(cheery music) >> Thanks, Adam. Thanks for everyone in the studio. Dave, we've got some great main stage CUBE interviews. Normally we'll sit at the desk, and do a remote, but since it's a virtual event, and a physical event, it's a hybrid event. We've got two amazing Google leaders to talk with us. I had a chance to sit down with Amol who was gone yesterday during our breaking news segment. They had the big news. We had two great guests, Amol Phadke. He's our first interview. He's the head of Google's telecom industry. Again, he came in, broke into our segment yesterday with breaking news. Obviously released with Ericsson, and the O-RAN Alliance. I had a great chance to chat with him. A wide ranging conversation for 13 minutes. Enjoy my interview with Amol, right now. (cheery music) Well welcome to the CUBE's coverage for Mobile World Congress, 2021. I'm John Furrier, your host of the CUBE. We're here in person as well as remote. It's a hybrid event. We're on the ground at Mobile World Congress, bringing all the action here. We're remote with Amol Phadke, who's the Managing Director of the Telecom Industry Solutions team at Google Cloud, a big leader, and driving a lot of the change. Amol, thank you for coming on theCUBE here in the hybrid event from Mobile World Congress. >> Thank you, John. Thank you, John. Thank you for having me, So, hybrid event, which means it's in person, we're on the floor, as well as doing remote interviews and people are virtual. This is the new normal. Kind of highlights where we are in this telecom world, because the last time, Mobile World Congress actually had a physical event was winter of 2019. A ton has changed in the industry. Look at the momentum at the Edge. Hybrid cloud is now standard. Multi-cloud is being set up as we speak. This is all now the new normal, what is your take? And so it's pretty active in your industry. Tell us your opinion. >> Yes, John I mean the last two years have been seismic to say the least, right? I mean, in terms of the change that the CSP industries had had to do. You know, John, in the last two years, the importance of a CSP infrastructure has never become so important, right? The infrastructure is paramount. I'm talking to you remotely over the CSP infrastructure right now, and everything that we are doing in the last two years, whether it's working, or studying, or entertaining ourselves, all on that CSP infrastructure. So from that perspective, they are really becoming a critical national global information fabric on which the society is actually depending on. And that we see at Google as well, in the sense that we have seen up to 60% increase in demand, John, in the last two years, for that infrastructure. And then when we look at the industry itself, unfortunately all of that huge demand is not translating into revenue, because as an industry, the revenue is still flat-lining. In fact, the forecasted revenue for globally, for all the industry over the next 12 months is three to five per cent negative on revenue, right? So one starts to think, how come there is so much demand over the last two years, post-pandemic, and that's not translating to revenue? Having said that, the other thing that's happening is this demand is driving significant CapEx and OPEX investments in the infrastructure, as much as eight to $900 billion over the next decade is going to get spent in this infrastructure, from our perspective, Which means it's really a perfect storm. John, We have massive demand, massive need to invest to meet that demand, yet not translating to revenue, and the crux of all this is customer experience, because ultimately all of that translates into not having that kind of radically disruptive or transformational customer experience, right? So that's a backdrop that we find ourselves in the industry, and that really sets the stage for us to look at these challenges in terms of how does the CSP industry as a whole, grow top line, radically transform CSPCO, at the same time, reinventing the customer experience and finding those capital efficiencies. It's almost an impossible problem to find solution. >> It's a perfect storm. The waves are kind of coming together to form one big wave. You mentioned CapEx and OPEX. That's obviously changing the investments of their post-pandemic growth, and change in user behavior and expectations. The modern applications are being built on top of the infrastructure, that's changing. All of this is being driven by Cloud Native, and that's clear. You're seeing a lot more open kind of approaches, IT and OT coming together, whatever you want to do, this is just, it's a collision, right? It's a collision of many things. And this positive innovation coming out of it. So I have to ask you, what are you seeing as a solution that are showing the most promise for these telco industry leaders, because they're digitally transforming, so they got to re-factor their platforms while enabling innovation, which is a key growth for the revenue. >> Yes. So John, from a solution standpoint, what we actually did first and foremost as Google Cloud, was look at ourselves. So just like the transformation we just talked about in the CSP industry, we are seeing Google being transformed over the last two decades or so, right. And it's important to understand that there's a lot Google data over the last two decades that we can actually not externalize all of that innovation, all of that open source, all of that multicloud, was originally built for all the Google applications that all of us use daily, whether it's YouTube, or email or maps, you know. Same infrastructure, same open source, same multicloud. And we decided to sort of use the same paradigm to build the telecom solutions that I'm going to talk about next, right. So that's important to bear in mind, that those assets were there, and we wanted to externalize those assets, right. There are really four big solutions that are resonating really well with our CSP partners, John. You know, number one to your point, is how can they monetize the Edge? All of this happens at the Edge. All of this gets converged at the Edge. We believe with 5G acting as the brilliant catalyst to really drive this Edge deployment. CSPs would be in a very strong position, partnering with Cloud players like ourselves to drive growth, not just for their top line, but also to add value to the actual end enterprises that are seeking to use that Edge. Let me give you a couple of examples. We've been working with industries like retail and manufacturing, to create end solutions in a post-pandemic world. Solutions like contact-less shopping, or visual inspection of an assembly line in a manufacturing plant, without the need for having a human there, because of the digitalization of workforce. Which meant these kinds of solutions, can actually work well at the Edge driven by 5G. But of course they can't be done in isolation. So what we do is we partner with CSPs. We bring our set of solutions, and we actually launch in December 30 partners that are already on our Google Cloud Solutions. And then we partner with the CSPs based on our infrastructure, and their infrastructure to ultimately bring this all to life at the end customer, which often tends to be an enterprise, whether it's a manufacturing, plant, or a retail chain. >> Yeah, you guys got some great examples there. I love that Edge story. I think it's huge. I think it's only going to get bigger. I got to ask you while I got you here, because again, you're in the industry, you're the managing director, so you have to oversee this whole telecom industry. But it's bigger, it's beyond Telecom, where it's now Telecom's just one other Edge network, piece of the pie of the surety computing, as we say. So I got to ask you, one of the big things that Google brings to the table is the developer mojo, and opensource, and scale obviously. Scale's unprecedented, everyone knows that. But ecosystems are super important, and Telco's kind of really aren't good at that, right? So, you know, the Telco ecosystem was, I mean, okay, I'd say, okay, but mostly driven by carriers and moving bits from point A to point B. But now you've got a developer mindset, public cloud, developer ecosystem. How is this changing the landscape of the CSPs and how is it changing this cloud service provider's ability to execute, because that's the key in this new world? What's your opinion? >> Absolutely, John. So, there are two things, there are two dimensions to look at. One is when we came to market a couple of years ago with AnToks, we recognized exactly what you said, John, which is the world is moving to multi-cloud, hybrid cloud. We needed to provide a common platform that the developer community can utilize through microservices and API. And that platform had to by definition, work not just from Google Cloud, but any cloud. It could work on any public cloud, can work on CSP's private cloud. And of course, supports on some Google Cloud, right? The reason was, once you deploy and cause, once as a seamless application development platform, you could put all kinds of developer apps on top. So I just talked about 5G Edge John, a minute ago, those apps can sit on Antoks, but at the same time, IT to your point, John, IT apps could also sit on the same AnToks paradigm, and network apps. So as networks start becoming Cloud Native, whether it's SRAN, whether it's O-Ran, whether it's 5G core, same principle. And that's why we believe when we partner with CSPs, we are saying, "Hey, you give this AnToks to an ecosystem of community, whether that community is network, whether that community is IT, whether the communities Edge apps, all of those can reside seamlessly on this sort of AnToks fabric, John. >> Yeah, and that's going to set the table for multicloud, which is basically cloud words for multi-vendor, multi app. Amol, I've got to ask you while I have you here, first of all, thank you for coming on and sharing your insights. It's really great industry perspective. And obviously Google Cloud's got huge scale, and great leadership. And again, you know, the big, cloud players are moving in and helping out, and enabling a lot of value. I got to ask you, if you don't mind sharing, if someone asked you, "Amol, tell me about the impact that public cloud is having on the Telco industry." What would you say? What's the answer to that? Because a lot of people are like, okay, public cloud, I get it. I know what it looks like, but now everyone's knows it's going hybrid. So everyone will ask you the question, "What is public cloud doing for the telecom sector?" >> Yeah, I think it's doing three things, John, and great question by the way. Number one, we are actually providing unprecedented amount of insights on data that the CSPs traditionally already had, but have never looked at it from the angle we have looked at it. Whether that insights are at the network layer, whether those insights are to personalize customer experiences on the front-end systems. Or whether those insights are to drive care solutions in contact centers, and so on, and so forth. So it's a massive uplift of customer experience that we can help with, right. So that's a very important point, because we do have a significant amount of leadership, John at Google Cloud on analytics and data and insights, right? So, and we offer those roads to these people. Number two, is really what I talked about, which is helping them build an ecosystem, because let's take retail as an example. As a minimum, there are five constituents in that ecosystem, John. There is a CSP, there is Google Cloud, there's an actual retail store. There is a hardware supplier, there's a software developer. All of them as a minimum, have to work together to build that ecosystem, which is where we give those solutions, right? So that's the second part. And then the third part is, as they move towards Cloud Native, we are really helping them change their business model to become a DevOps, a Cloud Native mindset, not just a Cloud Native network or IP. But a Cloud Native mindset that creates unparalleled agility and flexibility in how they work as a business. So those are the three things I would say, as a response to that question. >> And also the retail's a great vertical for Google to go in there, given the Amazon fear out there. People want this for certainly low hanging fruit. I think the DevOps piece is going to be a big, winning opportunity to see how the developers get driven into the landscape. I think that's a huge point. Amol, that's really great insight. A final question for you, while I got you here. If someone says, "Hey, what's happened in the industry since 2019?" Last time we had Mobile World Congress, they were talking speeds and feeds. Now the world has changed. We're coming out of the pandemic. California is opening up. There's going to be a physical event. The world's going hybrid, certainly on the event, and certainly cloud. What's different in the telecom industry, from, you know, many, many months ago, over a year and a half ago, from 2019? >> I would say primarily, it's the adoption of digital everywhere, which previously, you know, there were all these inhibitions and oh, would this work? Would my customer systems become fully digital? Would I be able to offer AR VR experiences? Ah, that's a futuristic thing, you know. And suddenly the pandemic has created this acceleration that says, "Oh, even post-pandemic, half my customers are always going to talk to me, via our digital channel only." Which means the way they experience us, has to be through these new experiences whether it's AR VR, whether it's some other thing or applications. So that has been accelerated John, and the CSPs have therefore really started to go to the application, and to the services. Which is why you are seeing less on, you know, speeds and feeds because 5G is here, 5G's been deployed. Now, how do we monetize 5G? How can we leverage that biggest number? So that's the biggest- >> There's down stack, and then there's a top of the stack for applications. And certainly there's a lot of assets in the telecom landscape, a lot of value, a lot of refactoring going on, and new opportunities that are out there. Great, great conversation. Well, thank you, Amol Phadka, Managing Director, Telecom Industry Solutions. Thanks for comin' on the CUBE, appreciate it. >> Thank you, John. Thank you having me. >> Okay, Mobile World Congress here, in person, and hybrid, and remote. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. Thank you for watching. We are here in person at the Cloud City Expo Community Area. Thanks for watching. Okay, that was us. That was me, online. Now, I'm here in person, as you can see Dave. That's a lot of fun. I love doing those interviews. So we had a chance to grab Google's top people when we could. They're not here, obviously. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Google, the three hyperscalers, Dave, didn't make it out here. They didn't have a booth, but we had a chance to grab them. And that was head of the industry marketing, and I mean the industry group. So he's like the managing door. He runs the business side. >> It's an important sector for Google. You know, Amazon was really first, with that push into telco. Thomas Curran last March, laid out Google strategy for Telco. It's a huge sector. They know it. They understand how the cloud can disrupt it, and play a massive role there. >> Yeah. >> And Google, of course. >> They're not going to object to the public cloud narrative that Danielle Royston- >> No. >> I think they like it open source, Android coming to telco. Who knows what it's going to look like? >> That's what we call digital- >> So the next interview I did was with Shailesh Shukla. He is the Senior Vice-president. He's the Senior Leader at Google Cloud for Networking. And if you know, Google, Dave, Google's networking is really well known in the industry for being really awesome, because they power obviously Google Search, and a variety of other things. They pioneered the concept of SRE, Site Reliability Engineer, which is now a de facto position for DevOps, which is a cloud now persona inside almost every company, and certainly a very important position. And so- >> Probably the biggest global network, right? Undersea cables, and- >> I mean, Microsoft's got a big hyper-scale, because they've had MSN, and bunch of other stuff, infrastructure globally. But Amazon, Google and Microsoft all have massive scale, and Google again, very well engineered. They're total, and they're as we know, I live in Palo Alto, so I can attest that they're very strong. So this next interview is really from a networking perspective, because as infrastructure, as code gets more prolific and more penetrated, it's going to be programmable. And that's really going to be a key new enabler. So let's hear from Shailesh, Head of Networking at Google Cloud, and my interview with him. (cheery music) Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of Mobile World Congress, 2021. We are here in person in Barcelona, as well as remote. It's a hybrid event. You're going to have the physical space, in Barcelona for the first time, since 2019, and virtual worlds connecting. I've got a great guest here from Google, Shailesh Shukla, Vice-president and General Manager of the Networking Team, Google Cloud. Shailesh, it's great to see you. Thank you for coming on theCUBE for the special presentation from Mobile World Congress. Obviously, the Edge networking core, Edge human devices, all coming together. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you so much, John. It's great to see you again. And it's always a pleasure talking to theCUBE. And I want to say hello to everybody, from, you know, in Mobile World Congress. >> Yeah, and people don't know your background. You have a great history in networking. You've been there, many ways of innovation. You've been part of directly, big companies that were now known. Big names are all there. But now we haven't had a Mobile World Congress, since 2019. Think about that. That's, you know, many months, 20 something months gone by, since the world has changed in telco. I got to ask you, what is the disruption happening? Because think about that. Since 2019, a lot's changed in telco. Cloud-scale has happened. You've got the Edge developing. It's IT like now. What's your take? Shailesh, tell us. >> Yeah, John, as you correctly pointed out the last 18 months have been very difficult. And you know, I'll acknowledge that right up front, for a number of people around the world. I empathize with that. Now in the telecom, and kind of the broader Edge world, I would say that the last 18, 24 months have actually been transformative. O-RAN, it turns out was a very interesting sort of, you know, driver of completely new ways of both living, as well as working, right, as we all have experienced. I don't think that I've had a chance to see you live in 24 months. So, what we are seeing is the following. Number one, a number of telecom carriers around the world have started the investment process for 5G, right, and deployment process. And that actually changes the game, as you know, due to latency, due to all of the capabilities around kind of incalculable bandwidth, right. Much lower latency, as well as, much higher kind of enterprise oriented capabilities, right? So network's licensing, as an example, quality of service, you know, by a traffic type, and for a given enterprise. So that's number one. Number two, I would say that the cloud is becoming a lot more kind of mainstream in the world, broader world of telecom. What we are seeing is an incredible amount of partnerships between telecom carriers and cloud providers, right? So instead of thinking of those two as separate universes, those are starting to come together. So I believe that over a period of time, you will see the notion of kind of Cloud Native capability for both the IT side of the house, as well as the network side of the house is becoming, you know, kind of mainstream, right. And then the third thing is that increasingly it's a lot more about enabling new markets, new applications, in the enterprise world, right. So certainly it opens up a new kind of revenue stream for service providers and carriers around the world. But it also does something unique, which is brings together the cloud capabilities right, around elasticity, flexibility, intelligence, and so on, with the enterprise customer base that most of the cloud providers already have. And with the combination of 5G, brings it to the telecom world. And those, you know, I started to call it, as a kind of the triad, right? The triad of an enterprise, the telecom service provider, and the cloud provider, all working together to solve real business problems. >> Yeah, and it's totally a great call out there on the pandemic. I think the pandemic has shown us, coming out of it now, that cloud-scale matters. And you look at all the successes between work, play, and how we've all kind of adjusted, the cloud technologies were a big part of that, those solutions that got us through it. Now you've got the Edge developing with 5G. And I got to ask you this question, because when we have CUBE interviews with all the leaders of engineering teams, whether it's in the industry, or customers in the enterprise, and even in the telcos, the modern application teams have end-to-end visibility into the workload. You're starting to see more and more of that. You starting to see more open source in everything, right. So okay, I buy that. You got an SRE on the team, you got some modern developers, you're shifting left, you've got Devs set up. All good, all cloud. However, you're a networking guy. You know this. Routing packets across multiple networks is difficult. So if you're going to have end-to-end visibility, you got to have end-to-end intelligence on the networking. How is that being solved? Because this is a critical discussion here at Mobile World Congress. Okay, I buy Cloud Native, I buy observability, I buy open source, but I got to have end-to-end visibility for security, and workload management and managing all the data. What's the answer on the network side? >> Yeah, so that's a great question. And the simple way to think about this, is first and foremost, you need kind of global infrastructure, right? So that's a given, and of course, you know, Google with its kind of global infrastructure, and some of the largest networks in the world, we have that present, right. So that's important. Second is, to be able to abstract a way that underlying infrastructure, and make it available to applications, to a set of APIs. Right, so I'll give an analogy here. Just as you know, say 10 years ago, around 10 years ago, Android came into the market from Google, in the following way. What it did, was that it abstracted away the underlying devices with a simple kind of layer on top of operating system, which exposed APIs northbound. So then application developers can write new applications. And that actually unleashed, you know, a ton of kind of creativity right, around the world. And that's precisely what we believe is kind of the next step, as you said, on an end-to-end observability basis, right? If you can do an abstraction away from all of the underlying kind of core infrastructure, provide the right APIs, the right kind of information around observability, around telemetric, instead of making, you know, cloud and the infrastructure, the black box. Make it open, make it kind of visible to the applications. Bring that to the applications, and let the thousand flowers bloom, right? The creativity in each vertical area is so significant, because there are independent software vendors. There are systems integrators. There are individual developers. So one of the things that we are doing right now, is utilizing open source technologies, such as Kubernetes, right? Which is something that Google actually brought into the market. And it has become kind of the de facto standard for all of the container and modernization of applications. So by leveraging those open technologies, creating this common control plane, exposing APIs, right, for everything from application development, to observability, you certainly have the ability to solve business problems through a large number of entities in the systems integrator and the ISC and the developer community. So that's the approach that we are taking, John. >> I love the Android analogy of the abstraction layer, because at that time, the iPhone was closed. It still is. And they got their own little strategy there. Android went the other way. They went open, went open abstraction. Now abstraction layers are good. And now I want to get your thoughts on this, because anyone in operating systems knows abstractions are great for innovation. How does that apply to the real world on telco? Because I get how it could add some programmability in there. I get the control plane piece. Putting it into the operator's hands, how do you guys see, and how do you guys talk about the Edge service offering? What does it mean for the telco? Because if they get this right, this is going to be in telco cloud developer play. It's going to be a telco cloud ecosystem play. It's an opportunity for a new kind of telco system. How do you see that rolling out in real world? >> Great question, John. So the way I look at it, actually even we should take a step back, right? So the confluence of 5G, the kind of cloud capabilities and the Edge is, you know, very clear to me that it's going to unleash a significant amount of innovation. We are in early stages, no question, but it's going to drive innovation. So one almost has to start by saying what exactly is Edge, right? So the way I look at it, is that the Edge can be a continuum all the way from kind of an IOT device in automobiles, right? Or an enterprise Edge, like a factory location, or a retail store, or kind of a bank branch. To the telecom Edge, which is where the service providers have, not only their points of presence, and central offices, but increasingly a very large amount of intelligent RAN sites as well, right. And then the, kind of public cloud Edge, right. Where, for example, Google has, you know, 25 plus kind of regions around the world. 144, you know, PoPS, lots of CDN locations. We have, you know, few thousand nodes deployed deep inside service provider networks for caching of content, and so on. So if you think about these as different places in the network that you can deploy, compute, storage and intelligence act, right. And do that in a smart way, right? For example, if you were to run the learning algorithms in the cloud with its flexibility and elasticity, and run the inferencing at the Edge, very Edge, at the point of sort of a sale, or a point, a very consumer standing. Now you suddenly have the ability to create a variety of Edge applications. So going back to the new question, what have we seen, right? So what we are seeing, is depending on the vertical, there are different types of Edge applications, okay. So let's take a few examples. And I'll give you some, a favorite example of mine, which is in the sports arena, right? So in baseball, when you are in a stadium, and soon there are people sort of starting to be in stadiums, right? And a pitcher is throwing the pitch, right, the trajectory of the ball, the speed of the pitch, where the batter is, you know, what the strike zone is, and all of these things, if they can be in a stadium in real time, analyzed, and presented to the consumer as additional intelligence, and additional insight, suddenly it actually creates kind of a immersive experience. Even though you may be in the stadium, looking at the real thing, you are also seeing an immersive experience. And of course at home, you get a completely different experience, right? So the idea is that in sports, in media and entertainment, the power of Edge compute, and the power of AI ML, right, can be utilized to create completely new immersive experiences. Similarly, in a factory or an automotive environment, you have the ability to use AI ML, and the power of the Edge and 5G coming together, to find where the defects are, in a manufacturing environment, right? So every vertical, what we're finding is, there are very specific applications, which you can call as kind of killer apps, right in the Edge world, that over time will become prevalent and mainstream. And they will drive the innovation. They will drive deployment, and they also will drive ultimately, kind of the economics of all of this. >> You're laying out, essentially the role of the public cloud in the telco market. I'd love to get your thoughts, because a lot of people are saying, "Oh, the cloud, it's all Edge now. It's going back to on-premises." This is not the case. I mean, I've been really vocal on this. The public cloud and cloud operations is now the new normal. So developers are there. So I want you to explain real quick, the role of the public cloud in the telecom market and the Telecom Edge, because now they're working together. You've got abstraction, you mentioned that Android-like environment coming, there's going to be an Android-like effect, that abstraction. You got O-RAN out there, creating these connection points, for interoperability, for radio signals, and the End Transceivers or the Edge of the radios. All of this is happening. How is Google powering this? What is the role of public cloud in this? >> Yeah, so let me first talk about genetically the role of public cloud. Then I'll talk about Google, okay, in particular. So, if at the end of the day, the goal here is to create applications in a very simple and efficient manner, right? So what do you like, if you look for that as the goal, then the public cloud brings, you know, three fundamental things. Number one, is what I would call as elasticity and flexibility, right? So why is this important? Because as we discussed earlier, Edge is not one place, it's a variety of kind of different locations. If there is a mechanism to create this common control plane, and have the ability to kind of have elastic compute, elastic networking, elastic storage, and have this deployed in a flexible manner. Literally if you think, think about it like an effortless Edge is what we are starting to call it. You can move workload and capability, and run it precisely where it makes sense, right? Like I said, earlier, training and learning algorithms in the deep cloud. Inferencing, at the very edge, right? So if you can make that decision, then it becomes very powerful. So that's the first point, you know, elasticity and flexibility that cloud can bring. Second is, intelligence. The whole notion of leveraging the power of data, and the power of AI and ML is extremely crucial for creation of new services. So that's something that the public cloud brings. And the third is this notion of, write once, deploy anywhere, right? This notion of kind of a full stack capability that when open, kind of developer ecosystem can be brought in, right? Like we talked about Kubernetes earlier. So if there's a way in which you can bring in those developer and ISV ecosystem, which is already present in the world of public cloud, that's something that is the third thing that public cloud brings. And Google strategy very simply, is to play on all of these, right? Because we, you know, Google has incredibly rich deployment experience around the world for some of the largest services on the planet, right? With some of the biggest infrastructure in the networking world. Second, is we have a very open and flexible approach, right? So open as you know, we not only leverage kind of the Kubernetes environment, but also there are many other areas, Key Native, and so on where Google has brought a lot of open kind of capabilities to the broader market. And the third, is the enablement of the ecosystem. So last year we actually announced 200 applications, you know, from 30 ISVs in multiple verticals that we're now going to be deployed on Google Cloud, in order to solve specific business pain points, right. And building out that ecosystem, working with telecom service providers, with systems integrators, with equipment players, is the way that we believe Google Cloud can make a difference in this world of developing Edge applications. We are seeing great traction, John, you know, whether it is in the carrier world. Carrier such as Orange, Telecom Italia, TELUS, SK Telecom, Vodafone. These have all publicly announced their work with Google Cloud, leveraging the power of data, analytics, AI ML, and our very flexible infrastructure. And then a variety of kind of partners and OEM players, in the industry. As an example, Nokia, right, Amdocs, and Netcracker, and many others. So we are really excited in the traction that we are getting. And we believe that public cloud is going to be a key part of the evolution of the telecom industry. >> Shailesh, it's great to have you on. Shailesh Shukla, VP and GM of Networking at Google Cloud. And I would just add to that final point there, that open and this Android-like open environment is going to create a thousand flowers to bloom. Those are new applications, new modern applications, new companies, a new ecosystem in the Telco Cloud. So congratulations. Thanks for coming on and sharing your insights. Google Cloud, you guys are about the data, and being open. Thanks for comin' on. >> Thank you, John. Good to talk to you. >> Okay, so keeps coverage of Mobile World Congress. Google Cloud, featured interview here on theCUBE. Really a big part of the public cloud is going to be a big driver. Call it public cloud, hybrid cloud, whatever you want to call it. It's the cloud, cloud and Edge with 5G, making a big difference and changing the landscape, and trying innovation for the telco space. I'm John Furrier, your CUBE host. Thanks for watching. Okay, Dave, that's the Google support. They are obviously singing the same song as Danielle Royston, every vertical. >> Two great interviews, John. Really nice job. We can see the tech. The strategy is becoming more clear. You know, one of the big four. >> Yeah, I just love, these guys are so smart. Every vertical is going to be impacted by elastic infrastructure, AI, machine learning, and this new code deployment, write once, deploy anywhere. That's theCUBE. We love being here it's a cloud show now. Mobile World Congress, back to the studio for more awesome Cloud City content.

(upbeat music) >> And, welcome back to theCube's coverage of Red Hat Summit, 2021. I'm John Furrier, host of theCube. We've got a great segment here on how Red Hat is working with telcos and the disruption in the telco cloud. We've got a great guest Cube alumni, Darrell Jordan Smith, senior vice president of industries and global accounts at Red Hat. Darrell, great to see you. Thanks for coming back on theCube. >> Oh, it's been, it's great to be here and I'm really excited about having the opportunity to talk to you today. >> Yeah, we're not in person, in real life's coming back soon. Although I hear Mobile World Congress, might be in person this year, looking like it's good. A lot of people are going to be virtual and activating I know. A lot to talk about. This is probably one of the most important topics in the industry because when you talk about telco industry, you're really talking about the edge. You're talking about 5G, talking about industrial benefits for business, because it's not just edge for connectivity access. We're talking about innovative things from self-driving cars to business benefits. It's not just consumer, it's really bringing that together. You guys are really leading with the cloud-native platform from REL, OpenShift managed services. Everything about the cloud-native underpinnings, you guys have been successful as a company. But now in your area, telco is being disrupted. You're leading the way >> Absolutely. Give us your take on this, this is super exciting. >> Well, it's actually one of the most exciting times. I've been in the industry for 30 years. I'm probably aging myself now, but in the telecommunications industry, this for me, is the most exciting. It's where, you know, technology is actually going to visibly change, the way, that everyone interacts with the network. And with the applications that are being developed out there on, on our platform. and, you know, as you mentioned, IoT, and a number of the other AI and ML innovations, that are occurring in the marketplace. We're going to see a new wave of applications and innovation. >> What's the key delivery workload you're seeing, with 5G environment. Obviously it's not just, you know 5G in the sense of thinking about mobile phones or mobile computers as they are now. It's not just that consumer, "Hey surf the web and check your email and get an app and download and, and communicate". It's bigger than that now. Can you tell us, where you see the workloads coming in on the 5G environment? >> You, you hit the nail on the head. The, the, the, the killer application, isn't the user or the consumer and the way that we traditionally have known it. Because you might be able to download a video and that might take 20 seconds less, but you're not going to pay an awful lot more money for that. The real opportunity around 5G, is the industrial applications. Things like connected car. You know automotive driving, factory floor automation. How you actually interface digitally with your bank. How we're doing all sorts of things, more intelligently at the edge of the network, using artificial intelligence and machine learning. So all of those things are going to deliver a new experience, for everyone that interacts with the network and the telcos are at the heart of it. >> You know, I want to get into the real kind of underpinnings, of what's going on with the innovations happening. You just kind of laid out kind of the implications of the use cases and the target application workloads, but there's kind of two big things going on with the edge and 5G. One is under the hood networking, you know, what's going on with the moving the packets around the workload, throughput, bandwidth, et cetera, and all that, that goes on under the hood. And then there's the domain expertise in the data, where AI and machine learning have to kind of weave in. So let's take the first part, first. OpenShift is out there. Red Hat's got a lot of products, but you have to nail the networking requirements and cloud native with containerization, because at large scales, not just packets, it's all kinds of things going on, security, managing compute at the edge. There's a lot of things under the hood, if you will, from a networking perspective. >> Could you share what Red Hat's doing in that area? >> Yep, so, so that's a very good question, in that we've been building on our experience with OpenStack and the last time I was on theCube, I talked about, you know, people virtualizing network applications and network services. We're taking a lot of that knowledge, that we've learned from OpenStack and we're bringing that into the container based world. So we're looking at how we accelerate packets. We're looking at how we build cloud-native applications, on bare metal, in order to drive that level of performance. We're looking at actually how we do, the certification around these applications and services, because they may be sitting in different applets across the cloud. And in some instances running on multiple clouds, at the same time. So we're building on our experience from OpenStack. We're bringing all of that into OpenShift, our container based environment. With all of the tooling necessary to make that effective. >> It's interesting with all the automation going on and certainly with the edge developing nicely, the way you're describing it, it's certainly disrupting the telco cloud. You have an operator mindset a cloud-native operator thinking, kind of, I mean it's distributed computing. We know that, but it's hybrid. So it's essentially cloud operations. So there's an operator mindset here, that's just different. Could you just share quickly, before we move on to the next segment, what's different about this operating model, for the, these new kinds of operators. As, as you guys have been saying, the CIO is the new cloud operator. That's the skill set they have to be thinking. And certainly IT, to anyone else provisioning and managing infrastructure has to think like an operator, what's your view? >> Exactly. They certainly do need to think like an operator. They need to look at how they automate a lot of these functions, because they're actually deployed in many different places, all at the same time. They have to live independently of each other, that's what cloud-native actually really is. So the whole, the whole notion of five nines and vertically orientated stacks of five nines availability that's kind of going out the window. We're looking at application availability, across a hybrid cloud environment and making sure the application can live and sustain itself. So operators as part of OpenShift is one element of that, operations in terms of management and orchestration and all the tooling that we actually also provide as Red Hat, but also in conjunction with a big partner ecosystem, such as companies like Netcracker, for example, or IBM as another example. Or Ericsson bringing their automation tool sets and their orchestration tool sets, to that whole equation, to address exactly that problem. >> Yeah. You bring up the ecosystem and this is really an interesting point. I want to, just hit on that real quick, because it reminds me of the days, when we had this massive innovation wave in the nineties. During that era, the client server movement, really was about multi-vendor, right? And that, you start to see that now and where this ties into here I think, is and I want to get your reaction to this is that, you know, moving to the cloud was all about to 2015, moved to the cloud, move to the cloud, cloud-native. Now it's all about not only being agile and better performance, but you're going to have smaller footprints, with more security requirements, more net, enterprise requirements. This is now, it's more complicated. So you have to kind of make the complication go away. And now you have more people in the ecosystem, filling in these white spaces. So, you have to be performance and purpose built, if you will. I hate to use that word, but, or, or at least performing and agile, smaller footprint, greater security, enabling other people to participate. That's a requirement. Can you share your reactions to that? >> Well, that's core of what we do at Red Hat. I mean, we take open source community software, into a hardened distribution, fit for the telecommunications marketplace. So we're very adapt to working with communities and third parties. That ecosystem is really important to us. We're investing hundreds of engineers, literally hundreds of engineers, working with our ecosystem partners, to make sure that their application is services certified running on our platform. But also importantly, is certified to be running in conjunction with other cloud-native applications that sit under the same cloud. So that, that is not trivial to achieve, in any stretch of the imagination. And a lot of IT technology skills come to bear. And as you mentioned earlier a lot of networking skills, things that we've learned, and we build with a lot of these traditional vendors as we bring that to the marketplace. >> You know, I've been saying on theCube, I think five years ago, I started talking about this and it was kind of a loose formulation. I want to get your reaction, because you brought up ecosystem. Now saying, you know, you're going to see the big clouds develop obviously Amazon and Microsoft came in after and now Google and others. And then I said, there's going to be a huge wave of, of what I call secondary clouds. And you see companies, like Snowflake building on top of Amazon. And so you start to see the power law, of new cloud service providers emerging, that can either sit and work with, across multiple clouds, either one cloud or others, that's now multi-cloud and hybrid. But this rise of the new, more CSPs, more cloud service providers. This is a huge part of your area right now because some call that telco, telco cloud, edge hits that. What is Red Hat doing in this cloud service provider market specifically? How do you help them? If I'm a cloud service provider, what do I get in working with Red Hat? How do I be successful? Because it's very easy to be a cloud service provider now more than ever. What do I do? How do you help? How do you help me? >> Well, we, we, we offer a, a platform called OpenShift which is our containerized based platform, but it's not just a container. It involves huge amounts of tooling associated with operating it, developing in and around it. So the, the concept that we have, is that you can bring those applications, develop them once, on one, one single platform, and run it on premise. You can run it natively as a service in Microsoft's environment. You can actually run it natively as a service in Amazon's environment. You can run it natively in IBM's environment. You can build an application once and run it in all of them, depending on what you want to achieve and who actually provides you the best zoning, the best terms and conditions, the best, the best tooling in terms of other services, such as an AI, associated with that. So it's all about developing it once, certifying it once, but deploying it in many, many different locations, leveraging the largest possible developer ecosystem, to drive innovation through applications on that common platform. >> So the assumption there, is that's going to drive down costs. Can you tell me about why the benefits, the economics are there? Talk about the economics. >> Well, Yeah, so, so, A, it does drive down costs and that's an important aspect but more importantly, it drives up agility, so time to market advantage is actually attainable for you. So many of the telcos when they deploy a network service, traditionally it would take them literally, maybe a year to roll it all out. They have to do it in days, they have to do updates in real time, in day two operations, in literally minutes. So we were building the fabric necessary, in order to enable those applications and services to occur. And as you move into the edge of the network and you look at things like private 5G networks, service providers or telcos, in this instance, will be able to deliver services all the way out to the edge, into that private 5G environment and operate that, in conjunction with those enterprise clients. >> So OpenShift allows me if I get this right, from the CSP to run, have a horizontally scalable organization. Okay. And from a unification platform standpoint. Okay. Whether it's 5G and other functions, is that correct? >> Darrell: That's correct. >> Okay. So you've got that. Now I want to come in and bring in the top of the stack with the other element that's been been a big conversation here at Red Hat Summit and in the industry. That is AI and the use of data. One of the things that's emerging is the ability to have both the horizontal scale, as well as the specialism of the data and have that domain expertise. You're in the industries for Red Hat. This is important because you're going to have, one industry is going to have different jargon, different language, different data, different KPIs. So you got to have that domain expertise, to enable the ability, to, to write the apps and also enable AI. Can you comment on how that works and what's Red Hat do in there? >> So, so, so, we, we're developing OpenShift and a number of our, other technologies, to be fit for the edge of the network, where a lot of these AI applications will reside, because you want them at the closest to the client or the, or the application itself, where it needs to reside. We're, we're creating that edge fabric, if you like. The next generation of hybrid cloud is really going to be, in my view at the edge. We're enabling a lot of the service providers to go after that, but we're also igniting by industry. You mentioned different industries. So if I look at, for example, manufacturing with MindSphere, we recently announced with Siemens, how they do at the edge of the network, factory automation, collecting telemetry, doing real-time data and analytics, looking at materials going through the factory floor, in order to get a better quality result, with lower, lower levels of imperfections, as they run through that system. It's just one industry and they have, their own private and favorite AI platforms and data sets they want to work with. With their own data scientists who understand that, that, that ecosystem inherently. You can move that to healthcare. And you can imagine, you know, how you actually interface with your healthcare professionals here in North America, but also around the world. How those applications and services and what the AI needs to do, in terms of understanding x-rays and looking at, you know common errors associated with different x-rays, so, so our practitioner can make a more specific diagnosis, faster, saving money and potentially lives as well. So different, different vertical markets in this space, have different AI and ML requirements and needs, different data sciences and different data models. And what we're seeing is an ecosystem of companies, that are starting up there in that space, you know, we have Watson as part of IBM, but you have Perceptor Labs, you have H2O and a number of other, very very important AI based companies in that ecosystem. >> Yeah. And you've got the horizontal scalability of the control plane then in the platform, if you will, that gives us cross-organizational leverage and enable that, that vertical domain expertise. >> Exactly. And you'd want to build an AI application, that might run on a factory floor for certain reasons, it's location and what they're actually physically building. You might want to run that on premise. You might actually want to put it in the IBM cloud, or in Zuora or into AWS. You develop it once to OpenShift, you can deploy it in all of those as a service, sitting natively in those environments. >> Darrell, great chat. You got a lot going on. telco cloud, there is a lot of cloud-native disruption going on. It's a challenge and an opportunity. And some people have to be on the right side of history, on this one, if they're going to get it right. We'll know, and the scoreboard will be very clear, 'cause this is a shift, it's a shift. So again, you hit all the key points that I wanted to get out, but I want to ask you two more areas that are hot here at Red Hat Summit 21, as well, again as well in the industry. I want to get your reaction and thoughts on. And they are DevSecOps and automation. Okay. Two areas everyone's talking about, DevOps, which we know is infrastructure as code, programmability, under the hood, modern application development, all good. You add the second there, security, DevSecOps, it's critical. Automation is continuing to be the benefits of cloud-native. So DevSecOps and automation, what's your take, and how's that impact the telco world and your world? >> You can't, you can't operate a network without having security in place. You're talking about very sensitive data. You're talking about applications that could be real-time critical And this is actually, even lifesaving or life threatening, if you don't get them right. So the acquisition that Red Hat recently made around StackRox, really helps us, make that next level of transition into that space. And we're looking at about how we go about securing containers, in a cloud-native environment. As you can imagine, there'll be many many thousands, tens of thousands of containers running. If one is actually misbehaving for want of a better term, that creates a security risk and a security loophole. We're shoring that up. That's important for the deployment OpenShift in the telco domain and other domains. In terms of automation, if you can't do it at scale and if you look at 5G and you look at the radios at the edge of the network and how you're going to provision those services. You're talking about hundreds of thousands of nodes, hundreds of thousands. So you have to automate a lot of those processes, otherwise you can't scale to meet the opportunity. You can't physically deploy. >> You know, Darrell this is a great conversation, you know as a student of history and Dave Vellante and I always kind of joke about that. And you've been in and around the industry for a long time. Telcos have been balancing this evolution of digital business for many, many decades. And now with cloud-native, it's finally a time where you're startin' to see, that it's just the same game, now, new infrastructure. You know, video, voice, text, data, all now happening, all transformed and going digital, all the way, all aspects of it. In your opinion, how should telcos be thinking about, as they put their plans in place for next generation? Because you know, the world is, is now cloud-native. There's a huge surface here of opportunities, different ecosystem relationships. The power dynamics are shifting. It's, it's really a time where there will be winners and there will be losers. What's your, what's your view on on how the telco industry needs to Cloudify, and how to be positioned for success? >> So, so one of the things I, I truly believe very deeply, that the telcos need to create a platform, horizontal platform that attracts developer and ecosystems to their platform, because innovation is going to sit elsewhere. Then you know, there might be a killer application that one telco might create, but in reality, most of those innovations, the most of those disruptors are going to occur from outside of that telco company. So you want to create an environment, where you're easy to engage and you've got maximum sets of tools and versatility and agility in order to attract that innovation. If you attract the innovation, you're going to ignite the business opportunity that 5G and 6G and beyond is going to actually provide you, or enable your business to drive. And you've really got to unlock that innovation. And you can only unlock it, in our view at Red Hat innovation, if you're open. You know, you follow open standards, you're using open systems and open source, is a method or a tool, that you guys, if you're a telco I would ask, you guys need to leverage and harness. >> Yeah. And there's a lot. And there's a lot of upside there if you get that right. >> Yes. >> There's plenty of upside. A lot of leverage, a lot of assets, take advantage of the whole offline, online, coming back together. We are living in a hybrid world, certainly with the pandemic. We've seen what that means. It's put a spotlight, on critical infrastructure and the critical shifts. If you had to kind of get pinned down Darrell, how would you describe that learnings from the pandemic. As folks start to come out of the pandemic, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. As we come out of this pandemic, companies want a growth strategy. Want to be positioned for success. What's your learning coming out of the pandemic? >> So from, from my perspective, which really kind of in one respect was, was very admirable, but, in another respect is actually deeply, a lot of gratitude, is the fact that the telecommunications companies, because of their carrier grade capabilities and their operational prowess, were able to keep their networks up and running and they had to move significant capacity from major cities to rural areas, because everyone was working from home. And in many different countries around the world, they did that extremely, extremely well. And their networks held up. I don't know, and maybe someone will correct me and email me, but I don't know one telco had a huge network outage, through this pandemic. And that kept us connected. It kept us working. And it also, what I also learned is, that in certain countries, particularly Latam, where they have a very large prepaid market. They were worried that the prepaid market in the pandemic would go down, because they felt that people would have less money to spend. And therefore they wouldn't top up their phones as much. The opposite effect occurred. They saw prepaid grow. And that really taught me, that, that connectivity is critical, in times of stress, that we are also, where everyone's going through. So, I think there were some key learnings there. >> Yeah, I think you're right on the money there. It's like they pulled the curtain back of all the FUD and said, you know, necessity's the mother of invention. And when you look at what happened and what had to happen, to survive in the pandemic and be functional, you're, you nailed it. The network stability, the resilience, but also the new capabilities that were needed, had to be delivered in an agile way. And I think, you know, it's pretty much a forcing function, for all the projects that are on the table, to know which ones to double down on. So, I think you pretty much nailed it. >> Thank you. Darrell Jordan Smith, senior vice president of industries and global accounts for Red Hat, theCube alumni. Thanks for that insight. Thanks for sharing. Great conversation around telcos and telco clouds and all the edge opportunities. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you, John. >> Okay. It's theCube's coverage of Red Hat Summit 21. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)