(upbeat music) >> Announcer: From New York, it's theCUBE. Covering ESCAPE/19. >> Everyone, welcome to theCUBE coverage here in New York City for the ESCAPE Conference 19. This is the inaugural event for multicloud, I think it's the first industry event for, really talking about multicloud and the impact to enterprises and public cloud. My next guest is Steve Mullaney, President and CEO of Aviatrix, storied career in tech, been there done that, seen many waves of innovation. Nicira, Palo Alto Networks, and now Aviatrix. You retired for a while, welcome back! >> I did, yeah, five years, yeah, yeah, yeah. >> Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, thanks for having me. >> It's nice to have you on because I think you have a good perspective on the multicloud because you've been in the industry since the 80s. We've both been broke in at the same time. And we've seen the waves. >> Oh, yeah. >> This wave is bigger than, I think, most of the other waves combined because it brings together so many things, infrastructure, software, cloud scale, and a new modern application environment. And then you complicate everything by throwing IoT out there, edges being pushed to their boundaries, securities equations changed, all this is going on right now, all at the same time. >> No, and that's why I was basically retired for five years, and I was at Nicira, we got bought by VMware, I stayed there for a couple years, and I just said, "Okay, that's it!" I've had a good career and I'm done. And about a year ago, the world changed. And it felt like on a Tuesday morning, I noticed enterprises really, we'd been talking about cloud for 12 years. And five years ago they said, "We're coming in, we're going to do it," but they didn't really mean it. But about a year ago, all in the same day, every enterprise said, "No, now we actually mean it." And I don't know why, I don't know if it was just people retired or just five years of talking about it, they all decided, we're comin' in, and enterprises all moved together. And this wave, as you said, is bigger than, I was around in 1992, in the early 90s, in the movement from mainframe to client server. This is 10 times bigger than that. And more importantly, it's going to happen 10,000 times faster. Because (fingers tapping). What's that? I just deployed 62 data centers around the world. Because if I can leverage the greatest infrastructure built, basic infrastructure of the hyperscalers, AWS, Azure, Google, Alibaba, Oracle, you name it. It's unbelievable the velocity at which you can now start deploying. >> Steve, I think you're onto something big here, and this is why I'm here at this event and why I'm excited, that a lot of the industry thought leaders and practitioners and leaders are doing this event. Small events, inaugural, but I think it has a lot of links. Because there's a lot of tell signs that I like to look at, one is cloud. I've been covering Amazon eight years now, with theCUBE, I've known AWS since it started, and I've done many startups in its launch using AWS. But I've had many conversations with Andy Jassy, one on ones, privately, I got an exclusive coming up for re:Invent with him. I've gotten to know him. It started out, "Everyone's moving to the cloud. "Every data center's not going to exist." And then, you know-- >> Oh, maybe not, yeah, yeah. >> Maybe not, we'll do an output. So I challenged him last year, I said, "Andy, come on, dude, like you were saying like a year ago that." >> Steve: Yeah, it's all AWS or nothing. >> And he said, "John, look I'm not, "I just listen to the customers." And I interviewed him when he did the VMware deal. And he's very customer focused. And when they make these moves with outpost, and I think it's going to be a hybrid message this year at re:Invent, you know it's real. >> Steve: Oh, yeah. >> I think this validates your point, so I got to ask you, what specifically do you see the formula being for multicloud, because certainly everyone's recognized that there's a huge benefit for AWS. But from a scale standpoint, so why not use that? What's going on on the Enterprise on-premise that's making this new thing work? >> I think it all starts with architecture, like anything else. I think right now, enterprises have said, "Okay, we've burned a boat, right? "Now, we're not going to get rid of our data centers, "but in terms of our strategic investment, "we are moving into the cloud. "We are going to leverage "the infrastructure of the hyperscalers. "And whether that is just one hyperscaler, or multiple." And I have not met an enterprise who thinks there only going to be one, right, every single one of them. Now, I don't think they're moving workloads across, I don't think that. I think they see that, I'm going to use Google for AI, I'm going to use AWS because it started there. I'm going to use Azure, for Office 365, and other different things, and everything in infrastructure is always multi. It's never homogeneous, right, it's always that. So I think is going to happen, and I think what people are begging for right now, is, I want to build an architecture that gives me the optionality to be able to deliver a common set of services whether I'm on AWS or multiple clouds. And I want them to be my services and I don't want to have understand the low level abstractions and constructs of each of those clouds, because their all different. One's metric, one's U.S., one's some other weird thing. And I don't have the time, the people, or the resources to be able to do that. Give me a common set of services, that are my services, that I can deploy and abstract away the details of those public clouds. >> Yeah, it's an interesting point there, in fact, I called BS on multicloud last year when it started to kind of rear it's head, I'm like, "Come on, multicloud is bullshit." And I said that on theCUBE. And here's what I meant. Multicloud as an operating model is directionally correct, but the architecture hasn't shown where there's true multicloud. Now, the fact of the matter is, people have Amazon, people have Office and Office 365, that's technically two clouds, >> They're siloed, yeah. >> If they give us Google, that's three clouds. >> I use two or three clouds. >> So, if he have three clouds, I guess they have multiple clouds. But you bring up an interesting point, and going back as a student of the history of tech industry, multi-vendor has been a big deal. >> It is a big deal. >> And like you said, there will be a multi-vendor world, that will happen. The question is how. How do you guys see it happening? >> Well I think what's-- >> Your company is attacking this Aviatrix. >> What's interesting is, so now you think about from a customer perspective which, I do the same thing, same thing with AWS. It's always outside in. Okay, I'm thinking as a enterprise IT person. I'm making the move. Do you believe that your basic infrastructure will lever the hyperscalers, or will you build an on-prem? Everyone says, "I believe that's the way I'm going to go." Great, how do I do that? So, I'm a IT architect, who do I go to to help me? Do I go to CISCO? No. The most shocking thing for me, of the six months I've been at Aviatrix, is that word's never used. It's like it was DEC or IBM in the conversation, when you were talking about client-server, no, why would you? CISCO, Juniper, Arista, any of the networking people, not even in the conversation. VMware, not really in the conversation. So, I don't have any incumbent vendor that I can go to that I used to go to. >> Why aren't they in the conversation? 'Cause of the commodity, they've been extracted away? >> I think it's just because it's the innovation of dilemma. Right, once you're selling a lot of stuff into on-prem, to then go and say, I mean you look at Palo Alto Networks, they're trying to make that transition. Acquiring a bunch of companies, VMware acquiring a bunch of companies. Why are they doing that? Because they know, I got to get off on-prem, everything's going in the cloud. >> So it's a legacy. >> It's a legacy thing, and I think what happens is, there is only one reason, and one reason only, an enterprise customer is not using Aviatrix. 'Cause they never heard of us. That's why, that's the only reason. Once they hear about what they're doing, my God. >> Well, give the plug, talk about the company, what do you guys do-- >> So we deliver, I mean it sounds like I made it up for this conference, but actually this conference was perfect for this. It's networking and security services for the multicloud enterprise. And we're building an architecture, that people can deploy, that will give them this common architecture across all the different clouds. So whether you're just using one cloud or multiple, it doesn't matter, it's the same set of security and networking services. And we do that by embracing and extending the basic constructs that AWS, Google, Azure, and Oracle, and all the other clouds will give you, and to deliver that real enterprise class. Because the other thing we've found is, everyone thinks that the cloud gives you everything and anything you will ever need from networking and security. Let's say AWS, they're going to do everything I need. What the enterprises are figuring out, is once they start going in, what they realize is, it's created for the low-level common basic constructs. And the enterprise starts at, well, I need these BGP feature because guess what, the data center is not going away. And I need more than a hundred route limitations, and I need, all of a sudden there's fifty different limitations AWS will give me. Well, they didn't talk about that! Well, of course they're not going to talk about that. They are just going to go check, check, check, we solve all your problems. As enterprises now move in, with mission critical applications, they're realizing, I need the same level of networking and security services that I had on-prem. I can't get that with the native constructs. So where do I go? That's what we do, so we fill in, we embrace what we can of those constructs, we fill in holes where there are fill in holes. And then we give you the mechanism to be able to orchestrate that across the global network. >> So you operationalize the hyperscale clouds for enterprise, >> Yes. >> that's basically what you do. >> Steve: Exactly, for the enterprise. >> Yeah, exactly. >> On the level that they need. >> So you get the benefits of the cloud, but all those nuances under the cover details like networking and other features you abstract that away and provide an operating model for enterprise compliments. >> And the beautiful thing about it is the velocity, at which we can, we're over the top, effectively over the top. We're integrated into the Cloud Suite, understand what cloud native, we understand all the constructs of accounts, and all the things we need to do. But what we expose to the customer, to the enterprise, is a set of over-the-top services that just work. >> Okay Steve, so I got to ask you, since we are at The Multi-Cloud Conference. What is multicloud, I mean how do you define it, you laid out a pretty compelling architecture of what needs are, levers in the cloud, and on-prem is what Aviatrix does. But what is the definition, how should people understand what is multicloud? >> I think for us, for networking and security in that base, so we're basic infrastructure. We get out there first, right? So, if you're going to build a city, you don't start putting people there first the first thing, if you do it right, is you get sewers, you get electricity, gas, roads, all that. Networking and security, infrastructure, is basic infrastructure goes out first. And you want to create an architecture that's going to live with you for twenty years. You don't want to have to rip up the roads and put the sewers in later. And that architecture needs to be multicloud because, even though you think maybe, most of our customers are 90% AWS right now. But every single one of them say, "But I'm moving to Azure, I'm moving to Google, "I've got retail customers that won't allow me "to put my infrastructure on AWS." Or, "I have machine learning, AI type apps on Google." They all say that same thing. But what they all then say to us, is, "You're going to be the mechanism "upon which I'm going to be able to deploy "this common set of services." So they don't need to know that. >> All right, give an example of a customer you guys have, name a name, we had a customer on stage here-- >> Steve: So, Jefferies. >> John: They did this for a use case. >> Yeah so, Jefferies. Financial Services Institution, lots of requirements, Mark Leon Soon is going to be on stage with me tomorrow. We started working with them about nine months ago. Exactly the same thing, they said, "Okay, you know what? "We need to start moving to the cloud, "we've got to start leveraging the cloud. "But, it's too complicated, right? "Even AWS, says 'Go Build.' "I don't want to go build, I want to consume services. "But they don't have all the service that I needed, "they're too low a level. "They're very high function, high enterprise requirements." So they start using us to orchestrate things, to provide transit networking, to provide egress filtering out to the Internet, we have high performance encryption, AWS will only offer it one gig. We can offer it to 10, 20, 30, 40 gig. So they start deploying, they start realizing all the things we do. Then they go and say, "I want to bring my Palo Alto Networks firewall "into the cloud." When you start looking at that, 'cause then guess what? All my policies, I want the same level that I have on-prem when I'm in the cloud. If I go try to bring in my VM series into AWS the construct that AWS give you, they cause you limitations in performance, in visibility, It's integration hassles, there's performance, sustainability, visibility issues, they force you to use SNAT. And there's all these issues, and they go, "Oh my God, this is a pain in the ass." We solved all that for them. We basically cloudify the VM series for them, so all those limitations go away. So that's just another use case that they use. Now they start looking, and they say, "Okay, now I'm going to start extending into other clouds and I want to use you as the common frame point, the common pane of glass. >> Well Steve, good luck in your venture, you're back in the saddle again. >> Steve: Yeah. >> Another ride here, you feel good about it? >> This is going to be the best, the biggest that I've been, and I was at Palo Alto Networks and VMware Nicira. And this one's going to be bigger than both of those. >> What's your vision for where this is going to be for you, where do you see the company in a few years, what are some of the outcomes you expect to happen? >> Our opportunity, and I look at it as, someone's going to take this opportunity, and the reason I came back is, why not us, someone's going to take it. And the opportunity, honestly, is to become, effectively, what Cisco was in the early 90's. To define the architecture, the networking and the security infrastructure architecture for enterprise customers. They are begging for that right now, that's our opportunity. >> Cloud Interoperability. >> Interoperability, yeah. And so there's so many things that we need to go and do. When you look at also the thing that people are going to say, the operations. So many people think, I want it the same as it was on-prem. I think with the cloud, and across multicloud you can do it right with us, and actually better. Because the visibility that you get is more, than what you get on-prem. >> Well, and the thing that's interesting that's different about this new world that we're talking about is that there is going to be constant improvements in new things which means that the functionality game is going to increase, which means the agility is even more important because the apps are going to have more things to do. >> Yeah. I mean in the end, why do you want to go to cloud? I want to go to cloud 'cause I want it to be self-service and I want agility. I want my developers, I want everybody to be able to do things quicker because all of the sudden they say, "Let's go roll this out", and you want to be able to do it. >> Well, good luck on the new venture, Aviatrix, check 'em out, hot multicloud startup, growing, how many people do you have, put the plug in, >> 100. >> what are you guys looking for, are you hiring, give me a quick plug. >> We just hired a new VP at World Wide Sales, James Winebrenner, who was Viptela CEO, VP Sales in Cisco, hiring a tremendous amount of sales guys right now, we're closing on a $40 million Series C round next week, and we're hiring a lot of people. >> Good luck, we'll be following you Steve, thanks for coming on and sharing your insights. Again, multicloud, this is a shift that's happening, multicloud is just another word for multi-vendor, in a new modern era, this is what it has been in the technology industry, but a whole new world. This is theCUBE coverage here in New York City, ESCAPE/19, I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

[Announcer] - From New York, it's theCUBE! Covering ESCAPE/19. >> Hello, welcome back to theCUBE coverage here in New York City for the first inaugural Multi-Cloud Conference called ESCAPE/2019. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here with Natalie Gholmieh who is the Manager of Data and Integration Services at the University of California San Diego campus/office- sprawling data center, tons of IT, a lot of challenges, welcome. >> Yeah, thank you for having me. >> So, thanks for taking the time out. You're a practitioner, you're here. Why are you at this conference? What are you hoping to gain from here? What interests you here at the Multi-Cloud Escape Conference? >> So, this conference is very much within the spirit of what we're trying to do. Our CIO has directives which is to avoid lock-in, to do multi-vendor orchestration, to go with containers first, and open-source wherever possible. So, this conference pretty much speaks to all of that. >> So, this is a really interesting data point, because it seems the common thread is data. >> Mhmm. >> The cloud is an integration of things, so people are trying to find that integration point so they can have multiple vendors, multiple clouds. It seems like the multi-vendor world back in the old days, where you had multiple vendors, heterogeneous environment, data seems to be the linchpin in all this. >> Right, yes. >> That's what you do. >> Right. >> How do you think about this? Because it used to be that the big database ran the world, now you have lots of databases, you have applications. >> Right, yeah. >> Databases are everywhere now. >> Data is born in multiple systems, but the data is also an asset right now to all of the organizations, including the university. So, what we want to try to accomplish is to get all of this data possibly in one place, or in multiple places, and be able to do analytics on top of this, and this is what the value-added processing over the data. >> What's exciting to you these days in the University? You guys try to change the business, could be technology? What are the cool things that you like, that you're working with right now, or that you envision emerging? >> Yeah. So, my team is currently building a platform to do all of the data integration and we are planning to offer this platform as a service to developers to streamline and standardize application development, as well as integration development, within the central IT at the University. So this is pretty much the most exciting thing that we're doing, is putting together this platform that is quite complex, it is a journey that we're taking together with the people who already operate the existing systems. So we're putting up this new thing that we're operating in parallel and then we will be migrating to that new platform. >> I'm sure containers are involved, >> Yes. >> Kubernetes is a key part of it. >> Yes, mhmm. So, the platform has two parts. There is the application publishing with Docker and Kubernetes, and we also have the streaming side of it, to build the data pipeline with open-source tools like Apache NiFi and Apache Kafka. So this is going to be wiring the data pipelines from source to target and moving the data in real time in order to- >> And you see that as a nice way to keep an option to move from cloud to cloud? >> Potentially, since the platform's role is to decouple the infrastructure from development. That way, you could spin a portion of the platform on any cloud, pretty much, and run your workload anywhere you want. >> So classic DevOps. >> Yeah. >> Separate infrastructure as code, provide a codified layer. >> Yeah. >> So, let me ask you a question. How did you get into all this data business? I mean, what attracted you to the data field? What's your story? Tell us your story. >> So, the data, you know, I personally started, I mean, I had more of a networking background. Then I became Sys Admin, then I got into the business of logging and log aggregation for machine data, and then I was, you know, using that data to create dashboards of system health and, you know, data correlation, and this is what exposed me, personally, first to the data world, and then I saw the value in doing all of this with data, and the value is even more impactful to the business when you're working with actual business data. So I'm very excited about that. >> So you were swimming in the first data lake before data lakes were data lakes. >> Yes, yeah, right, for machine data. >> Once you're in there, you see value, the data exhaust comes in, as we used to say back in the day, data exhaust! >> Yeah. >> So, now that you're dealing with the business value, is the conversation the same? Or are they different conversations? Or is it still the same, kind of, data conversation? Or is the job the same? Because you still have machine data, applications are throwing off data, you have infrastructure data being thrown off, you have new software layers. >> Yes, yeah. >> Is it the same, or is it different? Describe your current situation. >> You know, maybe the concepts are the same, but I think the logging machine data has more value to IT to give insights on how to improve your SLAs, within the scope of IT, but the business data really will impact the business, the whole entire university for us. So, one of the things that we're doing on the business side with the business data is to provide some analytics on the student data in order to increase their chances for success. So, getting all of that data, doing some reports and pattern analytics, and then coaching the students. >> Not a bad place to live, in San Diego, is it? >> Oh, it's excellent. >> Weather's always perfect? >> Oh, yeah. >> Marine layer's not as bad as L.A., but, you know. >> Yeah. >> Or is it? >> No, we do have- The university is right on the coast, so yeah. Sometimes it's gloomy the whole entire day. >> I love it there. I wish I could've gone to school at the University of San Diego. >> It is great. It's a great place to be. >> Love to go down, see my friends in La Jolla, Del Mar, beautiful areas. Great country. >> Yeah. >> Well, thank you for coming on and sharing your insights into multi-cloud and some of the thinking. It seems to be very foundational right now in its whole thinking. >> Mhmm. >> There's no master plan yet. People are really having good conversations around how to set it all up. >> Yeah. >> The architecture. >> Right. >> The role. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Do you see the same thing? >> Yes, architecture is actually a very essential piece of it because you need to plan before you go. If you go without planning, I think your bill is going to be off the roof. >> Huge bill. >> Yeah. >> And you'll sink in the quicksand and the data lake and you can be sucked into the data swamp. >> Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, architecture is a big piece of it, design, then build, and then continuous improvement, that's a huge thing at UC San Diego. >> You know what I get excited about? I get excited about real time, and how real time, time series data is becoming a big part of the application development, and understanding the context between good data and bad data. >> Mhmm. >> It's always a hard problem. It's a hard tech problem. >> Yeah, that is true, yeah. There are a lot of processes that should be set around the data to make sure the data's clean and it's a good data set and all of that. >> If data's an asset, then has it got a value? Is it on the balance sheet? Shouldn't we value the data? Some data's more valuable than others? It's a good question, huh? >> It is a good question, but I don't know the answer to that. >> No one knows. We always ask the question. I think that's a future state where at some point, data can be recognized, but right now it's hard to tell what's valuable or not. >> I think the value is in the returned services and the value-added services that you, as an organization, can bring to your customer base. This is where the value is, and if you want to put a dollar amount on that, I don't know, it's not my job. >> Thank you so much for coming on, special time of conversation. >> Thank you. >> CUBE Conversation here, the CUBE Coverage of the first inaugural Multi-Cloud Conference called ESCAPE/19, where the industry best are coming together. Practitioners, entrepreneurs, founders, executives, and finally, just talking about what multi-cloud really can be, foundationally what needs to be in place. And this is what happens here at these conferences, tons of hallway conversations. Natalie, thank you for spending the time with us. CUBE Coverage, I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: From New York, it's theCUBE. Covering ESCAPE/19. >> Everyone, welcome to theCUBE coverage here in New York City for the ESCAPE Conference 19. This is the inaugural event for multicloud, I think it's the first industry event for, really talking about multicloud and the impact to enterprises and public cloud. My next guest is Steve Mullaney, President and CEO of Aviatrix, storied career in tech, been there done that, seen many waves of innovation. Nicira, Palo Alto Networks, and now Aviatrix. You retired for a while, welcome back! >> I did, yeah, five years, yeah, yeah, yeah. >> Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, thanks for having me. >> It's nice to have you on because I think you have a good perspective on the multicloud because you've been in the industry since the 80s. We've both been broke in at the same time. And we've seen the waves. >> Oh, yeah. >> This wave is bigger than, I think, most of the other waves combined because it brings together so many things, infrastructure, software, cloud scale, and a new modern application environment. And then you complicate everything by throwing IoT out there, edges being pushed to their boundaries, securities equations changed, all this is going on right now, all at the same time. >> No, and that's why I was basically retired for five years, and I was at Nicira, we got bought by VMware, I stayed there for a couple years, and I just said, "Okay, that's it!" I've had a good career and I'm done. And about a year ago, the world changed. And it felt like on a Tuesday morning, I noticed enterprises really, we'd been talking about cloud for 12 years. And five years ago they said, "We're coming in, we're going to do it," but they didn't really mean it. But about a year ago, all in the same day, every enterprise said, "No, now we actually mean it." And I don't know why, I don't know if it was just people retired or just five years of talking about it, they all decided, we're comin' in, and enterprises all moved together. And this wave, as you said, is bigger than, I was around in 1992, in the early 90s, in the movement from mainframe to client server. This is 10 times bigger than that. And more importantly, it's going to happen 10,000 times faster. Because (fingers tapping). What's that? I just deployed 62 data centers around the world. Because if I can leverage the greatest infrastructure built, basic infrastructure of the hyperscalers, AWS, Azure, Google, Alibaba, Oracle, you name it. It's unbelievable the velocity at which you can now start deploying. >> Steve, I think you're onto something big here, and this is why I'm here at this event and why I'm excited, that a lot of the industry thought leaders and practitioners and leaders are doing this event. Small events, inaugural, but I think it has a lot of links. Because there's a lot of tell signs that I like to look at, one is cloud. I've been covering Amazon eight years now, with theCUBE, I've known AWS since it started, and I've done many startups in its launch using AWS. But I've had many conversations with Andy Jassy, one on ones, privately, I got an exclusive coming up for re:Invent with him. I've gotten to know him. It started out, "Everyone's moving to the cloud. "Every data center's not going to exist." And then, you know-- >> Oh, maybe not, yeah, yeah. >> Maybe not, we'll do an output. So I challenged him last year, I said, "Andy, come on, dude, like you were saying like a year ago that." >> Steve: Yeah, it's all AWS or nothing. >> And he said, "John, look I'm not, "I just listen to the customers." And I interviewed him when he did the VMware deal. And he's very customer focused. And when they make these moves with outpost, and I think it's going to be a hybrid message this year at re:Invent, you know it's real. >> Steve: Oh, yeah. >> I think this validates your point, so I got to ask you, what specifically do you see the formula being for multicloud, because certainly everyone's recognized that there's a huge benefit for AWS. But from a scale standpoint, so why not use that? What's going on on the Enterprise on-premise that's making this new thing work? >> I think it all starts with architecture, like anything else. I think right now, enterprises have said, "Okay, we've burned a boat, right? "Now, we're not going to get rid of our data centers, "but in terms of our strategic investment, "we are moving into the cloud. "We are going to leverage "the infrastructure of the hyperscalers. "And whether that is just one hyperscaler, or multiple." And I have not met an enterprise who thinks there only going to be one, right, every single one of them. Now, I don't think they're moving workloads across, I don't think that. I think they see that, I'm going to use Google for AI, I'm going to use AWS because it started there. I'm going to use Azure, for Office 365, and other different things, and everything in infrastructure is always multi. It's never homogeneous, right, it's always that. So I think is going to happen, and I think what people are begging for right now, is, I want to build an architecture that gives me the optionality to be able to deliver a common set of services whether I'm on AWS or multiple clouds. And I want them to be my services and I don't want to have understand the low level abstractions and constructs of each of those clouds, because their all different. One's metric, one's U.S., one's some other weird thing. And I don't have the time, the people, or the resources to be able to do that. Give me a common set of services, that are my services, that I can deploy and abstract away the details of those public clouds. >> Yeah, it's an interesting point there, in fact, I called BS on multicloud last year when it started to kind of rear it's head, I'm like, "Come on, multicloud is bullshit." And I said that on theCUBE. And here's what I meant. Multicloud as an operating model is directionally correct, but the architecture hasn't shown where there's true multicloud. Now, the fact of the matter is, people have Amazon, people have Office and Office 365, that's technically two clouds, >> They're siloed, yeah. >> If they give us Google, that's three clouds. >> I use two or three clouds. >> So, if he have three clouds, I guess they have multiple clouds. But you bring up an interesting point, and going back as a student of the history of tech industry, multi-vendor has been a big deal. >> It is a big deal. >> And like you said, there will be a multi-vendor world, that will happen. The question is how. How do you guys see it happening? >> Well I think what's-- >> Your company is attacking this Aviatrix. >> What's interesting is, so now you think about from a customer perspective which, I do the same thing, same thing with AWS. It's always outside in. Okay, I'm thinking as a enterprise IT person. I'm making the move. Do you believe that your basic infrastructure will lever the hyperscalers, or will you build an on-prem? Everyone says, "I believe that's the way I'm going to go." Great, how do I do that? So, I'm a IT architect, who do I go to to help me? Do I go to CISCO? No. The most shocking thing for me, of the six months I've been at Aviatrix, is that word's never used. It's like it was DEC or IBM in the conversation, when you were talking about client-server, no, why would you? CISCO, Juniper, Arista, any of the networking people, not even in the conversation. VMware, not really in the conversation. So, I don't have any incumbent vendor that I can go to that I used to go to. >> Why aren't they in the conversation? 'Cause of the commodity, they've been extracted away? >> I think it's just because it's the innovation of dilemma. Right, once you're selling a lot of stuff into on-prem, to then go and say, I mean you look at Palo Alto Networks, they're trying to make that transition. Acquiring a bunch of companies, VMware acquiring a bunch of companies. Why are they doing that? Because they know, I got to get off on-prem, everything's going in the cloud. >> So it's a legacy. >> It's a legacy thing, and I think what happens is, there is only one reason, and one reason only, an enterprise customer is not using Aviatrix. 'Cause they never heard of us. That's why, that's the only reason. Once they hear about what they're doing, my God. >> Well, give the plug, talk about the company, what do you guys do-- >> So we deliver, I mean it sounds like I made it up for this conference, but actually this conference was perfect for this. It's networking and security services for the multicloud enterprise. And we're building an architecture, that people can deploy, that will give them this common architecture across all the different clouds. So whether you're just using one cloud or multiple, it doesn't matter, it's the same set of security and networking services. And we do that by embracing and extending the basic constructs that AWS, Google, Azure, and Oracle, and all the other clouds will give you, and to deliver that real enterprise class. Because the other thing we've found is, everyone thinks that the cloud gives you everything and anything you will ever need from networking and security. Let's say AWS, they're going to do everything I need. What the enterprises are figuring out, is once they stop going in, what they realize is, it's created for the low-level common basic constructs. And the enterprise starts at, well, I need these BGP feature because guess what, the data center is not going away. And I need more than a hundred route limitations, and I need, all of a sudden there's fifty different limitations AWS will give me. Well, they didn't talk about that! Well, of course they're not going to talk about that. They are just going to go check, check, check, we solve all your problems. As enterprises now move in, with mission critical applications, they're realizing, I need the same level of networking and security services that I had on-prem. I can't get that with the native constructs. So where do I go? That's what we do, so we fill in, we embrace what we can of those constructs, we fill in holes where there are fill in holes. And then we give you the mechanism to be able to orchestrate that across the global network. >> So you operationalize the hyperscale clouds for enterprise, >> Yes. >> that's basically what you do. >> Steve: Exactly, for the enterprise. >> Yeah, exactly. >> On the level that they need. >> So you get the benefits of the cloud, but all those nuances under the cover details like networking and other features you abstract that away and provide an operating model for enterprise compliments. >> And the beautiful thing about it is the velocity, at which we can, we're over the top, effectively over the top. We're integrated into the Cloud Suite, understand what cloud native, we understand all the constructs of accounts, and all the things we need to do. But what we expose to the customer, to the enterprise, is a set of over-the-top services that just work. >> Okay Steve, so I got to ask you, since we are at The Multi-Cloud Conference. What is multicloud, I mean how do you define it, you laid out a pretty compelling architecture of what needs are, levers in the cloud, and on-prem is what Aviatrix does. But what is the definition, how should people understand what is multicloud? >> I think for us, for networking and security in that base, so we're basic infrastructure. We get out there first, right? So, if you're going to build a city, you don't start putting people there first the first thing, if you do it right, is you get sewers, you get electricity, gas, roads, all that. Networking and security, infrastructure, is basic infrastructure goes out first. And you want to create an architecture that's going to live with you for twenty years. You don't want to have to rip up the roads and put the sewers in later. And that architecture needs to be multicloud because, even though you think maybe, most of our customers are 90% AWS right now. But every single one of them say, "But I'm moving to Azure, I'm moving to Google, "I've got retail customers that won't allow me "to put my infrastructure on AWS." Or, "I have machine learning, AI type apps on Google." They all say that same thing. But what they all then say to us, is, "You're going to be the mechanism "upon which I'm going to be able to deploy "this common set of services." So they don't need to know that. >> All right, give an example of a customer you guys have, name a name, we had a customer on stage here-- >> Steve: So, Jefferies. >> John: They did this for a use case. >> Yeah so, Jefferies. Financial Services Institution, lots of requirements, Mark Leon Soon is going to be on stage with me tomorrow. We started working with them about nine months ago. Exactly the same thing, they said, "Okay, you know what? "We need to start moving to the cloud, "we've got to start leveraging the cloud. "But, it's too complicated, right? "Even AWS, says 'Go Build.' "I don't want to go build, I want to consume services. "But they don't have all the service that I needed, "they're too low a level. "They're very high function, high enterprise requirements." So they start using us to orchestrate things, to provide transit networking, to provide egress filtering out to the Internet, we have high performance encryption, AWS will only offer it one gig. We can offer it to 10, 20, 30, 40 gig. So they start deploying, they start realizing all the things we do. Then they go and say, "I want to bring my Palo Alto Networks firewall "into the cloud." When you start looking at that, 'cause then guess what? All my policies, I want the same level that I have on-prem when I'm in the cloud. If I go try to bring in my VM series into AWS the construct that AWS give you, they cause you limitations in performance, in visibility, It's integration hassles, there's performance, sustainability, visibility issues, they force you to use SNAT. And there's all these issues, and they go, "Oh my God, this is a pain in the ass." We solved all that for them. We basically cloudify the VM series for them, so all those limitations go away. So that's just another use case that they use. Now they start looking, and they say, "Okay, now I'm going to start extending into other clouds and I want to use you as the common frame point, the common pane of glass. >> Well Steve, good luck in your venture, you're back in the saddle again. >> Steve: Yeah. >> Another ride here, you feel good about it? >> This is going to be the best, the biggest that I've been, and I was at Palo Alto Networks and VMware Nicira. And this one's going to be bigger than both of those. >> What's your vision for where this is going to be for you, where do you see the company in a few years, what are some of the outcomes you expect to happen? >> Our opportunity, and I look at it as, someone's going to take this opportunity, and the reason I came back is, why not us, someone's going to take it. And the opportunity, honestly, is to become, effectively, what Cisco was in the early 90's. To define the architecture, the networking and the security infrastructure architecture for enterprise customers. They are begging for that right now, that's our opportunity. >> Cloud Interoperability. >> Interoperability, yeah. And so there's so many things that we need to go and do. When you look at also the thing that people are going to say, the operations. So many people think, I want it the same as it was on-prem. I think with the cloud, and across multicloud you can do it right with us, and actually better. Because the visibility that you get is more, than what you get on-prem. >> Well, and the thing that's interesting that's different about this new world that we're talking about is that there is going to be constant improvements in new things which means that the functionality game is going to increase, which means the agility is even more important because the apps are going to have more things to do. >> Yeah. I mean in the end, why do you want to go to cloud? I want to go to cloud 'cause I want it to be self-service and I want agility. I want my developers, I want everybody to be able to do things quicker because all of the sudden they say, "Let's go roll this out", and you want to be able to do it. >> Well, good luck on the new venture, Aviatrix, check 'em out, hot multicloud startup, growing, how many people do you have, put the plug in, >> 100. >> what are you guys looking for, are you hiring, give me a quick plug. >> We just hired a new VP at World Wide Sales, James Winebrenner, who was Viptela CEO, VP Sales in Cisco, hiring a tremendous amount of sales guys right now, we're closing on a $40 million Series C round next week, and we're hiring a lot of people. >> Good luck, we'll be following you Steve, thanks for coming on and sharing your insights. Again, multicloud, this is a shift that's happening, multicloud is just another word for multi-vendor, in a new modern era, this is what it has been in the technology industry, but a whole new world. This is theCUBE coverage here in New York City, ESCAPE/19, I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)