(upbeat music) >> We are back, approaching the finish line here at Supercomputing 22, our last interview of the day, our last interview of the show. And I have to say Dave Nicholson, my co-host, My name is Paul Gillin. I've been attending trade shows for 40 years Dave, I've never been to one like this. The type of people who are here, the type of problems they're solving, what they talk about, the trade shows are typically, they're so speeds and feeds. They're so financial, they're so ROI, they all sound the same after a while. This is truly a different event. Do you get that sense? >> A hundred percent. Now, I've been attending trade shows for 10 years since I was 19, in other words, so I don't have necessarily your depth. No, but seriously, Paul, totally, completely, completely different than any other conference. First of all, there's the absolute allure of looking at the latest and greatest, coolest stuff. I mean, when you have NASA lecturing on things when you have Lawrence Livermore Labs that we're going to be talking to here in a second it's a completely different story. You have all of the academics you have students who are in competition and also interviewing with organizations. It's phenomenal. I've had chills a lot this week. >> And I guess our last two guests sort of represent that cross section. Armando Acosta, director of HPC Solutions, High Performance Solutions at Dell. And Matt Leininger, who is the HPC Strategist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Now, there is perhaps, I don't know you can correct me on this, but perhaps no institution in the world that uses more computing cycles than Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and is always on the leading edge of what's going on in Supercomputing. And so we want to talk to both of you about that. Thank you. Thank you for joining us today. >> Sure, glad to be here. >> For having us. >> Let's start with you, Armando. Well, let's talk about the juxtaposition of the two of you. I would not have thought of LLNL as being a Dell reference account in the past. Tell us about the background of your relationship and what you're providing to the laboratory. >> Yeah, so we're really excited to be working with Lawrence Livermore, working with Matt. But actually this process started about two years ago. So we started looking at essentially what was coming down the pipeline. You know, what were the customer requirements. What did we need in order to make Matt successful. And so the beauty of this project is that we've been talking about this for two years, and now it's finally coming to fruition. And now we're actually delivering systems and delivering racks of systems. But what I really appreciate is Matt coming to us, us working together for two years and really trying to understand what are the requirements, what's the schedule, what do we need to hit in order to make them successful >> At Lawrence Livermore, what drives your computing requirements I guess? You're working on some very, very big problems but a lot of very complex problems. How do you decide what you need to procure to address them? >> Well, that's a difficult challenge. I mean, our mission is a national security mission dealing with making sure that we do our part to provide the high performance computing capabilities to the US Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. We do that through the Advanced Simulation computing program. Its goal is to provide that computing power to make sure that the US nuclear rep of the stockpile is safe, secure, and effective. So how we go about doing that? There's a lot of work involved. We have multiple platform lines that we accomplish that goal with. One of them is the advanced technology systems. Those are the ones you've heard about a lot, they're pushing towards exit scale, the GPU technologies incorporated into those. We also have a second line, a platform line, called the Commodity Technology Systems. That's where right now we're partnering with Dell on the latest generation of those. Those systems are a little more conservative, they're right now CPU only driven but they're also intended to be the everyday work horses. So those are the first systems our users get on. It's very easy for them to get their applications up and running. They're the first things they use usually on a day to day basis. They run a lot of small to medium size jobs that you need to do to figure out how to most effectively use what workloads you need to move to the even larger systems to accomplish our mission goals. >> The workhorses. >> Yeah. >> What have you seen here these last few days of the show, what excites you? What are the most interesting things you've seen? >> There's all kinds of things that are interesting. Probably most interesting ones I can't talk about in public, unfortunately, 'cause of NDA agreements, of course. But it's always exciting to be here at Supercomputing. It's always exciting to see the products that we've been working with industry and co-designing with them on for, you know, several years before the public actually sees them. That's always an exciting part of the conference as well specifically with CTS-2, it's exciting. As was mentioned before, I've been working with Dell for nearly two years on this, but the systems first started being delivered this past August. And so we're just taking the initial deliveries of those. We've deployed, you know, roughly about 1600 nodes now but that'll ramp up to over 6,000 nodes over the next three or four months. >> So how does this work intersect with Sandia and Los Alamos? Explain to us the relationship there. >> Right, so those three laboratories are the laboratories under the National Nuclear Security Administration. We partner together on CTS. So the architectures, as you were asking, how do we define these things, it's the labs coming together. Those three laboratories we define what we need for that architecture. We have a joint procurement that is run out of Livermore but then the systems are deployed at all three laboratories. And then they serve the programs that I mentioned for each laboratory as well. >> I've worked in this space for a very long time you know I've worked with agencies where the closest I got to anything they were actually doing was the sort of guest suite outside the secure area. And sometimes there are challenges when you're communicating, it's like you have a partner like Dell who has all of these things to offer, all of these ideas. You have requirements, but maybe you can't share 100% of what you need to do. How do you navigate that? Who makes the decision about what can be revealed in these conversations? You talk about NDA in terms of what's been shared with you, you may be limited in terms of what you can share with vendors. Does that cause inefficiency? >> To some degree. I mean, we do a good job within the NSA of understanding what our applications need and then mapping that to technical requirements that we can talk about with vendors. We also have kind of in between that we've done this for many years. A recent example is of course with the exit scale computing program and some things it's doing creating proxy apps or mini apps that are smaller versions of some of the things that we are important to us. Some application areas are important to us, hydrodynamics, material science, things like that. And so we can collaborate with vendors on those proxy apps to co-design systems and tweak the architectures. In fact, we've done a little bit that with CTS-2, not as much in CTS as maybe in the ATS platforms but that kind of general idea of how we collaborate through these proxy applications is something we've used across platforms. >> Now is Dell one of your co-design partners? >> In CTS-2 absolutely, yep. >> And how, what aspects of CTS-2 are you working on with Dell? >> Well, the architecture itself was the first, you know thing we worked with them on, we had a procurement come out, you know they bid an architecture on that. We had worked with them, you know but previously on our requirements, understanding what our requirements are. But that architecture today is based on the fourth generation Intel Xeon that you've heard a lot about at the conference. We are one of the first customers to get those systems in. All the systems are interconnected together with the Cornell Network's Omni-Path Network that we've used before and are very excited about as well. And we build up from there. The systems get integrated in by the operations teams at the laboratory. They get integrated into our production computing environment. Dell is really responsible, you know for designing these systems and delivering to the laboratories. The laboratories then work with Dell. We have a software stack that we provide on top of that called TOSS, for Tri-Lab Operating System. It's based on Redhead Enterprise Linux. But the goal there is that it allows us, a common user environment, a common simulation environment across not only CTS-2, but maybe older systems we have and even the larger systems that we'll be deploying as well. So from a user perspective they see a common user interface, a common environment across all the different platforms that they use at Livermore and the other laboratories. >> And Armando, what does Dell get out of the co-design arrangement with the lab? >> Well, we get to make sure that they're successful. But the other big thing that we want to do, is typically when you think about Dell and HPC, a lot of people don't make that connection together. And so what we're trying to do is make sure that, you know they know that, hey, whether you're a work group customer at the smallest end or a super computer customer at the highest end, Dell wants to make sure that we have the right setup portfolio to match any needs across this. But what we were really excited about this, this is kind of our, you know big CTS-2 first thing we've done together. And so, you know, hopefully this has been successful. We've made Matt happy and we look forward to the future what we can do with bigger and bigger things. >> So will the labs be okay with Dell coming up with a marketing campaign that said something like, "We can't confirm that alien technology is being reverse engineered." >> Yeah, that would fly. >> I mean that would be right, right? And I have to ask you the question directly and the way you can answer it is by smiling like you're thinking, what a stupid question. Are you reverse engineering alien technology at the labs? >> Yeah, you'd have to suck the PR office. >> Okay, okay. (all laughing) >> Good answer. >> No, but it is fascinating because to a degree it's like you could say, yeah, we're working together but if you really want to dig into it, it's like, "Well I kind of can't tell you exactly how some of this stuff is." Do you consider anything that you do from a technology perspective, not what you're doing with it, but the actual stack, do you try to design proprietary things into the stack or do you say, "No, no, no, we're going to go with standards and then what we do with it is proprietary and secret."? >> Yeah, it's more the latter. >> Is the latter? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're not going to try to reverse engineer the industry? >> No, no. We want the solutions that we develop to enhance the industry to be able to apply to a broader market so that we can, you know, gain from the volume of that market, the lower cost that they would enable, right? If we go off and develop more and more customized solutions that can be extraordinarily expensive. And so we we're really looking to leverage the wider market, but do what we can to influence that, to develop key technologies that we and others need that can enable us in the high forms computing space. >> We were talking with Satish Iyer from Dell earlier about validated designs, Dell's reference designs for for pharma and for manufacturing, in HPC are you seeing that HPC, Armando, and is coming together traditionally and more of an academic research discipline beginning to come together with commercial applications? And are these two markets beginning to blend? >> Yeah, I mean so here's what's happening, is you have this convergence of HPC, AI and data analytics. And so when you have that combination of those three workloads they're applicable across many vertical markets, right? Whether it's financial services, whether it's life science, government and research. But what's interesting, and Matt won't brag about, but a lot of stuff that happens in the DoE labs trickles down to the enterprise space, trickles down to the commercial space because these guys know how to do it at scale, they know how to do it efficiently and they know how to hit the mark. And so a lot of customers say, "Hey we want what CTS-2 does," right? And so it's very interesting. The way I love it is their process the way they do the RFP process. Matt talked about the benchmarks and helping us understand, hey here's kind of the mark you have to hit. And then at the same time, you know if we make them successful then obviously it's better for all of us, right? You know, I want to secure nuclear stock pile so I hope everybody else does as well. >> The software stack you mentioned, I think Tia? >> TOSS. >> TOSS. >> Yeah. >> How did that come about? Why did you feel the need to develop your own software stack? >> It originated back, you know, even 20 years ago when we first started building Linux clusters when that was a crazy idea. Livermore and other laboratories were really the first to start doing that and then push them to larger and larger scales. And it was key to have Linux running on that at the time. And so we had the. >> So 20 years ago you knew you wanted to run on Linux? >> Was 20 years ago, yeah, yeah. And we started doing that but we needed a way to have a version of Linux that we could partner with someone on that would do, you know, the support, you know, just like you get from an EoS vendor, right? Security support and other things. But then layer on top of that, all the HPC stuff you need either to run the system, to set up the system, to support our user base. And that evolved into to TOSS which is the Tri-Lab Operating System. Now it's based on the latest version of Redhead Enterprise Linux, as I mentioned before, with all the other HPC magic, so to speak and all that HPC magic is open source things. It's not stuff, it may be things that we develop but it's nothing closed source. So all that's there we run it across all these different environments as I mentioned before. And it really originated back in the early days of, you know, Beowulf clusters, Linux clusters, as just needing something that we can use to run on multiple systems and start creating that common environment at Livermore and then eventually the other laboratories. >> How is a company like Dell, able to benefit from the open source work that's coming out of the labs? >> Well, when you look at the open source, I mean open source is good for everybody, right? Because if you make a open source tool available then people start essentially using that tool. And so if we can make that open source tool more robust and get more people using it, it gets more enterprise ready. And so with that, you know, we're all about open source we're all about standards and really about raising all boats 'cause that's what open source is all about. >> And with that, we are out of time. This is our 28th interview of SC22 and you're taking us out on a high note. Armando Acosta, director of HPC Solutions at Dell. Matt Leininger, HPC Strategist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. Great discussion. Hopefully it was a good show for you. Fascinating show for us and thanks for being with us today. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you for having us >> Dave it's been a pleasure. >> Absolutely. >> Hope we'll be back next year. >> Can't believe, went by fast. Absolutely at SC23. >> We hope you'll be back next year. This is Paul Gillin. That's a wrap, with Dave Nicholson for theCUBE. See here in next time. (soft upbear music)

(radio calls) >> Announcer: From around the globe, its theCUBE covering Space & Cybersecurity Symposium 2020, hosted by Cal poly. Hello, welcome back to theCUBE virtual coverage with Cal Poly for the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium, a day four and the wrap up session, keynote session with the Lieutenant Governor of California, Eleni Kounalakis. She's here to deliver her keynote speech on the topic of California's role in supporting America's Cybersecurity future. Eleni, take it away. >> Thank you, John, for the introduction. I am Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis. It is an honor to be part of Cal Poly Space and Cybersecurity Symposium. As I speak kind of Pierre with the governor's office of business and economic development is available on the chat, too ready to answer any questions you might have. California and indeed the world are facing significant challenges right now. Every day we are faced with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the economic downturn that is ensued. We have flattened the curve in California and are moving in the right direction but it is clear that we're not out of the woods yet. It is also impossible right now to escape the reality of climate change from the fire sparked by exceptionally rare, dry lightening events to extreme heat waves threatening public health and putting a strain on our electricity grid. We see that climate change is here now. And of course we've been recently confronted with a series of brutal examples of institutionalized racism that have created an awakening among people of all walks of life and compelled us into the streets to march and protest. In the context of all this, we cannot forget that we continue to be faced with other less visible but still very serious challenges. Cybersecurity threats are one of these. We have seen cities, companies and individuals paralyzed by attacks costing time and money and creating an atmosphere of uncertainty and insecurity. Our state agencies, local governments, police departments, utilities, news outlets and private companies from all industries are target. The threats around cybersecurity are serious but not unlike all the challenges we face in California. We have the tools and fortitude to address them. That is why this symposium is so important. Thank you, Cal Poly and all the participants for being here and for the important contributions you bring to this conference. I'd like to also say a few words about California's role in America's future in space. California has been at the forefront of the aerospace industry for more than a century through all the major innovations in aerospace from wooden aircraft, to World War II Bombers, to rockets and Mars rovers. California has played a pivotal role. Today, California is the number one state in total defense spending, defense contract spending and total number of personnel. It is estimated the Aerospace and Defense Industry, provides $168 billion in economic impact to our state. And America's best trained and most experienced aerospace and technology workforce lives here in California. The fact that the aerospace and defense sector, has had a strong history in California is no accident. California has always had strong innovation ecosystem and robust infrastructure that puts many sectors in a position to thrive. Of course, a big part of that infrastructure is a skilled workforce. And at the foundation of a skilled workforce is education. California has the strongest system of public higher education in the world. We're home to 10 university of California campuses, 23 California State university campuses and 116 California Community Colleges. All told nearly 3 million students are enrolled in public higher education. We also have world renowned private universities including the California Institute of Technology and Stanford University numbers one and three in the country for aerospace engineering. California also has four national laboratories and several NASA facilities. California possesses a strong spirit of innovation, risk taking and entrepreneurship. Half of all venture capital funding in the United States, goes to companies here in California. Lastly, but certainly no less critical to our success, California is a diverse state. 27% of all Californians are foreign born, 27% more than one in four of our population of 40 million people are immigrants from another country, Europe central and South America, India, Asia, everywhere. Our rich cultural diversity is our strength and helps drive our economy. As I look to the future of industries like cybersecurity and the growing commercial space industry, I know our state will need to work with those industries to make sure we continue to train our workforce for the demands of an evolving industry. The office of the lieutenant governor has a unique perspective on higher education and workforce development. I'm on the UC Board of Regents, the CSU Board of Trustees. And as of about two weeks ago, the Community Colleges Board of Governors. The office of the lieutenant governor is now the only office that is a member of every governing board, overseeing our public higher education system. Earlier in the symposium, we heard a rich discussion with Undersecretary Stewart Knox from the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency about what the state is doing to meet the needs of space and cybersecurity industries. As he mentioned, there are over 37,000 job vacancies in cybersecurity in our state. We need to address that gap. To do so, I see an important role for public private partnerships. We need input from industry and curriculum development. Some companies like Lockheed Martin, have very productive partnerships with universities and community colleges that train students with skills they need to enter aerospace and cyber industries. That type of collaboration will be key. We also need help from the industry to make sure students know that fields like cybersecurity even exist. People's early career interests are so often shaped by the jobs that members of their family have or what they see in popular culture. With such a young and evolving field like cybersecurity, many students are unaware of the job opportunities. I know for my visits to university campuses that students are hungry for STEM career paths where they see opportunities for good paying jobs. When I spoke with students at UC Merced, many of them were first generation college students who went through community college system before enrolling in a UC and they gravitated to STEM majors. With so many job opportunities available to STEM students, cybersecurity ought to be one that they are aware of and consider. Since this symposium is being hosted by Cal Poly, I wanted to highlight the tremendous work they're doing as leaders in the space and cybersecurity industry. Cal Poly California Cybersecurity Institute, does incredible work bringing together academia, industry and government training the next generation of cyber experts and researching emerging cybersecurity issues. As we heard from the President of Cal Poly, Jeff Armstrong the university is in the perfect location to contribute to a thriving space industry. It's close to Vandenberg Air Force Base and UC Santa Barbara and could be home to the future permanent headquarters of US Space Command. The state is also committed to supporting this space industry in the Central Coast. In July, the State of California, Cal poly US-based force and the others signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a commercial space port at Vandenberg Air Force Base and to develop a master plan to grow the commercial space industry in the region. Governor Newsom has made a commitment to lift up all regions of the state. And this strategy will position the Central Coast to be a global leader in the future of the space industry. I'd like to leave you with a few final thoughts, with everything we're facing. Fires, climate change, pandemic. It is easy to feel overwhelmed but I remain optimistic because I know that the people of the State of California are resilient, persistent, and determined to address our challenges and show a path toward a better future for ourselves and our families. The growth of the space industry and the economic development potential of projects like the Spaceport at Vandenberg Air Force Base, our great example of what we can look forward to. The potential for the commercial space industry to become a $3 trillion industry by mid century, as many experts predict is another. There are so many opportunities, new companies are going to emerge doing things we never could have dreamed of today. As Lieutenant General John Thompson said in the first session, the next few years of space and cyber innovation are not going to be a pony ride at the state fair, they're going to be a rodeo. We should all saddle up. Thank you. >> Okay, thank you very much, Eleni. I really appreciate it. Thank you for your participation and all your support to you and your staff. You guys doing a lot of work, a lot going on in California but cybersecurity and space as it comes together, California's playing a pivotal role in leading the world and the community. Thank you very much for your time. >> Okay, this session is going to continue with Bill Britton. Who's the vice president of technology and CIO at Cal Poly but more importantly, he's the director of the cyber institute located at Cal Poly. It's a global organization looking at the intersection of space and cybersecurity. Bill, let's wrap this up. Eleni had a great talk, talking about the future of cybersecurity in America and its future. The role California is playing, Cal Poly is right in the Central Coast. You're in the epicenter of it. We've had a great lineup here. Thanks for coming on. Let's put a capstone on this event. >> Thank you, John. But most importantly, thanks for being a great partner helping us get this to move forward and really changing the dynamic of this conversation. What an amazing time we're at, we had quite an unusual group but it's really kind of the focus and we've moved a lot of space around ourselves. And we've gone from Lieutenant General Thompson and the discussion of the opposition and space force and what things are going on in the future, the importance of cyber in space. And then we went on and moved on to the operations. And we had a private company who builds, we had the DOD, Department Of Defense and their context and NASA and theirs. And then we talked about public private partnerships from President Armstrong, Mr. Bhangu Mahad from the DOD and Mr. Steve Jacques from the National Security Space Association. It's been an amazing conference for one thing, I've heard repeatedly over and over and over, the reference to digital, the reference to cloud, the reference to the need for cybersecurity to be involved and really how important that is to start earlier than just at the employment level. To really go down into the system, the K through 12 and start there. And what an amazing time to be able to start there because we're returning to space in a larger capacity and it's now all around us. And the lieutenant governor really highlighted for us that California is intimately involved and we have to find a way to get our students involved at that same level. >> I want to ask you about this inflection point that was a big theme of this conference and symposium. It was throughout the interviews and throughout the conversations, both on the chat and also kind of on Twitter as well in the social web. Is that this new generation, it wasn't just space and government DOD, all the normal stuff you see, you saw JPL, the Hewlett Foundation, the Defense Innovation Unit, Amazon Web Services, NASA. Then you saw entrepreneurs come in, who were doing some stuff. And so you had this confluence of community. Of course, Cal Poly had participated in space. You guys does some great job, but it's not just the physical face-to-face show up, gets to hear some academic papers. This was a virtual event. We had over 300 organizations attend, different organizations around the world. Being a virtual event you had more range to get more people. This isn't digital. This symposium isn't about Central California anymore. It's global. >> No, it really has gone. >> What really happened to that? >> It's really kind of interesting because at first all of this was word of mouth for this symposium to take place. And it just started growing and growing and the more that we talk to organizations for support, the more we found how interconnected they were on an international scale. So much so that we've decided to take our cyber competition next year and take it globally as well. So if in fact as Major General Shaw said, this is about a multinational support force. Maybe it's time our students started interacting on that level to start with and not have to grow into it as they get older, but do it now and around space and around cybersecurity and around that digital environment and really kind of reduce the digital dividing space. >> Yeah, General Thompson mentioned this, 80 countries with programs. This is like the Olympics for space and we want to have these competitions. So I got great vision and I love that vision, but I know you have the number... Not number, the scores and from the competition this year that happened earlier in the week. Could you share the results of that challenge? >> Yeah, absolutely. We had 83 teams participate this year in the California Cyber Innovation Challenge. And again, it was based around a spacecraft scenario where a spacecraft, a commercial spacecraft was hacked and returned to earth. And the students had to do the forensics on the payload. And then they had to do downstream network analysis, using things like Wireshark and autopsy and other systems. It was a really tough competition. The students had to work hard and we had middle school and high school students participate. We had an intermediate league, new schools who had never done it before or even some who didn't even have STEM programs but were just signing up to really get involved in the experience. And we had our ultimate division which was those who had competed in several times before. And the winner of that competition was North Hollywood. They've been the winning team for four years in a row. Now it's a phenomenal program, they have their hats off to them for competing and winning again. Now what's really cool is not only did they have to show their technical prowess in the game but they also have to then brief and out-brief what they've learned to a panel of judges. And these are not pushovers. These are experts in the field of cybersecurity in space. We even had a couple of goons participating from DefCon and the teams present their findings. So not only are we talking technical, we're talking about presentation skills. The ability to speak and understand. And let me tell you, after reading all of their texts to each other over the weekend adds a whole new language they're using to interact with each other. It's amazing. And they are so more advanced and ready to understand space problems and virtual problems than we are. We have to challenge them even more. >> Well, it sounds like North Hollywood got the franchise. It's likethe Patriots, the Lakers, they've got a dynasty developing down there in North Hollywood. >> Well, what happens when there's a dynasty you have to look for other talent. So next year we're going global and we're going to have multiple states involved in the challenge and we're going to go international. So if North Hollywood pulls it off again next year, it's going to be because they've met the best in the world than defeated >> Okay, the gauntlet has been thrown down, got to take down North Hollywood from winning again next year. We'll be following that. Bill, great to get those results on the cyber challenge we'll keep track and we'll put a plug for it on our site. So we got to get some press on that. My question to you is now as we're going digital, other theme was that they want to hire digital natives into the space force. Okay, the DOD is looking at new skills. This was a big theme throughout the conference not just the commercial partnerships with government which I believe they had kind of put more research and personally, that's my personal opinion. They should be putting in way more research into academic and these environments to get more creative. But the skill sets was a big theme. What's your thoughts on how you saw some of the highlight moments there around skill sets? >> John, it's really interesting 'cause what we've noticed is in the past, everybody thinks skill sets for the engineering students. And it's way beyond that. It's all the students, it's all of them understanding what we call cyber cognizance. Understanding how cybersecurity works whatever career field they choose to be in. Space, there is no facet of supporting space that doesn't need that cyber cognizance. If you're in the back room doing the operations, you're doing the billing, you're doing the contracting. Those are still avenues by which cybersecurity attacks can be successful and disrupt your space mission. The fact that it's international, the connectivities, all of those things means that everyone in that system digitally has to be aware of what's going on around them. That's a whole new thought process. It's a whole new way of addressing a problem and dealing with space. And again it's virtual to everyone. >> That's awesome. Bill, great to have you on. Thank you for including theCUBE virtual, our CUBE event software platform that we're rolling out. We've been using it for the event and thank you for your partnership in this co-creation opening up your community, your symposium to the world, and we're so glad to be part of it. I want to thank you and Dustin and the team and the President of Cal Poly for including us. Thank you very much. >> Thank you, John. It's been an amazing partnership. We look forward to it in the future. >> Okay, that's it. That concludes the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, your host with Cal Poly, who put on an amazing virtual presentation, brought all the guests together. And again, shout out to Bill Britton and Dustin DeBrum who did a great job as well as the President of Cal poly who endorsed and let them do it all. Great event. See you soon. (flash light sound)

>>live from Las Vegas. It's the Cube covering Splunk dot com. 19. Brought to you by spunk. >>Okay, welcome back. Everyone secures live coverage in Las Vegas response dot com. I'm John Ferrier, host of the Cube. We're here for three days is a spunk. Spunk dot com 10 anniversary of their end user conference way Got some great guests here. They talk about diversity, inclusion breaking the barrier. Women in tech We got some great guests. Jane Heights, I add Si io National government service is Thanks for joining us. Appreciate it. Carol Jones, CEO Sandy and National Labs from Albuquerque Think coming on to CEOs of excited Suzanne McGovern. Diversity and inclusion talent leader for Splunk Thanks for guys joining us. Really appreciate it. I want to get into a panel you guys discuss because this is the area of really important to the workforce. Global workforce is made up of men and women, but most of the software text built by mostly men. But we get that second. I want to get in, find out what you guys are doing in your rolls because you guys, the journey is breaking through the barrier. Start with you. What's your role. What do you do? Their CEO. >>So I am CEO for National Government Service Is we do Medicare claims processing for the federal government. We also have a number of I t contracts with CMS. And, um, I organ. I have an organization of 331 people. Very different organization, Data center, infrastructure security gambit of I t, if you will. A great group of people divers were in Baltimore. Where? In Indianapolis. We're out of the kingdom office. How >>long have you been in 19 >>My career. So yes. Yeah. The waves. Yes. I have seen the waves have Daryl >>Jones and I'm c i o same National Laboratories. It's a federally funded research and development center. So we do research and development from on behalf of the U. S. Government. I have about 500 employees and 400 contractors. So we provide the I T for Sadia, all gametes of it, including some classified environments. >>A lot of security, your role. What's wrong? >>I'm the chief diversity officer. It's Plus I get the pleasure to do that every day. A swell, a cz. It's everyone's job. Not just magically explode. But I'm very honored to do that. How to look after talent. >>I want to compliment you guys on your new branding. Thank not only is a cool and really picking orange, but also that position is very broad and everything is trade message. But the big posters have diversity. Not a bunch of men on the posters. So congratulations, it's anger. Representative is really important. Worth mentioning. Okay, let's start with the journey. The topic you guys just talked about on a panel here in Las Vegas is female leaders smashing the glass ceiling. So when you smash his last ceiling, did you get caught? Was her bleeding? What happened? Take us for your journey. What was big? Take away. What's the learnings? Share your stories. >>Well, a lot of it, as I shared today with Panel, is really learning and be having that Lerner mindset and learning from something that you do, which is part of your life. And I use the example of I'm married to an Indian Muslim, went to India, spent some time with his family, and they told me Let's be ready at 6 30 and I said, Okay, I'm ready. I'm ready. Dressed in 6 30 nobody else was ready. And everyone in the room said, Well, we're gonna have Chai first we're gonna have some tea And I was like, Well, you said 6 30 and I'm ready And, um, everyone said, Well, you know, we need to relax. We need to connect. We need to have some time So I took that back and said, You know what? We all need to make time for tea Way. All need to connect with our people and the individuals that work with us, And I've kind of taken that on through the last 20 years of being married, Tim. But connecting with individuals and your teams and your partner's is what's important and as what Lead Meeks. I've built those allies and that great group of people that >>being people centric, relationship driven, not so much chasing promotions or those kinds. >>That's what's worked for me. Yes, >>Carol, it's been your journey. Stories >>start a little bit of beginnings. I've been in Tech over 30 years. I got a bachelor's and marketing, and then I was looking to get my master's. So I got, um, I s degree, but I didn't know even to go into that field. So my professor said you needed to go into my s, so don't know that's too hard. You can't do that. You know, you could do it. So it's always been challenging myself and continuing learning. I worked at IBM then I was there in the time when they did great layoffs. So no, e he was 93 right to left. Only wonder he's gonna be left by the end of the year. >>You know, for the younger audience out there M I s stands from management information systems. Before that, there was data processing division which actually relevant today. Quite a journey. What a great spirit. What's the one thing that you could share? Folks, this is a lot of young women coming into the workforce, and a lot of people are looking at inspirational figures like yourselves that have been there and done that. There's a lot of mentoring going on is a lot of navigation for young women and understand minorities. And they just you guys, there's no real playbook. You guys have experiences. What's your advice, folks out watching >>my number one advice. And I gave this to people who are wanting to go into leadership. Trust yourself. Trust to you. Are you all got to this place because of the successful person you are and just continue to trust yourself to take advantage of those opportunities. Take a risk. I took a risk when my total focus was in Medicare. I was asked to do another job and I took another, you know, position. And it wasn't in Medicare. So you have to take those opportunities and risk and just trust that you're gonna get yourself. >>Carol. You're >>similar. It's to continue to grow and to be resilient, there'll be times in your career like a layoff where you don't know what you're gonna do. You bounce back and make it into uneven. Better job on. Take risks. I took a risk. I went into cybersecurity. Spent 10 years there, continuing learning and the Brazilian >>learnings key, right? I mean, one of the things about security mentioned 10 years. So much has changed, hasn't it? >>Well, it's bad. Guys still outnumber the good guys. That has changed faster. Exactly. Technologies change. >>Just talk about the diversity inclusion efforts. You guys have a Splunk Splunk cultures very open transparent on the technology solutions very enabling you actually enabling a lot of change on the solution side. Now we're seeing tech for good kind of stories because Texas Tech Tech for business. But also you're seeing speed and times value time to mission value, a new term way kicked around this morning. It's time to mission value. >>Yes. So I'm glad you mentioned data, right? We're data company, and we're very proud that we actually whole star diversity inclusion numbers, right? So way moved the needle 1.8% on gender last year, year on year pride, but not satisfied. We understand that there's much more to diversity inclusion than just gender, But our strategy is threefold for diversity. Inclusion. So it's work force, workplace marketplace farces around just where talk is improving our representation so that these women are no longer the only. These are in the minority that were much more represented, and we're lucky we have three women and our board. We have four women in our C suite, so we're making good good progress. But there's a lot more to do, and as I say, it's not just about gender. We want to do way, nor the innovation is fueled by diversity. So we want to try. You know, folks of different races, different ethnicity, military veterans, people with disability. We need everyone. It's belongs to be, since >>you guys are all three leaders in the industry, Thanks for coming on. Appreciate that. I want to ask you guys because culture seems to be a common thread. I mean, I do so money talks and interviews with leaders for all types, from digital transformation to Dev ops, the security and they always talk speeds in fees. But all the change comes from culture people on what I'm seeing is a pattern of success. Diversity inclusion works well if it's in the culture of the company, so one filter for anyone a woman or anyone is this is a company culturally aligned with it. So that's the question is what do you do when you have a culture that's aligned with it? And what do you do? There's a culture that's not allow, so you want to get out. But how do you unwind and how do you navigate and how do you see the size of signals? Because the date is there >>a way to certainly really harness and failed a culture of inclusion. And that's through employee resource groups in particular. So it's plunks. More than 50% of our spelunkers are actually members. Followers are allies on employee resource. So gives community. It gives that sense of inclusion so that everyone could bring their whole Selves to work. So, to your point, it really does build a different culture, different level of connection. And it's super different. >>Any thoughts on culture and signals look for good, bad, ugly, I mean, because you see a good ways taken right. Why not >>take a chance, right? Right. No, I think, you know, like you look at it and you decide, like some young women we were talking to, You know, Is this the right company for you? And if not, can you find an ally? You know, it's a feeling that the culture isn't there and helped educate him on help to get him to be Jack of what does he and his leaders, I think we have to always ask ourselves, Are we being inclusive for everyone >>and mine? I would spend it a little bit. Is that diversity and thoughts And how? When I joined this organization. Culture is a big factor that needs to change and some of the things that I'm working on, but to bring people to the table and hear those different thoughts and listen to them because they all do think differently. No matter color, race, gender, that sort of thing. So diversity and thought is really something that I try to focus in on >>carry. Palin was just on the Cuban CMO of Splunk and top of the logo's on the branding and, she said, was a great team effort. Love that because she's just really cool about that. And she said we had a lot of diversity and thought, which is a code word for debate. So when you have diversity, I want to get your thoughts on this because this is interesting. We live in a time where speed is a competitive advantage speed, creativity, productivity, relevance, scale. These air kind of the key kind of modern efforts. Diversity could slow things down, too, so but the benefit of diversity is more thought, more access to data. So the question is, what do you guys think about how companies or individuals could not lose the speed keep the game going on the speed and scale and get the benefits of the diversity because you don't want things to grind down. Toe halts way Slugs in the speed game get data more diverse. Data comes in. That's a technical issue. But with diversity, you >>want a challenge that, to be honest, because we're a data company in the details. Irrefutable. Right? So gender diverse Teams up inform homogeneous teams by about 15% if you take that to race and ethnicity was up to 33%. Companies like ourselves, of course, their numbers see an uptick in share price. It's a business imperative, right? We get that. It's the right thing to do. But this notion that it slows things down, you find a way right. You're really high performance. You find a way best time. So it doesn't always come fast, right? Sometimes it's about patients and leadership. So I'm on the side of data and the data is there. If you tickle, di bear seems just perform better, >>so if it is slowing down, your position would be that it's not working >>well. Yes, I know. I think you got to find a way to work together, you know? And that's a beautiful thing about places like spun were hyper cool, right? It's crazy. Tons of work to do different things were just talking about this in the break way have this unwritten rule that we don't hire. I'll see jerks for >>gender neutral data, saris, origin, gender neutral data. >>Yeah, absolutely no hiring folks are really gonna, you know, have a different cultural impact there. No cultural adds the organization way. Need everyone on bats. Beautiful thing. And that's what makes it special. >>I think you know, is you start to work and be more inclusive. You start to build trust. So it goes back to what Jane was talking about relationships. And so you gotta have that foundation and you can move fast and still be reversed. I >>think that's a very key point. Trust is critical because people are taking chances whether they're male or female. If the team works there like you see a Splunk, it shouldn't be an issue becomes an issue when it's issue. All right, so big Walk away and learnings over the years in your journey. What was some moments of greatness? Moments of struggle where you brought your whole self to bear around resolving in persevering what were some challenges in growth moments that really made a difference in your life breaking through that ceiling. >>Wow. Well, um, I'm a breast cancer survivor, and I, uh, used my job and my strength to pull me through that. And I was working during the time, and I had a great leader who took it upon herself to make sure that I could work if I wanted. Thio are not. And it really opened that up for me to be able to say, I can still bring my whole self, whatever that is today that I'm doing. And I look back at that time and that was a strength from inside that gave me that trust myself. You're going to get through it. And that was a challenging personal time, But yet had so many learnings in it, from a career perspective to >>story thanks for sharing Caroline stories and struggles and successes that made him big impact of you. Your >>life. It was my first level one manager job. I got into cybersecurity and I didn't know what I was doing. I came back. My boss of Carol. I don't know what you did this year, and so I really had to learn to communicate. But prior to that, you know that I would never have been on TV. Never would have done public speaking like we did today. So I had to hire a coach and learn hadn't forward on communications. Thanks for sharing stories, I think a >>pivotal moment for me. I was in management, consultants say, for the first half of my career, Dad's first child and I was on the highway with a local Klein seven in the morning. Closet Night started on a Sunday midday, so I didn't see her a week the first night. I know many women who do it just wasn't my personal choice. So I decided to take a roll internal and not find Jason and was told that my career would be over, that I would be on a track, that I wouldn't get partner anymore. And it really wasn't the case. I find my passions in the people agenda did leadership development. I didn't teach our role. I got into diversity, including which I absolutely love. So I think some of those pivotal moments you talked about resilient earlier in the panel is just to dig, dying to know what's important to you personally and for the family and really follow your to north and you know, it works out in the end, >>you guys air inspiration. Thank you for sharing that, I guess on a personal question for me, as a male, there's a lot of men who want to do good. They want to be inclusive as well. Some don't know what to do. Don't even are free to ask for directions, right? So what would you advise men? How could they help in today's culture to move the needle forward, to support beach there from trust and all these critical things that make a difference what you say to that? >>So the research says that women don't suffer from a lack of mentorship. The sucker suffer from a lack of advocacy. So I would say if you want to do something super easy and impactful, go advocate for women, go advocate for women. You know who is amazing I there and go help her forward >>in Korea. And you can do that. Whatever gender you are, you can advocate for others. Yeah, also echo the advocacy. I would agree. >>Trust relationships, yes, across the board >>way, said Thio. Some of the women and our allies today WAAS bring your whole self. And I would just encourage men to do that, to bring your whole self to work, because that's what speeds up the data exchange. That's what it speeds up. Results >>take a chance, >>Take a chance, bring your whole self >>get trust going right. He opened a communicated and look at the date on the photo booth. Datable driver. Thank you guys so much for sharing your stories in The Cube, you think. Uses the stories on the Cube segments. Cube coverage here in Las Vegas for the 10th stop. Compass Accused seventh year John Ferrier with Q. Thanks for watching.

>> Live from San Francisco. Its The Cube. Covering IBM Think 2019. Brought to you by, IBM. >> Okay, welcome back everyone, live here in The Cube here in San Francisco, exclusive coverage of IBM Think 2019. I'm John Furrier and Stu meeting next guest is Calline Sanchez, Vice President of IBM Systems Labs Services. New role for you, welcome back to the cube. >> Yes. Thank you for asking me back. >> So the new role, Vice President of the Systems Lab Services. Sounds super cool, sounds like you got a little lab in there, a little experimentation >> yeah think of it as a sandbox for geeks worldwide. And what that means is we enable high performance computing deployments as well as what we do with blockchain and also artificial intelligence. >> So its a play ground for people that want to do some big things, solve big problems, what are some of the things that you offer, just take us through how it works. Do I just jump in online, is it a physical location? What's it like ? In 2018 9000 plus engagements worldwide in 123 countries. So to net it out is, it's not necessarily a single lab or a single garage, we have multiple locations and skills worldwide to enable these engagements. >> How big is the organization roughly? Its over a thousand folks, consultants who are smart and capable. >> We had a conversation yesterday with Jamie Thomas, talking about, from a super computer stand point, now IBM's reclaimed the top couple of positions there and from a research stand point, David Floyer from our team has been talking for years about how HPC architectures are really going to permeate what happens in the industry and I think about distributed architectures, it all seems to go back to what people in the HPC environment lived in. You've got background in that, you worked for one of the big labs, explain how this has come from something some government lab used to do to something that now many more companies around the globe are leveraging. >> Before IBM I worked at Sandia National Laboratories and the reason why I chose to work with these awesome skills worldwide in lab services is that I wanted to be part of the cool group, so to speak. So they were doing work in deployments with Oak Ridge National Laboratories and also Laurence Lilvermore. So you'll hear (inaudible) with Laurence Livermore speak on stage about some of the relevance associated with high performance computing and why were number 1. So, to get to our question it's cool to be back online with what I could say, high performance computing deployment. We are the mechanics so to speak in this organization. Similar to what we do with formula 1, people who put on the tires, add the air and also enable the cars to move around. Well without them, guess what? Things don't move around. >> So you guys work on the high performance systems, you got quantum coming around the corner, you got AI front and center so you guys are like the hot shots. You come in, you build solutions with what's in the tool chest, if you will with IBM, is that right ? >> correct You're 100% correct. I will say it in my mind, we make things real. We deploy and implement strategic technologies worldwide for the benefit of our end users and we do that also with our partners. >> Give an example of an engagement you guys have had that's notable, that's worth sharing. >> Recently, this was a really exciting area a Smarter Cities with Kazakhstan. And so heres this independent city that works on basically AI for filming things whether its a security thing recognizing certain faces, deployments associated with weapons etc. And they were able to secure safety based on the film, films that they've taken, those assets. Now the other aspect is managing safer traffic. So even the president of Kazakhstan felt it was extremely relevant that we helped him deploy and he comes back to one of our European leaders saying, hey we need more of this and we want it to be extensive, we want to scale this opportunity. >> Talk about the philosophy's you guys are deploying because it sounds like its a... you said sandbox, when I think sandbox I think you do prototypes, I'm thinking about cool stuff, building solutions and that kind of brings this whole entrepreneurial creation mindset. Do you guys have like a design thinking methodology, is there things you're bringing to the table what else is involved besides the sandbox? >> You are correct. We have a very key component of design thinking. There's a CTO that reports to me directly who leads our overall design thinking and so that's a key component of what we do worldwide. Now as far as... We also enable incubation of technologies. So it's like what we intend to do with IBM Cube, What we intend to do with blockchain on system Z. So with these things we have garages worldwide to deploy or incubate the technology. >> What's the coolest thing you've worked on so far? Or the team's worked on? >> That's really hard to say 'cause there's so much. >> It's like picking a favorite child. >> Yeah, it's like I have way too many. So I was - >> You mention blockchain. I like blockchain. Blockchain, are you in healthcare, is it more, is there certain industries that are popping out for you guys? >> So healthcare is an example but I have seen it in the telecom area as well as other industries in general. So we have 11 industries in which we serve. >> How about AI? We're always trying to understand where customers are, how they're really moving things forward, to understand that that HPC architecture is a foundational layer for many customers to help deploy AI. Where are customers starting to make progress ? Give us some of the vibe you're feeling from customers out there. >> So its exciting with AI right now because we have Power Vision that allows us as any of us to actually exploit, utilize and play with, so to speak. So from my perspective that is what's nice, is that you can enable opportunities with the consumer market and learn. Similar to what we do with, and for instance, I am jumping around here, IMB Cube. Where users can actually become a user and start evaluating algorithms in order to enable this really amazing technology as in IB Cube. >> That was always the promise of big date, is that we should be able to leverage our data and get the average business user to do it. So it sounds like AI will continue that trend. >> Correct. So in prior rule, I talked to all of you about big data storage, right and replication. So now what's amazing about the conversations is that they've transcended. Its like, here you're looking to manage these large data warehouses, when, what do you do with the data? How's it monetized, how is it used in order to solution what's possible. >> What is the goal of the organization, next 6 months, year, what's the charter, what's your key performance indicators, how do you guys measure success, client engagements, onboarding people, what is the business objectives? >> So we look at the number of engagements, we also look at educational services worldwide for instance I will be in Cairo, Egypt next week to work on specific things that are going on in Mia in order to enable this next growth market so to speak. What in addition we do to measure ourselves, utilization, classic services organization view of the world. So we also evaluate what we can do with revenue, profit and our understanding of growth and we really believe the focus is these growth technologies. >> Is there a criteria if I wanted to get involved, just say I am a customer, prospect, wow, I really want to get into this design thinking, got these labs, coolest labs services, I want to play with the cutting edge technologies, how do I get involved? Is there a criteria open to all or how does it work? >> In addition to IBM Systems Labs Services, I have technical universities and we actually run technical universities worldwide for end users, clients as well as what we do with partners and IBMers. And this is important because we're able to then discuss, talk, collaborate with SME's across multiple areas of technology. So its a very good question and very important that I mention the technical universities. >> Are there certifications along that line? What are some of the hot skill sets that people are looking to learn about ? >> It circles right back to your last question, AI. With regards to how we certify folks as well as we, in essence, they get enough training in boot camps in order to get badges. >> So their certification, they just pass the touring test and then they're okay. >> correct. Well. (laughs) I don't know about the touring test so to speak. >> So is there a website on IBM.com, is there like a URL as in like labservices.ibm.com? >> I personally like the look at twitter where you can do a search on IBM Lab Services or Tech U. >> Tech U. And screening, how big is that focus, used a lot of video, is it collaborative tooling is it face to face, virtual, how do you guys do the training, all the above? >> Unfair, I was going to say all of the above. (laughs) It depends. (laughs) Giving that classic response, our favorite is video blogs. What we can do in social media with the YouTube channels etc. to get our opinions or our voice out with regards to key technologies. >> Well great, make sure you let us know what those channels are and we'll promote them, get that metadata out there, of course The Cube loves to collaborate. And thanks for coming on and sharing. >> I appreciate it and I will definitely take a sticker and put it on my laptop. >> Calline Sanchez, Vice President of the new IBM Systems Lab Services. A lot of opportunities to get in the worldwide sandbox and put the sluices together from blockchain to cutting edge AI. Your live coverage here at San Francisco at IBM Think, I'm (inaudible) stay with us for more coverage after this short break. (lively music)