's the, how was you guys organized? You guys we're obviously were in San Francisco bay area, Silicon valley, zillions of startups here, New York. It's got another one we're gonna be at tons of startups. Lot of 'em getting funded, big growth and cloud big growth and data security, hot and sectors. >>Absolutely. >>So maybe, maybe we could just start with the global startup program. Um, it's essentially a white glove service that we provide to startups that are built on AWS. And the intention there is to help identify use cases that are being built on top of AWS. And for these startups, we want to provide white glove support in co building products together. Right. Um, co-marketing and co-selling essentially, um, you know, the use cases that our customers need solved, um, that either they don't want to build themselves or are perhaps more innovative. Um, so the, a AWS global startup program provides white glove support, dedicated headcount for each one of those pillars. Um, and within our program, we've also provided incentives, programs go to market activities like the AWS startup showcase that we've built for these startups. >>Yeah. By the way, start AWS startups.com is the URL, check it out. Okay. So partnerships are key. Jeff, what's your role? >>Yeah. So I'm responsible for leading the overall F for, for the AWS global startup program. Um, so I've got a team of partner managers that are located throughout the us, uh, managing a few hundred startup ISVs right now. <laugh> >>Yeah, I got >>A lot. We've got a lot. >>There's a lot. I gotta, I gotta ask the tough question. Okay. I'm I'm a startup founder. I got a team. I just got my series a we're grown. I'm trying to hire people. I'm super busy. What's in it for me. Yeah. What do you guys bring to the table? I love the white glove service, but translate that what's in it. What do I get out of it? What's >>A good story. Good question. I focus, I think. Yeah, because we get, we get to see a lot of partners building their businesses on AWS. So, you know, from our perspective, helping these partners focus on what, what do we truly need to build by working backwards from customer feedback, right? How do we effectively go to market? Because we've seen startups do various things, um, through trial and error, um, and also just messaging, right? Because oftentimes partners or rather startups, um, try to boil the ocean with many different use cases. So we really help them, um, sort of laser focus on what are you really good at and how can we bring that to the customer as quickly as possible? >>Yeah. I mean, it's truly about helping that founder accelerate the growth of their company. Yeah. Right. And there's a lot that you can do with AWS, but focus is truly the key word there because they're gonna be able to find their little piece of real estate and absolutely deliver incredible outcomes for our customers. And then they can start their growth curve there. >>What are some of the coolest things you've seen with the APN that you can share publicly? I know you got a lot going on there, a lot of confidentiality. Um, but you know, we're here lot of great partners on the floor here. I'm glad we're back at events. Uh, a lot of stuff going on digitally with virtual stuff and, and hybrid. What are some of the cool things you guys have seen in the APN that you can point to? >>Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can point to few, you can take them. Sure. So, um, I think what's been fun over the years for me personally, I came from a startup, ran sales at an early stage startup and, and I went through the whole thing. So I have a deep appreciation for what these guys are going through. And what's been interesting to see for me is taking some of these early stage guys, watching them progress, go public, get acquired, and see that big day mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, and being able to point to very specific items that we help them to get to that point. Uh, and it's just a really fun journey to watch. >>Yeah. I, and part of the reason why I really, um, love working at the AWS, uh, global startup program is working with passionate founders. Um, I just met with a founder today that it's gonna, he's gonna build a very big business one day, um, and watching them grow through these stages and supporting that growth. Um, I like to think of our program as a catalyst for enterprise sort of scale. Yeah. Um, and through that we provide visibility, credibility and growth opportunities. >>Yeah. A lot, a lot of partners too. What I found talking to staff founders is when they have that milestone, they work so hard for it. Whether it's a B round C round Republic or get bought. Yeah. Um, then they take a deep breath and they look back at wow, what a journey it's been. So it's kind of emotional for sure. Yeah. Still it's a grind. Right? You gotta, I mean, when you get funding, it's still day one. You don't stop. It's no celebrate, you got a big round or valuation. You still gotta execute >>And look it's hypercompetitive and it's brutally difficult. And our job is to try to make that a little less difficult and navigate those waters right. Where everyone's going after similar things. >>Yeah. I think as a group element too, I observe that startups that I, I meet through the APN has been interesting because they feel part of AWS. Yeah, totally. As a group of community, as a vibe there. Um, I know they're hustling, they're trying to make things happen. But at the same time, Amazon throws a huge halo effect. I mean, that's a huge factor. I mean, yeah. You guys are the number one cloud in the business, the growth in every sector is booming. Yeah. And if you're a startup, you don't have that luxury yet. And look at companies like snowflake, they're built on top of AWS. Yeah. I mean, people are winning by building on AWS. >>Yeah. And our, our, our program really validates their technology first. So we have, what's called a foundation's technical review that we put all of our startups through before we go to market. So that when enterprise customers are looking at startup technology, they know that it's already been vetted. And, um, to take that a step further and help these partners differentiate, we use programs like the competency programs, the DevOps compet, the, the security competency, which continues to help, um, provide sort of a platform for these startups, help them differentiate. And also there's go to market benefits that are associated with that. >>Okay. So let me ask the, the question that's probably on everyone's mind, who's watching. Certainly I asked this a lot. There's a lot of companies startups out there who makes the, is there a criteria? Oh God, it's not like his sports team or anything, but like sure. Like there's activate program, which is like, there's hundreds of thousands of startups out there. Not everyone is at the APN. Right? Correct. So ISVs again, that's a whole nother, that's a more mature partner that might have, you know, huge market cap or growth. How do you guys focus? How do you guys focus? I mean, you got a good question, you know, a thousand flowers blooming all the time. Is there a new way you guys are looking at it? I know there's been some talk about restructure or, or new focus. What's the focus. >>Yeah. It's definitely not an easy task by any means. Um, but you know, I recently took over this role and we're really trying to establish focus areas, right. So obviously a lot of the fees that we look after our infrastructure ISVs, that's what we do. Uh, and so we have very specific pods that look after different type of partners. So we've got a security pod, we've got a DevOps pod, we've got core infrastructure, et cetera. And really we're trying to find these ISVs that can solve, uh, really interesting AWS customer challenges. >>So you guys have a deliberate, uh, focus on these pillars. So what infrastructure, >>Security, DevOps, and data and analytics, and then line of business >>Line of business line, like web marketing >>Solutions, business apps, >>Business, this owner type thing. Exactly. >>Yeah, exactly. >>So solutions there. Yeah. More solutions and the other ones are like hardcore. So infrastructure as well, like storage, backup, ransomware of stuff, or, >>Uh, storage, networking. >>Okay. Yeah. The classic >>Database, et cetera. Right. >>And so there's teams on each pillar. >>Yep. So I think what's, what's fascinating for the startup that we cover is that they've got, they truly have support from a build market sell perspective. Right. So you've got someone who's technical to really help them get the technology, figured out someone to help them get the marketing message dialed and spread, and then someone to actually do the co-sell, uh, day to day activities to help them get in front of customers. >>Probably the number one request that we always ask for Amazon is can we waste that sock report? Oh, download it, the console, which we use all the time. Exactly. But security's a big deal. I mean, you know, SREs are evolving, that role of DevOps is taking on dev SecOps. Um, I, I could see a lot of customers having that need for a relationship to move things faster. Do you guys provide like escalation or is that a part of a service or not, not part of a, uh, >>Yeah, >>So the partner development manager can be an escalation point. Absolutely. Think of them as an extension of your business inside of AWS. >>Great. And you guys how's that partner managers, uh, measure >>On those three pillars. Right. Got it. Are we billing, building valuable use cases? So product development go to market, so go to market activities, think blog, posts, webinars, case studies, so on and so forth. And then co-sell not only are we helping these partners win their current opportunities that they are sourcing, but can we also help them source net new deals? Yeah. Right. That's >>Very important. I mean, top asked from the partners is get me in front of customers. Right. Um, not an easy task, but that's a huge goal of ours to help them grow their top >>Line. Right. Yeah. In fact, we had some interviews here on the cube earlier talking about that dynamic of how enterprise customers are buying. And it's interesting, a lot more POCs. I have one partner here that you guys work with, um, on observability, they got a huge POC with capital one mm-hmm <affirmative> and the enterprises are engaging the startups and bringing them in. So the combination of open source software enterprises are leaning into that hard and bringing young growing startups in mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yep. So I could see that as a huge service that you guys can bring people in. >>Right. And they're bringing massively differentiated technology to the table. Mm-hmm <affirmative> the challenge is they just might not have the brand recognition that the big guys have. And so that it's our job is how do you get that great tech in front of the right situations? >>Okay. So my next question is about the show here, and then we'll talk globally. So here in San Francisco sure. You know, Silicon valley bay area, San Francisco bay area, a lot of startups, a lot of VCs, a lot of action. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so probably a big market for you guys. Yeah. So what's exciting here in SF and then outside SF, you guys have a global program, you see any trends that are geography based or is it sure areas more mature? There's certain regions that are better. I mean, I just interviewed a company here that's doing, uh, AWS edge really well in these cases. It's interesting that these, the partners are filling a lot of holes and gaps in the opportunities with AWS. So what's exciting here. And then what's the global perspective. >>Yeah, totally. So obviously a ton of partners, I, from the bay area that we support. Um, but we're seeing a lot of really interesting technology coming out of AMEA specifically. Yeah. Uh, and making a lot of noise here in the United States, which is great. Um, and so, you know, we definitely have that global presence and, and starting to see super differentiated technology come out of those regions. >>Yeah. Especially Tel Aviv. Yeah. >>Amy real quick, before you get in the surge. It's interesting. The VC market in, in Europe is hot. Yeah. They've got a lot of unicorns coming in. We've seen a lot of companies coming in. They're kind of rattling their own, you know, cage right now. Hey, look at us. We'll see if they crash, you know, but we don't see that happening. I mean, people have been projecting a crash now in, in the startup ecosystem for at least a year. It's not crashing. In fact, funding's up. >>Yeah. The pandemic was hard on a lot of startups for sure. Yeah. Um, but what we've seen is many of these startups, they, as quickly as they can grow, they can also pivot as, as, as well. Um, and so I've actually seen many of our startups grow through the pandemic because their use cases are helping customers either save money, become more operationally efficient and provide value to leadership teams that need more visibility into their infrastructure during a pandemic. >>It's an interesting point. I talked to Andy jazzy and Adam Leski both say the same thing during the pandemic necessity, the mother of all invention. Yep. And startups can move fast. So with that, you guys are there to assist if I'm a startup and I gotta pivot cuz remember iterate and pivot, iterate and pivot. So you get your economics, that's the playbook of the ventures and the models. >>Exactly. How >>Do you guys help me do that? Give me an example of walk me through, pretend me I'm a startup. Hey, I am on the cloud. Oh my God. Pandemic. They need video conferencing. Hey cube. Yeah. What do I need? Surge? What, what do I do? >>That's a good question. First thing is just listen. Yeah. I think what we have to do is a really good job of listening to the partner. Um, what are their needs? What is their problem statement and where do they want to go at the end of the day? Um, and oftentimes because we've worked with so many successful startups, they have come out of our program. We have, um, either through intuition or a playbook, determined what is gonna be the best path forward and how do we get these partners to stop focusing on things that will eventually, um, just be a waste of time yeah. And, or not provide, or, you know, bring any fruit to the table, which, you know, essentially revenue. >>Well, we love star rights here in the cube because one, um, they have good stories. They're oil and cutting edge, always pushing the envelope and they're kind of disrupting someone else. Yeah. And so they have an opinion. They don't mind sharing on camera. So love talking to startups. We love working with you guys on our startup showcases startups.com. Check out AWS startups.com and you got the showcases, uh, final. We I'll give you guys the last word. What's the bottom line bumper sticker for AP the global APN program. Summarize the opportunity for startups, what you guys bring to the table and we'll close it out. Totally start >>With you. Yeah. I think the AWS global startup program's here to help companies truly accelerate their business full stop. Right. And that's what we're here for. I love it. >>It's a good way to, it's a good way to put it Dito. >>Yeah. All right, sir. Thanks for coming on. Thanks John. Great to see you love working with you guys. Hey, startups need help. And the growing and huge market opportunities, the shift cloud scale data engineering, security infrastructure, all the markets are exploding in growth because of the digital transformation of the realities here. Open source and cloud all making it happen here in the cube in San Francisco, California. I'm John furrier, your host. Thanks for watching >>John. >>Hello and welcome back to the cubes live coverage here in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for host of the cube. Uh, two days of coverage, AWS summit, 2022 in New York city. Coming up this summer, we'll be there as well at events are back. The cube is back of course, with the cube virtual cube hybrid, the cube.net, check it out a lot of content this year, more than ever, a lot more cloud data cloud native, modern applic is all happening. Got a great guest here. Jeremy Burton, Cub alumni, uh, CEO of observe Inc in the middle of all the cloud scale, big data observability Jeremy. Great to see you. Thanks >>Always great to come and talk to you on the queue, man. It's been been a few years, so, >>Um, well you, you got your hands. You're in the trenches with great startup, uh, good funding, great board, great people involved in the observability hot area, but also you've been a senior executive president of Dell, uh, EMC, uh, 11 years ago you had a, a vision and you actually had an event called cloud meets big data. Um, yeah. And it's here. You predicted it 11 years ago. Um, look around it's cloud meets big data. >>Yeah. I mean the, the cloud thing I think, you know, was, was probably already a thing, but the big data thing I do claim credit for, for, for sort of catching that bus out, um, you know, we, we were on the, the, the bus early and, and I think it was only inevitable. Like, you know, if you could bring the economics and the compute of cloud to big data, you, you could find out things you could never possibly imagine. >>So you're close to a lot of companies that we've been covering deeply. Snowflake obviously are involved, uh, the board level, you know, the founders, you know, the people there cloud, you know, Amazon, you know, what's going on here? Yeah. You're doing a startup as the CEO at the helm, uh, chief of observ, Inc, which is an observability, which is to me in the center of this confluence of data engineering, large scale integrations, um, data as code integrating into applic. I mean, it's a whole nother world developing, like you see with snowflake, it means snowflake is super cloud as we call it. So a whole nother wave is here. What's your, what's this wave we're on what's how would you describe the wave? >>Well, a couple of things, I mean, people are, I think riding more software than, than ever fall. Why? Because they've realized that if, if you don't take your business online and offer a service, then you become largely irrelevant. And so you you've got a whole set of new applications. I think, I think more applications now than any point. Um, not, not just ever, but the mid nineties, I always looked at as the golden age of application development. Now back then people were building for windows. Well, well now they're building for things like AWS is now the platform. Um, so you've got all of that going on. And then at the same time, the, the side effect of these applications is they generate data and lots of data and the, you know, the sort of the transactions, you know, what you bought today or something like that. But then there's what we do, which is all the telemetry data, all the exhaust fumes. And I think people really are realizing that their differentiation is not so much their application. It's their understanding of the data. Can, can I understand who my best customers are, what I sell today. If people came to my website and didn't buy, then I not, where did they drop off all of that they wanna analyze. And, and the answers are all in the data. The question is, can you understand it >>In our last startup showcase, we featured data as code. One of the insights that we got out of that I wanna get your opinion on our reaction to is, is that data used to be put into a data lake and turns into a data swamp or throw into the data warehouse. And then we'll do some query, maybe a report once in a while. And so data, once it was done, unless it was real time, even real time was not good anymore after real time. That was the old way. Now you're seeing more and more, uh, effort to say, let's go look at the data cuz now machine learning is getting better. Not just train once mm-hmm <affirmative> they're iterating. Yeah. This notion of iterating and then pivoting, iterating and pivoting. Yeah, that's a Silicon valley story. That's like how startups work, but now you're seeing data being treated the same way. So now you have another, this data concept that's now yeah. Part of a new way to create more value for the apps. So this whole, this whole new cycle of >>Yeah. >>Data being reused and repurposed and figured out and >>Yeah, yeah. I'm a big fan of, um, years ago. Uh, uh, just an amazing guy, Andy McAfee at the MIT C cell labs I spent time with and he, he had this line, which still sticks to me this day, which is look I'm I'm. He said I'm part of a body, which believes that everything is a matter of data. Like if you, of enough data, you can answer any question. And, and this is going back 10 years when he was saying these kind of things and, and certainly, you know, research is on the forefront. But I, I think, you know, starting to see that mindset of the, the sort of MIT research be mainstream, you know, in enterprises, they they're realizing that yeah, it is about the data. You know, if I can better understand my data better than my competitor than I've got an advantage. And so the question is is, is how, what, what technologies and what skills do I need in my organization to, to allow me to do that. So >>Let's talk about observing you the CEO of, okay. Given you've seen the wave before you're in the front lines of observability, which again is in the center of all this action what's going on with the company. Give a quick minute to explain, observe for the folks who don't know what you guys do. What's the company doing? What's the funding status, what's the product status and what's the customer status. Yeah. >>So, um, we realized, you know, a handful of years ago, let's say five years ago that, um, look, the way people are building applications is different. They they're way more functional. They change every day. Uh, but in some respects they're a lot more complicated. They're distributed. They, you know, microservices architectures and when something goes wrong, um, the old way of troubleshooting and solving problems was not gonna fly because you had SA so much change going into production on a daily basis. It was hard to tell like where the problem was. And so we thought, okay, it's about time. Somebody looks at the exhaust fumes from this application and all the telemetry data and helps people troubleshoot and make sense of the problems that they're seeing. So, I mean, that's observability, it's actually a term that goes back to the 1960s. It was a guy called, uh, Rudolph like, like everything in tech, you know, it's, it's a reinvention of, of something from years gone by. >>But, um, there's a guy called, um, Rudy Coleman in 1960s, kinder term. And, and, and the term was been able to determine the state of a system by looking at its external outputs. And so we've been going on this for, uh, the best part of the all years now. Um, it took us three years just to build the product. I think, I think what people don't appreciate these days often is the barrier to entry in a lot of these markets is quite high. You, you need a lot of functionality to have something that's credible with a customer. Um, so yeah, this last year we, we, we did our first year selling, uh, we've got about 40 customers now. <affirmative> um, we just we've got great investors for the hill ventures. Uh, I mean, Mike SP who was, you know, the, the guy who was the, really, the first guy in it snowflake and the, the initial investor were fortunate enough to, to have Mike on our board. And, um, you know, part of the observed story yeah. Is closely knit with snowflake because all of that time data know we, we still are in there. >>So I want to get, uh, >>Yeah. >>Pivot to that. Mike Pfizer, snowflake, Jeremy Burton, the cube kind of, kind of same thinking this idea of a super cloud or what snowflake became snowflake is massively successful on top of AWS. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and now you're seeing startups and companies build on top of snowflake. Yeah. So that's become an entrepreneurial story that we think that to go big in the cloud, you can have a cloud on a cloud, uh, like as Jerry, Jerry Chan and Greylock calls it castles in the cloud where there are moats in the cloud. So you're close to it. I know you're doing some stuff with snowflake. So a startup, what's your view on building on top of say a snowflake or an AWS, because again, you gotta go where the data is. You need all the data. >>Yeah. So >>What's your take on that? >>I mean, having enough gray hair now, um, you know, again, in tech, I think if you wanna predict the future, look at the past. And, uh, you know, to many years ago, 25 years ago, I was at a, a smaller company called Oracle and an Oracle was the database company. And, uh, their, their ambition was to manage all of the world's transactional data. And they built on a platform or a couple of platforms, one, one windows, and the other main one was Solaris. And so at that time, the operator and system was the platform. And, and then that was the, you know, ecosystem that you would compete on top of. And then there were companies like SAP that built applications on top of Oracle. So then wind the clock forward 25 years gray hairs. <laugh> the platform, isn't the operating system anymore. The platform is AWS, you know, Google cloud. I gotta probably look around if I say that in. Yeah. It's >>Okay. But hyperscale, yeah. CapX built out >>That is the new platform. And then snowflake comes along. Well, their aspiration is to manage all of the, not just human generator data, but machine generated data in the world of cloud. And I think they they've done an amazing job doing for the, I'd say, say the, the big data world, what Oracle did for the relational data world, you know, way back 25 years ago. And then there are folks like us come along and, and of course my ambition would be, look, if, if we can be as successful as an SAP building on top of snow snowflake, uh, as, as they were on top of Oracle, then, then we'd probably be quite happy. >>So you're building on top of snowflake. >>We're building on top of snowflake a hundred percent. And, um, you know, I've had folks say to me, well, aren't you worried about that? Isn't that a risk? It's like, well, that that's a risk. You >>Still on the board. >>Yeah. I'm still on the board. Yeah. That that's a risk I'm prepared to take <laugh> I am long on snowflake you, >>Well, you're in a good spot. Stay on the board, then you'll know what's going on. Okay. No know just doing, but the, this is a real dynamic. It is. It's not a one off it's. >>Well, and I do believe as well that the platform that you see now with AWS, if you look at the revenues of AWS is an order of magnitude more than Microsoft was 25 years ago with windows mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so I believe the opportunity for folks like snowflake and folks like observe it's an order of magnitude more than it was for the Oracle and the SAPs of the old >>World. Yeah. And I think this is really, I think this is something that this next generation of entrepreneurship is the go big scenario is you gotta be on a platform. Yeah. >>It's quite >>Easy or be the platform, but it's hard. There's only like how many seats are at that table left. >>Well, value migrates up over time. So, you know, when the cloud thing got going, there were probably 10, 20, 30, you know, Rackspace and there's 1,000,001 infrastructure, a service platform as a service, my, my old, uh, um, employee EMC, we had pivotal, you know, pivotal was a platform as a service. You don't hear so much about it, these, but initially there's a lot of players and then it consolidates. And then to, to like extract, uh, a real business, you gotta move up, you gotta add value, you gotta build databases, then you gotta build applications. So >>It's interesting. Moving from the data center of the cloud was a dream for starters. Cause then if the provision, the CapEx, now the CapEx is in the cloud. Then you build on top of that, you got snowflake you on top of that, the >>Assumption is almost that compute and storage is free. I know it's not quite free. Yeah. It's >>Almost free, >>But, but you can, you know, as an application vendor, you think, well, what can I do if I assume compute and storage is free, that's the mindset you've gotta get into. >>And I think the platform enablement to value. So if I'm an entrepreneur, I'm gonna get a serious, multiple of value in what I'm paying. Yeah. Most people don't even blanket their Avis pills unless they're like massively huge. Yeah. Then it's a repatriation question or whatever discount question, but for most startups or any growing company, the Amazon bill should be a small factor. >>Yeah. I mean, a lot of people, um, ask me like, look, you're building on snowflake. Um, you, you know, you are, you are, you're gonna be, you're gonna be paying their money. How, how, how, how does that work with your business model? If you're paying them money, you know, do, do you have a viable business? And it's like, well, okay. I, we could build a database as well in observe, but then I've got half the development team working on in that will never be as good as snowflake. And so we made the call early on that. No, no, we, we wanna innovate above the database. Yeah. Right. Snowflake are doing a great job of innovating on the database and, and the same is true of something like Amazon, like, like snowflake could have built their own cloud and their own platform, but they didn't. >>Yeah. And what's interesting is that Dave <inaudible> and I have been pointing this out and he's actually more on snowflake. I I've been looking at data bricks, um, and the same dynamics happening, the proof is the ecosystem. Yeah. I mean, if you look at Snowflake's ecosystem right now and data bricks it's exploding. Right. I mean, the shows are selling out the floor. Space's book. That's the old days at VMware. Yeah. The old days at AWS >>One and for snowflake and, and any platform provider, it's a beautiful thing. You know, we build on snowflake and we pay them money. They don't have to sell to us. Right. And we do a lot of the support. And so the, the economics work out really, really well. If you're a platform provider and you've got a lot of ecosystems. >>Yeah. And then also you get, you get a, um, a trajectory of, uh, economies of scale with the institutional knowledge of snowflake integrations, right. New products. You're scaling that function with the, >>Yeah. I mean, we manage 10 petabytes of data right now. Right. When I, when I, when I arrived at EMC in 2010, we had, we had one petabyte customer. And, and so at observe, we've been only selling the product for a year. We have 10 petabytes of data under management. And so been able to rely on a platform that can manage that is invaluable, >>You know, but Jeremy Greek conversation, thanks for sharing your insights on the industry. Uh, we got a couple minutes left. Um, put a plug in for observe. What do you guys, I know you got some good funding, great partners. I don't know if you can talk about your, your, your POC customers, but you got a lot of high ends folks that are working with you. You getting traction. Yeah. >>Yeah. >>Scales around the corner. Sounds like, are you, is that where you are scale? >>Got, we've got a big announcement coming up in two or weeks. We've got, we've got new funding, um, which is always great. Um, the product is, uh, really, really close. I think, as a startup, you always strive for market fit, you know, which is at which point can you just start hiring salespeople? And the revenue keeps going. We're getting pretty close to that right now. Um, we've got about 40 SaaS companies run on the platform. They're almost all AWS Kubernetes, uh, which is our sweet spot to begin with, but we're starting to get some really interesting, um, enterprise type customers. We're, we're, you know, F five networks we're POC in right now with capital one, we got some interest in news around capital one coming up. I, I can't share too much, uh, but it's gonna be exciting. And, and like I saids hill continued to, to, to stick, >>I think capital one's a big snowflake customer as well. Right. They, >>They were early in one of the things that attracted me to capital one was they were very, very good with snowflake early on. And, and they put snowflake in a position in the bank where they thought that snowflake could be successful. Yeah. And, and today that, that is one of Snowflake's biggest accounts. >>So capital one, very innovative cloud, obviously AIOS customer and very innovative, certainly in the CISO and CIO, um, on another point on where you're at. So you're, Prescale meaning you're about to scale, right? So you got POCs, what's that trick GE look like, can you see around the corner? What's, what's going on? What's on, around the corner. That you're, that you're gonna hit the straight and narrow and, and gas it >>Fast. Yeah. I mean, the, the, the, the key thing for us is we gotta get the product. Right. Um, the nice thing about having a guy like Mike Pfizer on the board is he doesn't obsess about revenue at this stage is questions that the board are always about, like, is the product, right? Is the product right? Is the product right? If you got the product right. And cuz we know when the product's right, we can then scale the sales team and, and the revenue will take care of itself. Yeah. So right now all the attention is on the product. Um, the, this year, the exciting thing is we were, we're adding all the tracing visualizations. So people will be able to the kind of things that back in the day you could do with the new lakes and, and AppDynamics, the last generation of, of APM tools, you're gonna be able to do that within observe. And we've already got the logs and the metrics capability in there. So for us, this year's a big one, cuz we sort of complete the trifecta, you know, the, the logs, >>What's the secret sauce observe. What if you had the, put it into a, a sentence what's the secret sauce? I, >>I, I think, you know, an amazing founding engineering team, uh, number one, I mean, at the end of the day, you have to build an amazing product and you have to solve a problem in a different way. And we've got great long term investors. And, and the biggest thing our investors give is actually it's not just money. It gives us time to get the product, right. Because if we get the product right, then we can get the growth. >>Got it. Final question. Why I got you here? You've been on the enterprise business for a long time. What's the buyer landscape out there. You got people doing POCs on capital one scale. So we know that goes on. What's the appetite at the buyer side for startups and what are their requirements that you're seeing? Uh, obviously we're seeing people go in and dip into the startup pool because new ways to refactor their business restructure. So a lot happening in cloud. What's the criteria. How are enterprises engaging in with startups? >>Yeah. I mean, enterprises, they know they've gotta spend money transforming the business. I mean, this was, I almost feel like my old Dell or EMC self there, but, um, what, what we were saying five years ago is happening. Um, everybody needs to figure out out a way to take their, this to this digital world. Everybody has to do it. So the nice thing from a startup standpoint is they know at times they need to risk or, or take a bet on new technology in order to, to help them do that. So I think you've got buyers that a have money, uh, B prepared to take risks and it's, it's a race against time to, you know, get their, their offerings in this. So a new digital footprint, >>Final, final question. What's the state of AWS. Where do you see them going next? Obviously they're continuing to be successful. How does cloud 3.0, or they always say it's day one, but it's more like day 10. Uh, but what's next for Aw. Where do they go from here? Obviously they're doing well. They're getting bigger and bigger. >>Yeah. They're, they're, it's an amazing story. I mean, you know, we we're, we're on AWS as well. And so I, I think if they keep nurturing the builders in the ecosystem, then that is their superpower. They, they have an early leads. And if you look at where, you know, maybe the likes of Microsoft lost the plot in the, in the late it was, they stopped, uh, really caring about developers and the folks who were building on top of their ecosystem. In fact, they started buying up their ecosystem and competing with people in their ecosystem. And I see with AWS, they, they have an amazing head start and if they did more, you know, if they do more than that, that's, what's gonna keep the jut rolling for many years to come. Yeah, >>They got the silicone and they got the staff act, developing Jeremy Burton inside the cube, great resource for commentary, but also founding with the CEO of a company called observing in the middle of all the action on the board of snowflake as well. Um, great start. Thanks for coming on the cube. >>Always a pleasure. >>Okay. Live from San Francisco to cube. I'm John for your host. Stay with us more coverage from San Francisco, California after the short break. >>Hello. Welcome back to the cubes coverage here live in San Francisco, California. I'm John furrier, host of the cubes cube coverage of AWS summit 2022 here in San Francisco. We're all the developers of the bay area at Silicon valley. And of course, AWS summit in New York city is coming up in the summer. We'll be there as well. SF and NYC cube coverage. Look for us. Of course, reinforcing Boston and re Mars with the whole robotics AI thing, all coming together. Lots of coverage stay with us today. We've got a great guest from Deibel VC. John Skoda, founding partner, entrepreneurial venture is a venture firm. Your next act, welcome to the cube. Good to see you. >>Good to see you, Matt. I feel like it's been forever since we've been able to do something in person. Well, >>I'm glad you're here because we run into each other all the time. We've known each other for over a decade. Um, >><affirmative>, it's been at least 10 years now, >>At least 10 years more. And we don't wanna actually go back as frees back, uh, the old school web 1.0 days. But anyway, we're in web three now. So we'll get to that in >>Second. We, we are, it's a little bit of a throwback to the path though, in my opinion, >><laugh>, it's all the same. It's all distributed computing and software. We ran each other in cube con you're investing in a lot of tech startup founders. Okay. This next level, next gen entrepreneurs have a new makeup and it's software. It's hardcore tech in some cases, not hardcore tech, but using software is take old something old and make it better, new, faster. <laugh>. So tell us about Deibel what's the firm. I know you're the founder, uh, which is cool. What's going on. Explain >>What you're doing. I mean, you remember I'm a recovering entrepreneur, right? So of course I, I, I, >>No, you're never recovering. You're always entrepreneur >>Always, but we are also always recovering. So I, um, started my first company when I was 24. If you remember, before there was Facebook and friends, there was instant messaging. People were using that product at work every day, they were creating a security vulnerability between their network and the outside world. So I plugged that hole and built an instant messaging firewall. It was my first company. The company was called, I am logic and we were required by Symantec. Uh, then spent 12 years investing in the next generation of our companies, uh, early investor in open source companies and cloud companies and spent a really wonderful 12 years, uh, at a firm called NEA. So I, I feel like my whole life I've been either starting enterprise software companies or helping founders start enterprise software companies. And I'll tell you, there's never been a better time than right now to start enter price software company. >>So, uh, the passion for starting a new firm was really a recognition that founders today that are starting in an enterprise software company, they, they tend to be, as you said, a more technical founder, right? Usually it's a software engineer or a builder mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, they are building products that are serving a slightly different market than what we've traditionally seen in enterprise software. Right? I think traditionally we've seen it buyers or CIOs that have agendas and strategies, which, you know, purchased software that has traditionally bought and sold tops down. But, you know, today I think the most successful enterprise software companies are the ones that are built more bottoms up and have more technical early opts. And generally speaking, they're free to use. They're free to try. They're very commonly community source or open source companies where you have a large technical community that's supporting them. So there's a, there's kind of a new normal now I think in great enterprise software. And it starts with great technical founders with great products and great and emotions. And I think there's no better place to, uh, service those people than in the cloud and uh, in, in your community. >>Well, first of all, congratulations, and by the way, you got a great pedigree and great background, super smart admire of your work and your, and, and your founding, but let's face it. Enterprise is hot because digital transformation is all companies. The is no, I mean, consumer is enterprise. Now everything is what was once a niche. No, I won't say niche category, but you know, not for the faint of heart, you know, investors, >>You know, it's so funny that you say that enterprise is hot because you, and I feel that way now. But remember, like right now, there's also a giant tech in VC conference in Miami <laugh> it's covering cryptocurrencies and FCS and web three. So I think beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder <laugh> but no, I, I will tell you, >>Ts is one big enterprise, cuz you gotta have imutability you got performance issues. You have, I IOPS issues. Well, and, >>And I think all of us here that are, uh, maybe students of history and have been involved in, open in the cloud would say that we're, you know, much of what we're doing is, uh, the predecessors of the web web three movement. And many of us I think are contributors to the web three movement. >>The hype is definitely that three. >>Yeah. But, but >>You know, for >>Sure. Yeah, no, but now you're taking us further east to Miami. So, uh, you know, look, I think, I, I think, um, what is unquestioned with the case now? And maybe it's, it's more obvious the more time you spend in this world is this is the fastest growing part of enterprise software. And if you include cloud infrastructure and cloud infrastructure spend, you know, it is by many men over, uh, 500 billion in growing, you know, 20 to 30% a year. So it it's a, it's a just incredibly fast, >>Let's getting, let's get into some of the cultural and the, the shifts that are happening, cuz again, you, you have the luxury of being in enterprise when it was hard, it's getting easier and more cooler. I get it and more relevant, but it's also the hype of like the web three, for instance. But you know, uh, um, um, the CEO snowflake, okay. Has wrote a book and Dave Valenti and I were talking about it and uh, Frank Luman has says, there's no playbooks. We always ask the CEOs, what's your playbook. And he's like, there's no playbook, situational awareness, always Trump's playbooks. So in the enterprise playbook, oh, higher direct sales force and SAS kind of crushed the, at now SAS is being redefined, right. So what is SAS? Is snowflake a SAS or is that a platform? So again, new unit economics are emerging, whole new situation, you got web three. So to me there's a cultural shift, the young entrepreneurs, the, uh, user experience, they look at Facebook and say, ah, you know, they own all my data. You know, we know that that cliche, um, they, you know, the product. So as this next gen, the gen Z and the millennials come in and our customers and the founders, they're looking at things a little bit differently and the tech better. >>Yeah. I mean, I mean, I think we can, we can see a lot of commonalities across all successful startups and the overall adoption of technology. Uh, and, and I would tell you, this is all one big giant revolution. I call it the user driven revolution. Right. It's the rise of the user. Yeah. And you might say product like growth is currently the hottest trend in enterprise software. It's actually user like growth, right. They're one in the same. So sometimes people think the product, uh, is what is driving. You >>Just pull the >>Product through. Exactly, exactly. And so that's that I, that I think is really this revolution that you see, and, and it does extend into things like cryptocurrencies and web three and, you know, sort of like the control that is taken back by the user. Um, but you know, many would say that, that the origins of this movement maybe started with open source where users were, are contributors, you know, contributors, we're users and looking back decades and seeing how it, how it fast forward to today. I think that's really the trend that we're all writing and it's enabling these end users. And these end users in our world are developers, data engineers, cybersecurity practitioners, right. They're really the users. And they're really the, the beneficiaries and the most, you know, kind of valued people in >>This. I wanna come back to the data engineers in a second, but I wanna make a comment and get your reaction to, I have a, I'm a GenXer technically, so for not a boomer, but I have some boomer friends who are a little bit older than me who have, you know, experienced the sixties. And I've, I've been staying on the cube for probably about eight years now that we are gonna hit a digital hippie revolution, meaning a rebellion against in the sixties was rebellion against the fifties and the man and, you know, summer of love. That was a cultural differentiation from the other one other group, the predecessors. So we're kind of having that digital moment now where it's like, Hey boomers, Hey people, we're not gonna do that anymore. We hate how you organize shit. >>Right. But isn't this just technology. I mean, isn't it, isn't it like there used to be the old adage, like, you know, you would never get fired for buying IBM, but now it's like, you obviously probably would get fired if you bought IBM. And I mean, it's just like the, the, I think, I think >>It's the main for days, those renegades were breaking into Stanford, starting the home brew club. So what I'm trying to get at is that, do you see the young cultural revolution also, culturally, just, this is my identity NFTs to me speak volumes about my, I wanna associate with NFTs, not single sign on. Well, >>Absolutely. And, and I think like, I think you're hitting on something, which is like this convergence of, of, you know, societal trends with technology trends and how that manifests in our world is yes. I think like there is unquestionably almost a religion around the way in which a product is built. Right. And we can use open source, one example of that religion. Some people will say, look, I'll just never try a product in the cloud if it's not open source. Yeah. I think cloud, native's another example of that, right? It's either it's, you know, it either is cloud native or it's not. And I think a lot of people will look at a product and say, look, you know, you were not designed in the cloud era. Therefore I just won't try you. And sometimes, um, like it or not, it's a religious decision, right? It's, it's something that people just believe to be true almost without, uh, necessarily. I mean >>The decision making, let me ask you this next question. As a VC. Now you look at pitch, well, you've made a VC for many years, but you also have the founder, uh, entrepreneurial mindset, but you can get empathize with the founders. You know, hustle is a big part of the, that first founder check, right? You gotta convince someone to part with their ch their money and the first money in which you do a lot of is about believing in the person. So fing, so you make, it is hard. Now you, the data's there, you either have it cloud native, you either have the adaption or traction. So honesty is a big part of that pitch. You can't fake it. Oh, >>AB absolutely. You know, there used to be this concept of like the persona of an entrepreneur, right. And the persona of the entrepreneur would be, you know, somebody who was a great salesperson or somebody who tell a great story. You, I still think that that's important, right? It still is a human need for people to believe in narratives and stories. But having said that you're right, the proof is in the pudding, right? At some point you click download and you try the product and it does what it says it it's gonna do, or it doesn't, or it either stands up to the load test or it doesn't. And so I, I feel like in this new economy that we live in, it's a shift from maybe the storytellers and the creators to, to the builders, right. The people that know how to build great product. And in some ways the people that can build great product yeah. Stand out from the crowd. And they're the ones that can build communities around their products. And, you know, in some ways can, um, you know, kind of own more of the narrative because their products exactly >>The volume back to the user led growth. >>Exactly. And it's the religion of, I just love your product. Right. And I, I, I, um, Doug song was the founder of du security used to say, Hey, like, you know, the, the really like in today's world of like consumption based software, the user is only gonna give you 90 seconds to figure out whether or not you're a company that's easy to do business with. Right. And so you can say, and do all the things that you want about how easy you are to work with. But if the product isn't easy to install, if it's not easy to try, if it's not, if, if the, you know, it's gotta speak to >>The, speak to the user, but let me ask a question now that the people watching who are maybe entrepreneurial entrepreneur, um, masterclass here is in session. So I have to ask you, do you prefer, um, an entrepreneur to come in and say, look at John. Here's where I'm at. Okay. First of all, storytelling's fine. Whether you're an extrovert or introvert, have your style, sell the story in a way that's authentic, but do you, what do you prefer to say? Here's where I'm at? Look, I have an idea. Here's my traction. I think here's my MVP prototype. I need help. Or do you wanna just see more stats? What's the, what's the preferred way that you like to see entrepreneurs come in and engage, engage? >>There's tons of different styles, man. I think the single most important thing that every founder should know is that we, we don't invest in what things are today. We invest in what we think something will become. Right. And I think that's why we all get up in the morning and try to build something different, right? It's that we see the world a different way. We want it to be a different way, and we wanna work every single moment of the day to try to make that vision a reality. So I think the more that you can show people where you want to be, the more likely somebody is gonna align with your vision and, and want to invest in you and wanna be along for the ride. So I, I wholeheartedly believe in showing off what you got today, because eventually we all get down to like, where are we and what are we gonna do together? But, um, no, I >>Show >>The path. I think the single most important thing for any founder and VC relationship is that they have the same vision, uh, have the same vision. You can, you can get through bumps in the road, you can get through short term spills. You can all sorts of things in the middle of the journey can happen. Yeah. But it doesn't matter as much if you share the same long term vision, >>Don't flake out and, and be fashionable with the latest trends because it's over before you can get there. >>Exactly. I think many people that, that do what we do for a living will say, you know, ultimately the future is relatively easy to predict, but it's the timing that's impossible to predict. So you, you know, you sort of have to balance the, you know, we, we know that the world is going this way and therefore we're gonna invest a lot of money to try to make this a reality. Uh, but sometimes it happens in six months. Sometimes it takes six years is sometimes like 16 years. >>Uh, what's the hottest thing in enterprise that you see the biggest wave that people should pay attention to that you're looking at right now with Desel partners, Tebel dot your site. What's the big wave. What's your big >>Wave. There, there's three big trends that we invest in. And they're the, they're the only things we do day in, day out. One is the explosion and open source software. So I think many people think that all software is unquestionably moving to an open source model in some form or another yeah. Tons of reasons to debate whether or not that is gonna happen and on what timeline happening >>Forever. >>But it is, it is accelerating faster than we've ever seen. So I, I think it's, it's one big, massive wave that we continue to ride. Um, second is the rise of data engineering. Uh, I think data engineering is in and of itself now, a category of software. It's not just that we store data. It's now we move data and we develop applications on data. And, uh, I think data is in and of itself as big of a, a market as any of the other markets that we invest in. Uh, and finally, it's the gift that keeps on giving. I've spent my entire career in it. We still feel that security is a market that is under invested. It is, it continues to be the place where people need to continue to invest and spend more money. Yeah. Uh, and those are the three major trends that we run >>And security, you think we all need a dessert do over, right? I mean, do we need a do over in security or is what's the core problem? I, >>I, I keep using this word underinvested because I think it's the right way to think about the problem. I think if you, I think people generally speaking, look at cyber security as an add-on. Yeah. But if you think about it, the whole economy is moving online. And so in, in some ways like security is core to protecting the digital economy. And so it's, it shouldn't be an afterthought, right? It should be core to what everyone is doing. And that's why I think relative to the trillions of dollars that are at stake, uh, I believe the market size for cybersecurity is around 150 billion. And it still is a fraction of what we're, what >>We're and security even boom is booming now. So you get the convergence of national security, geopolitics, internet digital >>That's right. You mean arguably, right? I mean, arguably again, it's the area of the world that people should be spending more time and more money given what to stake. >>I love your thesis. I gotta, I gotta say, you gotta love your firm. Love. You're doing we're big supporters of your mission. Congratulations on your entrepreneurial venture. And, uh, we'll be, we'll be talking and maybe see a Cub gone. Uh, >>Absolutely. >>Certainly EU maybe even north America's in Detroit this year. >>Huge fan of what you guys are doing here. Thank you so much for having me on >>The show. Guess bell VC Johnson here on the cube. Check him out. Founder for founders here on the cube, more coverage from San Francisco, California. After the short break, stay with us. Everyone. Welcome to the queue here. Live in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022 we're live we're back with the events. Also we're virtual. We got hybrid all kinds of events. This year, of course, 80% summit in New York city is happening this summer. We'll be there with the cube as well. I'm John. Again, John host of the cube got a great guest here. Justin Coby owner and CEO of innovative solutions. Their booth is right behind us. Justin, welcome to the cube. >>Thank you. Thank you for having me. >>So we're just chatting, uh, uh, off camera about some of the work you're doing. You're the owner of and CEO. Yeah. Of innovative. Yeah. So tell us a story. What do you guys do? What's the elevator pitch. >>Yeah. <laugh> so the elevator pitch is we are, uh, a hundred percent focused on small to midsize businesses that are moving into the cloud or have already moved to the cloud and really trying to understand how to best control, cost, security, compliance, all the good stuff, uh, that comes along with it. Um, exclusively focused on AWS and, um, you know, about 110 people, uh, based in Rochester, New York, that's where our headquarters is, but now we have offices down in Austin, Texas up in Toronto, uh, key Canada, as well as Chicago. Um, and obviously in New York, uh, you know, the, the business was never like this, uh, five years ago, um, founded in 1989, made the decision in 2018 to pivot and go all in on the cloud. And, uh, I've been a part of the company for about 18 years, bought the company about five years ago and it's been a great ride. It >>It's interesting. The manages services are interesting with cloud cause a lot of the heavy liftings done by AWS. So we had Matt on your team on earlier talking about some of the edge stuff. Yeah. But you guys are a managed cloud service. You got cloud advisory, you know, the classic service that's needed, but the demands coming from cloud migrations and application modernization and obviously data is a huge part of it. Huge. How is this factoring into what you guys do and your growth cuz you guys are the number one partner on the SMB side for edge. Yeah. For AWS, you got results coming in. Where's the, where's the forcing function. What's the pressure point. What's the demand like? >>Yeah. It's a great question. Every CEO I talk to, that's a small to midsize business. They're trying to understand how to leverage technology. It better to help either drive a revenue target for their own business, uh, help with customer service as so much has gone remote now. And we're all having problems or troubles or issues trying to hire talent. And um, you know, tech ISNT really at the, at the forefront and the center of that. So most customers are coming to us and they're like, listen, we gotta move to the cloud or we move some things to cloud and we want to do that better. And um, there's this big misnomer that when you move to the cloud, you gotta automatically modernize. Yeah. And what we try to help as many customers understand as possible is lifting and shifting, moving the stuff that you maybe currently have OnPrem and a data center to the cloud first is a first step. And then, uh, progressively working through a modernization strateg, always the better approach. And so we spend a lot of time with small to midsize businesses who don't have the technology talent on staff to be able to do >>That. Yeah. They want get set up. But then the dynamic of like latency is huge. We're seeing that edge product is a big part of it. This is not a one-off happening around everywhere. It is. And it's not, it's manufacturing, it's the physical plant or location >>Literally. >>And so, and you're seeing more IOT devices. What's that like right now from a challenge and problem statement standpoint, are the customers, not staff, is the it staff kind of old school? Is it new skills? What's the core problem you guys solve >>In the SMB space? The core issue nine outta 10 times is people get enamored with the latest and greatest. And the reality is not everything that's cloud based. Not all cloud services are the latest and greatest. Some things have been around for quite some time and are hardened solutions. And so, um, what we try to do with technology staff that has traditional on-prem, uh, let's just say skill sets and they're trying to move to a cloud-based workload is we try to help those customers through education and through some practical, let's just call it use case. Um, whether that's a proof of concept that we're doing or whether we're gonna migrate a small workload over, we try to give them the confidence to be able to not, not necessarily go it alone, but to, to, to have the, uh, the Gusto and to really have the, um, the, the opportunity to, to do that in a wise way. Um, and what I find is that most CEOs that I talk to, yeah, they're like, listen, the end of the day, I'm gonna be spending money in one place or another, whether that's OnPrem or in the cloud. I just want to know that I'm doing that in a way that helps me grow as quickly as possible status quo. I think every, every business owner knows that COVID taught us anything that status quo is, uh, is, is no. No. >>Good. How about factoring in the, the agility and speed equation? Does that come up a lot? It >>Does. I think, um, I, there's also this idea that if, uh, if we do a deep dive analysis and we really take a surgical approach to things, um, we're gonna be better off. And the reality is the faster you move with anything cloud based, the better you are. And so there's this assumption that we gotta get it right the first time. Yeah. In the cloud, if you start down your journey in one way and you realize midway that it's not the right, let's just say the right place to go. It's not like buying a piece of iron that you put in the closet and now you own it in the cloud. You can turn those services on and off. It's gives you a much higher density for making decisions and failing >>Forward. Well actually shutting down the abandoning the projects that early and not worrying about it, you got it. I mean, most people don't abandon cause like, oh, I own it. >>Exactly. And >>They get, they get used to it. Like, and then they wait too long. >>That's exactly. Yeah. >>Frog and boiling water as we used to say. So, oh, it's a great analogy. So I mean, this is a dynamic that's interesting. I wanna get more thoughts on it because like I'm a, if I'm a CEO of a company, like, okay, I gotta make my number. Yeah. I gotta keep my people motivated. Yeah. And I gotta move faster. So this is where you, I get the whole thing. And by the way, great service, um, professional services in the cloud right now are so hot because so hot, you can build it and then have option optionality. You got path decisions, you got new services to take advantage of. It's almost too much for customers. It is. I mean, everyone I talked to at reinvent, that's a customer. Well, how many announcements did am jazzy announce or Adam, you know, the 5,000 announcement or whatever. They do huge amounts. Right. Keeping track of it all. Oh, is huge. So what's the, what's the, um, the mission of, of your company. How does, how do you talk to that alignment? Yeah. Not just processes. I can get that like values as companies, cuz they're betting on you and your people. >>They are, they are, >>What's the values. >>Our mission is, is very simple. We want to help every small to midsize business leverage the power of the cloud. Here's the reality. We believe wholeheartedly. This is our vision that every company is going to become a technology company. So we go to market with this idea that every customer's trying to leverage the power of the cloud in some way, shape or form, whether they know it or don't know it. And number two, they're gonna become a tech company in the process of that because everything is so tech-centric. And so when you talk about speed and agility, when you talk about the, the endless options and the endless permutations of solutions that a customer can buy in the cloud, how are you gonna ask a team of one or two people in your, or it department to make all those decisions going it alone or trying to learn it as you go, it only gets you so far working with a partner. >>I'll just give you some perspective. We work with about a thousand small to midsize business customers. More than 50% of those customers are on our managed services. Meaning they know that we have their back Andre or the safety net. So when a customer is saying, all right, I'm gonna spend a couple thousand dollars a month in the cloud. They know that that bill, isn't gonna jump to $10,000 a month going in alone. Who's there to help protect that. Number two, if you have a security posture and let's just say you're high profile and you're gonna potentially be more vulnerable to security attack. If you have a partner, that's all offering you some managed services. Now you, again, you've got that backstop and you've got those services and tooling. We, we offer, um, seven different products, uh, that are part of our managed services that give the customer the tooling, that for them to go out and buy on their own for a customer to go out today and go buy a new Relic solution on their own. It, it would cost 'em a fortune. If >>Training alone would be insane, a factor and the cost. Yes, absolutely. Opportunity cost is huge, >>Huge, absolutely enormous training and development. Something. I think that is often, you know, it's often overlooked technologists. Typically they want to get their skills up. Yeah. They, they love to get the, the stickers and the badges and the pins, um, at innovative in 2018, when, uh, when we made the decision to go all in on the club, I said to the organization, you know, we have this idea that we're gonna pivot and be aligned with AWS in such a way that it's gonna really require us all to get certified. My executive assistant at the time looks at me. She said, even me, I said, yeah, even you, why can't you get certified? Yeah. And so we made, uh, a conscious decision. It wasn't requirement and still isn't today to make sure everybody in the company has the opportunity to become certified. Even the people that are answering the phones at the front desk >>And she could be running the Kubernetes clusters. I love it. It's amazing. >>But I'll tell you what, when that customer calls and they have a real Kubernetes issue, she'll be able to assist and get >>The right people involved. And that's a cultural factor that you guys have. So, so again, this is back to my whole point about SMBs and businesses in general, small en large, it staffs are turning over the gen Z and millennials are in the workforce. They were provisioning top of rack switches. Right. First of all. And so if you're a business, there's also the, I call the build out, um, uh, return factor, ROI piece. At what point in time as an owner or SMB, do I get the ROI? Yeah. I gotta hire a person to manage it. That person's gonna have five zillion job offers. Yep. Uh, maybe who knows? Right. I got cybersecurity issues. Where am I gonna find a cyber person? Yeah. A data compliance. I need a data scientist and a compliance person. Right. Maybe one and the same. Right. Good luck. Trying to find a data scientist. Who's also a compliance person. Yep. And the list goes on. I can just continue. Absolutely. I need an SRE to manage the, the, uh, the sock report and we can pen test. Right. >>Right. >>These are, these are >>Critical issues. This >>Is just like, these are the table stakes. >>Yeah. And, and every, every business owner's thinking about. So that's, >>That's what, at least a million in bloating, if not three or more Just to get that going. Yeah. Then it's like, where's the app. Yeah. So there's no cloud migration. There's no modernization on the app side though. Yeah. No. And nevermind AI and ML. That's >>Right. That's right. So to try to go it alone, to me, it's hard. It it's incredibly difficult. And, and the other thing is, is there's not a lot of partners, so the partner, >>No one's raising their hand boss. I'll >>Do all that >>Exactly. In it department. >>Exactly. >>Like, can we just call up, uh, you know, <laugh> our old vendor. That's >>Right. <laugh> right. Our old vendor. I like it, but that's so true. I mean, when I think about how, if I was a business owner, starting a business to today and I had to build my team, um, and the amount of investment that it would take to get those people skilled up and then the risk factor of those people now having the skills and being so much more in demand and being recruited away, that's a real, that's a real issue. And so how you build your culture around that is, is very important. And it's something that we talk about every, with every one of our small to midsize business. >>So just, I want to get, I want to get your story as CEO. Okay. Take us through your journey. You said you bought the company and your progression to, to being the owner and CEO of innovative award winning guys doing great. Uh, great bet on a good call. Yeah. Things are good. Tell your story. What's your journey? >>It's real simple. I was, uh, was a sophomore at the Rochester Institute of technology in 2003. And, uh, I knew that I, I was going to school for it and I, I knew I wanted to be in tech. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn't wanna code or configure routers and switches. So I had this great opportunity with the local it company that was doing managed services. We didn't call it at that time innovative solutions to come in and, uh, jump on the phone and dial for dollars. I was gonna cold call and introduce other, uh, small to midsize businesses locally in Rochester, New York go to Western New York, um, who innovative was now. We were 19 people at the time. And I came in, I did an internship for six months and I loved it. I learned more in those six months that I probably did in my first couple of years at, uh, at R I T long story short. >>Um, for about seven years, I worked, uh, to really help develop, uh, sales process and methodology for the business so that we could grow and scale. And we grew to about 30 people. And, um, I went to the owners at the time in 2010 and I was like, Hey, I'm growing the value of this business. And who knows where you guys are gonna be another five years? What do you think about making me an owner? And they were like, listen, you got long ways before you're gonna be an owner, but if you stick it out in your patient, we'll, um, we'll work through a succession plan with you. And I said, okay, there were four other individuals at the time that we're gonna also buy the business with >>Me. And they were the owners, no outside capital, >>None zero, well, 2014 comes around. And, uh, the other folks that were gonna buy into the business with me that were also working at innovative for different reasons. They all decided that it wasn't for them. One started a family. The other didn't wanna put capital in. Didn't wanna write a check. Um, the other had a real big problem with having to write a check. If we couldn't make payroll, I'm like, well, that's kind of like if we're owners, we're gonna have to like cover that stuff. <laugh> so >>It's called the pucker factor. >>Exactly. So, uh, I sat down with the CEO in early 2015, and, uh, we made the decision that I was gonna buy the three partners out, um, go through an earn out process, uh, coupled with, uh, an interesting financial strategy that wouldn't strap the business, cuz they care very much. The company still had the opportunity to keep going. So in 2016 I bought the business, um, became the sole owner. And, and at that point we, um, we really focused hard on what do we want this company to be? We had built this company to this point. Yeah. And, uh, and by 2018 we knew that pivoting all going all in on the cloud was important for us and we haven't looked back. >>And at that time, the proof points were coming clearer and clearer 2012 through 15 was the early adopters, the builders, the startups and early enterprises. Yes. The capital ones of the world. Exactly the, uh, and those kinds of big enterprises. The game don't, won't say gamblers, but ones that were very savvy. The innovators, the FinTech folks. Yep. The hardcore glass eating enterprises >>Agreed, agreed to find a small to midsize business, to migrate completely to the cloud as, as infrastructure was considered. That just didn't happen as often. Um, what we were seeing were a lot of our small to midsize business customers, they wanted to leverage cloud based backup, or they wanted to leverage a cloud for disaster recovery because it lent itself. Well, early days, our most common cloud customer though, was the customer that wanted to move messaging and collaboration. The, the Microsoft suite to the cloud and a lot of 'em dipped their toe in the water. But by 2017 we knew infrastructure was around the corner. Yeah. And so, uh, we only had two customers on eight at the time. Um, and we, uh, we, we made the decision to go all in >>Justin. Great to have you on the cube. Thank you. Let's wrap up. Uh, tell me the hottest product that you have. Is it migrations? Is the app modernization? Is it data? What's the hot product and then put a plug in for the company. Awesome. >>So, uh, there's no question. Every customer is looking to migrate workloads and try to figure out how to modernize for the future. We have very interesting, sophisticated yet elegant funding solutions to help customers with the cash flow, uh, constraints that come along with those migrations. So any SMB that's thinking about migrating to the cloud, they should be talking innovative solutions. We know how to do it in a way that allows those customers not to be cash strapped and gives them an opportunity to move forward in a controlled, contained way so that they can modernize. >>So like insurance, basically for them not insurance class in the classic sense, but you help them out on the, on the cash exposure. >>Absolutely. We are known for that and we're known for being creative with those customers, empathetic to where they are in their journey. And >>That's the cloud upside is all about doubling down on the variable wind. That's right. Seeing the value and doubling down on it. Absolutely not praying for it. Yeah. <laugh> all right, Justin. Thanks for coming on. You really appreciate it. Thank >>You very much for having >>Me. Okay. This is the cube coverage here live in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching with back with more great coverage for two days after this short break >>Live on the floor in San Francisco for 80 west summit, I'm John ferry, host of the cube here for the next two days, getting all the action we're back in person. We're at AWS reinvent a few months ago. Now we're back events are coming back and we're happy to be here with the cube, bringing all the action. Also virtual, we have a hybrid cube, check out the cube.net, Silicon angle.com for all the coverage. After the event. We've got a great guest ticketing off here. Matthew Park, director of solutions, architecture with innovation solutions. The booth is right here. Matthew, welcome to the cube. >>Thank you very much. I'm glad >>To be here. So we're back in person. You're from Tennessee. We were chatting before you came on camera. Um, it's great to have to be back through events. >>It's amazing. This is the first, uh, summit I've been to and what two, three years. >>It's awesome. We'll be at the, uh, New York as well. A lot of developers and a big story this year is as developers look at cloud going distributed computing, you got on premises, you got public cloud, you got the edge. Essentially the cloud operations is running everything dev sec ops, everyone kind of sees that you got containers, you got Kubernetes, you got cloud native. So the, the game is pretty much laid out. Mm. And the edge is with the actions you guys are number one, premier partner at SMB for edge. >>That's right. >>Tell us about what you guys doing at innovative and, uh, what you do. >>That's right. Uh, so I'm the director of solutions architecture. Uh, me and my team are responsible for building out the solutions that are around, especially the edge public cloud out for us edge is anything outside of an AWS availability zone. Uh, we are deploying that in countries that don't have AWS infrastructure in region. They don't have it. Uh, give >>An example, >>Uh, example would be Panama. We have a customer there that, uh, needs to deploy some financial tech data and compute is legally required to be in Panama, but they love AWS and they want to deploy AWS services in region. Uh, so they've taken E EKS anywhere. We've put storage gateway and, uh, snowball, uh, in region inside the country and they're running their FinTech on top of AWS services inside Panama. >>You know, what's interesting, Matthew is that we've been covering Aw since 2013 with the cube about their events. And we watched the progression and jazzy was, uh, was in charge and then became the CEO. Now Adam Slosky is in charge, but the edge has always been that thing they've been trying to, I don't wanna say, trying to avoid, of course, Amazon would listen to customers. They work backwards from the customers. We all know that. Uh, but the real issue was they were they're bread and butters EC two and S three. And then now they got tons of services and the cloud is obviously successful and seeing that, but the edge brings up a whole nother level. >>It does >>Computing. It >>Does. >>That's not central lies in the public cloud. Now they got regions. So what is the issue with the edge what's driving? The behavior. Outpost came out as a reaction to competitive threats and also customer momentum around OT, uh, operational technologies. And it merging. We see with the data at the edge, you got five GM having. So it's pretty obvious, but there was a slow transition. What was the driver for the <affirmative> what's the driver now for edge action for AWS >>Data is the driver for the edge. Data has gravity, right? And it's pulling compute back to where the customer's generating that data and that's happening over and over again. You said it best outpost was a reaction to a competitive situation. Whereas today we have over fit 15 AWS edge services, and those are all reactions to things that customers need inside their data centers on location or in the field like with media companies. >>Outpost is interesting. We always used to riff on the cube, uh, cuz it's basically Amazon in a box, pushed in the data center, uh, running native, all the stuff, but now cloud native operations are kind of become standard. You're starting to see some standard Deepak sings group is doing some amazing work with open source Rauls team on the AI side, obviously, uh, you got SW who's giving the keynote tomorrow. You got the big AI machine learning big part of that edge. Now you can say, okay, outpost, is it relevant today? In other words, did outpost do its job? Cause EKS anywhere seems to be getting a lot of momentum. You see low the zones, the regions are kicking ass for Amazon. This edge piece is evolving. What's your take on EKS anywhere versus say outpost? >>Yeah, I think outpost did its job. It made customers that were looking at outpost really consider, do I wanna invest in this hardware? Do I, do I wanna have, um, this outpost in my data center, do I wanna manage this over the long term? A lot of those customers just transitioned to the public cloud. They went into AWS proper. Some of those customers stayed on prem because they did have use cases that were, uh, not a good fit for outpost. They weren't a good fit. Uh, in the customer's mind for the public AWS cloud inside an availability zone. Now what's happening is as AWS is pushing these services out and saying, we're gonna meet you where you are with 5g. We're gonna meet you where you are with wavelength. We're gonna meet you where you are with EKS anywhere. Uh, I think it has really reduced the amount of times that we have conversations about outposts and it's really increased. We can deploy fast. We don't have to spin up outpost hardware. We can go deploy EKS anywhere in your VMware environment and it's increasing the speed of adoption >>For sure. So you guys are making a lot of good business decisions around managed cloud service. Innovative does that. You have the cloud advisory, the classic professional services for the specific edge piece and, and doing that outside of the availability zones and regions for AWS, um, customers in, in these new areas that you're helping out are they want cloud, like they want to have modernization a modern applications. Obviously they got data machine learning and AI, all part of that. What's the main product or, or, or gap that you're filling for AWS, uh, outside of their available ability zones or their regions that you guys are delivering. What's the key is it. They don't have a footprint. Is it that it's not big enough for them? What's the real gap. What's why, why are you so successful? >>So what customers want when they look towards the cloud is they want to focus on, what's making them money as a business. They wanna focus on their applications. They want focus on their customers. So they look towards AWS cloud and say, AWS, you take the infrastructure. You take, uh, some of the higher layers and we'll focus on our revenue generating business, but there's a gap there between infrastructure and revenue generating business that innovative slides into, uh, we help manage the AWS environment. We help build out these things in local data centers for 32 plus year old company, we have traditional on-premises people that know about deploying hardware that know about deploying VMware to host EKS anywhere. But we also have most of our company totally focused on the AWS cloud. So we're filling that gap in helping deploy these AWS services, manage them over the long term. So our customers can go to just primarily and totally focusing on their revenue generating business. >>So basically you guys are basically building AWS edges, >>Correct? >>For correct companies, correct? Mainly because the, the needs are there, you got data, you got certain products, whether it's, you know, low latency type requirements, right. And then they still work with the regions, right. It's all tied together, right. Is that how it works? Right. >>And, and our customers, even the ones in the edge, they also want us to build out the AWS environment inside the availability zone, because we're always gonna have a failback scenario. If we're gonna deploy FinTech in the Caribbean, we're gonna talk about hurricanes and gonna talk about failing back into the AWS availability zones. So innovative is filling that gap across the board, whether it be inside the AWS cloud or on the AWS edge. >>All right. So I gotta ask you on the, since you're at the edge in these areas, I won't say underserved, but developing areas where now have data, you have applications that are tapping into that, that requirement. It makes total sense. We're seeing across the board. So it's not like it's, it's an outlier it's actually growing. Yeah. There's also the crypto angle. You got the blockchain. Are you seeing any traction at the edge with blockchain? Because a lot of people are looking at the web three in these areas like Panama, you mentioned FinTech in, in the islands. There are a lot of, lot of, lot of web three happening. What's your, what's your view on the web three world right now, relative >>To we, we have some customers actually deploying crypto, especially, um, especially in the Caribbean. I keep bringing the Caribbean up, but it's, it's top of my mind right now we have customers that are deploying crypto. A lot of, uh, countries are choosing crypto underly parts of their central banks. Yeah. Um, so it's, it's up and coming. Uh, I, I have some, you know, personal views that, that crypto is still searching for a use case. Yeah. And, uh, I think it's searching a lot and, and we're there to help customers search for that use case. Uh, but, but crypto, as a, as a tech technology, um, lives really well on the AWS edge. Yeah. Uh, and, and we're having more and more people talk to us about that. Yeah. And ask for assistance in the infrastructure because they're developing new cryptocurrencies every day. Yeah. It's not like they're deploying Ethereum or anything specific. They're actually developing new currencies and, and putting them out there on it's >>Interesting. And I mean, first of all, we've been doing crypto for many, many years. We have our own little, um, you know, projects going on. But if you look talk to all the crypto people that say, look, we do a smart contract, we use the blockchain. It's kind of over a lot of overhead. It's not really their technical already, but it's a cultural shift, but there's underserved use cases around use of money, but they're all using the blockchain, just for this like smart contracts for instance, or certain transactions. And they go into Amazon for the database. Yeah. <laugh> they all don't tell anyone we're using a centralized service, but what happened to decent centralized. >>Yeah. And that's, and that's the conversation performance. >>Yeah. >>And, and it's a cost issue. Yeah. And it's a development issue. Um, so I think more and more as, as some of these, uh, currencies maybe come up, some of the smart contracts get into, uh, they find their use cases. I think we'll start talking about how does that really live on, on AWS and, and what does it look like to build decentralized applications, but with AWS hardware and services. >>Right. So take me through a, a use case of a customer, um, Matthew around the edge. Okay. So I'm a customer, pretend I'm a customer, Hey, you know, I'm, we're in an underserved area. I want to modernize my business. And I got my developers that are totally peaked up on cloud. Um, but we've identified that it's just a lot of overhead latency issues. I need to have a local edge and serve my a and I also want all the benefits of the cloud. So I want the modernization and I wanna migrate to the cloud for all those cloud benefits and the good this of the cloud. What's the answer. Yeah. >>Uh, big thing is, uh, industrial manufacturing, right? That's, that's one of the best use cases, uh, inside industrial manufacturing, we can pull in many of the AWS edge services we can bring in, uh, private 5g, uh, so that all the, uh, equipment inside that, that manufacturing plant can be hooked up. They don't have to pay huge overheads to deploy 5g it's, uh, better than wifi for the industrial space. Um, when we take computing down to that industrial area, uh, because we wanna do pre-procesing on the data. Yeah. We want to gather some analytics. We deploy that with, uh, regular commercially available hardware running VMware, and we deploy EKS anywhere on that. Uh, inside of that manufacturing plant, uh, we can do pre-processing on things coming out of the, uh, the robotics that depending on what we're manufacturing, right. Uh, and then we can take the, those refined analytics and for very low cost with maybe a little bit longer latency transmit those back, um, to the AWS availability zone, the, the standard >>For data lake or whatever, >>To the data lake. Yeah. Data Lakehouse, whatever it might be. Um, and we can do additional data science on that once it gets to the AWS cloud. Uh, but I'll lot of that, uh, just in time business decisions, just in time, manufacturing decisions can all take place on an AWS service or services inside that manufacturing plant. And that's, that's one of the best use cases that we're >>Seeing. And I think, I mean, we've been seeing this on the queue for many, many years, moving data around is very expensive. Yeah. But also compute going of the data that saves that cost yep. On the data transfer also on the benefits of the latency. So I have to ask you, by the way, that's standard best practice now for the folks watching don't move the data unless you have to. Um, but those new things are developing. So I wanna ask you, what new patterns are you seeing emerging once this new architecture's in place? Love that idea, localize everything right at the edge, manufacture, industrial, whatever the use case, retail, whatever it is. Right. But now what does that change in the, in the core cloud? There's a, there's a system element here. Yeah. What's the new pattern. There's >>Actually an organizational element as well, because once you have to start making the decision, do I put this compute at the point of use or do I put this compute in the cloud? Uh, now you start thinking about where business decisions should be taking place. Uh, so not only are you changing your architecture, you're actually changing your organization because you're thinking, you're thinking about a dichotomy you didn't have before. Uh, so now you say, okay, this can take place here. Uh, and maybe, maybe this decision can wait. Yeah. Uh, and then how do I visualize that? By >>The way, it could be a bot tube doing the work for management. Yeah. <laugh> exactly. You got observability going, right. But you gotta change the database architecture in the back. So there's new things developing. You've got more benefit. There >>Are, there are. And, and we have more and more people that, that want to talk less about databases and want to talk more about data lakes because of this. They want to talk more about out. Customers are starting to talk about throwing away data, uh, you know, for the past maybe decade. Yeah. It's been store everything. And one day we will have a data science team that we hire in our organization to do analytics on this decade of data. And well, >>I mean, that's, that's a great point. We don't have time to drill into, maybe we do another session on this, but the one pattern we're seeing of the past year is that throwing away data's bad, even data lakes that so-called turn into data swamps, actually, it's not the case. You look at data, brick, snowflake, and other successes out there. And even time series data, which may seem irrelevant efforts over actually matters when people start retraining their machine learning algorithms. Yep. So as data becomes code, as we call it in our last showcase, we did a whole whole event on this. The data's good in real time and in the lake. Yeah. Because the iteration of the data feeds the machine learning training. Things are getting better with the old data. So it's not throw it away. It's not just business better. Yeah. There's all kinds of new scale. >>There are. And, and we have, uh, many customers that are running pay Toby level. Um, they're, they're essentially data factories on, on, uh, on premises, right? They're, they're creating so much data and they're starting to say, okay, we could analyze this, uh, in the cloud, we could transition it. We could move Aytes of data to the AWS cloud, or we can run, uh, computational workloads on premises. We can really do some analytics on this data transition, uh, those high level and sort of raw analytics back to AWS run 'em through machine learning. Um, and we don't have to transition 10, 12 petabytes of data into AWS. >>So I gotta end the segment on a, on a kind of a, um, fun note. I was told to ask you about your personal background, OnPrem architect, Aus cloud, and skydiving instructor. <laugh> how does that all work together? What tell, what does this mean? Yeah. >>Uh, you >>Jumped out a plane and got a job. You got a customer to jump out >>Kind of. So I was, you jumped out. I was teaching having, uh, before I, before I started in the cloud space, this was 13, 14 years ago. I was a, I still am a sky. I instructor, uh, I was teaching skydiving and I heard out of the corner of my ear, uh, a guy that owned an MSP that was lamenting about, um, you know, storing data and, and how his customers are working. And he can't find an enough people to operate all these workloads. So I walked over and said, Hey, this is, this is what I went to school for. Like, I'd love to, you know, uh, I was living in a tent in the woods, teaching skydiving. I was like, I'd love to not live in a tent in the woods. So, uh, uh, I started and the first day there, uh, we had a, a discussion, uh, EC two had just come out <laugh> and, uh, like, >>This is amazing. >>Yeah. And so we had this discussion, we should start moving customers here. And, uh, and that totally revolutionized that business, um, that, that led to, uh, that that guy actually still owns a skydiving airport. But, um, but through all of that, and through being in on premises, migrated me and myself, my career into the cloud, and now it feels like, uh, almost, almost looking back and saying, now let's take what we learned in the cloud and, and apply those lessons and those services tore >>It's. So it's such a great story, you know, was gonna, you know, you know, the whole, you know, growth mindset pack your own parachute, you know, uh, exactly. You know, the cloud in the early days was pretty much will the shoot open. Yeah. It was pretty much, you had to roll your own cloud at that time. And so, you know, you, you jump on a plane, you gotta make sure that parachute is gonna open. >>And so was Kubernetes by the way, 2015 or so when, uh, when that was coming out, it was, I mean, it was, it was still, and maybe it does still feel like that to some people. Right. But, uh, it was, it was the same kind of feeling that we had in the early days of AWS, the same feeling we have when we >>It's now with you guys, it's more like a tandem jump. Yeah. You know, but, but it's a lot of, lot of this cutting edge stuff, like jumping out of an airplane. Yeah. You got the right equipment. You gotta do the right things. Exactly. >>Right. >>Yeah. Thanks for coming. You really appreciate it. Absolutely great conversation. Thanks for having me. Okay. The cubes here live in San Francisco for eight of us summit. I'm John for host of the cube. Uh, we'll be at a summit in New York coming up in the summer as well. Look up for that. Look up this calendar for all the cube, actually@thecube.net. We'll right back with our next segment after this break. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone to San Francisco live coverage here, we're at the cube a be summit 2022. We're back in person. I'm John fury host of the cube. We'll be at the eighties summit in New York city this summer, check us out then. But right now, two days in San Francisco, getting all the coverage what's going on in the cloud, we got a cube alumni and friend of the cube, my dos car CEO, investor, a Sierra, and also an investor in a bunch of startups, angel investor. Gonna do great to see you. Thanks for coming on the cube. Good to see you. Good to see you. Cool. How are you? Good. >>How hello you. >>So congratulations on all your investments. Uh, you've made a lot of great successes, uh, over the past couple years, uh, and your company raising, uh, some good cash as Sarah. So give us the update. How much cash have you guys raised? What's the status of the company product what's going on? >>First of all, thank you for having me. We're back to be business with you, never after to see you. Uh, so is a company started around four years back. I invested with a few of the investors and now I'm the CEO there. We have raised close to a hundred million there. The investors are people like Norwes Menlo ventures, coastal ventures, Ram Shera, and all those people, all well known guys. And Beckel chime Paul me Mayard web. So whole bunch of operating people and, uh, Silicon valley VCs are involved >>And has it gone? >>It's going well. We are doing really well. We are going almost 300% year over year. Uh, for last three years, the space ISRA is going after is what I call the applying AI for customer service. It operations, it help desk, uh, the same place I used to work at ServiceNow. We are partners with ServiceNow to take, how can we argument for employees and customers, Salesforce, and service now to take you to the next stage? Well, >>I love having you on the cube, Dave and I, Dave LAN as well loves having you on too, because you not only bring the entrepreneurial CEO experience, you're an investor. You're like a, you're like a guest analyst. <laugh> >>You know, who does >>You, >>You >>Get the call fund to talk to you though. You >>Get the commentary, your, your finger in the pulse. Um, so I gotta ask you obviously, AI and machine learning, machine learning AI, or you want to phrase it. Isn't every application. Now, AI first, uh, you're seeing a lot of that going on. You're starting to see companies build the modern applications at the top of the stack. So the cloud scale has hit. We're seeing cloud scale. You predicted that we talked about in the cube many times. Now you have that past layer with a lot more services and cloud native becoming a standard layer. Containerizations growing Docker just raised a hundred million on a $2 billion valuation back from the dead after they pivoted from enterprise services. So open source developers are booming. Um, where's the action. I mean, is there data control plan? Emerging AI needs data. There's a lot of challenges around this. There's a lot of discussions and a lot of companies being funded, observability there's 10 billion observability companies. Data is the key. This is what's your end on this. What's your take. >>Yeah, look, I think I'll give you the few that I see right from my side. Obviously data is very clear. So the things that rumor system of recorded you and me talked about the next layer is called system of intelligence. That's where the AI will play. Like we talk cloud native, it'll be called AI. NA AI enable is a new buzzword and using the AI for customer service. It, you talk about observability. I call it, AIOps applying AOPs for good old it operation management, cloud management. So you'll see the AOPs applied for whole list of, uh, application from observability doing the CMDB, predicting the events insurance. So I see a lot of work clicking for AIOps and AI services. What used to be desk with ServiceNow BMC GLA you see a new ALA emerging as a system of intelligence. Uh, the next would be is applying AI with workflow automation. So that's where you'll see a lot of things called customer workflows, employee workflows. So think of what UI path automation, anywhere ServiceNow are doing, that area will be driven with AI workflows. So you, you see AI going >>Off is RPA. A company is AI, is RPA a feature of something bigger? Or can someone have a company on RPA UI S one will be at their event this summer? Um, is it a product company? I mean, or I mean, RPA is, should be embedded in everything. It's a >>Feature. It is very good point. Very, very good thinking. So one is, it's a category for sure. Like, as we thought, it's a category, it's an area where RPA may change the name. I call it much more about automation, workflow automation, but RPA and automation is a category. Um, it's a company also, but that automation should be embedded in every area. Yeah. Like we call cloud NATO and AI. They it'll become automation data. Yeah. And that's your, thinking's >>Interesting me. I think about the, what you're talking about what's coming to mind is I'm kinda having flashbacks to the old software model of middleware. Remember at middleware, it was very easy to understand it was middleware. It sat between two things and then the middle, and it was software abstraction. Now you have all kinds of workflows, abstractions everywhere. So multiple databases, it's not a monolithic thing. Right? Right. So as you break that down, is this the new modern middleware? Because what you're talking about is data workflows, but they might be siloed. Are they integrated? I mean, these are the challenges. This is crazy. What's the, >>So remember the databases became called polyglot databases. Yeah. I call this one polyglot automation. So you need automation as a layer, as a category, but you also need to put automation in every area like you, you were talking about, it should be part of service. Now it should be part of ISRA. Like every company, every Salesforce. So that's why you see it MuleSoft and sales buying RPA companies. So you'll see all the SaaS companies, cloud companies having an automation as a core. So it's like how you have a database and compute and sales and networking. You'll also have an automation as a layer embedded inside every stack. >>All right. So I wanna shift gears a little bit and get your perspective on what's going on behind us. You can see, uh, behind, as you got the XPO hall got, um, we're back to vis, but you got, you know, AMD, Clum, Dynatrace data, dog, innovative, all the companies out here that we know, we interview them all. They're trying to be suppliers to this growing enterprise market. Right? Okay. But now you also got the entrepreneurial equation. Okay. We're gonna have John Sado on from Deibel later. He's a former NEA guy and we always talk to Jerry, Jen, we know all the, the VCs, what does the startups look like? What does the state of the, in your mind, cause you, I know you invest the entrepreneurial founder situation. Cloud's bigger. Mm-hmm <affirmative> global, right? Data's part of it. You mentioned data's code. Yes. Basically. Data's everything. What's it like for a first an entrepreneur right now who's starting a company. What's the white space. What's the attack plan. How do they get in the market? How do they engineer everything? >>Very good. So I'll give it to, uh, two things that I'm seeing out there. Remember leaders of Amazon created the startups 15 years back. Everybody built on Amazon now, Azure and GCP. The next layer would be people don't just build on Amazon. They're going to build it on top of snow. Flake companies are snowflake becomes a data platform, right? People will build on snowflake, right? So I see my old boss playing ment, try to build companies on snowflake. So you don't build it just on Amazon. You build it on Amazon and snowflake. Snowflake will become your data store. Snowflake will become your data layer, right? So I think that's the next level of companies trying to do that. So if I'm doing observability AI ops, if I'm doing next level of Splunk SIM, I'm gonna build it on snowflake, on Salesforce, on Amazon, on Azure, et cetera. >>It's interesting. You know, Jerry Chan has it put out a thesis a couple months ago called castles in the cloud where your moat is, what you do in the cloud. Not necessarily in the, in the IP. Um, Dave LAN and I had last re invent, coined the term super cloud, right? It's got a lot of traction and a lot of people throwing, throwing mud at us, but we were, our thesis was, is that what Snowflake's doing? What Goldman S Sachs is doing. You're starting to see these clouds on top of clouds. So Amazon's got this huge CapEx advantage. And guys like Charles Fitzgeral out there, who we like was kind of hitting on us saying, Hey, you guys terrible, they didn't get him. Like, yeah, I don't think he gets it, but that's a whole, can't wait to debate him publicly on this. <laugh> cause he's cool. Um, but snowflake is on Amazon. Yes. Now they say they're on Azure now. Cause they've got a bigger market and they're public, but ultimately without a AWS snowflake doesn't exist and, and they're reimagining the data warehouse with the cloud, right? That's the billion dollar opportunity. >>It is. It is. They both are very tight. So imagine what Frank has done at snowflake and Amazon. So if I'm a startup today, I want to build everything on Amazon where possible whatever is, I cannot build. I'll make the pass layer room. The middle layer pass will be snowflake. So I cannot build it on snowflake. I can use them for data layer if I really need to size, I'll build it on force.com Salesforce. Yeah. Right. So I think that's where you'll >>See. So basically the, the, if you're an entrepreneur, the, the north star in terms of the, the outcome is be a super cloud. It >>Is, >>That's the application on another big CapEx ride, the CapEx of AWS or cloud, >>And that reduce your product development, your go to market and you get use the snowflake marketplace to drive your engagement. Yeah. >>Yeah. How are, how is Amazon and the clouds dealing with these big whales, the snowflakes of the world? I mean, I know they got a great relationship, uh, but snowflake now has to run a company they're public. Yeah. So, I mean, I'll say, I think got Redshift. Amazon has got Redshift. Um, but snowflake big customer. The they're probably paying AWS big, >>I >>Think big bills too. >>So John, very good. Cause it's like how Netflix is and Amazon prime, right. Netflix runs on Amazon, but Amazon has Amazon prime that co-option will be there. So Amazon will have Redshift, but Amazon is also partnering with the snowflake to have native snowflake data warehouse as a data layer. So I think depending on the use case you have to use each of the above, I think snowflake is here for a long term. Yeah. Yeah. So if I'm building an application, I want to use snowflake then writing from stats. >>Well, I think that comes back down to entrepreneurial hustle. Do you have a better product? Right. Product value will ultimately determine it as long as the cloud doesn't, you know, foreclose your value. That's right. With some sort of internal hack, but I've think, I think the general question that I have is that I think it's okay to have a super cloud like that because the rising tide is still happening at some point, when does the rising tide stop and the people shopping up their knives, it gets more competitive or is it just an infinite growth cycle? I >>Think it's growth. You call it closed skill you the word cloud scale. So I think look, cloud will continually agree, increase. I think there's as long as there more movement from on, uh, on-prem to the classical data center, I think there's no reason at this point, the rumor, the old lift and shift that's happening in like my business. I see people lift and shifting from the it operations, it helpless. Even the customer service service. Now the ticket data from BMCs CAS like Microfocus, all those workloads are shifted to the cloud, right? So cloud ticketing system is happening. Cloud system of record is happening. So I think this train has still a long way to go made. >>I wanna get your thoughts for the folks watching that are, uh, enterprise buyers are practitioners, not suppliers to the market. Feel free to text me or DMing. Next question is really about the buying side, which is if I'm a customer, what's the current, um, appetite for startup products. Cause you know, the big enterprises now and you know, small, medium, large, and large enterprise, they're all buying new companies cuz a startup can go from zero to relevant very quickly. So that means now enterprises are engaging heavily with startups. What's it like what's is there a change in order of magnitude of the relationship between the startup selling to, or growing startup selling to an enterprise? Um, have you seen changes there? I mean seeing some stuff, but why don't we get your thoughts on that? What it >>Is you, if I remember going back to our 2007 or eight, when I used to talk to you back then when Amazon started very small, right? We are an Amazon summit here. So I think enterprises on the average used to spend nothing with startups. It's almost like 0% or one person today. Most companies are already spending 20, 30% with startups. Like if I look at a C I will line our business, it's gone. Yeah. Can it go more? I think it can double in the next four, five years. Yeah. Spending on the startups. Yeah. >>And check out, uh, AWS startups.com. That's a site that we built for the startup community for buyers and startups. And I want to get your reaction because I, I reference the URL causes like there's like a bunch of companies we've been promoting because the solution that startups have actually are new stuff. Yes. It's bending, it's shifting left for security or using data differently or um, building tools and platforms for data engineering. Right. Which is a new persona that's emerging. So you know, a lot of good resources there. Um, and goes back now to the data question. Now, getting back to your, what you're working on now is what's your thoughts around this new, um, data engineering persona, you mentioned AIOps, we've been seeing AIOps IOPS booming and that's creating a new developer paradigm that's right. Which we call coin data as code data as code is like infrastructure as code, but it's for data, right? It's developing with data, right? Retraining machine learnings, going back to the data lake, getting data to make, to do analysis, to make the machine learning better post event or post action. So this, this data engineers like an SRE for data, it's a new, scalable role we're seeing. Do you see the same thing? Do you agree? Um, do you disagree or can you share? >>I, a lot of thoughts that Fu I see the AI op solutions in the futures should be not looking back. I need to be like we are in San Francisco bay. That means earthquake prediction. Right? I want AOPs to predict when the outages are gonna happen. When there's a performance issue. I don't think most AOPs vendors have not gone there yet. Like I spend a lot of time with data dog, Cisco app dynamic, right? Dynatrace, all this solution will go future towards predict to pro so solution with AOPs. But what you bring up a very good point on the data side. I think like we have a Amazon marketplace and Amazon for startup, there should be data exchange where you want to create for AOPs and AI service that customers give the data, share the data because we thought the data algorithms are useless. I can give the best algorithm, but I gotta train them, modify them, make them better, make them better. Yeah. And I think their whole data exchange is the industry has not thought through something you and me talk many times. Yeah. Yeah. I think the whole, that area is very important. >>You've always been on, um, on the Vanguard of data because, uh, it's been really fun. Yeah. >>Going back to big data days back in 2009, you know that >>Look at, look how much data bricks has grown. >>It is doubled. The key cloud >>Air kinda went private, so good stuff. What are you working on right now? Give a, give a, um, plug for what you're working on. You'll still investing. >>I do still invest, but look, I'm a hundred percent on ISRA right now. I'm the CEO there. Yeah. Okay. So right. ISRA is my number one baby right now. So I'm looking year that growing customers and my customers, or some of them, you like it's zoom auto desk, McAfee, uh, grand <inaudible>. So all the top customers, um, mainly for it help desk customer service. AIOps those are three product lines and going after enterprise and commercial deals. >>And when should someone buy your product? What's what's their need? What category is it? >>I think they look whenever somebody needs to buy the product is if you need AOP solution to predict, keep your lights on, predict ours. One area. If you want to improve employee experience, you are using a slack teams and you want to automate all your workflows. That's another value problem. Third is customer service. You don't want to hire more people to do it. Some of the areas where you want to scale your company, grow your company, eliminate the cost customer service, >>Great stuff, man. Doing great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Congratulations on the success of your company and your investments. Thanks for coming on the cube. Okay. I'm John fur here at the cube live in San Francisco for day one of two days of coverage of a us summit 2022. And we're gonna be at Aus summit in San, uh, in New York in the summer. So look for that on the calendar, of course, go to a us startups.com. That's a site for all the hot startups and of course the cube.net and Silicon angle.com. Thanks for watching. We'll be back more coverage after this short break. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone. This the cubes coverage here in San Francisco, California, a Davis summit, 2022, the beginning of the event season, as it comes back, little bit smaller footprint, a lot of hybrid events going on, but this is actually a physical event, a summit in new York's coming in the summer. We'll be two with the cube on the set. We're getting back in the Groove's psych to be back. We were at reinvent, uh, as well, and we'll see more and more cube, but you're gonna see a lot of virtual cube outta hybrid cube. We wanna get all those conversations, try to get more interviews, more flow going. But right now I'm excited to have Corey Quinn here on the back on the cube chief cloud economist with duck bill groove, he's the founder, uh, and chief content person always got great angles, fun comedy, authoritative Corey. Great to see you. Thank you. >>Thanks. Coming on. Sure is a lot of words to describe is shit posting, which is how I describe what I tend to do. Most days, >>Shit posting is an art form now. And if you look at mark, Andrew's been doing a lot of shit posting lately. All a billionaires are shit posting, but they don't know how to do it. They're >>Doing it right. There's something opportunity there. It's like, here's how to be even more obnoxious and incisive. It's honestly the most terrifying scenario for anyone is if I have that kind of budget to throw at my endeavors, it's like, I get excited with a nonsense I can do with a $20 gift card for an AWS credit compared to, oh well, if I could buy a mid-size island to begin doing this from, oh, then we're having fun. >>This shit posting trend. Interesting. I was watching a thread go on about, saw someone didn't get a job because of their shit posting and the employer didn't get it. And then someone on this side I'll hire the guy cuz I get that's highly intelligent shit posting. So for the audience that doesn't know what shit posting is, what, what is shitposting >>It's more or less talking about the world of enterprise technology, which even that sentence is hard to finish without falling asleep and toppling out of my chair in front of everyone on the livestream, but it's doing it in such a way that brings it to life that says the quiet part. A lot of the audience is thinking, but generally doesn't say either because they're polite or not a Jack ass or more prosaically are worried about getting fired for better or worse. I don't have that particular constraint, >>Which is why people love you. So let's talk about what you, what you think is, uh, worthy and not worthy in the industry right now, obviously, uh, Cuban coming up in Spain, which they're having a physical event, you see the growth of cloud native Amazon's evolving Atos, especially new CEO. Andy move on to be the chief of all. Amazon just saw him the cover of was it time magazine. Um, he's under a lot of stress. Amazon's changed. Invoice has changed. What's working. What's not, what's rising, what's falling. What's hot. What's not, >>It's easy to sit here and criticize almost anything. These folks do. They're they're effectively in a fishbowl, but I have trouble. Imagine the logistics, it takes to wind up handling the catering for a relatively downscale event like this one this year, let alone running a 1.7 million employee company having to balance all the competing challenges and pressures and the rest. I, I just can't fathom what it would be like to look at all of AWS. And it's, it's sprawling immense, the nominates our entire industry and say, okay, this is a good start, but I, I wanna focus on something with a broader remit. What is that? How do you even get into that position? And you can't win once you're there. All you can do is hold onto the tiger and hope you don't get mold. >>Well, there's a lot of force for good conversations. Seeing a lot of that going on, Amazon's trying to a, is trying to portray themselves, you know, the Pathfinder, you know, you're the pioneer, um, force for good. And I get that and I think that's a good angle as cloud goes mainstream. There's still the question of, we had a guy on just earlier, who was a skydiving instructor and we were joking about the early days of cloud. Like that was like skydiving, build a parachute open, you know, and now it's same kind of thing. As you move to edge, things are like reliable in some areas, but still new, new fringe, new areas. That's crazy. Well, >>Since the last time we've spoken, uh, Steve Schmidt is now the CISO for all of Amazon and his backfill replacement. The AWS CISO is CJ. Moses who as a hobby races, a as a semi-pro race car, our driver to my understanding, which either, I don't know what direction to take that in either. This is what he does to relax or ultimately, or ultimately it's. Huh? That, that certainly says something about risk assessment. I'm not entirely sure what, but okay. Either way, it sounds like more exciting. Like they >>Better have a replacement ready in case something goes wrong on the track, highly >>Available >>CSOs. I gotta say one of the things I do like in the recent trend is that the tech companies are getting into the formula one, which I was never a fan of until I watched that Netflix series. But when you look at the formula one, it's pretty cool. Cause it's got some tech angles, I get the whole data instrumentation thing, but the most coolest thing about formula, the one is they have these new rigs out. Yeah. Where you can actually race in e-sports with other people in pure simulation of the race car. You gotta get the latest and video graphics card, but it's basically a tricked out PC with amazing monitors and you have all the equipment of F1 and you're basically simulating racing. Oh, >>It's great too. And I can see the appeal of these tech companies getting it into it because these things are basically rocket shifts. When those cars go, like they're sitting there, we can instrument every last part of what is going on inside that vehicle. And then AWS crops up. And we can bill on every one of those dimensions too. And it's like slow down their hasty pudding one step at a time. But I do see the appeal. >>So I gotta ask you about, uh, what's going on in your world. I know you have a lot of great SA we've been following you in the queue for many, many years. Got a great newsletter. Check out Corey Quinn's newsletter, uh, screaming in the cloud program. Uh, you're on the cutting edge and you've got a great balance between really being snarky and, and, and really being delivering content. That's exciting, uh, for people, uh, with a little bit of an edge, um, how's that going? Uh, what's the blowback, any blowback late leads there been tick? What was, what are some of the things you're hearing from your audience, more Corey, more Corey. And then of course the, the PR team's calling you >>The weird thing about having an audience beyond a certain size is far and away as a landslide. The most common response I get is silence where it's hi, I'm emailing an awful lot of people at last week in AWS every week and okay. They not have heard me. It. That is not actually true. People just generally don't respond to email because who responds to email newsletters. That sounds like something, a lunatic might do same story with response to live streams and podcasts. It's like, I'm gonna call into that am radio show and give them a piece of my mind. People generally don't do that. >>We should do that. Actually. I think sure would call in. Oh, I, I >>Think >>I guarantee if we had that right now, people would call in and Corey, what do you think about X? >>Yeah. It not, everyone understands the full context of what I do. And in fact, increasingly few people do and that's fine. I, I keep forgetting that sometimes people do not see what I'm doing in the same light that I do. And that's fine. Blowback has been largely minimal. Honestly, I am surprised anything by how little I have gotten over the last five years of doing this, but it would be easier to dismiss me if I weren't generally. Right. When, okay, so you launch this new service and it seems pretty crappy to me cuz when I try and build something, it falls over and begs for help. And people might not like hearing that, but it's what customers are finding too. Yeah. I really am the voice of the customer. >>You know, I always joke with Dave Avante about how John Fort's always at, uh, um, reinvent getting the interview with jazzy now, Andy we're there, you're there. And so we have these rituals at the events. It's all cool. Um, one of the rituals I like about your, um, your content is you like to get on the naming product names. Um, and, and, and, and, and kind of goof on that. Now why I like is because I used to work at ETT Packard where they used to name things as like engineers, HP 1 0, 0 5, or we can't, we >>Have a new monitor. How are we gonna name it? Throw the wireless keyboard down the stairs again. And then there you go. Yeah. >>It's and the old joke at HP was if they, if they invented sushi, they'd say, yeah, we can't call sushi. It's cold, dead fish, but that's what it is. And so the joke was cold. Dead fish is a better name than sushi. So you know is fun. So what's the, what are the, how's the Amazon doing in there? Have they changed their naming, uh, strategy, uh, on some of their, their product >>They're going in different directions. When they named Aurora, they decided to explore a new theme of Disney princesses as they go down those paths. And some things are more descriptive. Some people are clearly getting bonus on number of words, they can shove into it. Like the better a service is the longer it's name. Like AWS systems manager, a session manager is a great one. I love the service ridiculous name. They have a systems manager, parameter store with is great. They have secrets manager, which does the same thing. It's two words less, but that one costs money in a way that systems manage through parameter store does not. It's fun. >>What's your, what's your favorite combination of acronyms >>Combination of you >>Got Ks. You got EMR, you got EC two. You got S three SQS. Well, RedShift's not an acronym. You got >>Gas is one of my personal favorites because it's either elastic block store or elastic bean stock, depending entirely on the context of the conversation, >>They still got bean stock or is that still >>Around? Oh, they never turn anything off. They're like the anti Google, Google turns things off while they're still building it. Whereas Amazon is like, wow, we built this thing in 2005 and everyone hates it. But while we certainly can't change it, now it has three customers on it, John. >>Okay. >>Simple BV still haunts our >>Dreams. I, I actually got an email on, I saw one of my, uh, servers, all these C twos were being deprecated and I got an email I'm like, I couldn't figure out. Why can you just like roll it over? Why, why are you telling me just like, gimme something else. Right. Okay. So let me talk about, uh, the other things I want to ask you is that like, okay, so as Amazon gets better in some areas where do they need more work? And you, your opinion, because obviously they're all interested in new stuff and they tend to like put it out there for their end to end customers. But then they've got ecosystem partners who actually have the same product. Yes. And, and this has been well documented. So it's, it's not controversial. It's just that Amazon's got a database Snowflake's got out database service. So, you know, Redshift, snowflake database is out there. So you've got this optician. Yes. How's that going? And what are you hearing about the reaction to any of that stuff? >>Depends on who you ask. They love to basically trot out a bunch of their partners who will say nice things about them. And it very much has heirs of, let's be honest, a hostage video, but okay. Cuz these companies do partner with Amazon and they cannot afford to rock the boat too far. I'm not partnered with anyone. I can say what I want. And they're basically restricted to taking away my birthday at worse so I can live with that. >>All right. So I gotta ask about multi-cloud cause obviously the other cloud shows are coming up. Amazon hated that word. Multi-cloud um, a lot of people are saying, you know, it's not a real good marketing word. Like multicloud sounds like, you know, root canal. Mm-hmm <affirmative> right. So is there a better description for multicloud? >>Multiple single >>Loves that term. Yeah. >>You're building in multiple single points of failure. Do it for the right reasons or don't do it as a default. I believe not doing it is probably the, the right answer. However, and if I were, if I were Amazon, I wouldn't want to talk about multi-cloud either as the industry leader, let's talk about other clouds, bad direction to go in from a market cap perspective. It doesn't end well for you, but regardless of what they want to talk about, or don't want to talk about what they say, what they don't say, I tune all of it out. And I look at what customers are doing and multi-cloud exists in a variety of some brilliant, some brain dead. It depends a lot on context. But my general response is when someone gets on stage from a company and tells me to do a thing that directly benefits their company. I am skeptical at best. Yeah. When customers get on stage and say, this is what we're doing because it solves problems. That's when I shut up and listen. >>Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Corey, I gotta ask you a question cause I know you we've been, you know, fellow journey mean in the, in the cloud journey, going to all the events and then the pandemic hit where now in the third year, who knows what it's gonna end, certainly events are gonna look different. They're gonna be either changing footprint with the virtual piece, new group formations community's gonna emerge. You've got a pretty big community growing and it's growing like crazy. What's the weirdest or coolest thing, or just big changes you've seen with the pan endemic, uh, from your perspective, cuz you've been in the you're in the middle of the whitewater rafting. You've seen the events you circle offline. You saw the online piece come in, you're commentating, you're calling balls and strikes in the industry. You got a great team developing over there. Duck bill group. What's the big aha moment that you saw with the pandemic. Weird, funny, serious, real in the industry and with customers what's >>Accessibility. Reinvent is a great example. When in the before times it's open to anyone who wants to attend, who >>Can pony. >>Hello and welcome back to the live cube coverage here in San Francisco, California, the cube live coverage. Two days, day two of a summit, 2022 Aish summit, New York city coming up in summer. We'll be there as well. Events are back. I'm the host, John fur, the Cub got great guest here. Johnny Dallas with Ze. Um, here is on the queue. We're gonna talk about his background. Uh, little trivia here. He was the youngest engineer ever worked at Amazon at the age. 17 had to get escorted into reinvent in Vegas cause he was underage <laugh> with security, all good stories. Now the CEO of company called Z know DevOps kind of focus, managed service, a lot of cool stuff, Johnny, welcome to the cube. >>Thanks John. Great. >>So tell a story. You were the youngest engineer at AWS. >>I was, yes. So I used to work at a company called Bebo. I got started very young. I started working when I was about 14, um, kind of as a software engineer. And when I, uh, it was about 16. I graduated out of high school early, um, working at this company Bebo, still running all of the DevOps at that company. Um, I went to reinvent in about 2018 to give a talk about some of the DevOps software I wrote at that company. Um, but you know, as many of those things were probably familiar with reinvent happens in a casino and I was 16. So was not able to actually go into the, a casino on my own. Um, so I'd have <inaudible> security as well as casino security escort me in to give my talk. >>Did Andy jazzy, was he aware of >>This? Um, you know, that's a great question. I don't know. <laugh> >>I'll ask him great story. So obviously you started a young age. I mean, it's so cool to see you jump right in. I mean, I mean you never grew up with the old school that I used to grew up in and loading package software, loading it onto the server, deploying it, plugging the cables in, I mean you just rocking and rolling with DevOps as you look back now what's the big generational shift because now you got the Z generation coming in, millennials on the workforce. It's changing like no one's putting and software on servers. Yeah, >>No. I mean the tools keep getting better, right? We, we keep creating more abstractions that make it easier and easier. When I, when I started doing DevOps, I could go straight into E two APIs. I had APIs from the get go and you know, my background was, I was a software engineer. I never went through like the CIS admin stack. I, I never had to, like you said, rack servers, myself. I was immediately able to scale. I was managing, I think 2,500 concurrent servers across every Ables region through software. It was a fundamental shift. >>Did you know what an SRE was at that time? >>Uh, >>You were kind of an SRE on >>Yeah, I was basically our first SRE, um, was familiar with the, with the phrasing, but really thought of myself as a software engineer who knows cloud APIs, not a SRE. All >>Right. So let's talk about what's what's going on now as you look at the landscape today, what's the coolest thing that's going on in your mind in cloud? >>Yeah, I think the, I think the coolest thing is, you know, we're seeing the next layer of those abstraction tools exist and that's what we're doing with Z is we've basically gone and we've, we're building an app platform that deploys onto your cloud. So if you're familiar with something like Carku, um, where you just click a GitHub repo, uh, we actually make it that easy. You click a GI hub repo and it will deploy on ALS using a AWS tools. So, >>Right. So this is Z. This is the company. Yes. How old's the company about >>A year and a half old now. >>All right. So explain what it does. >>Yeah. So we make it really easy for any software engineer to deploy on a AWS. It's not SREs. These are the actual application engineers doing the business logic. They don't really want to think about Yamo. They don't really want to configure everything super deeply. They want to say, run this API on S in the best way possible. We've encoded all the best practices into software and we set it up for you. Yeah. >>So I think the problem you're solving is that there's a lot of want be DevOps engineers. And then they realize, oh shit, I don't wanna do this. Yeah. And some people want to do it. They loved under the hood. Right. People love to have infrastructure, but the average developer needs to actually be as agile on scale. So that seems to be the problem you solve. Right? >>Yeah. We, we, we give way more productivity to each individual engineer, you know? >>All right. So let me ask you a question. So let me just say, I'm a developer. Cool. I build this new app. It's a streaming app or whatever. I'm making it up cube here, but let's just say I deploy it. I need your service. But what happens about when my customers say, Hey, what's your SLA? The CDN went down from this it's flaky. Does Amazon have, so how do you handle all that SLA reporting that Amazon provides? Cuz they do a good job with sock reports all through the console. But as you start getting into DevOps <affirmative> and sell your app, mm-hmm <affirmative> you have customer issues. How do you, how do you view that? Yeah, >>Well, I, I think you make a great point of AWS has all this stuff already. AWS has SLAs. AWS has contract. Aw has a lot of the tools that are expected. Um, so we don't have to reinvent the wheel here. What we do is we help people get to those SLAs more easily. So Hey, this is AWS SLA as a default. Um, Hey, we'll fix you your services. This is what you can expect here. Um, but we can really leverage S's reliability of you. Don't have to trust us. You have to trust ALS and trust that the setup is good there. >>Do you handle all the recovery or mitigation between, uh, identification say downtime for instance? Oh, the server's not 99% downtime. Uh, went down for an hour, say something's going on? And is there a service dashboard? How does it get what's the remedy? Do you have a, how does all that work? >>Yeah, so we have some built in remediation. You know, we, we basically say we're gonna do as much as we can to keep your endpoint up 24 7 mm-hmm <affirmative>. If it's something in our control, we'll do it. If it's a disc failure, that's on us. If you push bad code, we won't put out that new version until it's working. Um, so we do a lot to make sure that your endpoint stay is up, um, and then alert you if there's a problem that we can't fix. So cool. Hey S has some downtime, this thing's going on. You need to do this action. Um, we'll let you know. >>All right. So what do you do for fun? >>Yeah, so, uh, for, for fun, um, a lot of side projects. <laugh> uh, >>What's your side hustle right now. You got going on >>The, uh, it's >>A lot of tools playing tools, serverless. >>Yeah, painless. A lot of serverless stuff. Um, I think there's a lot of really cool WAM stuff as well. Going on right now. Um, I love tools is, is the truest answer is I love building something that I can give to somebody else. And they're suddenly twice as productive because of it. Um, >>It's a good feeling, isn't it? >>Oh yeah. There's >>Nothing like tools were platforms. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, the expression, too many tools in the tool. She becomes, you know, tools for all. And then ultimately tools become platforms. What's your view on that? Because if a good tool works and starts to get traction, you need to either add more tools or start building a platform platform versus tool. What's your, what's your view on a reaction to that kind of concept debate? >>Yeah, it's a good question. Uh, we we've basically started as like a, a platform. First of we've really focused on these, uh, developers who don't wanna get deep into the DevOps. And so we've done all of the pieces of the stacks. We do C I C D management. Uh, we do container orchestration, we do monitoring. Um, and now we're, spliting those up into individual tools so they can be used. Awesome in conjunction more. >>All right. So what are some of the use cases that you see for your service? It's DevOps basically nano service DevOps. So people who want a DevOps team, do clients have a DevOps person and then one person, two people what's the requirements to run >>Z. Yeah. So we we've got teams, um, from no DevOps is kind of when they start and then we've had teams grow up to about, uh, five, 10 men DevOps teams. Um, so, you know, as is more infrastructure people come in because we're in your cloud, you're able to go in and configure it on top you're we can't block you. Uh, you wanna use some new AWS service. You're welcome to use that alongside the stack that we deploy >>For you. How many customers do you have now? >>So we've got about 40 companies that are using us for all of their infrastructure, um, kind of across the board, um, as well as >>What's the pricing model. >>Uh, so our pricing model is we, we charge basically similar to an engineering salary. So we charge a monthly rate. We have plans at 300 bucks a month, a thousand bucks a month, and then enterprise plan for >>The requirement scale. Yeah. So back into the people cost, you must have her discounts, not a fully loaded thing, is it? >>Yeah, there's a discounts kind of asking >>Then you pass the Amazon bill. >>Yeah. So our customers actually pay for the Amazon bill themselves. So >>Have their own >>Account. There's no margin on top. You're linking your, a analyst account in, um, got it. Which is huge because we can, we are now able to help our customers get better deals with Amazon. Um, got it. We're incentivized on their team to drive your costs down. >>And what's your unit main unit of economics software scale. >>Yeah. Um, yeah, so we, we think of things as projects. How many services do you have to deploy as that scales up? Um, awesome. >>All right. You're 20 years old now you not even can't even drink legally. <laugh> what are you gonna do when you're 30? We're gonna be there. >>Well, we're, uh, we're making it better, better, >>Better the old guy on the queue here. <laugh> >>I think, uh, I think we're seeing a big shift of, um, you know, we've got these major clouds. ALS is obviously the biggest cloud and it's constantly coming out with new services, but we're starting to see other clouds have built many of the common services. So Kubernetes is a great example. It exists across all the clouds and we're starting to see new platforms come up on top that allow you to leverage tools for multiple times. At the same time. Many of our customers actually have AWS as their primary cloud and they'll have secondary clouds or they'll pull features from other clouds into AWS, um, through our software. I think that's, I'm very excited by that. And I, uh, expect to be working on that when I'm 30. <laugh> awesome. >>Well, you gonna have a good future. I gotta ask you this question cuz uh, you know, I always, I was a computer science undergrad in the, in the, and um, computer science back then was hardcore, mostly systems OS stuff, uh, database compiler. Um, now there's so much compi, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> how do you look at the high school college curriculum experience slash folks who are nerding out on computer science? It's not one or two things. You've got a lot of, lot of things. I mean, look at Python, data engineering and emerging as a huge skill. What's it, what's it like for college kids now and high school kids? What, what do you think they should be doing if you had to give advice to your 16 year old self back a few years ago now in college? Um, I mean Python's not a great language, but it's super effective for coding and the datas were really relevant, but it's, you've got other language opportunities you've got tools to build. So you got a whole culture of young builders out there. What should, what should people gravitate to in your opinion and stay away from or >>Stay away from? That's a good question. I, I think that first of all, you're very right of the, the amount of developers is increasing so quickly. Um, and so we see more specialization. That's why we also see, you know, these SREs that are different than typical application engineering. You know, you get more specialization in job roles. Um, I think if, what I'd say to my 16 year old self is do projects, um, the, I learned most of my, what I've learned just on the job or online trying things, playing with different technologies, actually getting stuff out into the world, um, way more useful than what you'll learn in kind of a college classroom. I think classroom's great to, uh, get a basis, but you need to go out and experiment actually try things. >>You know? I think that's great advice. In fact, I would just say from my experience of doing all the hard stuff and cloud is so great for just saying, okay, I'm done, I'm banning the project. Move on. Yeah. Cause you know, it's not gonna work in the old days. You have to build this data center. I bought all this, you know, people hang on to the old, you know, project and try to force it out there. Now you >>Can launch a project now, >>Instant gratification, it ain't working <laugh> or this is shut it down and then move on to something new. >>Yeah, exactly. Instantly you should be able to do that much more quickly. Right. So >>You're saying get those projects and don't be afraid to shut it down. Mm-hmm <affirmative> that? Do you agree with that? >>Yeah. I think it's ex experiment. Uh, you're probably not gonna hit it rich on the first one. It's probably not gonna be that idea is the genius idea. So don't be afraid to get rid of things and just try over and over again. It's it's number of reps >>That'll win. I was commenting online. Elon Musk was gonna buy Twitter, that whole Twitter thing. And someone said, Hey, you know, what's the, I go look at the product group at Twitter's been so messed up because they actually did get it right on the first time. And we can just a great product. They could never change it because people would freak out and the utility of Twitter. I mean, they gotta add some things, the added button and we all know what they need to add, but the product, it was just like this internal dysfunction, the product team, what are we gonna work on? Don't change the product so that you kind of have there's opportunities out there where you might get the lucky strike right outta the gate. Yeah. Right. You don't know. >>It's almost a curse too. It's you're not gonna hit curse Twitter. You're not gonna hit a rich the second time too. So yeah. >><laugh> Johnny Dallas. Thanks for coming on the cube. Really appreciate it. Give a plug for your company. Um, take a minute to explain what you're working on. What you're look looking for. You hiring funding. Customers. Just give a plug, uh, last minute and kind the last word. >>Yeah. So, um, John Dallas from Ze, if you, uh, need any help with your DevOps, if you're a early startup, you don't have DevOps team, um, or you're trying to deploy across clouds, check us out z.com. Um, we are actively hiring. So if you are a software engineer excited about tools and cloud, or you're interested in helping getting this message out there, hit me up. Um, find us on z.co. >>Yeah. LinkedIn Twitter handle GitHub handle. >>Yeah. I'm the only Johnny on a LinkedIn and GitHub and underscore Johnny Dallas underscore on Twitter. All right. Um, >>Johnny Dallas, the youngest engineer working at Amazon, um, now 20 we're on great new project here in the cube. Builders are all young. They're growing into the business. They got cloud at their, at their back it's tailwind. I wish I was 20. Again, this is a I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching. Thanks. >>Welcome >>Back to the cubes. Live coverage of a AWS summit in San Francisco, California events are back, uh, ADAS summit in New York cities. This summer, the cube will be there as well. Check us out there lot. I'm glad we have events back. It's great to have everyone here. I'm John furry host of the cube. Dr. Matt wood is with me cube alumni now VP of business analytics division of AWS. Matt. Great to see you. Thank >>You, John. Great to be here. >>Appreciate it. I always call you Dr. Matt wood, because Andy jazzy always says Dr. Matt, we >>Would introduce you on the he's the one and only the one and >>Only Dr. Matt wood >>In joke. I love it. >>Andy style. And I think you had walkup music too on, you know, >>Too. Yes. We all have our own personalized walk. >>So talk about your new role. I not new role, but you're running up, um, analytics, business or AWS. What does that consist of right now? >>Sure. So I work, I've got what I consider to be the one of the best jobs in the world. Uh, I get to work with our customers and, uh, the teams at AWS, uh, to build the analytics services that millions of our customers use to, um, uh, slice dice, pivot, uh, better understand their day data, um, look at how they can use that data for, um, reporting, looking backwards and also look at how they can use that data looking forward. So predictive analytics and machine learning. So whether it is, you know, slicing and dicing in the lower level of, uh Hado and the big data engines, or whether you're doing ETR with glue or whether you're visualizing the data in quick side or building models in SageMaker. I got my, uh, fingers in a lot of pies. >>You know, one of the benefits of, uh, having cube coverage with AWS since 2013 is watching the progression. You were on the cube that first year we were at reinvent 2013 and look at how machine learning just exploded onto the scene. You were involved in that from day one is still day one, as you guys say mm-hmm <affirmative>, what's the big thing now. I mean, look at, look at just what happened. Machine learning comes in and then a slew of services come in and got SageMaker became a hot seller, right outta the gate. Mm-hmm <affirmative> the database stuff was kicking butt. So all this is now booming. Mm-hmm <affirmative> that was the real generational changeover for <inaudible> what's the perspective. What's your perspective on, yeah, >>I think how that's evolved. No, I think it's a really good point. I, I totally agree. I think for machine machine learning, um, there was sort of a Renaissance in machine learning and the application of machine learning machine learning as a technology has been around for 50 years, let's say, but, uh, to do machine learning, right? You need like a lot of data, the data needs to be high quality. You need a lot of compute to be able to train those models and you have to be able to evaluate what those mean as you apply them to real world problems. And so the cloud really removed a lot of the constraints. Finally, customers had all of the data that they needed. We gave them services to be able to label that data in a high quality way. There's all the compute. You need to be able to train the models <laugh> and so where you go. >>And so the cloud really enabled this Renaissance with machine learning, and we're seeing honestly, a similar Renaissance with, uh, with data, uh, and analytics. You know, if you look back, you know, five, 10 years, um, analytics was something you did in batch, like your data warehouse ran a analysis to do, uh, reconciliation at the end of the month. And then was it? Yeah. And so that's when you needed it, but today, if your Redshift cluster isn't available, uh, Uber drivers don't turn up door dash deliveries, don't get made. It's analytics is now central to virtually every business and it is central to every virtually every business is digital transformation. Yeah. And be able to take that data from a variety of sources here, or to query it with high performance mm-hmm <affirmative> to be able to actually then start to augment that data with real information, which usually comes from technical experts and domain experts to form, you know, wisdom and information from raw data. That's kind of, uh, what most organizations are trying to do when they kind of go through this analytics journey. It's >>Interesting, you know, Dave LAN and I always talk on the cube, but out, you know, the future and, and you look back, the things we were talking about six years ago are actually happening now. Yeah. And it's not a, a, a, you know, hyped up statement to say digital transformation. It actually's happening now. And there's also times where we bang our fist on the table, say, I really think this is so important. And Dave says, John, you're gonna die on that hill <laugh>. >>And >>So I I'm excited that this year, for the first time I didn't die on that hill. I've been saying data you're right. Data as code is the next infrastructure as code mm-hmm <affirmative>. And Dave's like, what do you mean by that? We're talking about like how data gets and it's happening. So we just had an event on our 80 bus startups.com site mm-hmm <affirmative>, um, a showcase with startups and the theme was data as code and interesting new trends emerging really clearly the role of a data engineer, right? Like an SRE, what an SRE did for cloud. You have a new data engineering role because of the developer on, uh, onboarding is massively increasing exponentially, new developers, data science, scientists are growing mm-hmm <affirmative> and the, but the pipelining and managing and engineering as a system. Yeah. Almost like an operating system >>And as a discipline. >>So what's your reaction to that about this data engineer data as code, because if you have horizontally scalable data, you've gotta be open that's hard. <laugh> mm-hmm <affirmative> and you gotta silo the data that needs to be siloed for compliance and reasons. So that's got a very policy around that. So what's your reaction to data as code and data engineering and >>Phenomenon? Yeah, I think it's, it's a really good point. I think, you know, like with any, with any technology, uh, project inside an organization, you know, success with analytics or machine learning is it's kind of 50% technology and then 50% cultural. And, uh, you have often domain experts. Those are, could be physicians or drug experts, or they could be financial experts or whoever they might be got deep domain expertise. And then you've got technical implementation teams and it's kind of a natural often repulsive force. I don't mean that rudely, but they, they just, they don't talk the same language. And so the more complex the domain and the more complex the technology, the stronger that repulsive force, and it can become very difficult for, um, domain experts to work closely with the technical experts, to be able to actually get business decisions made. And so what data engineering does and data engineering is in some cases team, or it can be a role that you play. >>Uh, it's really allowing those two disciplines to speak the same language it provides. You can think of it as plumbing, but I think of it as like a bridge, it's a bridge between like the technical implementation and the domain experts. And that requires like a very disparate range of skills. You've gotta understand about statistics. You've gotta understand about the implementation. You've gotta understand about the, it, you've gotta understand and understand about the domain. And if you could pull all of that together, that data engineering discipline can be incredibly transformative for an organization, cuz it builds the bridge between those two >>Groups. You know, I was advising some, uh, young computer science students at the sophomore junior level, uh, just a couple weeks ago. And I told 'em, I would ask someone at Amazon, this questions I'll ask you since you're, you've been in the middle of of it for years, they were asking me and I was trying to mentor them on. What, how do you become a data engineer from a practical standpoint, uh, courseware projects to work on how to think, um, not just coding Python cause everyone's coding in Python mm-hmm <affirmative> but what else can they do? So I was trying to help them and I didn't really know the answer myself. I was just trying to like kind of help figure it out with them. So what is the answer in your opinion or the thoughts around advice to young students who want to be data engineers? Cuz data scientists is pretty clear in what that is. Yeah. You use tools, you make visualizations, you manage data, you get answers and insights and apply that to the business. That's an application mm-hmm <affirmative>, that's not the, you know, sta standing up a stack or managing the infrastructure. What, so what does that coding look like? What would your advice be to >>Yeah, I think >>Folks getting into a data engineering role. >>Yeah. I think if you, if you believe this, what I said earlier about like 50% technology, 50% culture, like the, the number one technology to learn as a data engineer is the tools in the cloud, which allow you to aggregate data from virtually any source into something which is incrementally more valuable for the organization. That's really what data engineering is all about. It's about taking from multiple sources. Some people call them silos, but silos indicates that the, the storage is kind of fungible or UND differentiated. That that's really not the case. Success requires you to really purpose built well crafted high performance, low cost engines for all of your data. So understanding those tools and understanding how to use 'em, that's probably the most important technical piece. Um, and yeah, Python and programming and statistics goes along with that, I think. And then the most important cultural part, I think is it's just curiosity. >>Like you want to be able to, as a data engineer, you want to have a natural curiosity that drives you to seek the truth inside an organization, seek the truth of a particular problem and to be able to engage, cuz you're probably, you're gonna have some choice as you go through your career about which domain you end up in, like maybe you're really passionate about healthcare. Maybe you're really just passionate about your transportation or media, whatever it might be. And you can allow that to drive a certain amount of curiosity, but within those roles, like the domains are so broad, you kind of gotta allow your curiosity to develop and lead, to ask the right questions and engage in the right way with your teams. So because you can have all the technical skills in the world, but if you're not able to help the team's truths seek through that curiosity, you simply won't be successful. >>We just had a guest on 20 year old, um, engineer, founder, Johnny Dallas, who was 16 when he worked at Amazon youngest engineer at >>Johnny Dallas is a great name by the that's fantastic. It's his real name? >>It sounds like a football player. Rockstar. I should call Johnny. I have Johnny Johnny cube. Uh it's me. Um, so, but he's young and, and he, he was saying, you know, his advice was just do projects. >>Yeah. That's get hands on. >>Yeah. And I was saying, Hey, I came from the old days though, you get to stand stuff up and you hugged onto the assets. Cause you didn't wanna kill the cause you spent all this money and, and he's like, yeah, with cloud, you can shut it down. If you do a project that's not working and you get bad data, no one's adopting it or you don't want like it anymore. You shut it down. Just something >>Else. Totally >>Instantly abandoned it. Move onto something new. >>Yeah. With progression. Totally. And it, the, the blast radius of, um, decisions is just way reduced, gone. Like we talk a lot about like trying to, you know, in the old world trying to find the resources and get the funding. And it's like, right. I wanna try out this kind of random idea that could be a big deal for the organization. I need 50 million in a new data center. Like you're not gonna get anywhere. You, >>You do a proposal working backwards, document >>Kinds, all that, that sort of stuff got hoops. So, so all of that is gone, but we sometimes forget that a big part of that is just the, the prototyping and the experimentation and the limited blast radius in terms of cost. And honestly, the most important thing is time just being able to jump in there, get fingers on keyboards, just try this stuff out. And that's why at AWS, we have part of the reason we have so many services because we want, when you get into AWS, we want the whole toolbox to be available to every developer. And so, as your ideas developed, you may want to jump from, you know, data that you have, that's already in a database to doing realtime data. Yeah. And then you can just, you have the tools there. And when you want to get into real time data, you don't just have kineses, but you have real time analytics and you can run SQL again, that data is like the, the capabilities and the breadth, like really matter when it comes to prototyping and, and >>That's culture too. That's the culture piece, because what was once a dysfunctional behavior, I'm gonna go off the reservation and try something behind my boss's back or cause now as a side hustle or fun project. Yeah. So for fun, you can just code something. Yeah, >>Totally. I remember my first Haddo project, I found almost literally a decommissioned set of servers in the data center that no one was using. They were super old. They're about to be literally turned off. And I managed to convince the team to leave them on for me for like another month. And I installed her DUP on them and like, got them going. It's like, that just seems crazy to me now that I, I had to go and convince anybody not to turn these service off, but what >>It was like for that, when you came up with elastic map produce, because you said this is too hard, we gotta make it >>Easier. Basically. Yes. <laugh> I was installing Haddo version, you know, beta nor 0.9 or whatever it was. It's like, this is really hard. This is really hard. >>We simpler. All right. Good stuff. I love the, the walk down memory lane and also your advice. Great stuff. I think culture's huge. I think. And that's why I like Adam's keynote to reinvent Adam. Lesky talk about path minds and trail blazers because that's a blast radius impact. Mm-hmm <affirmative> when you can actually have innovation organically just come from anywhere. Yeah, that's totally cool. Totally. Let's get into the products. Serverless has been hot mm-hmm <affirmative> uh, we hear a lot about EKS is hot. Uh, containers are booming. Kubernetes is getting adopted. There's still a lot of work to do there. Lambda cloud native developers are booming, serverless Lambda. How does that impact the analytics piece? Can you share the hot, um, products around how that translates? Sure, absolutely. Yeah, the SageMaker >>Yeah, I think it's a, if you look at kind of the evolution and what customers are asking for, they're not, you know, they don't just want low cost. They don't just want this broad set of services. They don't just want, you know, those services to have deep capabilities. They want those services to have as lower operating cost over time as possible. So we kind of really got it down. We got built a lot of muscle, lot of services about getting up and running and experimenting and prototyping and turning things off and turn turning them on and turning them off. And like, that's all great. But actually the, you really only most projects start something once and then stop something once. And maybe there's an hour in between, or maybe there's a year, but the real expense in terms of time and, and complexity is sometimes in that running cost. Yeah. And so, um, we've heard very loudly and clearly from customers that they want, that, that running cost is just undifferentiated to them and they wanna spend more time on their work and in analytics that is, you know, slicing the data, pivoting the data, combining the data, labeling the data, training their models, uh, you know, running inference against their models, uh, and less time doing the operational pieces. >>So is that why the servers focus is there? >>Yeah, absolutely. It, it dramatically reduces the skill required to run these, uh, workloads of any scale. And it dramatically reduces the UND differentiated, heavy lifting, cuz you get to focus more of the time that you would've spent on the operation on the actual work that you wanna get done. And so if you look at something just like Redshift serverless that we launched a reinvent, you know, there's a kind of a, we have a lot of customers that want to run like a, uh, the cluster and they want to get into the, the weeds where there is benefit. We have a lot of customers that say, you know, I there's no benefit for me though. I just wanna do the analytics. So you run the operational piece, you're the experts we've run. You know, we run 60 million instant startups every single day. Like we do this a lot. Exactly. We understand the operation. I >>Want the answers come on. So >>Just give the answers or just let, give me the notebook or just give the inference prediction. So today for example, we announced, um, you know, serverless inference. So now once you've trained your machine learning model, just, uh, run a few, uh, lines of code or you just click a few buttons and then yeah, you got an inference endpoint that you do not have to manage. And whether you're doing one query against that endpoint, you know, per hour or you're doing, you know, 10 million, but we'll just scale it on the back end. You >>Know, I know we got not a lot of time left, but I want, wanna get your reaction to this. One of the things about the data lakes, not being data swamps has been from what I've been reporting and hearing from customers is that they want to retrain their machine learning algorithm. They want, they need that data. They need the, the, the realtime data and they need the time series data, even though the time has passed, they gotta store in the data lake mm-hmm <affirmative>. So now the data lakes main function is being reusing the data to actually retrain. Yeah, >>That's >>Right. It worked properly. So a lot of, lot of postmortems turn into actually business improvements to make the machine learning smarter, faster. You see that same way. Do you see it the same way? Yeah, >>I think it's, I think it's really interesting. No, I think it's really interesting because you know, we talk it's, it's convenient to kind of think of analytics as a very clear progression from like point a point B, but really it's, you are navigating terrain for which you do not have a map and you need a lot of help to navigate that terrain. Yeah. And so, you know, being, having these services in place, not having to run the operations of those services, being able to have those services be secure and well governed, and we added PII detection today, you know, something you can do automatically, uh, to be able to use their, uh, any unstructured data run queries against that unstructured data. So today we added, you know, um, text extract queries. So you can just say, well, uh, you can scan a badge for example, and say, well, what's the name on this badge? And you don't have to identify where it is. We'll do all of that work for you. So there's a often a, it's more like a branch than it is just a, a normal, uh, a to B path, a linear path. Uh, and that includes loops backwards. And sometimes you gotta get the results and use those to make improvements further upstream. And sometimes you've gotta use those. And when you're downstream, you'll be like, ah, I remember that. And you come back and bring it all together. So awesome. It's um, it's, uh, uh, it's a wonderful >>Work for sure. Dr. Matt wood here in the queue. Got just take the last word and give the update. Why you're here. What's the big news happening that you're announcing here at summit in San Francisco, California, and update on the, the business analytics >>Group? Yeah, I think, you know, one of the, we did a lot of announcements in the keynote, uh, encouraged everyone to take a look at that. Uh, this morning was Swami. Uh, one of the ones I'm most excited about, uh, is the opportunity to be able to take, uh, dashboards, visualizations. We're all used to using these things. We see them in our business intelligence tools, uh, all over the place. However, what we've heard from customers is like, yes, I want those analytics. I want their visualization. I want it to be up to date, but you know, I don't actually want to have to go my tools where I'm actually doing my work to another separate tool to be able to look at that information. And so today we announced, uh, one click public embedding for quick side dashboards. So today you can literally, as easily as embedding a YouTube video, you can take a dashboard that you've built inside, quick site cut and paste the HTML, paste it into your application and that's it. That's all you have to do. It takes seconds and >>It gets updated in real time. >>Updated in real time, it's interactive. You can do everything that you would normally do. You can brand it like this is there's no power by quick site button or anything like that. You can change the colors, make it fit in perfectly with your, with your applications. So that's sitting incredibly powerful way of being able to take a, uh, an analytics capability that today sits inside its own little fiefdom and put it just everywhere. It's, uh, very transformative. >>Awesome. And the, the business is going well. You got the serverless and your tailwind for you there. Good stuff, Dr. Matt with thank you. Coming on the cube >>Anytime. Thank >>You. Okay. This is the cubes cover of eight summit, 2022 in San Francisco, California. I'm John host cube. Stay with us with more coverage of day two after this short break.

(upbeat music) >> Hey everyone. Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Coupa Inspire 2022. We are in Las Vegas at the beautiful Cosmopolitan hotel. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. Brian McKillips joins me next, a managing director at Accenture. Brian, it's great to have you on the program. >> Thanks for having me, I'm glad to be here. >> So you have an interesting, you lead a lot of stuff at Accenture and I want to read this off, so I get it right. You lead the intelligent platform services strategy and the industry and functions platform group. Talk to me about those responsibilities. >> Yeah, so the intelligent platform services is the place in the business where we have kind of our large software partners, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, Workday, Salesforce and Adobe. And we kind of think of ourselves as kind of the engine that powers industry and functional solutions, right? And the way Accenture's gone to market over the last couple of years has been kind of bringing together our breadth of experience all the way from strategy, all the way through operations and these big technology transformations are at the core of that. So that's what we do in intelligent platform services. And we recently launched this what we call the industry and functions platforms group because we realized there's a lot of strategic partners that are critical for us to be have a strong practice around, COUPA being one of them, you know in the supply chain and sourcing and procurement space so that we could create a home to be able to deliver these solutions globally and at scale. So I lead both kind of the strategy across all of IPS and then the new industry and functions platform group. >> Got it. All right. So you're here to talk to me about composable technology. First of all, define that for the audience so they understand what you're talking about. >> Yeah, you bet. So, you know, at Accenture, we're talking a lot about this is the age of compressed transformation, meaning, you know, change is only going to speed up and the need to change and so our clients are really struggling with not only kind of moving fast but that pressure around having to change as dynamics around the world change. So in the age of compressed transformation, we were really talking about how our clients should be kind of reorienting the way they think about their tech stack. And because, you know, historically a lot of us grew up in kind of monolithic implementations with, you know one software provider. But today it's really about composing technology to create new industry, new ways to solve industry problems, functional processes, customer experiences, right? And so composable technology we think about it in three parts. One is a cloud foundation that is, you know, the hyperscalers are a critical part of that. Secondly, our digital core and these are the kind of the historic software packages at the center of a lot of the industry and functional business processes. So you think about SAP and Oracle and Salesforce and things like that. But then around that digital core you have composable elements to be able to plug in. And that could be things like other software packages but it's also kind of industry IP or you know, edge devices, you know think IOT, think smart appliances, think and when you put, pull all those things together you need to be able to not only configure it once but configure and reconfigure as the dynamics of the marketplace change. >> So composable technology isn't necessarily new but has the pandemic been an accelerator of some of the things that you're seeing now in terms of why it's important, what's different about it now as being a foundation for competitive differentiation? >> Yeah, for sure. And it's, you know, I, anybody who's in technology say, you know, you tell them about this idea, they're like, well this isn't new, we've had service oriented architectures for 20 years. >> Right. >> You know, we've been talking about integrating things forever, but the you know, much like we all five to seven years ago we knew that we'd be using our phones to pay for pretty much everything but the tech hadn't caught up, right. Not every restaurant or store that you went to had the point of sale set up, right. So we all kind of knew that was coming. And the same thing has kind of happened around this idea of about composable technology and the three things that are new are one is that the cloud foundation is here, right. >> Yes. >> Where, you know, you now have not only kind of hyperscale high speed compute in at the core you actually have at the edge as well. And the same thing with high speed network, you know you have Starlink, you have 5G rolling out. So you have that cloud foundation that really wasn't there before. The second thing that's happening is the posture of a lot of the ecosystem, major ecosystem players has changed, right. And this started, you know when Satya Nadella took over Microsoft where Microsoft was very much a kind of a closed environment. >> Right. >> Where Satya under his leadership has really kind of changed the posture of being able to integrate into that. And we've seen that really pretty much across the entire landscape. And then lastly, it's become, you know, cheaper and, you know, quicker to be able to integrate with platforms like MuleSoft and others where there's kind of full scale integration platforms. So those are, those are the kind of the things that are new that allows for composable technology to be here in the real world. >> So it's something that's tangible, it's real organizations need to be on this bandwagon I imagine or they're going to be left behind. Gartner had some interesting stats that your team sent over and they were talking about these stats that were very compelling in terms of a seismic shift which always, you hear seismic living in California I think earthquakes, but something substantial. And they said, this seismic shift is going to happen by 2023. And I thought, hang on, that's less than a year away. >> Yeah. >> And they talked about by 2023, organizations that have adopted an intelligent composable approach will outpace competition 80% in the speed of new feature implementation. So if an organization hasn't started on that now is it too late? >> I would say not necessarily too late but they need to look for ways to change their disposition, right. And one of the ways that we've been helping clients do this is through pre-integrated solutions, right. So you know, in the past, the motion would be we would work with a client, they would work with our kind of strategists and consultants and say, what does the the future of supply chain look like for example. And if the client liked it, they would say, okay, I love it, what do I do next? Right. Then there would be another consulting engagement, another consulting engagement and then there would be a blueprint and architecture and at some point there was an implementation and a run. We've actually said we're investing heavily with our ecosystem partners to be able to pre-integrate solutions. So when that supply chain strategist says this is what the post COVID supply chain should look like and the client says, I love it what do I do next, that strategist can turn around and say, well, we've got a pre-integrated solution with SAP at the core sitting on a Microsoft Azure stack integrated with Coupa, wrapped with AI and machine learning and we can drop that and configure it for an environment. So that's how we're working with clients who are in that position that really need to kind of change their disposition is to bring these pre-integrated solutions and drop them in. >> Where are your conversations at the C- Suite level? Because this is, I hear many things in what you just said. Part of it is change management, which is very challenging. There's, people are very resistant to that. >> Brian: Yeah. >> One of the things that we've learned in the last two years is if it's going to come it's going to come but where are your conversations within that executive suite in terms of getting buy-in and going this is the direction we have to go in. >> Brian: Yeah. >> Because our business needs to be not just survive but thrive. >> Yeah. Yeah. These are, I mean, there are certainly of course in kind of traditional channels of tech whether it's, you know, the CIO or the CTO, but increasingly we're seeing this is a CEO discussion and, you know, our CEO Julie Sweet, is very, very market pacing and is having top to top conversations talking about compressed transformation, talking about composable technology because it's no longer just a, you know, a back office function as you know, right. I mean, this is really core to how companies you know, are, change their business models, make money, right. And it's a constant evolution. And that's why we talk about that kind of configuring and reconfiguring, it's not just coming in, implementing once, run it for five years and then when it's time to upgrade, we come back. >> No. >> We really want to be the partner with our clients to basically move in and, you know, across the patch whether it's specific industry processes, specific functional processes, specific customer experiences, we want to be the partner that is constantly tuning and configuring and reconfiguring and composing these solutions from across the ecosystem. >> And helping those businesses in any industry evolve as you talked about this compressed timeline, compressed transformation, such an interesting way of describing it but it's really true, it's what we've been living the last couple of years. >> Brian: Yeah. And so I want to get into Accenture's technology vision. You touched on this a little bit but there was some stats that your team provided that I thought were really, really interesting, a survey that Accenture did, 77% of executives, and we were just talking about the C-suite, state that their tech architecture is becoming critical to the overall success of the organization. So that awareness is there for sure en masse. Another thing that, stat that was interesting was 90% of business and IT execs agree that to be agile we always talk about agility, right, be resilient, organizations need to fast forward this digital transformation at the core. There's that compressed transformation. >> Brian: Yeah. >> Those are very high numbers. >> Brian: Yeah. >> In terms of where organizations say we see where we need to be. What's the vision at Accenture to help organizations get there fast? >> Yeah. Well, I think it's, you know, the thing that came to mind as you were talking is that we have, you know, major clients that have had this had in the, you know consumer packaged goods and apparel space that have had one way that they've done business is directly through retailers, you know, for pretty much their whole existence. Suddenly they need to shift to a direct to consumer model both in terms of marketing, in terms of commerce and that's not, you know, you don't just flip a switch in the back office and, you know, call IT and say hey, hey, can you change around a few things? It's actually shifting the entire core, it touches everything, it touches point of sale, it touches the customer experience, it touches supply chain, it touches employee experience even, right. >> Yeah. >> And so that's why I think it's so important for, you know technology leaders and business leaders to continue to kind of integrate themselves more tightly. >> Yes. >> To be able to make these business model transformations not just, you know, the tech that supports things. >> It's essential. >> Yeah. >> You know, we often in so many shows, Brian, we talk about alignment of business and technology, but it's not trivial. >> Yeah, yeah. >> It's absolutely fundamental to the success of every organization. And they've got to do so and as you said, I'm going to use your, your word, the compressed transformation. >> Yeah. >> A compressed timeframe. So talk to me about some customer examples where you really feel that Accenture and Coupa have helped this organization transform its supply chain to be able to be, use composable technology. >> Brian: Yeah. >> To be a leader in its industry. >> Yeah. Well, one example of that is a major industrial client that we have that has global operations across the world. And they're on a journey to kind of upgrade their digital core ERP that they've been on for a long time. And that's a multi-year journey. But at, you know, today they have needs for sourcing and procurement solutions in specific geographies around the world like Japan, for example. So what we've been able to do and it's a relatively simple example but quickly work with the client and Coupa to identify the right Coupa solution that's born in the cloud that has a great kind of user experience and implement that quickly as well as integrated it into the digital core, right. So they're not separate things. And it becomes part of that architecture, right. It just starts to kind of show the flexibility of when you have, when you come with a kind of composable technology point of view, the way we can help our clients do that. And in some other cases it's even more, you know, more cutting edge. So think about a utilities client, for example that has IOT sensors on their wires and when the, when that wire swings too far they say something's wrong. Automatically it goes back to the digital core cuts a ticket and finds the closest worker. >> Lisa: Okay. >> To then dispatch. The worker then can put on their hollow lens, for example and climb the pole and get directions on how to solve the problem right then and there, right? That's another example of you know, multiple systems, edge devices things coming together in order to create that. And it's only going to get faster, you know, with the metaverse. >> Lisa: Right. >> You know, with web 3.0 coming, with blockchain becoming more and more mainstream, companies need to be thinking about in this age of compressed transformation how to do that composable technology that you can figure and reconfigure. >> Do you think that we're in an age of compressed transformation or is that how it's going to be going forward given the global climate the last two years? >> Yeah. It's definitely going to be that way going forward over the next, you know, probably for the large part of the, the remainder of our career. I mean, we're, our CTO, Paul Daugherty, talks about us being an mega cycle, right? There's so many things changing. And even without these externalities of, you know, political issues and pandemics, you know, the introduction of AI and machine learning, a lot of these technologies I just mentioned, it's, the change is happening in every industry, in every, you know kind of area of the marketplace and in a way that's, you know, that's really exciting, right. And we get to help our clients be able to kind of solve those things not just once, but continually >> There's a tremendous amount of opportunity that's come from compressed transformation, right. A lot of opportunity, a lot of potential. What are some of the things that you're looking forward to say in the next year, as we talked about some of those business and lines of business and IT folks understand we've got to move in this direction. What excites you about the potential that you have to help these organizations really transform? >> Yeah, well, I think, I mean, the, we just came out with our new tech vision which is about the metaverse. And I think that the things that excite me are there's brand new ways like we've lived in a world where transactions take place in a very predictable way with local currencies through a single channel. And that was, that's been sort of fixed for a long time. The fundamentals of the economy or actually in the marketplace are starting to change in terms of how do we transact with things like cryptocurrencies, things like non fungible tokens, you know, all these things that we didn't, you know, they weren't, even the metaverse these were not main line words, even six you know, months ago, 12 months ago. >> Lisa: Right, right. >> Now these things, you know, every it seems like every month there's something new that is, you know, seismic to use your word that is shifting the fundamentals of the marketplace. And I think that's what's really exciting. I mean, that's where, I mean, it's probably one of the most exciting times to be in business, be in the marketplace. It certainly has a lot of challenges. >> Lisa: Yes. >> But, you know, I think we're really about using, you know, the promise of technology to unlock human ingenuity and this is a great time to be able to unlock that human ingenuity. >> And that's such a great alignment with Coupa. I was just in the keynote and there was an Accenture video, Julie Sweet was talking to some other folks about that. Great alignment in the partnership. Brian, thank you for joining me talking about composable technology, what's new, why and the potential that organizations and every business have to use it to unlock competitive advantages. >> Brian: Yeah. >> We appreciate your insights and your time. >> You bet. Pleasure to be here. >> All right. With Brian McKillips, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBEe from Coupa Inspire 2022. (upbeat music)

from the cube studios in palo alto in boston bringing you data driven insights from the cube and etr this is breaking analysis with dave vellante recent earnings reports from key enterprise software and infrastructure players underscore that tech spending remains robust in the post isolation economy especially for those companies that have figured out a cloud strategy now despite covert variant uncertainties and component shortages and hardware most leading tech names outperformed expectations this past week that said investors were not in the mood to reward all names and any variability in product mix or earnings outlook or other nuances were met with a tepid response from the street hello and welcome to this week's wikibon cube insights powered by etr in this breaking analysis we'll provide you with commentary and data points on key tech companies that announced this past week including snowflake salesforce workday splunk elastic palo alto networks vmware dell pure storage hp inc and netapp let's start by rolling back a week or so and look at how stocks that are priced to perfection get impacted by any negative news back on august 20th we saw this headline hit snowflake stock falls as analyst says signings growth has slowed the analyst report was put out by a boutique firm cleveland research the stock took a double-digit hit as you can see here i immediately got several texts from investors who know i follow the company asking me what i thought now as a disclaimer i don't give stock picking advice please do your own research but between the cube wikibon and etr we do see a lot of data and i'm happy to share that which i did with this tweet it said lots of talk ahead of snowflake's earnings some analysts have said their data suggests a slowdown etr data looks pretty encouraging and i tagged merv adrian he's a sharp analyst over at gartner who follows data and database he responded i don't speculate about revenues but there's no discernible shift in our client conversations though interest still seems high okay cool but let's let's dig into the etr data a bit and see why we remained positive this is a larger and more detailed version of the chart in the tweet it's a candlestick that shows a time series of the spending data on snowflake using etr's net score methodology the stacked bars represent the percent of customers in the survey that are newly adding the snowflake platform the forest green indicates the number of customers reporting that their spending is increasing by six percent or more the gray is flat spend that's plus or minus five percent the pinkish stack that's decreasing spend by six percent or more and the bright red is where chucking the platform we're leaving now you subtract the reds from the greens and that yields a net score which for snowflake last survey was a very elevated 81.3 percent we've highlighted the spending velocity line that's net score at the top put a picture of that blue line for snowflake in your mind because we're going to come back to it the yellow line down below is market share which is a measure of the pervasiveness in the survey i.e mention share if you will so looking at this chart one might conclude that the lime green i.e new account acquisition is compressing however in further analyzing the data back in january 2019 snowflake's presence in the survey was much lower only 35 accounts in subsequent quarters that number has jumped to over between 120 and 140 snowflake accounts so big much bigger n so while the percentage of respondents may be shrinking the absolute number of new accounts is growing on the snowflake earnings call snowflake said that new customers increased this past quarter to 458 up from 397 in the same period last year what's also telling is the forest green on its very first earnings call as a public company snowflake cfo mike scarpelli said very clearly the company's revenue growth in the near term will come from existing customers and the forest green i.e existing customers spending more is expanding in the etr survey so very strong confirmation of that trend and note the red is virtually non-existent for snowflake so it's no surprise that snowflake handily beat its earnings on the 25th of august which prompted a flurry of texts to me saying you were right thanks don't thank me do your own research we're just one data source okay so here's a snapshot of some of the major players that announced earnings this past week this chart is our popular xy view with net score or spending momentum on the vertical axis and market share or pervasiveness in the survey in the horizontal plane we talked about snowflake already but i'll emphasize they've held that roughly eighty percent net score for ten plus quarterly surveys now and they've continued to move steadily to the right on the horizontal axis let's make some comments on these other names and then dig in a bit more salesforce of course they're the big player amongst these names that we're showing and as we've said in previous breaking analysis segments they have become the next great software company showing 20 plus growth for five consecutive quarters which is quite impressive splunk as we've reported has struggled in the survey but you can see splunk has a great presence in the data set they have an awesome customer base and the acquisition of signal fx plotted on the left with an elevated next net score represents a really good opportunity to enter new markets like observability and pull signalfx to the right to the rest of splunk's customers and that can help accelerate splunk's move toward a subscription model then there's workday we're plotting the company's core hcm business as well as its emerging financial software suite the latter represents workday's tam expansion opportunity and the company appears to be back on track to show sustained growth now let's dig a little deeper into these names and we'll start with salesforce here's the etr spending profile for salesforce salesforce as we showed earlier has a huge and growing presence in the market and a consistently elevated net score in the etr data and while the chart shows much more green than red and a strong uptick in spending momentum from last october survey this doesn't really tell the whole story salesforce's stock price rocketed out of the march 2020 crash and ran up to a peak last august and is on its way back salesforce has made a number of strategic acquisitions including tableau slack mulesoft and several other billion dollar plus buys as well as a number of smaller acquisitions this past quarter saw 23 revenue growth relative to last year with 20 percent plus operating margins that's huge salesforce's acquisition strategy is beginning to demonstrate the company's promised operating leverage and slack in our view will only add to that benefit including continuous improvement and free cash flow sales force revenue will blow through 25 billion dollars this fiscal year it's a company with a 250 billion dollar market cap and appears to be one a name that has meaningful upside opportunity okay let's take a quick look at splunk we're finally seeing an uptick in splunk's spending momentum with within the etr data set eric bradley and i have discussed this in previous breaking analysis segments the key point as we've reported is we see splunk as a company that has been in transition from a traditional license to an arr subscription model and finally the company is showing clarity that there's light at the end of that tunnel investors don't like companies in transition and like salesforce splunk's stock price ran up to an all-time high last august but then came down hard and never fully recovered but it has come off its may lows and there were some real positives this past quarter cloud annual recurring revenue for splunk this past quarter grew 72 percent and its bookings grew 20 29 year on year the company was conservative in its guidance and there still seems to be some uncertainty around cash flow but more clear guidance by splunk on the top line is a welcome sign and now another name that we've been following that announced earnings this week is elastic and as you can see by the etr data that company has an elevated net score with very little red in the bars now note that blue line while it's slowly decelerating it remains very strong and elevated remember the comment earlier i made about freezing that snowflake blue line in your head the reason we said that is because for snowflake to hold its roughly 80 net score position firmly over the past 10 plus quarters is quite astounding and for the most part it's unprecedented in the etr data set in recent memory back to elastic the company grew its top line by 45 which is a healthy beat and that helped operating margins come in above expectations elastic has become the open source poster child for observability but customers often cite challenges related to complexity and scaling with the need often to seek professional services help which sometimes impacts adoption and cost obviously but overall very strong report especially in its cloud business which grew 89 relative to last year all right let's pivot to infrastructure we're going to do that with palo alto networks and then look at a broader more traditional hardware and software players in february of 2020 we reported the valuation of divergence between palo alto networks and fortinet and we cited the challenges that palo alto was having around its shift to cloud that was a clear headwind at the time especially with regard to some of its go to market challenges at the same time we said that we were confident that palo alto would work through these issues and the csos from the etr panels along with other anecdotal information from the cube community suggested that the company would power through these problems well it has palo alto has a huge presence in the market and consistently elevated net scores as you can see here palo alto stock is trading near all-time highs and it reacted very well to its uh to the earnings report this past week where revenue grew nicely at 20 28 year on year the company has consistently impressed despite some hiccups of the past and appears to be well positioned for the emerging hybrid work economy okay now let's take a look at some of the key infrastructure players that announced this past week this chart shows our popular xy view with netscore spending momentum on the vertical axis and market share and or pervasiveness on the horizontal axis we'll start with vmware it has the biggest presence in the market amongst these names vmware's revenue grew nine percent in the quarter which was in line with estimates the company had a solid quarter but only marginally beat expectations and the stock got hit hard it was down 8 percent midday on friday vmware cited stronger than expected perpetual license sales and somewhat softer sas subscription revenue now it's not surprising that we're going to see some lumpiness in those two lines as the company transitions to a subscription model but investors clearly want to see more growth in sas and subscriptions than they do in the traditional perpetual license model vmware cloud on aws grew 80 and that's confirmed in the data here compute was also strong one concern in the etr data is the vmware cloud which is the the core the vm vmr cloud foundation vcf which you can see here is well off its january net score highs now it's possible the etr is picking up some of the conservative clients that don't want to move to an ar or subscription model it's unclear but we'll continue to watch that trend overall vmware's business model is solid in our view and very very strong now let's talk about dell next dell in our view had a great quarter it grew top-line revenues by 15 year-on-year its client business grew 27 percent and you can see the elevated dell laptop net net scores in this chart the isg business was up three percent that comprises service and networking which was up six percent and storage which was off one percent the storage business contin continues to struggle but management reported that its mid-range storage revenue was up 17 now the challenge here is that high-end storage it's cyclical it's exposed sometimes you know somewhat to mainframe cycles but but but but the other thing is that a lot of the mid-range capability is eating away at the high end not the least which by the way is is pure storage competing at the higher end but also dell's own mid-range business so that continues to be a drag on revenue the the size of the traditional high-end business that that v-max power max business still is is is quite large and the the new is not growing fast enough to offset the decline in in the old but i mean i saw these numbers from dell i was surprised to see the stock down nearly five percent at midday on friday and i think what's happening is a couple things one is that hpq hp inc which we show here at a lower net score than dell's laptop business cited supply chain issues and component shortages now dell cited the same but maybe it's off on sympathy it's clear to us that dell is doing a much better job than hp with regard to managing component shortages the frustrating thing for these companies is it might be a 50 part holding up a server or in dell's case or a laptop in dell and hpq's case but demand is good which is a positive but the biggest factor in dell stock price we think is it's getting dragged down with vmware in a way if you think about it with vmware's value comprising so much of dell's market cap being down only four percent while vmware is down eight percent implies that the core dell business is viewed positively by the street but i thought with the vmware spin coming later this year investors might gravitate more aggressively toward dell but that didn't happen maybe over time now you see netapp on the chart netapp beat on top line revenue and earnings this past quarter however the company has not performed well in the etr surveys for several quarters and has a negative net score this is due when you tear apart the the math this is due to a low number of new adoptions and a fat middle very big fat middle of flat spending and a pretty high churn in the data set now the company claims they've picked up 1500 new customers in its cloud business so maybe maybe the etr survey is not picking that up or perhaps it's existing customers that are moving to netapp's cloud service that they're counting as new that's unclear but netapp claims that its public cloud business grew 155 in the quarter regardless the street likes netapp's story the stock has been acting very well this year out passing outpacing the s p 500. now you also see pure on the chart with a nicely elevated net score the company beat top and bottom lines this quarter and its ceo charlie giancarlo promised roughly 20 percent revenue growth going forward the street sure liked that that story and the stock shot up nearly 20 percent on that news and you can see here a little drill down the etr spending data trends in the right direction for pure to support this momentum pure's messaging is all around a modern data platform and it's clear from customer conversations that its storage products are easier to use than traditional storage offerings and it has a leg up on the as a service trend which we've been reporting on which pure has been pursuing for a number of years but it's still a much smaller player a couple billion dollars than the dells and the netapps of the storage world but if it can continue on a strong growth trajectory it will of course become a larger custom company the question will be how to continue to expand its total available market now the obvious path has been share gains which over the years it has accomplished and has served them well but that won't be as easy as it was last decade when pure caught emc and netapp flat-footed without strong flash array strategies pure's port works acquisition is something to watch as well as it tries to transition the market to a true cloud-like program programmable infrastructure model infrastructure as code and we'll leave you with this thought about the infrastructure space generally in storage specifically while cloud storage has exploded over the past several years on-prem storage has been extremely soft this in our view has been due to the double whammy that we've reported the combination of cloud stealing share from on-prem and the big flash injection in other words the latter suppressed the need to buy more spinning spindles and controllers for better performance and it hurt demand you don't need to do that when you have all this flash headroom but as we predicted last year we believe that there's pent up demand as people go back to work and headquarters need refresh there's only so much blood that it managers can squeeze from the stone moving storage around optimizing servers and and improving things like utilization while at the same time maintaining adequate performance and doing so within some kind of reasonable window of a day storage is no longer monolithic there are emerging use cases especially ones that are data intensive different storage types are emerging as satya nadella said recently we've reached peak centralization and as such that will create tailwinds for storage offerings that can accommodate cloud and on-prem because it pros understand that moving data is expensive and risky it's best to keep data where it belongs for reasons of performance and of course compliance so it looks like there's a decent chance that the long storage winter is over and the market could return to solid growth even the face of a continued cloud explosion now to circle back quickly to the enterprise software business there seems to be no end in sight to the shift to cloud-based offerings both sas and snowflake-like consumption models of which we're big believers digital transformation initiatives are real they're meaningful and software spending we believe is going to be robust and power these transformations for quite some time okay that's it for today remember these episodes are all available as podcasts all you got to do is search breaking analysis podcast we publish each week on wikibon.com and siliconangle.com you can reach me at divalante on twitter or my linkedin posts or email me at david.vellante siliconangle.com please do check check out the etr website at etr.plus and see their new data packages and offerings for all the survey data this is dave vellante for the cube insights powered by etr thanks for watching everybody be well and we'll see you next time [Music] you

>> From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, bringing you data-driven insights from theCUBE in ETR. This is breaking analysis with Dave Vellante. >> ServiceNow is a company that investors love to love, but there's caution in the investor community right now is confusion about transitory inflation and higher interest rates looms. ServiceNow also suffers from a perfection syndrome of sorts. The company has seen that the slightest misstep can cause many freak outs from the investor community. So what it's done is it's architected a financial and communications model that allows it to beat expectations and raise its outlook on a consistent basis. Regardless, ServiceNow appears to be on track to vie for what its CEO Bill McDermott refers to as the next great enterprise software company. Wait, I thought Marc Benioff had his hands on that steering wheel. Hello everyone, and welcome to this week's Wikibon CUBE insights powered by ETR. In this breaking analysis, we'll dig into one of the companies we began following almost 10 years ago and provide some thoughts on ServiceNow's March to 15 billion by 2026, which we think is a highly probable achievement. In 2020, despite the contraction in IT spending, SeviceNow outperformed both the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ, but here's a view of 2021. And you can see while the stock has done well since it saw a softness in May and again in early June, and it bounced off that double bottom, it's performance is well below those other benchmarks. This is not a big surprise given the fact that this is a high growth stock and we all know that those names with high multiples get hurt in an inflationary environment, but still the gaps are notable. This is especially true given the performance of the company. It's not often that you see a company with four to $5 billion in revenue growing at a 30% clip, throwing off billions of dollars in free cash flow and increasing operating margins at 100 basis points a year and promising to do that over the next several years. In fact, I don't think we've ever seen that before. I remember years ago, when the trade press was criticizing SeviceNow for its lofty valuation, despite the fact that it was losing money, then CEO, Frank Slootman said to me, "Dave, we can be highly profitable tomorrow if we want it to be, but this is a marathon and we're planning to go big." So essentially Slootman was telling me that this company was going to be an ATM machine that prints money. And that seems to be how it's shaping up. I happened to be at SeviceNow headquarters in 2017, literally the first day on the job for John Donahoe, the CEO replaced Slootman, and I remember while I was there thinking Donahoe was certainly capable, but why the heck I said, would the board let Frank Slootman get away? You know what? It turned great for Slootman, he's at snowflake. Donahoe, I always felt was a consumer guy anyway, and not long for SeviceNow. And now you have this guy, new CEO, Bill McDermott at the helm. He's not a more qualified CEO for the company in my view. About two months ago, McDermott led a virtual investor day. We've had McDermott on theCUBE a couple of times back when he was CEO of SAP and this individual is very compelling. He's got JFK like looks and charisma, but more than that, he's passionate and convincing. And he obviously knows enterprise software. And with conviction, he laid the groundwork for how SeviceNow will get to $10 billion in revenue by 2024 on its way to 15 billion two years thereafter. And one of the big things McDermott's stressed was they're going to get there without any big M&A moves. And that's important because previously the door was left open for that possibility. And now the company is assuring investors that it can get there organically, even with slower growth. So this chart implies no big M&A, and you can see Slootman handed over the reigns at that year one tick on the horizontal axis. This was not a turnaround story. It was a rocket ship at the time. And look at the logos on this chart. This is a revenue view and SeviceNow is aiming to be the fastest to get to 10 billion in software industry history. SeviceNow is valuation just to sort of shift gears here for a minute blew by workdays years ago. Its sites are now set on SAP which is currently valued at 170 billion. And then there's Oracle and Salesforce. They're at around 250 billion and 225 billion in valuation respectively. And these lines back to revenue show the trajectory that these companies took to get to 10 billion. And you can see how SeviceNow plans to get there with those dotted lines. And this is why I call this a collision course with Salesforce, because I think Marc Benioff might say, "Hey, we are ready." Are the next great enterprise software company. We have no plans to give up that post, that mantle anytime soon. I want to share a clip from four years ago. something we've been saying for a long, long time. Roll the clip. >> As they say their goal now is to be four billion by 2020. It feels like, you know, when we first covered SeviceNow knowledge, we said, wow, this company reminds us a lot of the early days of Salesforce. They've got this platform you can develop on this platform, you know, call it paths or, you know, whatever you want to call it, but we at the time said, they're on a collision course with Salesforce. Now there's plenty of room for both of those companies in the marketplace. Salesforce obviously focused predominantly on Salesforce automation, SeviceNow really on workflow automation, but you can see those sort of two markets coming together. >> Now you may be thinking isn't Salesforce's revenue like 5X that of SeviceNow? And yes it is. But I would say a couple of things. One is that Salesforce has gotten to where it is with a lot of M&A, more than 60 acquisitions. At some high profile wants to like slack and Tableau as well as MuleSoft and Heroku back in the day and many others. So we'll see how far McDermott can get before he reverts to his inquisitive self that we saw at SAP. But the second thing I'll say is serviceNow positions itself as the platform of platforms. And the thing is it runs its own cloud. And when it does acquisitions, it replatforms the acquiree into the now platform so that it can drive integrations more seamlessly. That's fundamentally part of its value proposition, a big part of its value proposition. And that means it's somewhat limited on the acquisitions it can make, it has to be pretty selective. Otherwise it's got to do a heavy lift to get it the now platform. It's the power of the models, especially if customers can get to a single CMDB, that configuration database management system, which by the way, a lot of customers never get to that kind of skirt that, but remember SeviceNow is like the ERP for IT. So the more you can get to a single data model, the more effective you're going to be, especially in this data era where you got to put data at the core of your organization, something we've talked about a lot. And the third thing I'll mention the SeviceNow wants to use this platform to attack what it sees as a very large TAM as shown here. Now, a couple of things I want to point out. One is when SeviceNow IPO in 2012, a lot of the analysts said that they were way overvalued because they were in a market. It was help desk and writing tickets was a $2 billion business that was in decline and BMC remedy. Wasn't really that big of a base to attack. In 2013, the Wikibon team took a stab at sizing the TAM. I dug back into the old Wiki. We had well over 30 billion at the time and we expected the company to move deeper into IT and then beyond IT into lines of business and line of business management. Yeah, we felt we were being conservative. We thought the number could be as big as 100 billion, but we felt like putting that number out there, was too aggressive but, you know, it turns out from SeviceNow standpoint, it sees these new software opportunities coming together. And SeviceNow in a way they can double dip both in and beyond their current markets. What I mean by that is it can partner with, for instance, HCM vendors and then at the same time offer employee workflows. They can partner or even purchase RPA tools from specialists like UI path or automation anywhere. And it can go acquire a company which it did like Intel a bot and integrate what I would consider lighter-weight RPA into its platform. So it can manage workflows for best of breed and pick off functionality throughout the software stack. Now what's interesting in this chart is first, the size of the TAM that SeviceNow sees 175 billion, but also how it's now reorganizing its business around workflows, which you see in the left-hand side. This was done of course, to simplify the many, many, many things that you can buy from SeviceNow. But there's also speculation that SeviceNow is leveraging its orchestration and service catalog capabilities, which are meaningful from a revenue standpoint and using them to power these workflows because the way it was organized was both confusing and not as effective as it could be. Now, it's well known that SeviceNow has ITSM this comprises the biggest piece of its revenue pie, probably a couple billion. And it's adding to that with ITSM pro and ITSM enterprise going deeper, deeper into the ITSM space. And it's ITAM business is also doing well against the likes of Datadog and Elastic and Splunk and others and its acquisition of LightStep. It's going to push it further into this space, which is both crowded is morphing into observability as we've been reporting. What's unclear though is how well, for instance, HR and the CSM businesses are doing as sort of standalone businesses, you might remember they used to be standalone businesses with standalone GMs. They've sort of changed that up a little bit. So this is potentially not only a way to simplify, but also shuffle the deck chairs a bit and maybe prop up the non IT workflows, which then allows SeviceNow to show this chart, which essentially says to the street, see, we have this huge TAM and our TAM expansion strategy is working as the overall business is growing nicely yet the mix is shifting toward customer, employee and creator workflows. See how awesome our business is and see how smart we are. So this is possibly a way to hide some of the warts and accentuate the growth. Look, there's not a lot to criticize SeviceNow about, but they've been pretty good at featuring what some perceive as weaknesses. Like for instance, the way it marketed it's a multi-instance and turned that into an advantage as a better model. Even though the whole cloud world was going multitenant and within a ServiceNow you got to really plan new releases, which they drop every six months, although CJ decide. So he's SeviceNows head of products. He did say at the investor meeting, that event that they held last May, that they do certain releases now bi-monthly and even some bi-weekly. So, yeah, maybe a little bit of nitpicking here, but I always liked to question when such changes are made to the reporting structures to the street. And if workflows are the new black, so to speak, I wonder will SeviceNow start pricing by workflows versus what really has been a legacy of, you know, what's your ticket volume and how many agents need access to the model and we'll charge you accordingly? Now, I'm not a service pricing expert and they don't make it easy to figure out that pricing. So let's dig a little bit more on that and keep an eye on it. Now I want to turn to the customers survey data from ETR on ServiceNow. First, here's the latest update on IT spending from ETR, something that we've been tracking for quite some time. We've been consistently saying to expect this year a seven to 8% growth for 2021 IT spend off of last year's contraction. And the latest ETR survey data puts it right at 8%. So we really liked that number. You know, could even be higher push 10% this year. Now, let's look at the spending profile within the ETR dataset. Of the 1100 plus respondents to this quarter, there were 377 SeviceNow customers, and this chart shows the breakdown of net score or spending velocity among those respondents. Remember, net score is a measure of that spending momentum. What it does is it takes the lime green bar, which is adopting new, that says 11% of that 377 customers are adopting ServiceNow for the first time. It takes that lime green and it adds the forest green bar that's growth in spending of 6% or more this half relative to the first half. That's 43% of the customers that have been surveyed here. And then it subtracts out the reds, which is that pinkish is spending less, that's 3%, small number of spending less. And then the bright red is we're leaving the platform. That's a minuscule 1% of the respondents. And you can see the rest in that gray area is flat spending, which is ignored. And so what this does is it calculates out, you'd take the greens minus the reds. It calculates out to a net score 50% for SeviceNow, which is well above that magic 40% elevated mark that we'd like to see. It's rare for a company of this size, except for the hyperscalers. You see AWS and Microsoft and Google are up that high and oh, there's another great enterprise software company at the 45% net score level. Guess who that is, salesforce.com. But anyway, it's rare to see that large of a company have that much spending momentum in the ETR surveys. Now let's take a look at the time series data for ServiceNow. This chart shows the net score granularity over time. So you see the bars, that time series, the blue line is net score. And you can see that it was dragged down during last year's lockdown. As, even though SeviceNow did pretty well last year and it's now spiking back to pre-COVID levels, which is a very positive sign for the company. That red call-out that ETR makes it shows market share. That's an indicator of pervasiveness in the dataset. I'm not overlyconcern there that downturn. I don't think it's a meaningful indicator because ServiceNow revenue is skewed towards a big spender accounts and this is an account unit indicator, if you will not spending level metric. And okay, and here's another reason and why I'm not concerned about SeviceNow is a so-called market share number in the ETR dataset as ETR defines it. This is an X, Y Z view chart that we'd like to show here. We've got net score on the vertical axis and market share in the horizontal plane. This is focusing on enterprise software. So remember that 40% red line is the magic level, anything above that is really indicative of momentum. Oh look, there's Salesforce and ServiceNow on that little collision course that I talked about. Now, CEO McDermott, I would say as by the way, would his predecessors, look, we're a platform of platforms and we partner with other companies, we'll meet at the customer level and sure we'll integrate functions where we think it can add value to customers. But we also understand we have to work with the vendors that our customers are using. So it's all good, plenty of room for growth for all of us, which by the way is true. But I would say this, anyone who's ever been in the enterprise software industry knows that enterprise software execs and their salespeople believe that every dollar spent on software should go to them. And if it's a good market with momentum and growth, they believe they can either organically write software to deliver customer function and value, or they can acquire to fill gaps. So, well, what McDermott would say is true. The likes of Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, Salesforce, Infor, et cetera, they all want as big of a budget piece as possible in the enterprise software space. That's just the way it is. Now, we're going to close with some anecdotal comments from ETR insights, formerly called VENN, which is a round table discussion with CXOs. You can read the summaries when we post on Wikibon and SiliconANGLE but let me summarize. This first comment comes from an assistant VP in retail who says SeviceNow is a key part of their digital transformation. They moved off of BMC remedy two years ago for the global ticketing system. And this person is saying that while the platform is extremely powerful, you got to buy into specific modules to just get one feature that you want. You may not need a lot of the other features, so it starts to get expensive. The other thing this individual is saying is initially, it's a very services heavy project. And so I'll tell you, when you look at the SeviceNow ecosystem the big SIs, the big names, they have big appetites. They love to eat at the trough as I sometimes say, and they want big clients with big budgets. So if you're not one of those top 500 or 700 customers, the big name SIs, you know, they might not be for you. They're not going to pay attention to you. They're going after the big prizes. So what I would suggest is you call up someone like Jason Wojahn of third era, he's the CEO over there and he's got a lot of experience in this space or some more specialized SeviceNow consultancy like them because you're going to get better value for the money. And you're going to get short-term ROI faster with a long-term sustainable ROI as a measurable objective. And I think this last comment sums it up nice, let me to skip over the second one and go just jump to the third one. This basically says the platform is integrated. It's like a mesh. It's not a bunch of stovepipes and cul-de-sacs. Yes it's expensive, but people love it. And like the iPhone, it just works. And their feature pace is accelerating. So pretty strong testimonials, but I want to keep an eye on price transparency any possible backlash there and how the ecosystem evolves. It's something that we called out early on. It's an indicator and SeviceNow needs to continue to invest in that partner network is especially as it builds out its vertical industry practices and expands internationally. Okay, we'll leave it there for now. Remember I publish each week on wikibon.com and siliconangle.com. These episodes they're all available as podcasts. All you got to do is search for breaking analysis podcast. You can always connect with me on Twitter @DVellante or email me @david.vellantesiliconangle.com. Appreciate the comments on LinkedIn. And don't forget to check out etr.plus for all the survey data. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE insights powered by ETR. Be well, and we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> From around the globe, it's theCUBE, covering Data Citizens '21. Brought to you by Collibra. >> For the past decade organizations have been effecting very deliberate data strategies and investing quite heavily in people, processes and technology, specifically designed to gain insights from data, better serve customers, drive new revenue streams we've heard this before. The results quite frankly have been mixed. As much of the effort is focused on analytics and technology designed to create a single version of the truth, which in many cases continues to be elusive. Moreover, the world of data is changing. Data is increasingly distributed making collaboration and governance more challenging, especially where operational use cases are a priority. Hello, everyone. My name is Dave Vellante and you're watching theCUBE coverage of Data Citizens '21. And we're pleased to welcome Michele Goetz who's the vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research. Hello, Michele. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Hi, Dave. Thanks for having me today. >> It's our pleasure. So I want to start, you serve have a wide range of roles including enterprise architects, CDOs, chief data officers that is, analyst, the analyst, et cetera, and many data-related functions. And my first question is what are they thinking about today? What's on their minds, these data experts? >> So there's actually two things happening. One is what is the demand that's placed on data for our new intelligent digital systems. So we're seeing a lot of investment and interest in things like edge computing. And then how does that intersect with artificial intelligence to really run your business intelligently and drive new value propositions to be both adaptive to the market as well as resilient to changes that are unforeseen. The second thing is then you create this massive complexity to managing the data, governing the data, orchestrating the data because it's not just a centralized data warehouse environment anymore. You have a highly diverse and distributed landscape that you both control internally, as well as taking advantage of third party information. So really what the struggle then becomes is how do you trust the data? How do you govern it, and secure, and protect that data? And then how do you ensure that it's hyper contextualized to the types of value propositions that our intelligence systems are going to serve? >> Well, I think you're hitting on the key issues here. I mean, you're right. The data and I sort of refer to this as well is sort of out there, it's distributed at the edge. But generally our data organizations are actually quite centralized and as well you talk about the need to trust the data obviously that's crucial. But are you seeing the organization change? I know you're talking about this to clients, your discussion about collaboration. How are you seeing that change? >> Yeah, so as you have to bring data into context of the insights that you're trying to get or the intelligence that's automating and scaling out the value streams and outcomes within your business, we're actually seeing a federated model emerge in organizations. So while there's still a centralized data management and data services organization led typical enterprise architects for data, a data engineering team that's managing warehouses as in data lakes. They're creating this great platform to access and orchestrate information, but we're also seeing data, and analytics, and governance teams come together under chief data officers or chief data and analytics officers. And this is really where the insights are being generated from either BI and analytics or from data science itself and having dedicated data engineers and stewards that are helping to access and prepare data for analytic efforts. And then lastly, this is the really interesting part is when you push data into the edge the goal is that you're actually driving an experience and an application. And so in that case we are seeing data engineering teams starting to be incorporated into the solutions teams that are aligned to lines of business or divisions themselves. And so really what's happening is if there is a solution consultant who is also overseeing value-based portfolio management when you need to instrument the data to these new use cases and keep up with the pace of the business it's this engineering team that is part of the DevOps work bench to execute on that. So really the balances we need the core, we need to get to the insights and build our models for AI. And then the next piece is how do you activate all that? And there's a team over there to help. So it's really spreading the wealth and expertise where it needs to go. >> Yeah, I love that. You took a couple of things that really resonated with me. You talked about context a couple of times and this notion of a federated model, because historically the sort of big data architecture, the team, they didn't have the context, the business context, and my inference is that's changing and I think that's critical. Your talk at Data Citizens is called how obsessive collaboration fuels scalable DataOps. You talk about the data, the DevOps team. What's the premise you put forth to the audience? >> So the point about obsessive collaboration is sort of taking the hubris out of your expertise on the data. Certainly there's a recognition by data professionals that the business understands and owns their data. They know the semantics, they know the context of it and just receiving the requirements on that was assumed to be okay. And then you could provide a data foundation, whether it's just a lake or whether you have a warehouse environment where you're pulling for your analytics. The reality is that as we move into more of AI machine learning type of model, one, more context is necessary. And you're kind of balancing between what are the things that you can ascribe to the data globally which is what data engineers can support. And then there's what is unique about the data and the context of the data that is related to the business value and outcome as well as the feature engineering that is being done on the machine learning models. So there has to be a really tight link and collaboration between the data engineers, the data scientists, and analysts, and the business stakeholders themselves. You see a lot of pods starting up that way to build the intelligence within the system. And then lastly, what do you do with that model? What do you do with that data? What do you do with that insight? You now have to shift your collaboration over to the work bench that is going to pull all these components together to create the experiences and the automation that you're looking for. And that requires a different collaboration model around software development. And still incorporating the business expertise from those stakeholders, so that you're satisfying, not only the quality of the code to run the solution, but the quality towards the outcome that meets the expectation and the time to value that your stakeholders have. So data teams aren't just sitting in the basement or in another part of the organization and digitally disconnected anymore. You're finding that they're having to work much more closely and side by side with their colleagues and stakeholders. >> I think it's clear that you understand this space really well. Hubris out context in, I mean, that's kind of what's been lacking. And I'm glad you said you used the word anymore because I think it's a recognition that that's kind of what it was. They were down in the basement or out in some kind of silo. And I think, and I want to ask you this. I come back to organization because I think a lot of organizations look the most cost effective way for us to serve the business is to have a single data team with hyper specialized roles. That'll be the cheapest way, the most efficient way that we can serve them. And meanwhile, the business, which as you pointed out has the context is frustrated. They can't get to data. So there's this notion of a federated governance model is actually quite interesting. Are you seeing actual common use cases where this is being operationalized? >> Absolutely, I think the first place that you were seeing it was within the operational technology use cases. There the use cases where a lot of the manufacturing industrial device. Any sort of IOT based use case really recognized that without applying data and intelligence to whatever process was going to be executed. It was really going to be challenging to know that you're creating the right foundation, meeting the SLA requirements, and then ultimately bringing the right quality and integrity to the data, let alone any sort of data protection and regulatory compliance that has to be necessary. So you already started seeing the solution teams coming together with the data engineers, the solution developers, the analysts, and data scientists, and the business stakeholders to drive that. But that is starting to come back down into more of the IT mindset as well. And so DataOps starts to emerge from that paradigm into more of the corporate types of use cases and sort of parrot that because there are customer experience use cases that have an IOT or edge component to though. We live on our smart phones, we live on our smart watches, we've got our laptops. All of us have been put into virtual collaboration. And so we really need to take into account not just the insight of analytics but how do you feed that forward. And so this is really where you're seeing sort of the evolution of DataOps as a competency not only to engineer the data and collaborate but ensure that there sort of an activation and alignment where the value is going to come out, and still being trusted and governed. >> I got kind of a weird question, but I'm going. I was talking to somebody in Israel the other day and they told me masks are off, the economy's booming. And he noted that Israel said, hey, we're going to pay up for the price of a vaccine. The cost per dose out, 28 bucks or whatever it was. And he pointed out that the EU haggled big time and they don't want to pay $19. And as a result they're not as far along. Israel understood that the real value was opening up the economy. And so there's an analogy here which I want to come back to my organization and it relates to the DataOps. Is if the real metric is, hey, I have an idea for a data product. How long does it take to go from idea to monetization? That seems to me to be a better KPI than how much storage I have, or how much geometry petabytes I'm managing. So my question is, and it relates to DataOps. Can that DataOps, should that DataOps individual maybe live, and then maybe even the data engineer live inside of the business and is that even feasible technically with this notion of federated governance? Are you seeing that and maybe talk a little bit more about this DataOps role. Is it. >> Yeah. >> Fungible. >> Yeah, it's definitely fungible. And in fact, when I talked about sort of those three units of there's your core enterprise data services, there's your BI and data, and then there's your line of business. All of those, the engineering and the ops is the DataOps which is living in all of those environments and being as close as possible to where the value proposition is being defined and designed. So absolutely being able to federate that. And I think the other piece on DataOps that is really important is recognizing how the practices around continuous integration and continuous deployment using agile methodologies is really reshaping. A lot of the waterfall approaches that were done before where data was lagging 12 to 18 months behind any sort of insights, but a lot of the platforms today assume that you're moving into a standard mature software development life cycle. And you can start seeing returns on investment within a quarter, really, so that you can iterate and then speed that up so that you're delivering new value every two weeks. But it does change the mindset this DataOps team aligned to solution development, aligned to a broader portfolio management of business capabilities and outcomes needs to understand how to appropriately scope the data products that they're delivering to incremental value-based milestones. So the business feels that they're getting improvements over time and not just waiting. So there's an MVP, you move forward on that and optimize, optimize, extend scale. So again, that CICD mindset is helping to not bottleneck and wait for the complete field of dreams to come from your data and your insights. >> Thank you for that, Michelle. I want to come back to this idea of collaboration because over the last decade we've seen attempts, I've seen software come out to try to help the various roles collaborate and some of it's been okay, but you have these hyper specialized roles. You've got data scientists, data engineers, quality engineers, analysts, et cetera. And they tend to be in their own little worlds. But at the end of the day we rely on them all to get answers. So how can these data scientists, all these stewards, how can they collaborate better? What are you seeing there? >> You need to get them onto the same process. That's really what it comes down to. If you're working from different points of view, that's one thing. But if you're working from different processes collaborating is really challenging. And I think the one thing that's really come out of this move to machine learning and AI is recognizing that you need processes that reinforce collaboration. So that's number one. So you see agile development in CICD not just for DataOps, not just for DevOps, but also encouraging and propelling these projects and iterations for the data science teams as well or even if there's machine learning engineers incorporated. And then certainly the business stakeholders are inserted within there as appropriate to accept what it is that is going to be developed. So processes is number one. And number two is what is the platform that's going to reinforce those processes and collaboration. And it's really about what's being shared. How do you share? So certainly what we're seeing within the platforms themselves is everybody contributing into some sort of a library where their components and products are being ascribed to and then that's able to help different teams grab those components and build out what those solutions are going to be. And in fact, what gets really cool about that is you don't always need hardcore data scientists anymore as you have this social platform for data product and analytic product development. This is where a lot of the auto ML begins because those who are less data science-oriented but can build an insight pipeline, can grab all the different components from the pipelines to the transformations, to capture mechanisms, to bolting into the model itself and allowing that to be delivered to the application. So really kind of balancing out between process and platforms that enable and encourage, and almost force you to collaborate and manage through sharing. >> Thank you for that. I want to ask you about the role data governance. You've mentioned trust and that's data quality, and you've got teams that are focused on and specialists focused on data quality. There's the data catalog. Here's my question. You mentioned edge a couple of times and I can see a lot of that. I mean, today, most AI is are a lot of value, I would say most is modeling. And in the future, you mentioned edge it's going to be a lot of influencing in real time. And people maybe not going to have the time or be involved in that decision. So what are you seeing in terms of data governance, federate. We talked about federated governance, this notion of a data catalog and maybe automating data quality without necessarily having it be so labor intensive. What are you seeing the trends there? >> Yeah, so I think our new environment, our new normal is that you have to be composable, interoperable, and portable. Portability is really the key here. So from a cataloging perspective and governance we would bring everything together into our catalogs and business glossaries. And it would be a reference point, it was like a massive Wiki. Well, that's wonderful, but why just how's it in a museum. You really want to activate that. And I think what's interesting about the technologies today for governance is that you can turn those rules, and business logic, and policies into services that are composable components and bring those into the solutions that you're defining. And in that way what happens is that creates portability. You can drive them wherever they need to go. But from the composability and the interoperability portion of that you can put those services in the right place at the right time for what you need for an outcome so that you start to become behaviorally driven on executing on governance rather than trying to write all of the governance down into transformations and controls to where the data lives. You can have quality and observability of that quality and performance right at the edge and context of behavior and use of that solution. You can run those services and in governance on gateways that are managing and routing information at those edge solutions and we synchronization between the edge and the cloud comes up. And if it's appropriate during synchronization of the data back into the data lake you can run those services there. So there's a lot more flexibility and elasticity for today's modern approaches to cataloging, and glossaries, and governance of data than we had before. And that goes back into what we talked about earlier of like, this is the new wave of DataOps. This is how you bring data products to fruition now. Everything is about activation. >> So how do you see the future of DataOps? I mean, I kind of been pushing you to a more decentralized model where the business has more control 'cause the business has the context. I mean, I feel as though, hey, we've done a great job of contextualizing our operational systems. The sales team they know when the data is crap within my CRM, but our data systems are context agnostic generally. And you obviously understand that problem well. But so how do you see the future of DataOps? >> So I think what's kind of interesting about that is we're going to go to governance on greed versus governance on right more so. What do I mean by that? That means that from a business perspective there's two sides of it. There's ensuring that where governance is run is as we talked about before executing at the appropriate place at the appropriate time. It's semantically domain-centric driven not logical and systems centric. So that's number one. Number two is also recognizing that business owners or business operations actually plays a role in this, because as you're working within your CRM systems, like a Salesforce, for example you're using an iPaaS MuleSoft to connect to other applications, connect to other data sources, connect to other analytics sources. And what's happening there is that the data is being modeled and personalized to whatever view insight our task has to happen within those processes. So even CRM environments where we think of as sort of traditional technologies that we're used to are getting a lift, both in terms of intelligence from the data but also your flexibility and how you execute governance and quality services within that environment. And that actually opens up the data foundations a lot more and avoids you from having to do a lot of moving, copying centralizing data and creating an over-weighted business application and an over, both in terms of the data foundation but also in terms of the types of business services, and status updates, and processes that happen in the application itself. You're drawing those tasks back down to where they should be and where performance can be managed rather than trying to over customize your application environment. And that gives you a lot more flexibility later too for any sort of upgrades or migrations that you want to make because all of the logic is contained back down in a service layer instead. >> Great perspectives, Michelle, you obviously know your stuff and it's been a pleasure having you on. My last question is when you look out there anything that really excites you or any specific research that you're working on that you want to share, that you're super pumped about? >> I think there's two things. One is it's truly incredible the amount of insight and growth that is coming through data profiling and observation. Really understanding and contextualizing data anomalies so that you understand is data helping or hurting the business value and tying it very specifically to processes and metrics, which is fantastic as well as models themselves like really understanding how data inputs and outputs are making a difference whether the model performs or not. And then I think the second thing is really the emergence of more active data, active insights. And as what we talked about before your ability to package up services for governance and quality in particular that allow you to scale your data out towards the edge or where it's needed. And doing so not just so that you can run analytics but that you're also driving overall processes and value. So the research around the operationalization and activation of data is really exciting. And looking at the networks and service mesh to bring those things together is kind of where I'm focusing right now because what's the point of having data in a database if it's not providing any value. >> Michele Goetz, Forrester Research, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. Really awesome perspectives. You're in an exciting space, so appreciate your time. >> Absolutely, thank you. >> And thank you for watching Data Citizens '21 on theCUBE. My name is Dave Vellante. (upbeat music)

>> From around the globe, it's theCube covering Data Citizens '21, brought to you by Collibra. >> For the past decade, organizations have been effecting very deliberate data strategies investing quite heavily in people, processes, and technology specifically designed to gain insights from data, better serve customers, drive new revenue streams, we've heard this before. The results quite frankly have been mixed. As much of the effort is focused on analytics and technology designed to create a single version of the truth, which in many cases continues to be elusive. Moreover, the world of data is changing, data is increasingly distributed making collaboration in governance more challenging especially where operational use cases are a priority. Hello, everyone, my name is Dave Vellante and you're watching theCube's coverage of Data Citizens '21. And we're pleased to welcome Michele Goetz, who's the Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. Hello, Michele, welcome to theCube. >> Hi, Dave thanks for having me today. >> It's our pleasure. So I want to start, you serve have a wide range of roles including enterprise architects, CDOs, chief data officers that is, the analyst et cetera, and many data related functions. And my first question is what are they thinking about today? What's on their minds? These data experts. >> So there's actually two things happening. One is what is the demand that's placed on data for our new intelligent digital systems. So we're seeing a lot of investment and interest in things like edge computing. And then how does that intersect with artificial intelligence to really run your business intelligently and drive new value propositions, to be both adaptive to the market as well as resilient to changes that are unforeseen. The second thing is then you create this massive complexity to managing the data, governing the data, orchestrating the data, because it's not just a centralized data warehouse environment anymore. You have a highly diverse and distributed landscape that you both control internally, as well as taking advantage of third party information. So really what the struggle then becomes is how do you trust the data? How do you govern it and secure or protect that data? And then how do you ensure that it's hyper-contextualized to the types of value propositions that our intelligence systems are going to serve? >> Well, I think you're hitting on the key issues here. I mean, you're right, the data and I sort of refer to this as well as sort of out there it's distributed as at the edge, but generally our data organizations are actually quite centralized. And as well, you talk about the need to trust the data, obviously that's crucial. But are you seeing the organization change? I know you're talking about this to clients, your discussion about collaboration. How are you seeing that change? >> Yeah, so as you have to bring data into context of the insights that you're trying to get or the intelligence that's automating and scaling out the value streams and outcomes within your business. We're actually seeing a federated model emerge in organizations. So while there's still a centralized data management and data services organization led typically by enterprise architects for data, a data engineering team that's managing warehouses and data lakes. They're creating this great platform to access and orchestrate information, but we're also seeing data and analytics and governance teams come together under chief data officers or chief data and analytics officers. And this is really where the insights are being generated from either BI and analytics or from data science itself and having dedicated data engineers and stewards that are helping to access and prepare data for analytic efforts. And then lastly, this is the really interesting part is when you push data into the edge, the goal is that you're actually driving an experience and an application. And so in that case, we are seeing data engineering teams starting to be incorporated into the solutions teams that are aligned to lines of business or divisions themselves. And so really what's happening is if there is a solution consultant who is also overseeing value-based portfolio management when you need to instrument the data to these new use cases and keep up with the pace of the business, it's this engineering team that is part of the DevOps work bench to execute on that. So really the balances we need the core, we need to get to the insights and build our models for AI. And then the next piece is how do you activate all that and there's a team over there to help? So it's really spreading the wealth and expertise where it needs to go. >> Yeah, I love that you to, a couple of things that really resonated with me. You talked about context a couple of times and this notion of a federated model, because historically the sort of big data architecture, the team, they didn't have the context, the business context, and you're the, my inference is that's changing. And I think that's critical. Your talk at Data Citizens is called how obsessive collaboration fuels scalable DataOps. You talk about the data, the DevOps team. What's the premise you put forth to the audience? >> So the point about obsessive collaboration is sort of taking the hubris out of your expertise on the data. Certainly, there's a recognition by data professionals that the business understands and owns their data. They know the semantics, they know the context of it and just receiving the requirements on that was assumed to be okay. And then you could provide a data foundation whether it's just a lake or whether you have a warehouse environment where you're pulling for your analytics. The reality is that as we move into more of AI machine learning type of model, one, more context is necessary and you're kind of balancing between what are the things that you can ascribe to the data globally which is what data engineers can support. And then there's what is unique about the data and the context of about the data that is related to the business value and outcome as well as the feature engineering that is being done on the machine learning models. So there has to be a really tight link and collaboration between the data engineers, the data scientists, and analysts, and the business stakeholders themselves. You see a lot of pods starting up that way to build the intelligence within the system. And then lastly, what do you do with that model? What do you do with that data? What do you do with that insight? You now have to shift your collaboration over to the work bench that is going to pull all these components together to create the experiences and the automation that you're looking for. And that requires a different collaboration model around software development and still incorporating the business expertise from those stakeholders so that you're satisfying, not only the quality of the code to run the solution, but the quality towards the outcome that meets the expectation and the time to value that your stakeholders have. So data teams aren't just sitting in the basement or in another part of the organization and digitally, disconnected anymore. You're finding that they're having to work much more closely and side by side with their colleagues and stakeholders. >> I think it's clear that you understand this space really well, hubris out, context in, I mean, that's kind of what's been lacking. And I'm glad you said, you used the word anymore because I think it's a recognition that that's kind of what it was. They were down in the basement or out in some kind of silo. And I think, and I want to ask you this, I'll come back to organization because I think a lot of organizations, look the most cost effective way for us to serve the businesses to have a single data team with hyper-specialized roles, that'll be the cheapest way, the most efficient way that we can serve them. And meanwhile, the business which as you pointed out has the context is frustrated. They can't get to data. So this notion of a federated governance model is actually quite interesting. Are you seeing actual common use cases where this is being operationalized? >> Absolutely, I think the first place that you were seeing it was within the operational technology use cases. The use cases where a lot of the manufacturing, industrial device, any sort of IoT-based use case really recognized that without applying data and intelligence to whatever process was going to be executed, it was really going to be challenging to know that you're creating the right foundation, meeting the SLA requirements, and then ultimately bringing the right quality and integrity to the data, let alone any sort of data protection and regulatory compliance that has to be necessary. So you already started seeing the solution teams coming together with the data engineers, the solution developers, the analysts, and data scientists, and the business stakeholders to drive that. But that is starting to come back down into more of the IT mindset as well. And so DataOps starts to emerge from that paradigm into more of the corporate types of use cases and sort of parrot that because there are customer experience use cases that have an IoT or edge component to them. We live on our smart phones, we live on our smart watches, we've got our laptops, all of us have been put into virtual collaboration. And so we really need to take into account not just the insight of analytics, but how do you feed that, you know, feed that forward. And so this is really where you're seeing sort of the evolution of DataOps as a competency not only to engineer the data and collaborate, but ensure that there sort of an activation and alignment where the value is going to come out and still being trusted and governed. >> I've got kind of a weird question, but I'm going to (indistinct). I was talking to somebody in Israel the other day and they told me masks are off, the economy's booming. And he noted that Israel said, "Hey, we're going to pay up for the price of a vaccine, the cost per dose around 28 bucks," or whatever it was. And he pointed out that the EU haggled big time and they go, "We're going to pay $19." And as a result, they're not, you know, as far along Israel understood that the real value was opening up the economy. And so there's an analogy here, which I want to come back to my organization and it relates to the DataOps. If the real metric is, "Hey, I have an idea for a data product." How long does it take to go from idea to monetization? That seems to me to be a better KPI than, you know, how much storage I have or how much petabytes I'm managing. So my question is, and it relates to DataOps, can that DataOps, should that DataOps individual maybe live and then maybe even the data engineer live inside of the business and is that even feasible technically with this notion of federated governance? Are you seeing that? And maybe talk a little bit more about this DataOps role. Is it-- >> Yeah. >> Fungible? >> Yeah, it's definitely fungible. And in fact, when I talked about sort of those three units of there's your core enterprise data services, there's your BI and data and then there's your line of business. All of those, the engineering and the ops is the DataOps which is living in all of those environments and being as close as possible to where the value proposition is being defined and designed. So absolutely being able to federate that. And I think the other piece on DataOps that is really important is recognizing how the practices around continuous integration and continuous deployment using agile methodologies is really reshaping a lot of the waterfall approaches that were done before where data was lagging 12 to 18 months behind any sort of insights, but a lot of the platforms today assume that you're moving into a standard mature software development life cycle. And you can start seeing returns on investment within a quarter really, so that you can iterate and then speed that up so that you're delivering new value every two weeks. But it does change the mindset, this DataOps team align to solution development, align to a broader portfolio management of business capabilities and outcomes needs to understand how to appropriately stop the data products that they're delivering to incremental value based milestones. So the business feels that they're getting improvements over time and not just waiting. So there's an MVP, you move forward on that and optimize, optimize, extend scale. So again, that CICD mindset is helping to not bottleneck and wait for the complete field of dreams to come from your data and your insights. >> Thank you for that, Michele. I want to come back to this idea of collaboration 'cause over the last decade, we've seen attempts. I've seen software come out to try to help the various roles, collaborate and some of it's been okay, but you have these hyper-specialized roles. You've got data scientists, data engineers, quality engineers, analysts, et cetera. And they tend to be in their own little worlds. But at the end of the day, we rely on them all to get answers. So how can these data scientists, all these stewards, how can they collaborate better? What are you seeing there? >> You need to get them onto the same process, that's really what it comes down to. If you're working from different points of view, that's one thing. But if you're working from different processes, collaborating is really challenging. And I think the one thing that's really come out of this move to machine learning and AI is recognizing that you need processes that reinforce collaboration. So that's number one. So you see agile development in CICD not just for DataOps, not just for DevOps, but also encouraging and propelling these projects and iterations before the data science teams as well or even if there's machine learning engineers incorporated. And then, certainly the business stakeholders are inserted within there as appropriate to accept what it is that is going to be developed. So process is number one. Number two is what is the platform that's going to reinforce those processes and collaboration. And it's really about what's being shared. How do you share? So certainly what we're seeing within the platforms themselves is everybody contributing into some sort of a library where their components and products are being ascribed to and then that's able to help different teams grab those components and build out what those solutions are going to be. And in fact, what gets really cool about that is you don't always need hardcore data scientists anymore as you have this social platform for data product and analytic product development. This is where a lot of the auto ML begins because those who are less data science oriented but can build an insight pipeline, can grab all the different components from the pipelines to the transformations, to capture mechanisms, to bolting into the model itself and allowing that to be delivered to the application. So really kind of balancing out between process and platforms that enable and encourage and almost force you to collaborate and manage through sharing. >> Thank you for that I want to ask you about the role of data governance. You've mentioned trust and that's data quality and you've got teams that are focused on and specialists focused on data quality. There's the data catalog and here's my question. You mentioned edge a couple of times and I can see a lot of that. I mean, today, most AI is a lot of the AI, I would say most is modeling. And in the future, you mentioned edge. It's going to be a lot of inferencing in real-time. And you know people maybe not going to have the time or be involved in that decision. So what are you seeing in terms of data governance, federate, we talked about federated governance, this notion of a data catalog and maybe automating data quality without necessarily having it be so labor-intensive. What are you seeing trends there? >> Yeah, so I think our new environment, our new normal is that you have to be composable, interoperable, and portable. Portability is really the key here. So from a cataloging perspective, in governance we would bring everything together into our catalogs and business glossaries. And it would be a reference point. It was like a massive Wiki. Well, that's wonderful, but why just how's it in a museum you really want to activate that. And I think what's interesting about the technologies today for governance is that you can turn those rules and business logic and policies into services that are composable components and bring those into the solutions that you're defining. And in that way, what happens is that creates portability. You can drive them wherever they need to go. But from the composability and the interoperability portion of that, you can put those services in the right place at the right time for what you need for an outcome so that you start to become behaviorally-driven on executing on governance, rather than trying to write all of the governance down into transformations and controls to where the data lives. You can have quality and observability of that quality and performance right at the edge in context of behavior and use of that solution. You can run those services and in governance on gateways that are managing and routing information at those edge solutions and where synchronization between the edge and the cloud comes up. And if it's appropriate during synchronization of the data back into the data lake, you can run those services there. So there's a lot more flexibility and elasticity for today's modern approaches to cataloging and glossaries and governance of data than we had before. And that goes back into what we talked about earlier of like this is the new wave of DataOps. This is how you bring data products to fruition now everything is about activation. >> So how do you see the future of DataOps? I mean, I kind of been pushing you to a more decentralized model where the business has more control 'cause the business has the context. I mean, I feel as though, hey, we've done a great job of contextualizing our operational systems. The sales team, they know when the data is crap within my CRM, but our data systems are context agnostic, which you know, generally and you obviously understand that problem well but so how do you see the future of DataOps? >> So I think what's kind of interesting about that is we're going to go to governance on greed versus governance on right, more so. What do I mean by that? That means that from a business perspective there's two sides of it. There's ensuring that where governance is run as we talked about before executing at the appropriate place at the appropriate time. It's semantically domain centric driven not logical and systems centric. So that's number one. Number two is also recognizing that business owners or business operations actually plays a role in this because as you're working within your CRM systems like a Salesforce, for example, you're using an I-PASS environment MuleSoft to connect to other applications, connect to other data sources, connect to other analytics sources, and what's happening there is that the data is being modeled and personalized to whatever view, insight, or task has to happen within those processes. So even CRM environments where we think of as sort of traditional technologies that we're used to are getting a lift to both in terms of intelligence from the data but also your flexibility and how you execute governance and quality services within that environment. And that actually opens up the data foundations a lot more and avoids you from having to do a lot of moving, copying, centralizing data, and creating an over-weighted business application and an over, you know, both in terms of the data foundation but also in terms of the types of business services and status updates and processes that happen in the application itself. You're drawing those tasks back down to where they should be and where performance can be managed rather than trying to over customize your application environment. And that gives you a lot more flexibility later too for any sort of upgrades or migrations that you want to make because all of the logic is contained back down in a service layer instead. >> Great perspectives, Michele, you obviously know your stuff and it's been a pleasure having you on. My last question is when you look out there anything that really excites you or any specific research that you're working on that you want to share that you're super-pumped about. >> I think there's two things. One is it's truly incredible the amount of insight and growth that is coming through data profiling and observation, really understanding and contextualizing data anomalies so that you understand is data helping or hurting the business value. And, you know tying it very specifically to processes and metrics which is fantastic as well as models themselves like really understanding how data inputs and outputs are making a difference whether the model performs or not. And then I think the second thing is really the emergence of more active data, active insights, as what we talked about before your ability to package up services for governance and quality in particular that allow you to scale your data out towards the edge or where it's needed and doing so, you know not just so that you can run analytics but that you're also driving overall processes and value. So the research around the operationalization and activation of data is really exciting. And looking at the networks and service mesh to bring those things is kind of where I'm focusing right now because what's the point of having data in a database if it's not providing any value. >> Michele Goetz, Forrester Research, thanks so much for coming on theCube really awesome perspectives. You're in an exciting space. So appreciate your time. >> Absolutely, thank you. >> And thank you for watching Data Citizens '21 on theCube. My name is Dave Vellante. (upbeat music)

>> From the Silicon Angle Media Office in Boston, Massachusetts, it's The Cube. Now, here's your host Dave Vellante. >> Hi everybody. Welcome to this Cube Insights powered by ETR. In this breaking analysis we're going to look at recent spending data from the ETR Spending Intentions Survey. We believe tech spending is slowing down. Now, it's not falling off a cliff but it is reverting to pre-2018 spending levels. There's some concern in the bellwethers of specifically financial services and insurance accounts and large telcos. We're also seeing less redundancy. What we mean by that is in 2017 and 2018 you had a lot of experimentation going on. You had a lot of digital initiatives that were going into, not really production, but sort of proof of concept. And as a result you were seeing spending on both legacy infrastructure and emerging technologies. What we're seeing now is more replacements. In other words people saying, "Okay, we're now going into production. We've tried that. We're not going to go with A, we're going to double down on B." And we're seeing less experimentation with the emerging technology. So in other words people are pulling out, actually some of the legacy technologies. And they're not just spraying and praying across the entire emerging technology sector. So, as a result, spending is more focused. As they say, it's not a disaster, but it's definitely some cause for concern. So, what I'd like to do, Alex if you bring up the first slide. I want to give you some takeaways from the ETR, the Enterprise Technology Research Q4 Pulse Check Survey. ETR has a data platform of 4,500 practitioners that it surveys regularly. And the most recent spending intention survey will actually be made public on October 16th at the ETR Webcast. ETR is in its quiet period right now, but they've given me a little glimpse and allowed me to share with you, our Cube audience, some of the findings. So as I say, you know, overall tech spending is clearly slowing, but it's still healthy. There's a uniform slowdown, really, across the board. In virtually all sectors with very few exceptions, and I'll highlight some of the companies that are actually quite strong. Telco, large financial services, insurance. That's rippling through to AMIA, which is, as I've said, is over-weighted in banking. The Global 2000 is looking softer. And also the global public and private companies. GPP is what ETR calls it. They say this is one of the best indicators of spending intentions and is a harbinger for future growth or deceleration. So it's the largest public companies and the largest private companies. Think Mars, Deloitte, Cargo, Coke Industries. Big giant, private companies. We're also seeing a number of changes in responses from we're going to increase to more flat-ish. So, again, it's not a disaster. It's not falling off the cliff. And there are some clear winners and losers. So adoptions are really reverting back to 2018 levels. As I said, replacements are arising. You know, digital transformation is moving from test everything to okay, let's go, let's focus now and double-down on those technologies that we really think are winners. So this is hitting both legacy companies and the disrupters. One of the other key takeaways out of the ETR Survey is that Microsoft is getting very, very aggressive. It's extending and expanding its TAM further into cloud, into collaboration, into application performance management, into security. We saw the Surface announcement this past week. Microsoft is embracing Android. Windows is not the future of Microsoft. It's all these other markets that they're going after. They're essentially building out an API platform and focusing in on the user experience. And that's paying off because CIOs are clearly more comfortable with Microsoft. Okay, so now I'm going to take you through some themes. I'm going to make some specific vendor comments, particularly in Cloud, software, and infrastructure. And then we'll wrap. So here's some major themes that really we see going on. Investors still want growth. They're punishing misses on earnings and they're rewarding growth companies. And so you can see on this slide that it's really about growth metrics. What you're seeing is companies are focused on total revenue, total revenue growth, annual recurring revenue growth, billings growth. Companies that maybe aren't growing so fast, like Dell, are focused on share gains. Lately we've seen pullbacks in the software companies and their stock prices really due to higher valuations. So, there's some caution there. There's actually a somewhat surprising focus given the caution and all the discussion about, you know, slowing economy. There's some surprising lack of focus on key performance indicators like cash flow. A few years ago, Splunk actually stopped giving, for example, cash flow targets. You don't see as much focus on market capitalization or shareholders returns. You do see that from Oracle. You see that last week from the Dell Financial Analyst Meeting. I talked about that. But it's selective. You know these are the type of metrics that Oracle, Dell, VMware, IBM, HPE, you know generally HP Inc. as well will focus on. Another thing we see is the Global M&A across all industries is back to 2016 levels. It basically was down 16% in Q3. However, well and that's by the way due to trade wars and other uncertainties and other economic slowdowns and Brexit. But tech M&A has actually been pretty robust this year. I mean, you know take a look at some examples. I'll just name a few. Google with Looker, big acquisitions. Sales Force, huge acquisition. A $15 billion acquisition of Tableau. It also spent over a billion dollars on Click software. Facebook with CTRL-labs. NVIDIA, $7 billion acquisition of Mellanox. VMware just plunked down billion dollars for Carbon Black and its own, you know, sort of pivotal within the family. Splunk with a billion dollar plus acquisition of SignalFx. HP over a billion dollars with Cray. Amazon's been active. Uber's been active. Even nontraditional enterprise tech companies like McDonald's trying to automate some of the drive-through technology. Mastercard with Nets. And of course the stalwart M&A companies Apple, Intel, Microsoft have been pretty active as well as many others. You know but generally I think what's happening is valuations are high and companies are looking for exits. They've got some cool tech so they're putting it out there. That you know, hey now's the time to buy. They want to get out. That maybe IPO is not the best option. Maybe they don't feel like they've got, you know, a long-term, you know, plan that is going to really maximize shareholder value so they're, you know, putting forth themselves for M&A today. And so that's been pretty robust. And I would expect that's going to continue for a little bit here as there are, again, some good technology companies out there. Okay, now let's get into, Alex if you pull up the next slide of the Company Outlook. I want to start with Cloud. Cloud, as they say here, continues it's steady march. I'm going to focus on the Big 3. Microsoft, AWS, and Google. In the ETR Spending Surveys they're all very clearly strong. Microsoft is very strong. As I said it's expanding it's total available market. It's into collaboration now so it's going after Slack, Box, Dropbox, Atlassian. It's announced application performance management capabilities, so it's kind of going after new relic there. New SIM and security products. So IBM, Splunk, Elastic are some targets there. Microsoft is one of the companies that's gaining share overall. Let me talk about AWS. Microsoft is growing faster in Cloud than AWS, but AWS is much, much larger. And AWS's growth continues. So it's not as strong as 2018 but it's stronger, in fact, much stronger than its peers overall in the marketplace. AWS appears to be very well positioned according to the ETR Surveys in database and AI it continues to gain momentum there. The only sort of weak spot is the ECS, the container orchestration area. And that looks a little soft likely due to Kubernetes. Drop down to Google. Now Google, you know, there's some strength in Google's business but it's way behind in terms of market share, as you all know, Microsoft and AWS. You know, its AI and machine learning gains have stalled relative to Microsoft and AWS which continue to grow. Google's strength and strong suit has always been analytics. The ETR data shows that its holdings serve there. But there's deceleration in data warehousing, and even surprisingly in containers given, you know, its strength in contributing to the Kubernetes project. But the ETR 3 Year Outlook, when they do longer term outlook surveys, shows GCP, Google's Cloud platform, gaining. But there's really not a lot of evidence in the existing data, in the near-term data to show that. But the big three, you know, Cloud players, you know, continue to solidify their position. Particularly AWS and Microsoft. Now let's turn our attention to enterprise software. Just going to name a few. ETR will have an extensive at their webcast. We'll have an extensive review of these vendors, and I'll pick up on that. But I just want to pick out a few here. Some of the enterprise software winners. Workday continues to be very, very strong. Especially in healthcare and pharmaceutical. Salesforce, we're seeing a slight deceleration but it's pretty steady. Very strong in Fortune 100. And Einstein, its AI offering appears to be gaining as well. Some of the acquisitions Mulesoft and Tableu are also quite strong. Demandware is another acquisition that's also strong. The other one that's not so strong, ExactTarget is somewhat weakening. So Salesforce is a little bit mixed, but, you know, continues to be pretty steady. Splunk looks strong. Despite some anecdotal comments that point to pricing issues, and I know Splunk's been working on, you know, tweaking its pricing model. And maybe even some competition. There's no indication in the ETR data yet that Splunk's, you know, momentum is attenuating. Security as category generally is very, very strong. And it's lifting all ships. Splunk's analytics business is showing strength is particularly in healthcare and pharmaceuticals, as well as financial services. I like the healthcare and pharmaceuticals exposure because, you know, in a recession healthcare will, you know, continue to do pretty well. Financial services in general is down, so there's maybe some exposure there. UiPath, I did a segment on RPA a couple weeks ago. UiPath continues its rapid share expansion. The latest ETR Survey data shows that that momentum is continuing. And UiPath is distancing itself in the spending surveys from its broader competition as well. Another company we've been following and I did a segment on the analytics and enterprise data warehousing sector a couple weeks ago is Snowflake. Snowflake continues to expand its share. Its slightly slower than its previous highs, which were off the chart. We shared with you its Net Score. Snowflake and UiPath have some of the highest Net Scores in the ETR Survey data of 80+%. Net Score remembers. You take the we're adding the platform, we're spending more and you subtract we're leaving the platform or spending less and that gives you the Net Score. Snowflake and UiPath are two of the highest. So slightly slower than previous ties, but still very very strong. Especially in larger companies. So that's just some highlights in the software sector. The last sector I want to focus on is enterprise infrastructure. So Alex if you'd bring that up. I did a segment at the end of Q2, post Q2 looking at earning statements and also some ETR data on the storage spending segment. So I'll start with Pure Storage. They continue to have elevative spending intentions. Especially in that giant public and private, that leading indicator. There are some storage market headwinds. The storage market generally is still absorbing that all flash injection. I've talked about this before. There's still some competition from Cloud. When Pure came out with its earnings last quarter, the stock dropped. But then when everybody else announced, you know, negative growth or, in Dell's case, Dell's the leader, they were flat. Pure Storage bounced back because on a relative basis they're doing very well. The other indication is Pure storage is very strong in net app accounts. Net apps mix, they don't call them out here but we'll do some further analysis down the road of net apps. So I would expect Pure to continue to gain share and relative to the others in that space. But there are some headwinds overall in the market. VMware, let's talk about VMware. VMware's spending profile, according to ETR, looks like 2018. It's still very strong in Fortune 1000, or 100 rather, but weaker in Fortune 500 and the GPP, the global public and private companies. That's a bit of a concern because GPP is one of the leading indicators. VMware on Cloud on AWS looks very strong, so that continues. That's a strategic area for them. Pivotal looks weak. Carbon Black is not pacing with CrowdStrike. So clearly VMware has some work to do with some of its recent acquisitions. It hasn't completed them yet. But just like the AirWatch acquisition, where AirWatch wasn't the leader in that space, really Citrix was the leader. VMware brought that in, cleaned it up, really got focused. So that's what they're going to have to do with Carbon Black and Security, which is going to be a tougher road to hoe I would say than end user computing and Pivotal. So we'll see how that goes. Let's talk about Dell, Dell EMC, Dell Technologies. The client side of the business is holding strong. As I've said many times server and storage are decelerating. We're seeing market headwinds. People are spending less on server and storage relative to some of the overall initiatives. And so, that's got to bounce back at some point. People are going to still need compute, they're still going to need storage, as I say. Both are suffering from, you know, the Cloud overhang. As well, storage there was such a huge injection of flash it gave so much headroom in the marketplace that it somewhat tempered storage demand overall. Customers said, "Hey, I'm good for a while. Cause now I have performance headroom." Whereas before people would buy spinning discs, they buy the overprovision just to get more capacity. So, you know, that was kind of a funky value proposition. The other thing is VxRail is not as robust as previous years and that's something that Dell EMC talks about as, you know, one of the market share leaders. But it's showing a little bit of softness. So we'll keep an eye on that. Let's talk about Cisco. Networking spend is below a year ago. The overall networking market has been, you know, somewhat decelerating. Security is a bright spot for Cisco. Their security business has grown in double digits for the last couple of quarters. They've got work to do in multi-Cloud. Some bright spots Meraki and Duo are both showing strength. HP, talk about HPE it's mixed. Server and storage markets are soft, as I've said. But HPE remains strong in Fortune 500 and that critical GPP leading indicator. You know Nimble is growing, but maybe not as fast as it used to be and Simplivity is really not as strong as last year. So we'd like to see a little bit of an improvement there. On the bright side, Aruba is showing momentum. Particularly in Fortune 500. I'll make some comments about IBM, even though it's really, you know, this IBM enterprise infrastructure. It's really services, software, and yes some infrastructure. The Red Hat acquisition puts it firmly in infrastructure. But IBM is also mixed. It's bouncing back. IBM Classic, the core IBM is bouncing back in Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 and in that critical GPP indicator. It's showing strength, IBM, in Cloud and it's also showing strength in services. Which is over half of its business. So that's real positive. Its analytics and EDW software business are a little bit soft right now. So that's a bit of a concern that we're watching. The other concern we have is Red Hat has been significantly since the announcement of the merger and acquisition. Now what we don't know, is IBM able to inject Red Hat into its large service and outsourcing business? That might be hidden in some of the spending intention surveys. So we're going to have to look at income statement. And the public statements post earnings season to really dig into that. But we'll keep an eye on that. The last comment is Cloudera. Cloudera once was the high-flying darling. They are hitting all-time lows. They made the acquisition of Hortonworks, which created some consolidation. Our hope was that would allow them to focus and pick up. CEO left. Cloudera, again, hitting all-time lows. In particular, AWS and Snowflake are hurting Cloudera's business. They're particularly strong in Cloudera's shops. Okay, so let me wrap. Let's give some final thoughts. So buyers are planning for a slowdown in tech spending. That is clear, but the sky is not falling. Look we're in the tenth year of a major tech investment cycle, so slowdown, in my opinion, is healthy. Digital initiatives are really moving into higher gear. And that's causing some replacement on legacy technologies and some focus on bets. So we're not just going to bet on every new, emerging technology, were going to focus on those that we believe are going to drive business value. So we're moving from a try-everything mode to a more focused management style. At least for a period of time. We're going to absorb the spend, in my view, of the last two years and then double-down on the winners. So not withstanding the external factors, the trade wars, Brexit, other geopolitical concerns, I would expect that we're going to have a period of absorption. Obviously it's October, so the Stock Market is always nervous in October. You know, we'll see if we get Santa Claus rally going into the end of the year. But we'll keep an eye on that. This is Dave Vellante for Cube Insights powered by ETR. Thank you for watching this breaking analysis. We'll see you next time. (upbeat tech music)

(bright symphony music) >> Hello, I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGLE Media and co-host of theCUBE. We're here in Paulo Alto at our studio here. I'm joining with Joseph Jacks, the founder and general partner of OSS Capital. Open Source Software Capital, is what OSS stands for. He's also the founder of KubeCon which now is part of the CNCF. It's a huge conference around Kubernetes. He's a cloud guy. He knows open source. Very well respected in the industry and also a great guest and friend of theCUBE, CUBE alumni. Joseph, great to see you. Also known as JJ. JJ, good to see you. >> Thank you for having me on again, John. >> Hey, great to have you come on. I know we've talked many times on theCUBE, but you've got some exciting news. You got a new firm, OSS Capital. Open Source Software, not operational support like a telco, but this is an investment opportunity where you're making investments. Congratulations. >> Thank you. >> So I know you can't talk about some of the specifics on the funds size, but you are actually going to go out, talk to entrepreneurs, make some equity investments. Around open source software. What's the thesis? How did you get here, why did you do it? What's motivating you, and what's the thesis? >> A lot of questions in there. Yeah, I mean this is a really profoundly huge year for open source software. On a bunch of different levels. I think the biggest kind of thing everyone anchors towards is GitHub being acquired by Microsoft. Just a couple of weeks ago, we had the two huge hadoop vendors join forces. That, I think, surprised a lot of people. MuleSoft, which is a big opensource middleware company, getting acquired by Salesforce just a year after going public. Just a huge outcome. I think one observation, just to sort of like summarize the year 2018, is actually, starting in January, almost on sort of like a monthly basis, we've observed a major sort of opensource software company outcome. And sort of kicking off the year, we had CoreOS getting acquired by Red Hat. Brandon and Alex, the founders over there, built a really interesting company in the Kubernetes ecosystem. And I think in February, Al Fresco, which is an open source content portal taking privatization outcome from a private equity firm, I believe in March we had Magento getting acquired by Adobe, which an open source based CMS. PHP CMS. So just a lot of activity for significant outcomes. Multibillion dollar outcomes of commercial open source companies. And open source software is something like 20 years old. 20 years in the making. And this year in particular, I've just seen just a huge amount of large scale outcomes that have been many years in the making from companies that have taken lots of venture funding. And in a lot of cases, sort of partially focused funding from different investors that have an affinity for open source software and sort of understand the uniqueness of the open source model when it's applied to business, when it's applied to company building. But more sort of opportunistic and sort of affinity oriented, as opposed to a pure focus. So that's kind of been part of the motivation. I'd say the more authentically compelling motivation for doing this is that it just needs to exist. This is sort of a model that is happening by necessity. We're seeing more and more software companies be open source software companies. So open source first. They're built in a distributed way. They're leveraging engineers and talent around the world. They're just part of this open source kind of philosophy. And they are fundamentally kind of commercial open source software companies. We felt that if you had a firm basically designed in a way to exclusively focus on those kind of companies, and where the firmware actually backed and supported by the founders of the largest commercial open source companies in the world before sort of the last decade. That could actually deliver a lot of value. So we've been sort of blogging a little bit about this. >> And you wrote a great post on it. I read about open source monetization. But I think one of the things I'm seeing as well that supports your thesis, and I like to get your reaction to it because I think this is something that's not really talked about, but open source is still young. I mean, you go back. I remember the days when we used to have to hide in the shadows to get licenses and pirate stuff and do all those crazy stuff. But now, it's only a couple decades away. The leaders that were investing were usually entrepreneurs that've been successful. The Rob Bearns, the Amar Wadhwa, the guy that did Spring. All these different open source. Linux, obviously, great success story. But there hasn't any been any institutional. Yeah, you got benchmark, other things, done some investments. A discipline around open source. Where open source is now table stakes in all software development. Cloud is scaling, scaling out globally. There's no real foc- There's never been a firm that's been focused on- Just open source from a commercial, while maintaining the purity and ethos of open source. I mean, is that. >> You agree? >> That's true. >> 100%, yeah. That's been the big part of creating the firm is aligning and solving for a pure focused structure. And I think what I'll say abstractly is this sort of venture capital, venture style approach to funding enterprise technology companies, software companies in general, has been to kind of find great entrepreneurs and in an abstract way that can build great technology companies. Can bring them to market, can sell them, and can scale them, and so on. And either create categories, or dominate existing categories, and disrupt incumbents, and so on. And I think while that has worked for quite a while, in the venture industry overall, in the 50, 60 years of the venture industry, lots of successful firms, I think what we're starting to see is a necessary shift toward accounting for the fundamental differences of opensource software as it relates to new technology getting created and going, and new software companies kind of coming into market. So we actually fundamentally believe that commercial open source software companies are fundamentally different. Functionally in almost every way, as compared to proprietary closed source software companies of the last 30 years. And the way we've sort of designed our firm and we'll about ten people pretty soon. We're just about a month in. We're growing the team quickly, but we're sort of a small, focused team. >> A ten's not focused small, I mean, I know venture firms that have two billion in management that don't have more than 20 people. >> Well, we have portfolio partners that are focused in different functional areas where commercial open source software companies have really fundamental differences. If you were to sort of stack rank, by function, where commercial open source software companies are really fundamentally different, sort of top to bottom. Legal would be, probably, the very top of the list. Right, in terms of license compliance management, structuring all the sort of protections and provisions around how intellectual property is actually shipped to and sold to customers. The legal licensing aspects. The commercial software licensing. This is quite a polarizing hot topic these days. The second big functional area where we have a portfolio partner focused on this is finance. Finance is another area where commercial open source software companies have to sort of behaviorally orient and apply that function very, very differently as compared to proprietary software companies. So we're crazy honored and excited to have world experts and very respected leaders in those different areas sort of helping to provide sort of different pillars of wisdom to our portfolio companies, our portfolio founders, in those different functional areas. And we provide a really focused kind of structure for them. >> Well I want to ask you the kind of question that kind of bridges the old way and new way, 'cause I definitely see you guys definitely being new and different, which is good. Or as Andy Jassy would say, you can be misunderstood for a while, but as you become successful, people will start understanding what you do. And that's a great example of Amazon. The pattern with success is traditionally the same. If we kind of encapsulate the difference between open source old and new, and that is you have something of value, and you're disrupting the market and collecting rents from it. Or revenue, or profit. So that's commercial, that's how businesses run. How are you guys going to disrupt with open source software the next generation value creation? We know how value's created, certainly in software that opensource has shown a path on how to create value in writing software if code is value and functionality's value. But to commercialize and create revenue, which is people paying something for something. That's a little bit different kind of value extraction from the value creation. So open source software can create value in functionality and value product. Now you bring it to the market, you get paid for it, you have to disrupt somebody, you have to create something. How are you looking at that? What's the vision of the creation, the extraction of value, who's disrupted, is it greenfield new opportunities? What's your vision? >> A lot of nuance and complexity in that question. What I would say is- >> Well, open source is creating products. >> Well, open source is the basis for creating products in a different kind of way. I'll go back to your question around let's just sort of maybe simplify it as the value creation and the value capture dynamics, right? We've sort of written a few posts about this, and it's subtle, but it's easy to understand if you look at it from a fundamental kind of perspective. We actually believe, and we'll be publishing research on this, and maybe even sort of more principled scientific, perhaps, even ways of looking at it. And then blog posts and research. We believe that open source software will always generate or create orders of magnitude more value than any constituent can capture. Right, and that's a fundamental way of looking at it. So if you see how cloud providers are capturing value that open source creates, whether it's Elasticsearch, or Postgres, or MySQL or Hadoop. And then commercial open source software companies that capture value that open source software creates, whether it's companies like Confluent around Kafka, or Cloudera around Hadoop, or Databricks around Apache Spark. Or whether it's the creators of those projects. The creators of Spark and Hadoop and Elasticsearch, sometimes many of them are the founders of those companies I mentioned, and sometimes they're not. We just believe regardless of how that sort of value is captured by the cloud providers, the commercial vendors, or the creators, the value created relative to the value captured will always be orders and orders of magnitude greater. And this is expressed in another way, which this may be easier to understand, it's a sort of reinforcing this kind of assertion that there's orders of magnitude value created far greater than what can be captured. If you were to do a survey, which we're currently in the process of doing, and I'm happy to sort of say that publicly for the first time here, of all the commercial open source software companies that have projects with large significant adoption, whether, say for example, it's Docker, with millions of users, or Apache Hadoop. How many Hadoop deployments there are. How many customers' companies are there running Hadoop deployments. Or it may be even MySQL. How many MySQL installations are there. And then you were to sort of survey those companies and see how many end users are there relative to how many customers are paying for the usage of the project. It would probably be something like if there were a million users of a given project, the company behind that project or the cloud provider, or say the end user, the developer behind the project, is unlikely to capture more than, say, 1% or a couple percent of those end users to companies, to paying companies, to paying customers. And many times, that's high. Many times, 1% to 2% is very high. Often, what we've seen actually anecdotally, and we're doing principled research around this, and we'll have data here across a large number of companies, many times it's a fraction of 1%. Which is just sort of maybe sometimes 10% of 1%, or even smaller. >> So the practitioners will be making more money than the actual vendors? >> Absolutely right. End users and practitioners always stand to benefit far greater because of the fundamental nature of open source. It's permissionless, it's disaggregated, the value creation dynamics are untethered, and it is fundamentally freely available to use, freely available to contribute to, with different constraints based on the license. However, all those things are sort of like disaggregating the creating of technology into sort of an unbounded network. And that's really, really incredible. >> Okay, so first of all, I agree with your premise 100%. We've seen it with CUBE, where videos are free. >> And that's a good thing. All those things are good. >> And Dave Vellante says this all the time on theCUBE. And we actually pointed this out and called this in the Hadoop ecosystem in 2012. In fact, we actually said that on theCUBE, and it turned out to be true, 'cause look at Hortonworks and Cloudera had to merge because, again, the market changed very quickly >> Value Creation. >> Because value >> Was created around them in the immediate cloud, etc. So the question is, that changes the valuation mechanisms. So if this true, which we believe it is. Just say it is. Then the traditional net present value cash flow metric of the value of the firm, not your firm, but, like, if I'm an open source firm, I'm only one portion of the extraction. I'm a supplier, and I'm an enabler, the valuation on cash flow might not be as great as the real impact. So the question I have for you, have you thought about the valuation? 'Cause now you're thinking about bigger construct community network effects. These are new dynamics. I don't think anyone's actually crunched a valuation model around this. So if someone knew that, say for example, an open source project created all this value, and they weren't necessarily harvesting it from a cash flow perspective, there might be other ways to monetize it. Have you though about that, and what's your reaction to that concept? 'Cause capitalism would kind of shake down the system. 'Cause why would someone be motivated to participate if they're not capturing any value? So if the value shifts, are they still going to be able to participate? You follow the logic I'm trying to- >> I definitely do. I think what I would say to that is we expect and we encourage and we will absolutely heavily invest in more business model innovation in the area of open source. So what I mean by that is, and it's important to sort of qualify a few things there. There's a huge amount of polarization and lack of consensus, lack of industry consensus on what it actually means to have or implement an open source based business model. In fact there's a lot of people who just sort of point blankedly assert that an opensource business model does not exist. We believe that many business models for monetizing and commercializing open source exist. We've blogged and written about a few of them. Their services and training and support. There's open core, which is very effective in sort of a spectrum of ways to implement open core. Around the core, you can have a thin crust or a thick crust. There's SAS. There are hardware based distribution models, things like Sourcefire, and Cumulus Networks. And there are also network based approaches. For example, project called Storj or Stor-J. Being developed and run now by Ben Golub, who's the former CEO of Docker. >> CUBE alumni. >> Ben's really great open source veteran. This is a network, kind of decentralized network based approach of sort of right sizing the production and consumption of the resource of a storage based open source project in a decentralized network. So those are sort of four or five ways to commercializing value, however, four or five ways of commercializing value, however what we believe is that there will be more business model innovation. There will be more developments around how you can better capture more, or in different ways, the value that open source creates. However, what I will say though, is it is unrealistic to expect two things. It is unrealistic and, in fact, unfair to expect that any of those constituents will contribute back to open source proportional to the value that they received from it, or the benefit, and I'm actually paraphrasing Doug Cutting there, who tweeted this a couple of years ago. Very profoundly deep, wise tweet, which I very strongly agree with. And it is also unrealistic to expect a second thing, which is that any of those constituents can capture a material portion of the value that open source creates, which I would assert is many trillions of dollars, perhaps tens of trillions of dollars. It's really hard to quantify that. And it's not just dollars in economic sense, it's dollars in productivity time saved, new markets, new areas, and so on. >> Yeah, I think this is interesting, and I think that we'll be an open book at that. But I will say that what I've observed in looking through all these CUBE interviews, I think that business model innovation absolutely is something that is an IP. >> We need it. Well, it's now intellectual property, the business model isn't, hey I went to business school, learned this at Babson or Harvard, I learned this business model. We're going to do SAS premium. Okay, I get that. There's going to be very interesting new innovations coming, and I think that's the new IP. 'Cause open source, if it's community based, there's going to be formulas. So that's going to be really inter- Okay, so now let's get back to actual funding itself. You guys are doing early stage. Can you take us through the approach? >> We're very focused on early stage, investing, and backing teams that are, just sort of welcoming the idea of a commercial entity around their open source project. Or building a business fundamentally dependent on an open source project or maybe even more than one. The reason for that is this is really where there's a lot of structural inefficiency in supporting and backing those types of founders. >> I think one of the things with ... is with that acquisition. They were pure on the open source side, doing a great job, didn't want to push the business model too hard because the open source, let's face it, you got people like, eh, I don't want to get caught on the business side, and get revenue, perverse incentives might come up, or fear of incentives that might be different or not aligned. Was a great a value. >> I think so. >> So Red Hat got a steal on that one. But as you go forward, there's going to be certainly a lot more stuff. We're seeing a lot of it now in CNCF, for instance. I want to get your thoughts on this because, being the co founder of KubeCon, and donating it to the CNCF, Kubernetes is the hottest thing on the planet, as we talked about many years ago. What's your take on that, now? I see exciting things happening. What is the impact of Kubernetes, in your opinion, to the world, and where do you see that evolving rapidly, and where is the focus here as the people should be paying attention to? >> I think that Kubernetes replaces EC2. Kubernetes is a disaggregated API for distributed computing anywhere. And it happens to be portable and able to run on any kind of computer infrastructure, which sort of makes it like a liquid disaggregated EC2-like API. Which a lot of people have been sort of chasing and trying to implement for many years with things like OpenStack or Eucalyptus. But interestingly, Kubernetes is sort of the right abstraction for distributed computing, because it meets people where they are architecturally. It's sort of aligned with this current movement around distributed systems first designs. Microservices, packaging things in small compartmentalized units. >> Good for integrating of existing stuff. >> Absolutely, and it's very composable, un-opinionated architecturally. So you can sort of take an application and structure it in any given way, and as long as it has this sort of isolation boundary of a container, you can run it on Kubernetes without needing to sort of retrofit the architecture, which is really awesome. I think Kubernetes is a foundational part of the next kind of computing paradigm in the same way that Linux was foundational to the computing paradigm that gave rise to the internet. We had commodity hardware meeting open source based sort of cost reduction and efficiency, which really Linux enabled, and the movement toward scale out data center infrastructure that supported the Internet's sort of maturity and infrastructure. I think we're starting to see the same type of repeat effect thanks to Kubernetes basically being really well received by engineers, by the cloud providers. It's now the universal sort of standard for running container based applications on the different cloud providers. >> And think having the non-technical opinion posture, as you said, architectural posture, allows it to be compatible with a new kind of heterogeneous. >> Heterogeneity is critical. >> Heterogeneity is key, 'cause it's not just within the environment, it's also within each vendor, or customer has more heterogeneity. So, okay, now that's key. So multi cloud, I want to get your thoughts on multi cloud, because now this goes into some of things that might build on top of if Kubernetes continues to go down the road that you say it does. Then the next question is, stateful applications, service meshes. >> A lot of buzz words. A lot of buzz words in there. Stateful application's real because at a certain point in time, you have a maturity curve with critical infrastructure that starts to become appealing for stateful mission critical storage systems, which is typically where you have all the crown jewels of a given company's infrastructure, whether it's a transactional system, or reading and writing core customer, or financial service information, or whatever it is. So Kubernetes' starting to hit this maturity curve where people are migrating really serious mission critical storage workloads onto that platform. And obviously we're going to start to see even more critical work loads. We're starting to see Edge workloads because Kubernetes is a pretty low footprint system, so you can run it on Edge devices, you can even run it on microcontrollers. We're sort of past the experimental, you know, fun and games was Raspberry Pi, sort of towers, and people actually legitimately doing real world Edge kind of deployments with Kubernetes. We're absolutely starting to see multi-geo, multi-replication, multi-cloud sort of style architectures becoming real, as well. Because Kubernetes is this API that the industry's agreeing upon sufficiently. We actually have agreement around this sort of surface area for distributed system style computing that if cloud providers can actually standardize on in a way that lets application specific vendors or new types of application deployment models innovate further, then we can really unlock this sort of tight coupling of proprietary services inside cloud providers and disaggregate it. Which is really exciting, and I forget the Netscape, Jim Barksdale. Bundling, un-bundling. We're starting to see the un-bundling of proprietary cloud computing service API's. Things like Kinesis, and ALB and ELB and proprietary storage services, and these other sticky services get un-bundled because of two big things. Open source, obviously, we have open source alternative data paths. And then we have Kubernetes which allows us to sort of disaggregate things out pretty easily. >> I want to hear your thoughts, one final concept, before we break, 'cause I was having a private conversation with three people besides myself. A big time CIO of a company that if I said the name everyone would go, oh my god, that guy is huge, he's seen it all going back many, many ways. Currently done a lot of innovation. A hardcore network chip guy who knows networking, old school infrastructure. And then a cloud native application founder who knows a lot about software development and is state-of-the-art cloud native. So cloud native, all experienced, old-school, kind of about my age, a cloud native app developer, a big time CIO, and a chip networking kind of infrastructure guy. And we're talking, and one thing that came out, I want to get you thoughts on this, he says, so what's going on with DevOps, how do you see this service mesh, is a stay for (mumbles) on top of the stack, no stacks, horizontally scalable. And the comment that came out was storage and networking have had this relationship with everything since day one. Network moves a packet from point A to point B, and nothing happens in between, maybe some inspection. And storage goes from here now to the then, because you store it. He goes, that premise moves up the stacks, so then the cloud native guy goes, well that's what's happening up at the top, there's a lot of moving things around, workloads and or services, provisioning services, and then from now to then state. In real time. And what dawned on the next conversation the CIO goes, well this is exactly our challenge. We have under the hood infrastructure being programmable, >> We're having some trouble with the connection. Please try again. >> My phone's calling me. >> Programmable connections. >> So you got the programmable on the top of the stack too, so the CIO said, that's exactly the problem we're trying to solve. We're trying to solve some of these network storage concepts now at an application level. Your thoughts to that. >> Well, I think if I could tease apart everything you just said, which is profound synthesis of a lot of different things, I think we've started to see application logic leak out of application code itself into dedicated layers that are really good at doing one specific thing. So traditionally we had some crud style kind of behavioral semantics implemented around business logic. And then, inside of that, you also had libraries for doing connectivity and lookups and service discovery and locking and key management and encryption and coordination with other types of applications. And all that stuff was sort of shoved into the single big application binary. And now, we're starting to see all those language runtime specific parts of application code sort of crack or leak out into these dedicated, highly scalable, Unix philosophy oriented sort of like layers. So things like Envoy are really just built for the sort of nervous system layer of application communication fabric up and down the layer two through layer seven sort of protocol transport stack, which is really profound. We're seeing things like Vault from Hashicorp handle secure key storage persistence of application dedication, authorization, metadata and information to sort of access different systems and end points. And that's a dedicated sort of stateful layer that you can sort of fragment out and delegate sort of application specific functionality to, which is really great for scalability reasons. And on, and on, and on. So we've started to see that, and I think one way of looking at that is it's a cycle. It's the sort of bundling and un-bundling aspect. >> One of the granny level services are getting a really low level- >> Yeah, it's a sort of like bundling and un-bundling and so we've got all this un-bundling happening out of application code to these dedicated layers. The bundling back may happen. I've actually seen a few Bay Area companies go like, we're going back to the monolith 'cause it actually gives us lots of efficiencies in things that we though were trade offs before. We're actually comfortable with a big monorepo, and one or two core languages, and we're going to build everything into these big binaries, and everyone's going to sort of live in the same source code repository and break things out through folders or whatever. There's a lot of really interesting things. I don't want to say we're sort of clear on where this bundling, un-bundling is happening, but I do think that there's a lot of un-bundling happening right now. And there's a lot of opportunity there. >> And the open source, obviously, driving it. So final question for you, how many deals have you done? Can you talk a little bit about the firm? And exciting things and plans that you have going forward. >> Yeah, we're going to be making a lot of announcements over the next few months, and we're, I guess, extremely thrilled. I don't want to say overwhelmed, 'cause we're able to handle all of the volume and inquiries and inbound interest. We're really honored and thrilled by the reception over the last couple weeks from announcing the firm on the first of October, sort of before the Hortonworks Cloudera merger. The JFrog funding announcement that week. The Elastic IPO. Just a lot of really awesome things happened that week. This is obviously before Microsoft open sourced all their patents. We'll be announcing more investments that we've made. We announced our first one on the first of October as well with the announcement of the firm. We've made a good number of investments. We're not able to talk to much about our first initiative, but you'll hear more about that in the near future. >> Well, we're excited. I think it's the timing's perfect. I know you've been working on this kind of vision for a while, and I think it's really great timing. Congratulations, JJ >> Thank you so much. Thanks for having me on. >> Joesph Jacks, also known as JJ, founder and general partner of OSS Capital, Open Source Software Capital, co founder of KubeCon, which is now part of the CNCF. A real great player in the community and the ecosystem, great to have him on theCUBE, thanks for coming in. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. >> Thanks, John. (bright symphony music)

>> Live, from Toronto, Canada, it's theCUBE! Covering Global Cloud and Blockchain Summit 2018, brought to you by theCUBE. >> So, welcome to the Global Cloud and Blockchain Summit. I'm about to hand you over to John Furrier, who is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of SiliconANGLE Media and Executive Editor at theCUBE, he's about to do a Fireside Chat with Al and Mathew, I'll let him introduce you to them as well. He's also involved in a major blockchain project himself, so he's going to get into that with those guys as well. So, and tomorrow we start at nine, in the meantime, enjoy the evening, enjoy the food, enjoy the chat, and I'll let you go. >> Okay. Hello? Thank you Ruth, appreciate it, thanks everyone for being part of this panel, Fireside Chat, want to make it loose, but high impact for you guys, I know, having some cocktails, having a good time. If there's any questions during, then at the end we'll pass the mic around, but. We want to have a conversation, kind of like we always do down in the lobby bar, just talking about crypto and cloud, and we ended up talking about cloud computing and crypto a lot because those are two areas that are kind of converging, and the purpose of this event. So we really wanted to share some thoughts around those two massively growing markets, one is already growing, it's continuing to be great: the cloud, and blockchain certainly is changing everything. These two important topics, we want to flesh them out, Al Burgio is the Serial Entrepreneur/Founder of DigitalBits, he's founded companies both in cloud and blockchain, so he brings a great perspective. And Matt Roszak, leading crypto investor, entrepreneur and advocate, well known in the crypto space for goin' way back, I think you gave a couple bitcoins to some very famous people early on, we'll get into that a little bit later. So guys, thanks for being part of the panel and Fireside. First question is: we know how big the money is, I mean the money is crypto is is flowin' around the world, and cloud computing we've seen specifically, and certainly in coverage now with Amazon's success, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft and others. Trillions of dollars being disrupted in the traditional kind of the enterprise, data center area, and blockchain is doing that too, so we want to get into that. But first, before we get into it, I want you guys to take a minute to explain for the folks, just to set the context, the kinds of projects you're working on. Now Al, you have DigitalBits, Matt you're investing and you're finding a lot of interesting token dynamics. So just take a minute. Al, start. >> (mic off) So-- Everybody hear me okay? Alright, perfect. Well thanks for that lovely intro. Yes, my name is Al Burgio, I'm, I've founded a few companies, as John mentioned. Before the cloud there was internet, (light laugh) and so it started for me in the late '90s in the e-commerce era. But more recently I pioneered what's known as Interconnection 2.0, and I did that with the company called Console, for those that may know PCCW, recently it was acquired by PCCW. And with that we disrupted the way networks at the core of the internet were connected together More recently I've founded the DigitalBits project, and now DigitalBits blockchain network, and with that, you can kind of think of that as the trading and transaction layer for the points economy and other digital assets, and you can do a lot of really interesting thing with that, it's really about bringing blockchain to the masses. >> Matt, what're you workin' on? >> So, Matthew Roszak, Co-Founder and Chairman of Bloq. Bloq is a enterprise software company, we do two things, the premise is the tokenization of things, so we think the money identity, new layers of the internet are going to be tokenized. And so, we go to market in two ways, one is through Bloq Enterprise, and these are all the software layers you need to to connect to tokenized networks, so think a wallet, a node, a router, etc. And then Bloq Labs we build, and partner with, some of the leading tokenize networks and applications, so we build a connective tissue and then we actually build these new networks. I started this space as an investor over five/six years ago, investing in some of the best entrepreneurs and technologists in the space build a great network. But I love building companies, and so my Co-Founder and I, Jeff Garzik, built Bloq two and a half years ago. And then lastly, also serve of Chairman of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, so, so if you believe in these new tokenized money layers, identity layers, etc, regulation comes into play. Certainly today from an institutional adoption level, and so if you care about this space, you need to spend time to kind of help that dialogue improve; this technology moves way faster than folks in DC and elsewhere, so. >> And the project that we're workin' on at SiliconANGLE, is we've tokenized our media platform, and we're opening it up to a token model, and have kind of changed the game. So all three of us have projects, want to put those in context, we build everything on Amazon Web Services, so, the view of the cloud, we also cover it. The cloud computing market is booming, we see that Amazon Web Services numbers empower the earnings for Amazon's company, obviously Apple's trillion dollar evaluation those are clear case studies; but blockchain could potentially disrupt it all, and Al, I want to get your thoughts, because even today in the news at Microsoft Azure, which is their big cloud provider, announced blockchain as a service. And folks that are in either the data center business or in cloud know the shift that's happening in the IT world, but no ones really connected the dots on where blockchain intersects, and also, is it an opportunity for the cloud guys, what's the landscape look like, so. What's your thoughts on that, how are they connected, what does it mean, how does a cloud company maintain their relevance and competitiveness with blockchain? >> Well, just pointing on the fact that, you know, today we had that new Microsoft, the Azure cloud, their support and evangelism for blockchain. You know, a company, I think it's very important that this isn't an ICO, two kids in a garage saying their doing something blockchain this is a massive, multi-billion dollar company; and making a decision like that is not trivial, it's many, many departments, a lot of resources, before such a thing's announced. So, that's, not only is it validation, but it's a leading indicator as to this trend, that this is clearly something that's important. And a lot of people, if you're not paying attention, you need to be paying attention, including if you're in the cloud industry, 'cause many companies obviously do compete with, with Microsoft and AWS, so. It may be still early, but it's not that early, in light of the news that we saw today. With that, I would say that, a lot of the parallels I like to kind of, if I was an infrastructure provider I'd look at this from the standpoint of the emergence of Linux when it first came on the scene. What was important for companies like Red Hat to be successful, they had competition at the time, and you had shortages of Linux, let's say engineers, and what have you. And so, a company like Red Hat built a business around that, and they did that by how they kind of surfaced and validated themselves to the enterprise of that era, was partnering with hardware companies, so, it was Intel, IBM, and then Dell, HP, and they all followed, and then all of a sudden, which version of Linux do you want to use? It's Red Hat, you're paying for that support, you're paying Red Hat. And, you know, then they had their hockey stick moment. Today, you know, it's not about hardware companies per se, it's about the cloud, right? So cloud is the new hardware per se, and many enterprises obviously are looking at cloud computing companies and cloud computing providers, infrastructure providers, as the company that they need to support them with the infrastructure that they use, or sorry the technologies that they use, right? Because they're not necessarily supporting these things and making sure that they're always on within the basement of that enterprise, they're depending, or outsourcing, to depending on these managed IT providers. This was very important that whatever technologies they're using in the lab, that ultimately their infrastructure partners are able to support the implementation, the integration, the ongoing support of these technologies. So if you think of blockchain like an operating system or a database technology, or whatever you want to call it, it's important that you're able to really identify these key trends, and be able to support your customer and what they're going to need, and ultimately for them, they can't have a clog in their digital supply chain, right? So, it's clearly emerging. Microsoft is validating that today, you know, clearly they have the data, that they're seeing for their existing enterprise customers, and they don't want to lose them. >> Yeah, but remember when cloud came out; you and I have talked about this many times Al that it wasn't easy to use, I remember when Amazon Web Services came out, it was just basically, it was hard to command line, basically you had to use it, so, it became easier now, it's so easy and consumable. Blockchain, similar growing pains, but, we don't want to judge it too early with the opportunity that it has, it's going to get easier, what're your thoughts? And it has to scale by the way, Amazon, at a large scale. >> Yeah, I mean-- >> So blockchain has to scale and be easier, your thoughts? >> Another kind of way to think of it is, to not necessarily think of cloud computing, but the evolution the internet went, you know, in Internet 1.0, you know, we went through this dial-up modem era, things were very raw back then; great visions we had of the future, like, it's going to be amazing for video one day! But, not during dial-up modem era, and eventually, you know, it eventually happened. And user interfaces improved, and tool sets improved and so forth. You know, fast forward to today, we have all of that innovation to leverage, so things will move a lot faster with blockchain, it did start very raw, but it's, it's moving much faster than anything we've seen definitely in the '90s and in the last decade, so. It's just, you know, it's a matter of moments, not years. >> And I think Al brings up a great point on leverage, because Amazon leverages infrastructure to a point where it's larger than Google, Azure, and IBM's public cloud combined, and so yeah, massive leverage there. And so, when these big cloud providers provide this blockchain as a service, it is instrumented and built on top of their existing infrastructure, not necessarily on blockchain infrastructure. So, it's an interesting dynamic where they're putting it on top of existing infrastructure that's there, but what's being build right now is the decentralized Amazon Web Services. So you have every layer of Amazon being re-imagined, like, and incentivized so you have distributed compute and access and storage and database. And so, what will be interesting to see is that, given this massive opportunity, will Amazon and some of these other incumbent cloud providers become the provisioning networks of the future? Of all this new decentralized resources that get, again, if you want storage, you have to start having smarts to say: if I'm going to go to Sia or Filecoin or Genaro or Storj, compute, etc; you have to start being a provisioning layer on top of that to kind of, you know, make that blockchain essentially work. So, it'll be interesting to see the transition 'cause today the lightweight versions to say yeah, I have a blockchain as a service strategy, and that's like, well done, and check the box. Now, the question is how far in this new world will they go down? And, as it gets more decentralized, as universities and governments, corporations, plug their access utility into these networks, and to see how that changes. That is much bigger than the Amazon of today. >> I think that's an interesting point, I want to just drill down on that if you don't mind, 'cause I think that's a fundamental observation that every layer's going to be decentralized. The questions I think I'm asking and I'm seeing is: How does it all work together? And then what's the priorities? And the old model was easy; got to get the infrastructure, got to get servers, (laughs lightly) and you know, work your way up to the top of the stack. What cloud brings also is that: a software developer can whip up an application, maybe a dApp on a test network and go viral, and the next thing you know they have a great opportunity, and then they got to build down. So the question is: What are you seeing in terms of priorities on stacks, portions of the stack that are being decentralized and tokenized, do you see patterns, trends, as an investor, is there a hotter (laughs) area than others, how do you look at that? >> Well, I think it's, it's in motion right now it's, like I said, every layer of AWS is getting thought through in how to create these digital cooperatives, I have excess storage, I'm going to contribute it to this network, and I'm going to get paid in tokens when a user uses that storage network, and pays for it in those native tokens and so that, coupled with all the other layers, is happening. From a user perspective, we may not want to be going to pick a database provider, a storage, a compute, etc, we're likely going to say: I want a provisioning layer, and provision this and execute this, much like if we, you know, there'll be new provisioning layers for moving money, I don't care if routes through Lightning or Litecoin or Doge or whatever, as long as the value gets across the pond or the app gets provisioned appropriately based on you know, time, security, and cost, and whatever other tendance are important, that's all I care about, but; given the depth and the market for all that, I think it'll be interesting to see how these are developed with the provisioning layers, and I would think Amazon or Azure, the future of that is, is more provisioning than actually going and doing all that at the end of the day. >> That's great. I want to get your thoughts guys on innovation. My good friend Andy Kessler wrote an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal around, an article around the government, the US government getting involved. You know, there's Twitter, Facebook, the big platforms, in terms of how they're handling their media, but it brings up a good point that with more regulation, there's less innovation. You mentioned some things outside the United States, it's a global cloud, cloud's operating globally with regions, it's a global fabric. Startups are really hot in this area so; how do you view the ecosystems of startups, in terms of being innovative, things happening that you think that're good, and things that aren't good, obviously I'm not a big of the government getting involved, and managing startups, the ecosystems but, blockchain has a lot of alpha entrepreneurs jumping in, you've looked at all the top ventures, the legit ventures, they're all alpha entrepreneurs, multi-time serial entrepreneurs, they see the opportunity and they go for it. Is the startup environment good, is there enough innovation opportunities, what're you thoughts on the opportunity to be innovative? >> Yeah, Al and I were just talking about this before the panel here, and were talking about our travels in Asia, and when we go there it is 10, 100 X of energy and get-it factor, and capital, and the markets are just wildly more vibrant than you know, going to some typical markets here in San Fran and New York in North America, and, so it's interesting to see that when you heat map the world, what's really happening. And you know, people are always saying: oh well this, this FinTech, or InsurTech, or whatever tech, is going to make a dent in Silicon Valley or Wall Street. This technology, this new frontier, is definitely going to do that. I think some of that will get put into more focus based on regulation, and there's two things that will happen; there's obviously a lot of whippersnapper countries that are promoting a safe place to innovate with crypto, I think Malta, Gibraltar, Barbados, etc, and there were-- >> Even Bermuda's getting in on the mix now. >> Yeah! I mean so there's no shortage of that, and so, and obviously this ecosystem outpaces the pace of regulation and then we'll see like the US doing something, or you know, other fast followers to try and catch up, and say hey, we're going to do the cryptocurrency act of 2022, miners get free power, tax-free, you know crypto trading, you know just try and play catch up. 'Cause it's kind of hard in the last year or 18 months we've seen this ecosystem go from this groundswell to this now institutional discussion; and how do you back end the the banking, the custody, all these form factors that are still relatively absent. And so, you know, we're right in the middle of it. >> It's a whole new way, you got to follow the money, right? Al, you and I talked about this; capital markets, you know entrepreneurs need to raise money and that's a good thing, you need to get capital to do stuff. >> Yeah, this is a new phenomenon that the world has never experienced before, it's awesomeness when it comes to capital formation; you know, without capital formation there is no innovation. And so the fact that more capital can be raised, it's the ultimate crowd sourcing in such an efficient period of time, capital being able, the ability to track capital from various different corners of the world, and deploy that capital to try to fuel innovation. Of course, you know, not all startups or what have you succeed, but that was true yesterday, right? You know, 90% of startups fail, but they all will give it some meaningful amounts of checks, people were employed and innovation was tried; and every once in a while something emerges that's amazing. If you can do that faster, right, when you have the opportunity to produce more and more innovation. And, of course with something so new as cryptocurrency, things like ICOs and what have you, people may kind of refer to it as the wild wild West, it's not, it's an evolution. And you have-- >> It's still the wild west though, you got to admit. (laughs) >> Well, it is but, we're getting better at it, right? As a world, this isn't the Silicon Valley community getting better at venture capital or some other part of the United States or Canada getting better at venture capital; this is the world as a whole getting better at capital formation. >> Yeah, that's a great point. >> In the new way of capital formation. >> And I wanted to just get an observation on that. I moved to Silicon Valley 20 years ago, and I love it there, for venture capital and new startups, it's the best place in the world. And I've seen people try to replicate Silicon Valley, we're the Silicon Valley of Canada, we're the Silicon Valley of the East or Europe, and it's always been hard to replicate, because it was a venture model, and you needed venture capitalists and you need money, you need a community, the culture, the failure, the starting over, and just, you know, gettin' back on the horse kind of thing. Crypto is the first time that I've seen the replica of that Silicon Valley dynamic, in a new way, because the money's flowing, (laughs) and there's community involved in crypto, crypto has a big community aspect to it. Do you guys see that as well? I mean I'm seeing, outside the United States, a lot of activity. Is that something that you're seeing? >> So, the first time we saw, well, last time we saw everybody trying to replicate Silicon Valley was first internet, you know, there was Silicon Swamp, there was Silicon Alley, there was silicon this-- >> Prairie. >> Every city was >> Silicon Beach. >> A silicon version of something, and then the capital evaporated, right? We had a mass correction happen. What wasn't being disrupted was value exchange, right, and so this is being created now, it is now possible for this to happen, and it's happening, we're seeing amazing things, Matt said, you know, in Asia. It's a truly awesome force, if anybody has an opportunity to go, they should go, it's unbelievable to experience it, and it really opens your eyes. >> And you've lived through a lot of investments during those .com days and through history now, you've seen a lot of different things. Your observations with the current state of the capital formation, startup landscapes, the global ecosystem around crypto and how it's different from say venture or classic rolling up companies and those kinds of things? >> Yeah, you hear a lot of this, you know, we're in a bubble, it's speculative, etc. And I think that when you look back at history of infrastructure, whether it's railroads, telephony, internet, and now crypto and blockchain, it's interesting, like, if you said: it would take this amount of money to innovate and come out the other end of internet with this kind of infrastructure, these kinds of applications, with these kinds of lessons learned, nobody would sign up for that number, right? It needs this fear, and greed, and all the other effervescence of markets to kind of come out the other end and have innovation. I think we're going through a very similar dynamic here with crypto and blockchain where you know, everything's getting tokenized, everything's getting decentralized. We're talking about fundamental things like money, you know, it's not like we're talking about pet food and women's shoes and airline tickets, we are talking about money, identity, things that will enable like other curves to really come into focus like in and out of things and the kind of compounding of intersections when some of these things get right is pretty extraordinary. And so, but I like what Al said in terms of capital formation and that friction to get from, you know, idea to capital to building, is getting compressed Yes, there will be edge cases of people taking advantage of that, but at the other end of this flow will be some amazing innovation. >> What do you guys think about the, if you had to answer the question with one answer, of what is the high order bit of why blockchain's so important? For me, I see it, from my standpoint, I'll just start, I see it making inefficient things more efficient for any use case, and that's being re-imagined, which is everything from IOT or whatever. Efficiency is a big thing, at least I see that. What do you guys see as a high order bit in terms of you know, the one thing that you'd say blockchain really impacts the world in terms of you know, impact, financial, etc? >> Well, I think with decentralization and all these things that we're seeing it's kind of evened the playing field. It's allowing for participation where parts of the world were unable to participate. And it's doing a whole lot of things in that area. And that's truly awesome, to really grow the economy, grow the global market, and the number of participants in that market in all areas. That's the ultimate trend at what's happening here. >> And your information? >> Absolutely, and I think there's two things, there's this blockchain dialogue, and then there's this crypto decentralization, tokenization dialogue, and on the blockchain side you have lots of companies engaging in blockchain and trying to figure out how it applies to their business, and you hear everything from McKinsey and Goldman saying financial services will save 100 billion dollars in operating expenses by applying blockchain technology, and that's great. That is probably low in terms of what they'll save, it's, to me, is just not the point of the technology, I think that when you kind of distill that down to say hey, for a group of folks to use this technology as a shared services thing to lower opex a trading settlement and decrease that, that's great, that is a step stone to creating these tokenized economies, these digital cooperatives. Meaning you contribute something and then you get something back, and it's measured in the value that this token is, like a barometric kind of value of how healthy that ecosystem is. And so, regulated public enterprises, and EC consortiums around insurance and financial services and banking, that is all fantastic, and that gets them in the pool, gets them exercising on what blockchain is, what it isn't, how they apply it, but it's, at the end of the day for them it's cost reduction The minute there's growth or IP, or disruption on the table, they're all going back to their boardrooms to say: hey let's do this, this, or that, but, if there's a way, my favorite class in college was industrial organization, and it sounds weird but, it was, it kind of told ya like how to dissect an industry, you know, what makes them competitive, who the market leaders are, and then, if you overlay like blockchain networks with tokens, with incentives, interesting things could happen, right? And so that future is going to be real interesting to see how market leaders think about how to tokenize their network, how to be, how to say: no I don't want to own this whole industrial network, I have to engage with some other participants and make sure everybody is incentivized to climb on board. So that I think is going to be more of the interesting part than just blockchain-ifying a workflow. >> Well let's just quickly drill down on that, token economics, what you're getting to. So let's assume blockchain just happens, as evolution of technology, let's just assume for a second that it's going to happen in a big way, it's private, public, hybrid chains, with all that good stuff happening, but the token economics is where the business value starts to be extracted, so the question for you is: How do you describe that to someone to look for, what are the key elements of token economics? When does it matter, when is it in play, and how should they be thinking about it? >> Yeah, I mean token economic design and getting a flywheel going to create a network and network effects is really important. You could have great technology, but Al could be a better marketer, and he gets tokens adopted better, and his network will do better because, you know, he was better able to get people to adopt and market a particular, you know, layer application. And so, it's really important to think about how you get that flywheel going, and how you get that kindling going on a particularly new ecosystem, and get users adoption and growth. That is really hard to do these days because some people don't even know what Bitcoin is, let alone to say I'm going to tokenize this layer, and every time you contribute, every time you take an action, you're going to get rewarded for it, and you're share the value of this network. >> Can you give me a good example of what's happening today that you can point to and say: that's a great example of token economics? >> Well, you see, I mean the most basic one is shared file storage, right? You know, it's like the Filecoin, Sia, Genaro model where, you know, you contribute you know, the unused storage in your laptop or your university data center or a corporate data center, and you say I'm going to contribute this, and when it's used I get these tokens and, you know at the end of the day or week or year you see what these tokens are worth, and was that worth your contribution? And so as these markets develop, and as utility develops, we'll see what that holds. >> Al, you got an example you could share? DigitalBits is a good use case obviously. >> Actually, I'm not going to use DigitalBits (John laughs) just to be neutral. This is one that Matt will know very well, definitely better than I, but one that I've-- the simpler something is, the easier it is for people to understand, and its like oh that makes sense, you know. You know, Binance is one that's very simple, you know it's a payment token, if you pay with some other currency, you pay, you know, Pricex, if you pay in the next few years with their token, you'll get the service at a discount. And in addition to that, they're using a percentage of profits, I think it's every quarter, to buy back up to, ultimately up to, 50% of tokens that are in circulation. So, you know, it's driving value, and driving return, in essence, if I can use that word. So for a user it's simple to understand, for someone that likes to speculate it's easy for someone to understand in terms of how the whole model works, so it's not some insanely complicated mathematical equation, that we can yes we can trust the math. And so in some cases, some adoption is going to just be, you know, attract participants based on simplicity. In other cases the math is important, and people will care about that, so, you know not all things are necessarily equal, and not necessarily one method is right, but there are some simple examples out there that that have proven to be successful. >> That's awesome, one last question, before we open it up if anyone has any questions. If anyone has any questions, if they want to come up, grab the microphone, and ask the three of us if you've got anything on your mind. And while you're thinking about that I'll get the final question for these guys is: A lot of people ask me hey, I want to be on the right side of history, what side of the street should I be on when the reality comes down that decentralization, blockchain, token economics, decentralized applications, becomes the norm, and that re-imagining actually happens? I don't want to be on the wrong side of history. What should I be doing, how should I be thinking differently, who should I be following, what should I be paying attention to? How do you answer that question? >> I think, at the basic level, you know, turn off your phone, lock your door, and study this technology for a day, it's the best advice I could give. Two: buy some crypto. Once you kind of have crypto on your phone, in your wallet, something changes in your brain, I think you just feel like you-- >> You check the prices every day. (all laugh) >> You lose a lot of sleep. And then after that, you know, I think you start engaging in this space in a very different way. So I think starting small, starting basic, is an important tenet. And then, what's amazing about this space is that it attracts the best and brightest out of industry, and law, and government, and technology, and you name it, and I'm always fascinated the people that show up and they're like yeah, I'm in a 20 year, you know, veteran in this space and I want to get into blockchain, it just attracts some of the best and brightest. And, I think we're going to see a lot of experience coming into the space, you know, this has been a, what I'd say a bottoms up groundswell of crypto and blockchain and the evolution of the space. And I think we're starting to see more some more mature folks come in the space to to add some history and perspective and helpin' the build out of this, and to build a lot of these networks. I think that the kind of intersection of both is going to be very healthy for the space. >> Al, your thoughts? >> Definitely agree with Matt. Definitely to lock yourself up and just try to absorb information, everyone has access to the internet, there's plenty of information. If you don't like to read go watch a few YouTube videos, just people explaining the stuff, it's really fascinating, the various different use cases and so forth. You definitely have to buy some, and, you know, whether it's five dollars worth, just go through the whole experience of being able to trade something of value that a few years ago didn't exist, and be able to trade it for something else of value is a pretty phenomenal experience. Then trying to go buy something with it, it's even more of a fascinating experience, I just bought something that used, again, something that didn't exist a few years ago. But, what I would add to that as well, you really have to get out there; if you keep surrounding yourself with people saying aw, this is, eh, whatever, >> It's never going to work. >> It's crazy, it's for criminals, and all that fun stuff. You're going to be last place. So coming to conferences, obviously future's conference you're going to meet a lot of interesting, great people, and that consistent experience, you'll learn something every time. You know, at the end of the day, I remember, I'm sure all three of us remember, with the birth of the internet there was many people that said you know the internet thing, it's crap, it's for kids, you know. And we had first movers, we had willing followers, and then the unwilling followed, you don't want to end up being-- >> The unwilling followers. >> Yeah, the unwilling. >> Alright. Does anyone have any questions they'd like to ask? Come on up. Yeah. We're recording, so we want to get it on film. >> So I have two questions. The first one is for you, Al: Two years ago I interviewed with IIX before it was Console, and I want to know why you didn't hire me? (Sparse laughs) No I'm kidding! That was a joke. Actually, I thought each of you brought up some good points, minus you Al. (chuckles) I'm just kidding. But what I really wanted to ask you guys is: so you talk a lot about this, the tokenized economy and kind of the roadmap and the things to get there, you talk about sediment layer, right, Fiat to crypto, sediment layer, your identity protocols, your dApps, X, Y, Z, right? The whole web 3.0 stack, I want each of you, or I want at least input from both of you or all of you, what are the hurdles to getting to a full adoption of web 3.0 stack, and make a bold prediction on the timing before we have a full web 3.0 stack that we use every day. >> That is a awesome question actually, timelines. You could be, being in technology, being in venture, you could be right, and you could be off by three, five, seven, 10 years, and be so wrong, right? And then at your retirement dinner you could say: I was right, but Tommy wasn't right. So, this is really hard technology, in terms of building systems that are distributed, creating the economic models, the incentive models, it takes a lot to go right in the intersection of all this. But it's not a question like is this happening? No, this is happening, this is like, it's in motion. The timelines are going to be a little elusive, I'm way more pragmatic, I was one of the early guys in the early internet, and you know everything was going to be .com and awesome and fantastic. But the timelines were a little elusive then, right? You know, it's like when was, people are thinking of today's Amazon was going to be the 2005 Amazon, you know, it's like, that took about another decade to get there, right? And people could easily just buy stuff and a drone or a UPS guy would just deliver it, and so, similar things apply today. And you know at the same time we all have a super computer in our pocket, and so it's a lot different. At the same time we're dealing with trusted mediums right? The medium of money, the medium of identity, all these different things they're, they're things that you know if I say download Instagram, and let's share cat pictures or whatever, it's not a big deal, our trust is really low for that, let's do it. For money, it's a different mental state, it's a different dynamic, especially if you're an individual, a government, or an enterprise, you go through a whole different adoption curve on that, so, you know, it is at grand scale five to 10 years, right? In any meaningful way. And so we still have a lot of work to do. >> My answer to that question, it's a good one, your question was a good one, my answer's a little bit weird because it's multi-generational. The first generation pivot was when the internet was born was because of standards, right? The government had investment. The OSI model, open system interconnect, actually never happened, the seven layers didn't get standardized, only a few key ones did; that created a lot of great things. And then when the we came out, that was very interesting protocol development there, the TCP/IP stuff, I mean HTP stuff. I don't see the standardization happening, because cloud flipped the stack model upside down because Amazon and these guys let the software developers drive the value. It used to be infrastructure drove the value of what software could do, then software became so proliferated that that drove the value of the infrastructure, so the whole cloud computing equation is making the infrastructure programmable for the first time, not the other way around, so. The cloud phenomenon's all about software driving the value, and that's happening, so. It's interesting because with blockchain you can almost do levels of services in a cloud-like way with crypto, I mean with blockchain and token economics, and have a partial stack. So think that this whole web 3.0 might be something that no one's every seen before. So, that's kind of my answer, I don't really know if that's going to be right or not, but just looking at the future, connecting the dots, it's probably not going to look like what we've seen before, and if the cloud's an indicator it's probably going to be some weird looking stack where certain sections are working, and then evolution might fill in the other ones, so. I mean, that's my take, I mean, but standards will play a role, the communities will have to get involved around certain things, and I think that's a timeless concept. >> Timing. >> Oh, timing. I think it's going to be pretty quick, I think if you look at the years it took for internet, and then the web, everything's being compressed down, but I think it's going to be much shorter. If it was a 20 year cycle in the past, that gets shortened down to 15 with the internet, and this could be five years. So five to 10 years, that could be the impact in my mind. The question I always ask is: what year will banks no longer be involved in anything? Is that 20 years or 10 years? (laughs) Exactly, so, yeah, follow the money. >> So I would say that in terms of trying to keep your finger on the pulse with things and how you kind of things, see things evolve; things are definitely moving a lot faster, you know in the past you would probably say seven to 10, I'm not sure if I would say five, sorry five to 10, it definitely feels to me that it's five max til we could start to see some of these key things fall into place, so. >> So could you answer the first question? >> What was the first question? >> Why didn't you hire me? (audience cringes) >> We've met before? Sorry. (all laugh) >> I have a question, this is Dave Vellante, Co-Host of theCUBE. And I want to pick up on something John you just said, and Matt you were talking about Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, it's not about them saving hundreds of millions of dollars, it's really about them transforming business, so. And John, you just asked the question about banks, I want to actually get your answer to this: Will traditional banks, in your opinion, lose control of payment systems? Not withstanding your bias. (laughter) >> Yeah, I am definitely biased on this. But, I mean, I've been in front of the C-suite of banks, credit card companies, etc, and I said, you know, in about a decade, the center of what you do and how you make money is going to be zero. And, 'cause there'll be networks, and ways to transmit money that'll be by far cheaper, or will be subsidized by other networks, meaning, and those networks are Apple, Amazon, Alibaba, you know, Tencent, whatever networks that're out there, that're engaging in collaboration and commerce and everything else, they will give away payments as just a courtesy, like people give away messaging or email or something, as a courtesy to that network, and will harden that network, and it'll be built and based on blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, so they don't necessarily have to worry about, you know, kind of subtle payments. But these new networks will start to encroach on banks, the banks are not worried about other banks today, the banks should be worried about these new networks that're being developed. >> How many people still have a home phone line? >> That was elegant, I like that. >> You know, I mean there's a generation of people that still like going to banks, they'll keep them in business for a while. But I think that comes to an end. >> I mean, when we covered a lot of the big data market when it started, the argument was mobile will kill the banks outlets, and now with ATMs there's more bank, more baking branches than ever before, so I think the services piece is interesting. >> And also, if you look at even the cloud basis, the software as a service, SaaS space, a decade, decade and a half ago, you would ask SAP, Oracle, what have you, what's your cloud strategy? And they'd be like cloud? That's just more efficient delivery model, not interested. 90 some billion dollars of M and A later, SAP, Oracle, etc, are cloud companies, right? And so, if banks kind of get into that same mode to say well, yeah, we need to play catch up and buy digital currency exchanges and multi-currency wallets, and this infrastructure and plumbing to be relevant in the next world, that would be interesting. But I think technology companies have as much an advantage to do that as as financial services companies, so it'll be interesting to see who kind of goes into that, goes into the crypto ecosystem to make that their own. >> It's interesting. We were talking before we came on and the OSS market, operational support systems is booming, and that's traditionally been these big operational outsource companies would manage big projects, but, if you look at in the first half of 2018, there's been a greater than 20 billion dollar commercial exits of companies through private equity merchants, IPOs, around OSS, and that's where we see operational things happening, CoreOS, Alfresco, MuleSoft, Pivotal went public, Magneto, GitHub, Treasure Data, Fastly, Elastic, DataStax, they're all in the pipeline. These are all companies that aren't cloud, they're like running stuff in cloud, so, this could be a tell sign that potentially the the blockchain operating market is going to be potentially a big one. >> Yeah, and then even look at BitMate, the world's largest miner in crypto. So, they did about a billion dollars in profit last year, did about a billion dollars in profit just in the first quarter going public, just raised a billion dollars last month, at a reportedly 50 to 70 billion dollar evaluation in Hong Kong in the next month, and the amount of money they'll raise will eclipse what Facebook raised. And so I think the institutional, the hardware, the cloud computing, the whole ecosystem starts to like resonate and think about this space a lot differently, and we need these milestones, we need these, whether they're room huddles or data points to kind of like think about how this is going to affect your business and what you do tomorrow morning. >> Any more questions from the crowd? Audience? Okay, great, well thanks for attending, appreciate you guys watching and listening, and guys thanks for the conversation; cloud and blockchain convergence. Collision course, or is it going to happen nicely, Al? >> Yeah, I think it's going to be a convergence, I don't see it necessarily as a collision course. >> And a lot of money to be made on this opportunity these days, and cloud convergence with blockchain. >> I concur with Al, I think there's going to be convergence, I think us most smarter players will engage and figure out their models in this new crypto and tokenized era. >> Thanks so much guys, appreciate it, give these guys a round of applause. (audience applause) Thank you very much. (bubbly music)

(dramatic music) >> Welcome to this special Cube Conversation here in Palo Alto, California. I'm John Furrier here with Shay Mowlem, Senior Vice President of Product and Strategy at Rubrik here in theCUBE Talk. Thanks for coming in today, great to see you. >> Pleasure, John, pleasure to see you. >> So the thing is, you joined Rubrik, Senior Vice President, last time we spoke to you in theCUBE, you were at Splunk. And then you did a stint at Mulesoft, famous public company, sold to Salesforce for massive amounts of money. Now you're here at Rubrik, thanks for comin' on. What's the story, what happened? >> Well, you know, Bipul, our founder and I, met a few years ago, we were introduced. I guess it was about two and a half years ago. I was running product manager and product marketing at Splunk at the time. And he just impressed me with his vision of what he was trying to do through Rubrik. The company was significantly smaller than it is today. And talked about his vision to really disrupt this 30 billion dollar market. And do it in a way that was very cloud-based, revolutionary. Allow companies to extract much bigger value out of this secondary storage arena. I thought, wow, sounds exciting. But at the time, I was just about to take a bigger role at Splunk, my timing was off. So it didn't work out, but we kept in touch. And we touched base again earlier this year. And I was just so impressed by what he had accomplished with Rubrik. In less than four years from zero to 300 million run rate. The executives that he assembled around the company, the progress that the business had made, the customers, the expansion into cloud arena, the innovation. It was just one of those opportunities you can't walk away from, and so I jumped on it. >> It's a classic Silicon Valley enterprise story. If you look at, he's been on theCUBE, so the folks watching, check out theCUBE video on Youtube or thecube.net. Bitpul, CEO, Founder of Rubrik, great interview. But it's interesting, I mean there's a lot of money thrown at Rubrik. They're growing like crazy. It's the classic rocket fuel going after the story. But there's a unique product angle that I think's interesting. And you're in charge of products and technology for the company. But you've also had a journey in the enterprise. Splunk was a very successful company. Mulesoft, very successful. Saas company sold to Salesforce. Huge tower in San Francisco. There's a new, kind of, generation shift happening with cloud computing that's forcing enterprises to change their infrastructure. And this is beyond just backup and other things. >> Yeah. >> This is a generation, once in a generation shift. >> Yes. >> In BTB, how has it changed things? And you've seen a lot of the enterprise action over the past decade or so and more. But right now, it's more than ever. What's the big shift? And I'll say, cloud force is a lot of change. What's the impact to the customer? >> You know, I think there are two phases to that. There's one that we are serving a market, this backup recovery market, represents a massive area of investment for companies. I've seen stats that suggests that there's 6x as much spend on storage infrastructure for the secondary arena than there is for production grade systems. But yet, this market just hasn't seen innovation since data domain. >> So tons of money, but nothing happening. >> Nothing happening. So we came in initially with a whole new, very customer centric approach, that delivered all of the complexity that this market had seen before, shrink wrapped into a modern era software platform running on commodity hardware. Our customers can be up and running in less than an hour. They can archive and leverage the cloud. And so it's driving both TCO benefits, agility of the business, and allowing them access to move workloads to the cloud, manage the cloud in ways that they'd never seen before. And so I think, certainly that has been one big part of the success of Rubrik. But I think, more broadly on the cloud, we're seeing many companies are really in a hybrid mode. They are moving from on-prem, they're leveraging MSPs, they're starting to build certain businesses in the cloud, and the ability to manage all that centrally, and in a way that is governed properly and allows them to extract real value from it, is something that's really resonating for our customers. >> What was the reason why you joined Rubrik. I mean, everyone has a reason. >> Obviously, you met Bitpul, you guys keeping in touch. Was it the team, was it the technology? What was the one thing that you were attracted to, that put you over the top? >> One thing, I've got so many. >> The most important thing. >> You know, I think I'm going to force you with three answers on that one. >> I'm supposed to ask you to rank them by one two and three. >> Alright, sounds good, I'll end with the last one on the product. >> Alright. >> I fell in love with Bitpul, quite honestly. I mean, remarkable guy, quite humble. Such tenacity, such a focus on customers. They team that he's assembled, to me, was just so paramount. I wanted to be part of this organization. And honestly, I'm humbled to be sitting around the table with folks like Murray Demo, who's our CFO, and Mark Smith, our head of sales from Arista, you know, Kara Wilson, our CMO. And we just keep bringing these incredible individuals to the company and the org. I'm truly humbled to be sitting around the table with them. So that excitement by the way, goes all the way down. The folks that have been hired into the organization are quite remarkable. But the thing that really, from a product perspective, that really is exciting to me, is that, not only are we disrupting this 40 billion dollar market in a way that's really connecting for our customers, we're doing it in a way that is thinking ahead. We're not treating this backup arena as some blob that's going to sit on tape somewhere. We're building it as part of an integrated management platform that then allows our customers to extract higher value services and insight from that in a way that they've never seen before. So radar is, we've had some incredible innovation over the last four months that I've been with the company. With the release of Rubrik Alta 4.2, the new product Radar for Ransomware protection. We've talked about our AWS competency and advancements there. But Radar is an example of a service that we're building on top of this data management platform that delivers higher value for our customers. And I am so excited about the exponential growth in value that we're going to deliver to our customers as we continue to deliver more of these services. >> Yeah, get the technology, got the great team. Yeah, the code of market is going to be interesting. With cloud, you've got marketplaces, you've got consumption by the users, the customers if you will, on your end, is changing, I think Saas is being a big part of it. How has the product road map shifted from classic old school product to now? Because it has to be a service. This service is out there, still commodity hardware. Software's driving the value. That's where the hardware gets sold. That's where the cloud gets sold on. It used to be the other way around. Your hardware drove what you can do with software. So that's a been flipped. >> Yes. >> How are you guys working that in the equation? Software first, cloud first? I mean, how do you explain that to customers? >> Well we're always a software company. And we built Rubrik as a very modern era expandable platform that runs on commodity hardware. And can archive and move workloads to the cloud at its core. I mean, our founders came from companies like Google and Facebook, and had really come from this world. And so, our customers were able to get that value quickly. And I think that was a big part of what attracted them to Rubrik. But if you really fast forward into the future, our vision is to have a ubiquitous centralized data management platform from which our customers can govern, manage, and establish rules that govern all of their applications that they protect across cloud boundaries, across private clouds, traditional infrastructure, cloud workloads, and we really think that's connecting for our customers. >> So about the product road map. Obviously, you're in charge of product and strategy, so you have a great market entry, the success has been documented. You guys have been one of the fastest growing companies in Silicon Valley the past couple of years. I've seen the success. You always have a big party at VM world. Your big show there, lookin' forward to this year. >> Going to happen again this year. (laughing) >> I heard there's a big performer there coming. Last year, it was great to see the Warriors there. So, but product is interesting. 'Cause at your start up, you want to have a beachhead, secure a core positioning, and then look at, kind of holistically, what the customers might want. >> Yeah. >> Can you share some insight into what that product roadmap is? And how are you guys fortifying your core and what are you adding onto the roadmap? >> Yeah, you know, the first thing that we did when we came out, was to provide this capability to protect your data and make it really easy to use, archive to the cloud, and we focused on the VMware and hypervisors, and it was very well received. And over the years, we've expanded to support other areas, other data, other applications. And so our strategy, certainly is going to continue to do that with the vision of protecting all of our customer's applications and data, regardless of where they reside. Whether they are traditional infrastructure applications running on PRIM, in private clouds, or new modern architectures that are running in the cloud. The ability to manage all of that. And that's certainly going to continue to be one of the directions of the roadmap strategy. The other is, as I mentioned, we're not really looking at these protected images as black boxes or tape images. We're going to enable our customers to extract value out of them in a way that they haven't seen before by introspecting this data and revealing insights from it. >> What's the current situation? So why can't they get that today? >> Well I think, typically, these images are stored in a proprietary blob form. And you can't really see much in there. >> You can't unlock it at all. >> You can't unlock it. And you can't really know much about what's even in the black box. And so, from the beginning, we started capturing meta-data that allows customers to classify this data and get insight into, well what applications are actually running in this particular snapshot. And so we continue to extract that level of value that is really connecting for our customers in allowing them to resurrect, move workloads, introspect for compliance reasons or otherwise in ways that, I think, are just really important. >> Yeah, things like GDPR for instance, alone. It gives it as a great use case. >> Absolutely. >> Alright, so what's the big picture? If you had to go talk to your friends and say, hey I joined Rubrik. And they say, I've never heard of Rubrik, what do they do? You don't say backup company, you say data company. How do you describe the company? >> I talk about a company that's providing data management for non-production systems. And allowing customers to extract value in ways that they haven't seen before. And I think, candidly, John, I have been very fortunate to work with some great companies. I have never seen an opportunity as exciting and as big as what Rubrik represents. It's just so important to our customers. Everybody has to protect their apps. And we're able to do it an a way that's going to allow them to extract so much more value. >> And what was your official start date? You started a couple months ago? >> April first. >> April first, four months roughly, yeah. >> Exactly, thrilled. >> And your impression, as you walk in. What's the DNA, what's the vibe of the company? If you had to describe the DNA of the company. >> You know, I'm really thrilled. I am really thrilled to be part of this organization. There's a deep sense of culture. One of the things that attracted me early on was there was an article written about Bipul talking about radical transparency. Open board room meetings, I'd never seen that before. And you know what it's about? It's about employee empowerment, he is so committed to that. To making sure that we are able to set everybody up to deliver their best in the organization. And I think it's spot on. It's why we're innovating so quickly. It's why we're attracting such top talent at all levels of the organization. And it's why I'm so confident about the future of this company. >> That's great. And you know, one of the things too that I want to get your thoughts on. Because you see in cloud disrupt a lot of things, and a great opportunity for you guys. You know, we're seeing it out there, and we talked to end-user enterprises. That the common answer is, you know clouds, that we got to go there. But the one thing that's interesting, is they all say, no matter what we do, when we talk about cloud for them, it makes them change their infrastructure. >> Yes. >> On premises, and what they do in the cloud. So it's a rethinking of things. So that's one. So that's opening up new markets. So question for you we have is, as you guys look at new markets, things like public sector for instance. We're seeing, I wrote a story today, it's looking like Oracle is challenging Amazon for the Department of Defense Deal. So public sector and global public sector. Not just in United States is a very interesting market. How are you guys doing in say that market? I know you're strong in the enterprise, but what's the sector angle? You guys competing there, you winning, what's the story? >> We are, and I would say there are multiple motions in addition to the public sector example. We're seeing a lot of Global 2000 organizations moving to manage service providers. And so that's an example of a private cloud model that really works for a lot of folks in federal organizations as well. Really looking to have a tenant, well-secured service model for their various agencies. And that is very aligned with what we're doing. In fact, in our Alta 4.2 release, we talked about Envoy that really advances how service providers can, and manage service providers even within organizations, can actually enable more self servicing capability in that regard. We see these varying segments. >> So you see public sector as an opportunity for you guys? >> No doubt. In fact, if you look at the rubric customer base today, it really spans the gamut of markets across the board, including public sector and state local agencies as well. >> Well we know you got a great relationship with Amazon Web Services, AWS. You're a competency partner with them, which is the highest award or level you can get. What is your relation with the other clouds, Google, Microsoft, Alibaba, and others? How do you guys relate to those other clouds? >> Our customers run on all platforms. And Rubrik does have a relationship with Microsoft, certainly. In fact, we have a co-sale agreement with them. We support Ajar at a relatively deep level. Same thing with Google Cloud. We enable our customers to. >> You're agnostic on cloud, basically. >> We are agnostic, and the point is, I think every one of these cloud platforms has their own unique angle and value, and we want to enable our customers to really leverage the platform of their choice. >> So a lot young people are lookin' at career choices. And some of the jobs are out there that haven't even been invented yet. At school starts to figure out curriculum, starting to see computer science. Women in tech is booming. You're seeing a lot of different, new kinds of jobs around data science, for instance. What do you advise young people, who are either in high school or college, who are thinking about careers? You don't have the classic, I'm going to be a software engineer. You could be a software developer, software artist, there's different jobs in management, marketing. All kinds of different scopes. What's the current track that you would recommend people to explore if they're interested in getting in tech? >> You know, I think it's remarkable to me to see how the internship programs have evolved. And how active they are. I was initially recruited into Oracle directly out of college. It was a very regimented process of recruiting from college. Well now you've got these internships. And I tell you, some of the interns that have worked with companies that I have been a part of just impress the hell out of me. So that's a great way to get in, to see what's about, and to have an opportunity to add value. And every single time one of those interns does something remarkable, and it happens all the time, there is an offer on the table for them to come back, too. So I think that's a very good way with many of these organizations to get in. >> I mean, it's so interesting. We do a lot of interviews. And there's no classic cookie cutter job anymore. I think you're starting to see interdisciplinary opportunities that are coming up. Some computer science, little bit of sociology, or business mixed, it's very interesting. Almost an alchemy of different projects out there that people can get involved in. >> Absolutely. >> Open source certainly is a big one. >> And it's fun because when we get new college grads, we just give them the opportunity to do a lot of different things in rotations. And that helps them also sort of get a sense of where their passion lies and what they want to do. And it's exactly the right thing to demand as you're coming into the workforce. >> It's interesting, at Google Cloud, I was talking with some folks over there. And you know, the women in tech conversation, and opportunity recognition and to level up. So many new opportunities that anyone of any gender or race can come in and quickly level up. >> Yes. >> 'Cause it's so new, the technology with Cloud. It's kind of interesting. >> Yes, I mean, I think it all comes down to your personal ability and commitment and work ethic and drive. And there's no end in sight to what's possible. >> That's right, well thanks for coming on theCUBE. Great to see you, and congratulations on your new role at Rubrik. Great company, right down the street here in Palo Alto. Rubrik, new Senior Vice President of Product and Strategy here inside theCUBE. For Cube conversation, I'm John Furrier here in Palo Alto in our studios. Thanks for watching. (dramatic music)

(energetic music) >> [Narrator] From San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering Radio 2018. Brought to you by VMware. >> Hello everyone. Welcome to the special CUBE coverage here in San Francisco, California for VMware's Radio 2018 event. This is their R&D big event kickoff. It's like a sales kickoff for engineers, as Steve Herrod said on stage. Out next guest is Mornay Van Der Walt, VP of the Explore Group, Office of the CTO. Also, program chair of the Event Today Conference, working for the collective of people within VMware on a rigorous selection committee for a high bar here at your event. Welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for joining me. >> Thank you. >> Talk about the event, because I know a lot of work went into it. Congratulations, the talks were amazing. I see the schedule. We have Pat Gelsinger coming on later today. We just had Ray O'Farrell on. This is like the, I don't want to say, Burning Man of Vmware, but this is really a recognition, but also really important innovation. Take a minute to talk about the process that you go through to put this together. It's a fantastic event. The smartest minds, the cream rises to the top. It's hard, it's challenging, it's a team effort, but yet you gotta ride the right waves. >> Right. So, RADIO: R&D Innovation Offsite. And as you said, it is tough because we've got this huge R&D community and they've all got amazing ideas. So they get the opportunity to submit ideas. I think this this year we have over 1,700 ideas submitted, and at the end of the day we're only going to showcase 226 of those ideas across research programs, posters, breakout sessions, Just-In-Time BOFs, Birds Of a Feather. You know, so, the bar is high. we've got a finite amount of time, but what's amazing is we take these ideas, and we don't just showcase them at RADIO. We have four other programs that give us the ability to take those ideas to the next level. So when we think about the innovation programs that come out of OCTO, this is really to drive what we call "Off-Road Map Innovation." So Raghu and Rajiv, with our Product Cloud Services Division, are driving road map, zero to three years out the stuff that you can buy from sales, >> [Furrier] Customer centric? >> Customer centric, yeah. OCTO is providing an innovation program structure, these five programs: Tech Talks, Flings, Borathons, RADIO, and xLabs, and as a collective, they are focused on off-road map innovation. Maybe something that's-- >> Give me an example of what that means, Off-Road Map. >> Sure. So last year at RADIO we did a paper that was showcased on functions as a service. So you think of AWS Lambda, right. [Furrier] Yep, yep >> VM was uniquely positioned, with the substrate, to manage and orchestrate VM's containers and whynot functions. So this radio paper was submitted, I then, as the xLabs group, said we're going to fund this, but given where we are in this market, we said, "Alright, we'll fund this for 12 months." So, we're incubating functions as a service. In July/August time frame, that'll actually exit xLabs into the Cloud Native business. >> It's a real rapid innovation. >> Very rapid. >> Within a 12 month period, we're gonna get something into a BU that they can take it to market. >> Yeah, and also I would say that this also I've seen from the talks here, there's also off-road map hard problems that need to kind of get the concepts, building blocks, or architecture... >> [Van Der Walt] Correct. >> With the confluence of hitting, whatever, its IOT or whatever, blockchains, seeing things like that. >> [Van Der Walt] Yeah. Correct. >> Is that also accurate too? >> Very true. And, you know, Ray had a great slide in his keynote this morning, you know, we spoke about how we started in 2003, when he joined the company, it was all about computer virtualization. Fast-forward 15 years, and you look at our strategy today, it's any Cloud, any device, any app, right? Then, you gotta look to the future, beyond there, what we're doing today, what are the next twenty years going to look like? Obviously, there's things like, you know, blockchain, VR, edge computing, you know, AIML... >> [Furrier] Service meshes? >> Services meshes, adaptive security. And, you know, people say, "Oh, AIML, that's a hot topic right now, but if you look back at VM ware, we've been doing that since 2006. Distributed resource scheduler: a great example of something that, at the core of the product, was already using ML techniques, you know, to load-balance a data center. And now, you can load-balance across Clouds. >> It's interesting how buzzwords can become industry verticals. We saw that with Hadoop; it didn't really happen, although it became important in big data as it integrates in. I mean, I find that you guys, really from the ecosystem we look at, you guys have a really interesting challenge. You started out as "inside the box," if you will. I saw your old t-shirt there from the 14 year history you guys have been doing this event. Great collection of t-shirts behind me if you can't see it. It's really cool. But infrastructures, on premise, you buy, it's data center, growth, all that stuff happened. Cloud comes in. Big data comes in. Now you got blockchain. These are big markers now, but the intersection of all these are all kind of touching each other. >> [Van Der Walt] Correct. >> IOT...so it's really that integration. I also find that you guys do a great job of fostering innovation, and always amazed at the VM world with some great either bechmarks or labs that show the good stuff. How do you do it? Walk me through the steps because you have this Explorer program, which is working. >> [Van Der Walt] Yeah >> It's almost a ladder, or a reverse ladder. Start with tech talks, get it out to the marketplace... >> [Van Der Walt] Do a hackathon. >> Hackathon. Take us through the process. So there's four things: tech talks, borathons, which is the meaning behind the name, flings, and xLabs. >> Correct >> Take us through that progression. >> ... and RADIO, of course. >> And RADIO, of course, the big tent event. Bring it all together. >> So, I'm an engineer. I have a great idea. I wanna socialize it; I wanna get some feedback. So, at VMWare, we offer a tech talk platform. You come, you present your idea. It's live. There'll be engineers in the audience. We also record those, and then those get replayed, and engineers will say, "You know, have you thought about this?" or "Have you met up with Johnny and Mary?" They're actually working on something very similar. Why don't you go and, you know, compare ideas? I can actually make that very real. I was in India in November, and we were doing a shark tank for our xLabs incubator, and this one team presented an idea on an augmented reality desktop. We went over to another office, actually the air watch office, and we did another shark tank there. Another team pitched the exact same idea, so I looked at my host, and I said, "Do these two teams know each other?" and the guy goes, "Absolutely not," so what did we do? We made the connection point. Their ideas were virtually identical. They were 25 kilometers apart. Never met. >> [Furrier] Wow. >> You know, so when, that's one of the challenges when your company becomes so big, you've got this vast R&D organization that's truly global, in one country 25 kilometers apart, you had two teams with the same idea that had never met. So part of the challenge is also bringing these ideas together because, you know, the sum of the parts makes for a greater whole. >> And they can then collectively come together then present to RADIO one single paper or idea. >> [Van Der Walt] Absolutely, or go ahead and say, you know what, let's take this to the next step, which would be a borathon, so borathons are heckathons. >> Explain the name because borathon sounds like heckathon, so it is, but there's a meaning behind the name borathon. What is the meaning? >> Sure. So, our very first build repository was named after Bora Bora, and so we paid homage to that, and so, instead of saying a heckathon, we called it a borathon. And one of our senior engineers apparently came up with that name, and it stuck, and it's great. >> So it's got history, okay. So, borathons is like ... okay, so you do tech talks, you collaborate, you socialize the idea via verbal or presentation that gets the seeds of innovation kinda planted. Borathon is okay, lets attack it. >> Turn it into a prototype. >> Prototype. >> And it gets judged, so then you get even more feedback from your most senior engineers. In fact ... >> And there's a process for all this that you guys run? >> Yeah, so the Explorer groups run these five innovation programs. We just recently, in Palo Alto, did a theme borathon. Our fellows and PE's came together. Decided the theme should be sustainability, and we mixed it up a little bit. So, normally, at a borathon, teams come with ideas that they've already been developing. For this one, the teams had no idea what the theme was going to be, so we announced the theme. Then, they showed up on the day to learn what the five challenges were going to be, and some of those challenges, one of them was quite interesting. It was using distributed ledger to manage microgrids, and that's a ... >> A blockchain limitation >> Well, it's a project that's, you know, is near and dear to us at VMWare. We're actually going to be setting up a microgrid on campus, and if you think about microgrids, and Nicola Acutt can talk more to this, we're gonna be looking at, you know, how can we give power back to the city of Palo Alto? Well, imagine that becoming a mesh network. >> [Furrier] With token economics. >> How do you start tracking this, right? A blockchain would be a perfect way to do this, right? So, then, you take your ideas at a borathon, get them into a prototype, get some more feedback, and now you might have enough critical mass to say, "Alright, I'm going to present a RADIO paper next year." So, then, you work as a team; get that into the system. >> [Furrier] And, certainly, in India and these third-world countries now becoming large, growing middle-class, these are important technologies to build on top of, say, mobile... >> [Van Der Walt] Absolutely. >> And with solar and power coming in, it's a natural evolution, so that's good use case. Okay, so, now I do the borathon. I've got a product. Flings? >> It's a prototype, right, so now ... >> You can socialize it, you have a fling, you throw it out there, you fling it out there What happens? >> Yeah, so, I've done something at a borathon. It's like, I want to get some actual feedback from the ecosystem: our customers and partners. That example I used with vSAN. You know, vSAN launched. We wanted to get some health analytics. The release managers were doing their job. The products got a ship on the state. Senior engineers on the team got a health analytics tool out as a fling. It got incredible feedback from the community. Made it into the next release. We did the same with the HTML clients, right? And that's been in the press lately because, you know, we've got Rotoflex. Now, there's HTML, but that actually started - two teams started working on that. One team just did HTML >> a very small portion of the HTML client, presented a RADIO paper. Two years later, another team, started the work, and now we have a full-fledged HTML client that's embedded into the VIS via product. >> [Furrier] So, the fling brings in a community dynamic, it brings in new ideas, or diversity, if you will. All kinds of diverse ideas melting together. Now, xLabs, I'm assuming that's an incubator. That brings it together. What is xLabs? Is that an incubator? You fund it? What happens there? >> So with an xLabs, the real way to think about it, it's truly an incubator. I don't want to use the word "start-up" there because you've clearly got the protection of the larger VMware organization, so you're not being a scrappy start-up, but you've got a great idea, we see there's merit ... >> [Furrier] Go build a real product. >> We see it more being on the disruptive side, and so we offer two tracks in the xLabs. There's a light track, which typically runs three to six months, and you're still doing your day job. You know, so you're basically doing two jobs. You know, we fund you with a level of funding that allows you to bring on extra contracting, resources, developers, etc., and you're typically delivering one objective. The larger xLab is the full-track, so functions as a service. Full-track, we showcased it as a RADIO paper last year. We said, "Alright, we're going to fund this. We're going to give it 12 months worth of funding, and then it needs to exit into a business unit," and we got lucky with that one because we were already doing a lot of work with containers, the PKS, the pivotal. >> [Furrier] Do the people have to quit their day job, not quit their day job, but move their resource over? >> [Van Der Walt] Absolutely. >> The full-track is go for it, green light >> Yep >> Run as fast as you can, take it to this business unit. Is the business unit known as the end point in time? Is it kind of tracked there, or is it more flexible still. >> Not all the time. You know so sometimes, with functions it was easier, right? So, we know we've got pull for zone heading up Cloud native apps. The Cloud native business unit is doing all the partnerships with PKS. That one makes sense. >> [Furrier] Yeah. >> We're actually doing one right now, another xLabs full, called network slicing, and it's going to play into the Telco space. We've obviously got NFV being led by Shekar and team, but we don't know if network slicing, when it exits, and this one is probably going to have a longer time arise and probably 24-36 months. Does it go into the NFV business unit, or does it become its own business unit. >> [Furrier] That's awesome. So, you got great tracks, end to end, so you have a good process. I gotta ask you the question that's on my mind. I think everyone would look at this, and some people might look at Vmware as, and most people do, at least I do, as kind of a cutting-edge tier one company. You guys always are a great place to work. Voted as, get awards for that, but you take seriously innovation and organic growth in community and engineering. Engineering and community are two really important things. How do you bring the foster culture because engineers can be really pissed off. "Oh my god! They're idiots that make the selection!" because you don't want engineers to be pissed cuz they're proud, and they're inventing. >> Yep, yep. >> So, how to manage the team approach? What's the cultural secret in the DNA that makes this so successful over 14 years? >> So, before I answer that question, I think it's important to take a step back. So, when we think about innovation, we call this thing the Vmware "innovation engine." It's really three parts to it, right? If you think about innovation at its core: sustaining, disruptive, internal, external, And, so, we've got product Cloud Services group, Raghu and Rajiv, we've got OCTO, headed up by Ray, we've got corp dev headed up by Shekar. Think of it as it's a three-legged stool. You take one of those legs away, the stool falls over. So, it's a balancing act, right? And we need to be collaborating. >> [Furrier] And they're talking to each other all the time. >> We're talking to each other all the time, right? Build or buy? Are we gonna do something internal, or we gonna go external, right? You think something about acquisitions like Nicira, right? We didn't build that; we bought it. You think about Airwatch, right? Airwatch put us into the top right quadrant from Gartner, right? So, these are very strategic decision that get made. Petchist presented at Dell emc world, Dell Technologies world. He had a slide on there that showed, it was the Nicira acquisition, and then it sort of was this arc leading all the way up to VeloCloud, and when you saw it on one slide, it made perfect sense. As an outsider looking in, you might have thought, "Why were they doing all these things? Why was that acquisition made? But there's always a plan, and that plan involves us all talking across. >> [Furrier] Strategic plan around what to move faster on. >> Correct >> Because there's always the challenge on M&A, if they're not talking to each other, is the buy/build is, you kinda, may miss a core competency. They always ... what's the core competency of the company? And should you outsource a core competency, or should you build it internally? Sometimes, you might even accelerate that, so I think Airwatch and Nicira, I would say, was kinda on the edges of core competency, but together with the synergies ... >> [Van Der Walt] Helped us accelerate. >> And I think that's your message. >> [Van Der Walt] Yep. >> Okay, so that's the culture. How do you make, what's the secret sauce of making all this work? I mean, cuz you have to kinda create an open, collaborative, but it's competitive. >> [Van Der Walt] Absolutely. >> So how do you balance that? >> You know, so clearly, there's a ton of innovation going on within the prior Cloud services division. The stuff that's on the truck that our customers can buy today, alright? We also know we gotta look ahead, and we gotta start looking at solving problems that aren't on the truck today, alright? And, so, having these five programs and the collective is really what allows us to do that. But at the same time, we need to have open channels of communication back into corp dev as well. I can give you examples of, you know, Shekar and his team might be looking at Company X. We're doing some exploratory work, IOT, I did an ordered foray. IOT is gonna be massive; everybody knows that, but you know what's going to be even more massive is all the data at the edge, and what do you do with that data? How do you turn that data into something actionable, right? So, if you think about a jet engine on a big plane, right? When it's operating correctly, you know what all the good levels are, the metrics, the telemetry coming off it. Why do I need to collect that and throw it away? You're interested in the anomalies, right? As we start thinking about IOT, and we start thinking all this data at the edge, we're going to need a different type of analytics engine that can do real-time analytics but not looking at the norm, looking at the deviations, and report back on that, so you can take action on that, you know? So, we started identifying some companies like PubNub, Mulesoft, too, just got acquired, right? Shekar and his team were looking at the same companies, and was like, "These companies are interesting because they're starting to attack the problem in a different way. We do that at Vmware all the time. You think about Appdefense. We've taken a completely different approach to security. You know what the good state is, but if you have a deviation, attack that, you know? And then you can use things like ... >> It's re-imagining, almost flipping everything upside-down. >> Yeah, challenging the status quo. >> Yeah, great stuff, great program. I gotta ask you a final question since it's your show here. Great content program, by the way. Got the competition, got the papers, which is deep, technical coolness, but the show is great content, great event. Thanks for inviting us. What's trending? What's rising up? Have you heard or kind of point at something you see getting some buzz, that you thought might get buzz, or it didn't get buzz? What's rising of the topics of interest here? What's kind of popping out for you; what's trending if I had to a Twitter feed, not Twitter feed, but like top three trending items here. >> Well, I'll take it back to that last borathon that we did on sustainability. We set out the five challenges. The challenge that got the most attention was the blockchain microgrid. So, blockchain is definitely trending, and, you know, the challenge we have with blockchain today is it's not ready for the enterprise. So, David Tennenhouse and his research group is actually looking at how do you make blockchain enterprise ready? And that is a difficult problem to solve. So, there's a ton of interest in watching ... >> [Furrier] Well, we have an opinion. Don't use the public block chain. (both laugh) >> So, you know, that's one that's definitely trending. We have a great program called Propel, where we basically attract the brightest of the brightest, you know, new college grads coming into the company, and they actually come through OCTO first and do a sort of onboarding process. What are they interested in? They're not really interested in working for a particular BU, but, you know, when we share with them, "You're gonna have the ability to work on blockchain, AI, VR, augmented reality, distributed systems, new ways of doing analytics >> that's what attracts them. >> [Furrier] And they have the options to go test and put the toe in the water or jump in deep with xLabs. >> Absolutely >> So, I mean, this is like catnip for engineers. It draws a lot of people in. >> Absolutely, and, you know, we need to do that to be competitive in the valley. I mean, it's a very hard marketplace. >> Great place to work. >> You guys have a great engineering team. >> Congratulations for a great event, Mornay, and thanks for coming on theCUBE. We're here in San Francisco for theCUBE coverage of RADIO 2018. I'm John Furrier. Be back with more coverage after this break. Thanks for watching. (upbeat techno music)

(upbeat instrumental music) >> Presenter: Live from New Orleans, Louisiana, it's theCUBE, covering dot .NEXT Conference 2018 brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media's live production of Nutanix .NEXT Conference here in New Orleans, Louisiana. I'm Stu Miniman joined by my co-host Keith Townsend. Happy to welcome back to the program, also fresh off the keynote stage, the founder, CEO and Chairman of the publicly traded, Nutanix. Dheeraj Pandey, thanks for joining us. >> Thank you, thank you for your time by the way. >> Dheeraj, it's always a pleasure. One of the things we say about theCUBE is we want to take those conversations that we're having at events in the industry and share them out, and we've had the opportunity to have many of them over the years. So to start off with, when you take us back, some of the keynote you say five years ago couldn't really predict what was going to happen now. Yet I talked in our open here, the first interview that we did with you back in 2012, talking about the challenges over time in distributed architectures, it's more real today than it was back in 2012. Cloud has matured and is a little bit more nuanced today. The application space is exploding and changing more than ever. I guess inside a little bit, when you talk about the vision that you had for Nutanix, any major learnings on things that have surprised you along the way? And what things have played out exactly like you thought they would? >> Well, let's start with the easy one, which is the way things have played out, what we wanted them to play out like. I think the idea of commoditization of hardware, the fact that things will become pure software, all these hardware devices should look like apps was one of our sort of big prognosis early on, like six, seven, eight years ago. And largely, everybody is talking about software-defined everything. And that's not to say that hardware doesn't play a role, it's just that it becomes more invisible in the sense that with software running on top, and the fact that you have economies of scale coming with standardization in hardware, a lot of things will move to pure software. That's really worked out well. Disaggregation has worked out well in our favor. The fact that you'd stop buying big things and you start small and pay zero. I think consumerization has really, I mean and this is a word that is a cliche in many senses but what does it mean to have consumer-grade experience of enterprise grade systems, which is a paradox in itself to say that if consumer-grade experience with enterprise grade systems, but I think that has turned out really well for us. And in the staying power of everything eventually is can you build reliable systems? Can you build highly available systems? I mean, because building trust with the enterprise is really hard, and there's lots of startups that has come and gone, that have over-promised and under-delivered, and I think that's one of the things that has really worked in our favor to be really methodical and robust with the way we build our systems, especially the backend systems. And it's showing up in the front end of the world. Surprise, surprise, I think the fact that it's mega distributed now, not just distributed because distributed over LAN is one thing, but distributed over WAN is a very different thing altogether and you need to really think about the basic tenets of computer science, about state and migration and caching. And a lot of this is coherency, consistency, availability, network partitioning, there's a lot of things you need to think about in a very different way than you used to think about on a LAN itself, so... >> Yeah, I want to drill into one of those things. The move to a software model, you and I talked since the early days and Nutanix, at its core, it's software that you do. Changing how people think and consume and boy, getting the financial arm of companies, your channel partners, your salespeople and your customers, that's a challenging piece there. There was one of the customers I've already talked to this week that said one of the things we always had was I buy stuff and you tend to over buy and you could never kind of shrink down. Now, I go to a software model, I have a certain piece of it that I really understand and then I buy, and I can even kind of dial back as needed. Maybe explain some of the nuances and some of those changes. You know, how's the field doing with this? How's the channel adopting to this, and any customer stories? >> Yeah, I think there's, especially for ambitious companies, there's always a Netflix moment, there's always an Adobe Omniture moment. Look at these companies 10 years ago, Adobe was a $3 billion company in 2007. But they said we need to dramatically look at consumption model as the big differentiator going forward actually. Even though they had digitized blockbuster and Hollywood videos and so on, they said it's not enough. We need to digitize even further. I mean, Apple had digitized music with $0.99 songs, but the music player itself needed digitization, and I think that's what happened with iPhone bringing a music player on as an app itself. Photographers digitized, you know because you could now do JPEG files back and forth in emails, but the camera itself made further digitization and the camera became an app. So I think there's multiple layers of digitization that needs to happen. I think as a company, we've digitized a lot of hardware devices. But as a company, we had to digitize ourselves even further. This is our digital transformation. The fact that you can consume Nutanix in ways that are even more invisible, the fact that you can try out Nutanix, kick the tires on Nutanix, run it in your favorite server that you want. And then after you like it, you call us. You know, all of a sudden, the sales funnel is warmer because whenyou look at sales funnel, you don't need people up there to really go do a POC and kick the tires and technology and so on. So software provides access, which is probably at the core of an operating system. If you don't have access, if you don't feel distributable, then you'll always stay at the mercy of the appliance gravity. Because appliance's gravity, it's hardware, you need to ship things as physical objects being shipped, there is logistics, there is capital expenditure, there's a lot things involved that really keeps you sort of anchored to the bottom. And the only way to unleash this is to really bring more digital delivery models, and software is one such thing. Now our sales teams like starting this quarter, are being paid on software only as opposed to on the hardware itself. And we're doing things in the channel that makes it really unique because the customer experience doesn't have to change. In some sense, we're really saying can we have the cake and eat it too? And that's what we're really doing so that the two north, which is customer experience, doesn't take any kind of hit while we can actually look at going and selling the value of software itself. And as you know about Xi, I mean, just doing software alone is just the first step towards digital transformation. And the further digitization is, when nothing is visible on-prem for Nutanix, everything is totally invisible and you can swipe a credit card, you can sign up in a matter of seconds, I think that is where the real epitome of digitalization will be for the company. >> So let's talk about the impact of becoming a software company. I love some of the stories that he says, the ability to download software and kick the tires. I've seen some really geeky stuff, people running prism on bare metal clouds, there's use cases that I didn't really consider. What are some of the more interesting things that your partners and customers are doing that you didn't expect? Like, what's the surprises? >> Well, it starts with the tinkerers. The most important thing about any good software company is tinkerers do things that you never imagined you could do. And it comes down to API, then it comes down to access. Like I have an app on my iPhone, it's called iBeer. Now Apple opened up its oscilloscope, its accelerometer, its compass, and now you can basically fill up beer in your iPhone and you can drink it and it burps for you as well. I don't think the company knew that when it opens up an API. You know, what other possibilities, what kind of apps people will build? I think community addition has been at the core of access for us. People can just download it on an Intel NUC and do things with it. In fact, the NUC is part of a drone now so you can actually have an entire data center in a drone, and the drones can replicate to each other and failover from each other. In fact, we're talking to a lot of very large oil and gas and remote vertical organizations, which are really looking for what does it mean to miniaturize a datacenter? And then at the same time, do very serious stuff in it, back it up, encrypt it, compress it, replicate it, all sorts of things, even put event processing. Like, how do you put a Casca bus on a mini PC-sized server, I think, palm-sized server? These are all the things that we hadn't imagined three, four or five years ago. But the fact that Nutanix can be shrunk wrapped into a palm-sized server, it takes this possibility to the edge, to the next level, actually. >> So the show floor is growing, you hit on API, critical part of building an ecosystem to becoming a true platform player. What are some of the more impressive parts of growth from (mumbles) ecosystem? >> I would bring it back to all the applications. We've done a tremendous job of applications on Nutanix. So if you look at north, south and east, west, I always look at things north, south, east, west, north, south is apps and hardware. So hardware platforms and apps on top of us. I think we've done a really good job with that. East, west, you know, look at data protection, business continuity, security. A lot of those companies are actually part of our overall ecosystem. And we still are not happy. I think we have to do an even better job. But what's the MuleSoft equivalent in infrastructure? Nobody thinks of integration in the operating system world today. It's mostly point-to-point. Okay, I am Nutanix, you're Arista, we'll do point-to-point. I am Nutanix, you are F5, we'll do point-to-point. What if there's a real event bus where you could just publish topics and you become a radio station? There's TiVo and because you can go back in time, look at three days ago what events happened and so on. There's a whole aspect of putting a multicast tree of events that becomes a real groundswell of integration between different kinds of appliances, virtual appliances, physical appliances, hardware below us, software above us. I think that has yet to happen in the industry. And a lot of our developers are now talking about like what's the MuleSoft for Nutanix? So I think there's a lot of innovation that infrastructure has not seen because we always think differently than apps. What if we thought like app companies? We'd do things like app companies. And you'd see us in the next couple of years do something really interesting with, build a system bus which are the pub/sub like model as opposed to a RESTful request/response-like model actually. >> Dheeraj, gives us a little more color on some of those partnerships. I've seen Google and IBM on stage in the past. You're now over a billion dollars in revenue, public company, so I have to imagine some of these companies treat you a little differently. And the ones I kind of initially want to hear of, but you're welcome to run with it is, the server players and the cloud players is, how you see, how much can it just be we do our thing and how much do they need to work with you? >> Yeah, absolutely. Well a billion is still a small number. We're more like VMware of '07. And VMware of '07 was still a test and dev company by the way. They hadn't done anything production at all. People are still tinkering with databases and Microsoft apps and so on in '07. So we are small, we're still not a very big company. I think there's a lot of headroom for us in the coming years. The thing is that we've taken the tougher route by the way. Tougher route being we didn't have to sell ourselves to EMC, which is what VMware did. If you think about it, that asset was worth 60 billion eventually. Was sold for 600 million. It was a 100x smaller price to EMC. Because they actually seeded the ground on go to market. (mumbles) It's really hard, we need EMC to go and really do the distribution in peace. And as a company, we said no, no, I think there is value in building go to market on our own. I mean, look at our cap table. Our cap table is clean, we have dual class, voting structure and things like that. The things that VMware would die for, looking at from a financial investor point of view that we have that they don't, because we took the tougher route to really come to build a business. Now if you talk about hardware companies below us, and when I said below, I don't mean pejoratively, but you know, the stuff that runs underneath us, >> Stu: Southbound. (chuckles) >> I think NX has been a great way to build a market because if you hadn't done supermicro, we wouldn't be here actually. I mean, this architecture would have been a child's play, a science project, foreign tinkerer, most of them what it has become over time because the server vendors took note. They said, oh you can actually come and displace me? I would rather work with you because there's a lot of value we can bring to the table as well. So in that vein I think what we've done with Dell, what we've done with Lenovo, what we are doing with IBM, Fujitsu, and what we're doing with HP's and Cisco's channel partners, there's a lot of regional love that's forming on the ground with HP's and Cisco's channel partners and sales people because sales people are less political than headquarters. And think about strategy tax that headquarter face versus what sales people do. Sales people, I just saw a tweet, I think you talked about an HPE sales guy saying, you've got to bring Nutanix to the table because they really respect market forces. For them, market forces are most powerful actually. And above us and in the cloud, I think definitely a lot of work that we're doing in Google GCP. But I think you know, as bare-metal opens up from these other providers, we probably would be very interested to see exactly how Nutanix Xi works in bare metals of these public cloud providers. >> So you guys disrupt yourself. There was NX, business was doing fine. You guys are starting to build a reputation to being able to support the large enterprise with NX, some of the logistic challenges that you had as a small organization you were starting to overcome, but you decided you know what, you're going to untether yourself, let's zoom out of the industry. If you looked at the industry and say you know what, the advantage that Nutanix has because we're willing to disrupt ourselves, what are the tethers that remain in the industry that you're happy to go before your customers and say you know what, Nutanix doesn't have these tethers and if we did, we'll easily disrupt ourselves again. What's the competitive advantage? >> Hmmm, I think it's a great question. In fact it is the competitive advantage to say that the glass is half-full and it's not a zero-sum game. Because there's two kinds of people in the world. There's the zero-sum mindsets people who actually always think that if somebody is winning, the other must lose. And then there's growth mindset people who actually feel like of course legacy will get disrupted, but the new guys will actually make further progress, future progress. So as a builder, there's a bias in me and many of us out there in Nutanix that you need to have a growth mindset. And then the growth mindset, just giving a software to an OEM partner doesn't mean that it will shrink yours. It's possible that there's going to be more word-of-mouth, and the market forces will actually appreciate that. I mean, eventually, if somebody had a great relationship with Dell, Lenovo or HP or Cisco or IBM, we'd love to do business with them. And we have to relax some constraints because at the end of the day, this is still not our cloud. Now in Xi we can do whatever we want. But when we're walking to the customer, saying we want to build a cloud with you, with you is an important work. It's not for you, it's with you. And with you would mean that we'll have to bend a little bit backwards to relax the constraints away. And that's exactly what we've done. No one else has done this. Same is true for hypervisors. I mean, look at VMware. We go in there and we don't start talking about VMware right away. Like you know what, let's talk about architecture, let's talk about migration, let's talk about security, automation, and some day we'll certainly talk about whether you need to pay for a hypervisor. I think we'll do the same things with data protection and other things we're doing networking and so on. We're not going to just come in and say this is us and nothing else matters. API is everything. I mean, think of consumer companies. They've always competed with their partners and they've done a good job at it. They're like, look, at the end of the day, Spotify, their competitor, Apple music competes with it, but I'm not going to not give them a level playing field. Google Maps, Apple Maps compete. Keynote, Number, Pages competes with Microsoft Office. And I think the best companies are very good at being comfortable. Amazon the retailer, they fulfill more than I would say half their things not from their warehouse but someone else's warehouse, and both parties make money, actually. It's the growth mindset that creates large companies. >> Dheeraj, you're a technical founder, have great success with the company. You know, it's still one of the things I've loved in our journey on theCUBE, is being able to document companies that we knew from the early days and got over 2,500 employees now. >> Dheeraj: Actually, more than 3,500. >> 3,500. Congratulations. As you talk to people in the Valley or your travels around the world, what advice do you give to potential future entrepreneurs, people that are sitting like you did in the early days and have a vision for the future? >> Well, I've gotten a little more philosophical about organizational building. At the core of companies that are building and growing over time, is how do you keep reducing friction? And it's not just friction with customers and partners, also friction within. Because orgs grow and you need to, if you look at organisms, you know we have mitosis where cells divide themselves and become smaller cells and even smaller cells and so on. There's a division of labor, there's specialization, there's all sorts of things that actually happen as organisms themselves. I think an org is like an organism. And over time, there's a lot of accumulated stress that develops. And if you don't really go and address it, you're not a company, you're basically a business that doesn't understand culture. So what I talked about with a lot of entrepreneurs is really fuzzy words like how do you become authentic in what you do? Like, I was in Bloomberg and I talked about the difficulties with Xi. At the end of the day, most people, maybe not the 10, 15, 20% impressionables, but most people appreciate authenticity. And we're like, that is vulnerable, and being vulnerable is the best way to build a relationship actually. So I talk about vulnerability and trust and organizational design and reducing friction and things of that nature because once you are so many people, it's all about reducing friction. >> All right, well Dheeraj, one of the things people I know love about this show is you bring speakers that get us thinking authenticity. Hopefully one of the reasons why you bring theCUBE to the event. So thank you so much for joining us again. Always a pleasure. >> Pleasure. >> All right, Keith Townsend and I, Stu Miniman, will be back with lots more coverage here of the Nutanix .NEXT Conference 2018 in New Orleans. You're watching theCUBE. (technorock music)