(busy music) >> Announcer: Live from the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, it's the Cube, covering DevNet Create 2018. Brought to you by Cisco. (busy music) >> Welcome back, everyone. Live here in Mountain View, California, at the Computer History Museum, the heart of Silicon Valley as the Cube covering Cisco DevNet Create. I'm here with Lauren Cooney. Our next guest is Jim Bugwadia, who's the founder of Nirmata, Cube alum, here last year at our inaugural coverage of DevNet Create. Multiyear, back to back, welcome back. >> That's right, thank you, John. >> Good to see you. >> Hi, Lauren. >> All right, so last year, we kind of talked about multicloud, I think I just did a word search of the transcript last year, 13 times we mentioned multicloud. They had, Mark Zuckerberg yesterday mentioned AI 20 times in his Senate hearing. Pretty popular. What's the update this year? What's changed in year from your standpoint? >> Certainly, the trend, as we saw, starting with containers and now with Kubernetes as an operations management platform, the movement for enterprises has start adopting multicloud, whether it's hybrid or even multiple public clouds, this continues to grow. >> I mean, we're seeing a lot more Kubernetes growth this year, a lot's changed in one year. Well, as a matter fact, that's been a full year since last year, like 10 months. But still, CNCF, KubeCon is coming up in Copenhagen, we'll be there. Just in general, the open source is kind of, essentially, ratified, defacto, Kubernetes. >> Yes, and that's been great for the community as well as for enterprises, right. Because when we had multiple orchestration platforms, several contending platforms and solutions, enterprises were staying on the sidelines trying to still decide which way to go. >> What's new with your business? Give us an update on your company. >> Yeah, absolutely. 2017 is also the year when we announced our Kubernetes focused solution, so we're completely focused on operations management off Kubernetes workloads as well as clusters. We, of course, operate multicloud, so hybrid public and private. >> What's the big trend in Kubernetes? Obviously, STO's got a lot of buzz, sidecar containers, interesting. What's your analytics and your operations management software tell you about some of the trends in Kubernetes? What's hot, what's real, what's in production? Who's playing with what features? >> Yeah, so there's runtime trends, but there's also organizational trends and patterns which are very interesting. One major shift we're seeing is, whereas in the past, it was lines of businesses, or product teams directly starting to consume cloud services or Kubernetes. Now it's IT operations, right. It's also very interesting that with Kubernetes with containers, private cloud continues to may even grow in a strong fashion. We're seeing as many private cloud deployments as public cloud deployments with Kubernetes becoming that central management play. >> I think there's a research firm, Wikibon, that predicted private cloud growth. I think we nailed that one. Everyone didn't see that coming, they thought public cloud and hybrid cloud. But I mean, private cloud is happening. That's where the action is to prepare for hybrid. >> Jim: Right. >> You see that same thing? >> Absolutely. We see two factors of them. One is, of course, in highly regulated, like we are working with the energy company, we're in their environment, they will have to obviously deploy in their private network itself. However, even enterprises where they have several workloads today, they are not moving away from private cloud, but they're using public cloud for new workloads for new applications. >> They shift some of their, I won't say baggage, but their less core workloads to the cloud, analytics, other things. Let's, so on multicloud. Obviously, we debated it last year. I've been debating it all year since. I'm not, I mean, I'm bullish on multicloud in the sense it's choice. But the notion of multicloud, to me, doesn't yet exist. I mean, having apps on Azure that run on Azure and having different apps that run on Amazon, that's multiple clouds, that's not multicloud. >> Sure. >> We're starting to see some movement when people starting to think about a day layer, control planing stuff. Where are we with multicloud apps that are moving workloads? What's your analysis? >> Before we get to the application layer for multicloud, there's also the software infrastructure services that need to become multicloud. That's a lot of what we're doing at Nirmata, right. >> John: Like what, like what? >> Like, so Nirmata itself has a common management plane, a common control plane across several Kubernetes clusters, whether those are running public cloud or private cloud, and creating a common set of policies. That, in our opinion-- >> John: For infrastructure or for the apps? >> For both the clusters as well as workloads which go into the clusters. Because certainly, even if you take a containerized Kubernetes app, how you run it in production may be very different than how you run it in dev test, right. Something has to govern those policies and make sure that each cluster is set up in the right manner, so those infrastructure services first need to exist. I think the application side of things will come. We're seeing still great, a lot of innovation in the storage space. That is still a problem that needs to be solved. >> Foundationally, you agree that what you guys are working on is, foundationally, get the clusters, handle the infrastructure, get that right. >> Exactly. >> That's what's going to be dynamic. >> Absolutely. >> Don't worry about the apps yet, that kind of thing. >> Yeah, and having the ability, like one of the demos we show is the ability to take an application and to be able to create a like application in a different cloud. Now, it may not be, we might not migrate the storage, because, in production, that's not something, that's not a realistic use case. But you still want to be having the choice of being able to choose where that application gets deployed, that's a huge benefit. >> Let's go put our IT ops hat on for a second, just throw something at you. I'm an IT ops guy, I'm like, hm, we've got some on prem, we've got some Azure, I got some Amazon. I got EC2, S3, and a bunch of other stuff on Amazon, I got Azure, I forget what they use for storage, not S3, that's Amazon. Then in house, I'm running all my own provision stuff. What the heck, do I have to hire three guys? What's the, where's that come together? People get stuck there. >> Sure. Yeah, so obviously, if you're using multiple cloud providers and multiple systems, you will need some skill set, some expertise there. But more and more, the abstractions that are, again, created by Kubernetes and then with software like Nirmata is decoupling applications from that, right. It's that clean decoupling, something which we've always wanted in this space of infrastructure from applications, that's finally happening and that's really exciting. >> It'll be great when we see Office 365 running on Amazon. We made it, multicloud. >> Or at least on Linux, right, so that will happen. >> Yeah, cool. >> Great, well, when you look at these applications that you're decoupling, and I fully believe in a loosely coupled environment as well, what about the data that they can actually pull from the network? What is valuable that you kind of want to build into that application? >> Yeah, so certainly the types of data that you would, and there's systems of record and sort of systems of interaction, right. The type of data that you would probably want to keep towards your private cloud is still those systems of records, because of regulation, because of other types of requirements. But so, the engagement data, that that can be shared, distributed using some of the more innovative sort of storage concepts, distributed storage, across these clouds. >> Great, so when you're working, you've got a set of customers that, you're doing pretty well. Are you finding that, you're working with these customers that are still kind of in the old IT age, and you're kind of bringing them up to speed? Or do these guys, do they get it and they're looking for your help to really get there further and faster? >> Yeah, so when we started and Nirmata was founded in late 2013, so a lot of the conversations we had back then were why containers, why microservices. Those terms didn't even exist at that time, right. Well, containers did, but in a different form. But now it's more, enterprises know they want to go towards containers, they want to use Kubernetes, and they're looking for help and guidance in how to get there. The conversations are very different than the other. Another major trend we're seeing, like I mentioned, is the centralization of that function. Because larger enterprises are realizing that doing this in a distributed fashion, having each team build their own expertise with every cloud provider is just not scalable or cost effective, yeah. >> What's your definition of serverless? I mean, this is like a hot trend. Lambda's got functions to service. Really interesting. >> People are driving to it. >> Jim: Yeah, absolutely. >> What's your, how would you define serverless for the folks that you talk to, that say, "What is serverless?" >> Yeah, so there, one definition, obviously, the popular definition is where developers don't have to worry about the servers or any of the infrastructure, right. They're providing a function and then somehow, magically, the rest just happens, right. But I'm a software developer, I come from a development background. In any programming language, we have an object oriented, we have had lambda functions in Java as a programming language. But Java is also object oriented. My belief, and what we feel is going to happen is, applications are going to be a mix of things like serverless or lambda style functions, and stateful functions and stateless services. You need all of these in an enterprise application. It's not one or the other. >> What's the glue layer in this? >> Yeah, so that's where we feel, again, Kubernetes is the right choice. You see things like open FaaS being built on Kubernetes. We completely believe in the mission of the CNCF and how things are rolling out there, and the fact that even technologies like serverless have to start becoming decoupled from a particular provider or vendor and more of an industry standard. >> Here's a question for you. If someone asks you, hey, how should I look at the big cloud providers? Got Amazon and Google, Microsoft, you got Oracle, IBM, Alibaba, certainly for China, you go to Alibaba, they're going to cut you a deal. But I have to make some decisions about what's going to happen in the next five years as setting the foundation for an architecture. As a software engineer, what's your advice on that just getting the playbook ready, thinking about the first few steps to take, to start thinking about, OK, I'm going to be dealing with multicloud, assuming some things happen that we see connecting the dots. What's your advice? >> Yeah, so the first question is, for your business, and all of this has to be driven by business needs requirements, right, is, is it OK to be locked in into a single stack, a single vendor or provider? In a lot of cases, if you're a startup, if you're five people starting out, that may be a very good choice, and that is the most optimal path, right. Maybe you do that for a first couple of years. But as you grow, if you're an enterprise with several different teams, several applications, and if your business requires you to run on different platforms, you're going to make some different choices. That's when you would want your applications to be portable, so definitely, it makes sense to leverage cloud providers for infrastructure services, but locking in your applications to a single provider has to be carefully thought about and driven from a business perspective. >> John: You got to have choice. >> Yeah. >> All right, what's up with Nirmata? What's your action this year? What are you guys looking at doing? What's the next step? I see CNCF is doing great, good bet you guys are making. What's the product roadmap look like? What's some of the value propositions? How is this evolving, how is it evolving? >> Yeah, certainly what we see in the space, and what we're excited about, we're growing and in turn with our customers, of course. At this point, we're well funded. We're looking at doubling our head count and also-- >> John: How much did you guys raise? >> We haven't publicly announced that, but we're-- >> John: OK, but you have venture capital? >> Yeah, for the next 18 months, we're kind of funded. >> OK, a good runway. >> Yeah. Certainly, we have access to more-- >> Do you have customers? >> Yes. >> How many customers do you have? >> There's approaching the dozens now. But what we're doing-- >> Good sized customers? >> Yeah. We are focused on mid to large enterprises, right? What we do is, our appeal is to IT operations teams who are looking at deploying Kubernetes as a service for their business. As they, and IT is now sort of, in some ways, taking on this function of being able to leverage multiple cloud providers, choose where workloads go, and manage the efficiencies, manage these in their deployments. >> I mean, ops is not going away. Everything's ops now. >> Yeah, right. >> Well, thanks for coming on, appreciate it. You can see next update. >> Absolutely. >> Let me see you around KubeCon or some of the CNCF events. Great to see you. The Cube coverage here in Mountain View California for the cloud native DevOps community, part of Cisco's new foray into DevOps, DevNet Create is a part of DevNet, but this is an extension to the DevNet core Cisco Developer Conference. I'm John Furrier, Lauren Cooney, be back with more after this short break. (busy music)

(electronic music) >> Voiceover: Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering DevNet Create 2017. Brought to you by Cisco. >> Welcome back everyone. We are here live in San Francisco for Cisco's inaugural event. First time they're having DevNet Create, an extension of their classic DevNet program. I guess not so classic, Peter, it's been only three years. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, and here my co-host, Peter Burris, general manager of Wikibon.com. Our next guest is Jim Bugwadia who is the founder and CEO of Nirmata startup. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, John. >> So, thanks for coming on. First question before you get started, what do you guys do? Take a minute to talk about what your company does, and why are you here at Cisco DevNet Create. >> Right. Yes, so Nirmata is a SaaS for cloud application delivery and management. So what we do is, you can think of us as a logical layer above the big three cloud providers as well as private clouds, and we provide a common set of application services for developers who are looking at multi-cloud use cases, and even edge computing moving forward, to provide a common layer. >> I was just covering SAP Sapphire last week, again, on multi-cloud again coming out. Multi-cloud is the hottest trend right now in terms of what people are seeing. And that makes a lot of sense. No one cloud is going to win it all. There's never been a winner-take-all, Jerry Chen at Greylock said that many years ago. Turns out he's right. However, you got the big cloud guys lining up. The question is, multi-cloud, is it reality yet? Or it's just hybrid IT, hybrid cloud, just the stepping stone to potentially a multi-cloud world. Your thoughts. >> Yeah, good point, and hybrid is certainly the stepping stone but what we're seeing more and more is the application sort of being chosen to go on one cloud or another. So it's not at a point where we're seeing the same application span multiple clouds but based on the workload, based on the application type, enterprises deciding whether to put them on private cloud, public cloud or a choice of public clouds. >> So, define multi-cloud real quick. Take a minute. So let's get your definition of what is multi-cloud. >> Right, so to me it's a combination of being able to choose your infrastructure services primarily, and being able to have a portable set of application components and constructs which can span either these public or private cloud deployments. And today of course it's a lot of momentum towards public cloud but private cloud is also going to continue to grow and will continue to grow for various reasons. So having that choice of deployment is really what we're seeing as multi-cloud today. >> And of course put a plug in for Wikibon and Peter's research. They just put out on a new true private cloud report and they had it pegged at a market of what? 260 billion? >> For a true private cloud, yeah! >> For a true private cloud, yes. So you're right true is going to be big. >> And John, just another point. We are actually doing a multi-cloud crowd chat tomorrow at 9 a.m. Pacific. So, anybody that wants to participate in a crowd chat about multi-cloud, 9 a.m. Pacific tomorrow. >> Okay, good plug, check it out Crowdchat.net, check it, it's going to be right there on the front page. You should get on that Jim. But I want to ask you to go to the next level. Multi-cloud, let's peel the onion a little bit. Does that mean I can run workloads on any cloud, or do I put a workload on one cloud and then I put another workload on another cloud. Or, can this workload, if the capacity is bad, move over to another cloud. It just smells like a latency problem to me. It just seems like ungettable at this point. What's your definition, is that multi-cloud? What is multi-cloud? >> Yeah, so what is happening in the developer space of course with the big adoption of containers and the push towards containerizing applications, now we have that ability to rapidly spin up services as needed on different cloud platforms. And really, a cloud becomes a place where you can have a container host and an end-point for deployment. So you combine that with management services, application management services like Nirmata, and now you do have that choice of being able to set policies either based on demand and scale or usage, or based on recovery from faults in the infrastructure to span different clouds from the same workload. >> Okay, next question for you. Great to have you on, great subject matter expert there. Thanks for answering the questions. But this one is a little bit different. If I want to secure cloud, with say Amazon, put my stuff there. You've seen mostly Test/Dev, and the Oracle CEO talks about this all the time . It's pretty much all Test/Dev. Okay that ship has sailed. Pretty much no brainer. What percentage of the workloads now, or what workloads specifically are going beyond Test and Dev that you've seen that are going into production. Because now with hybrid, it opens up more range of apps beyond Test and Dev. So certainly Test/Dev is happening, we get that. Low hanging fruit. What's the next level? >> Yeah, so I think the one way to categorize it is systems of engagement and systems of record of course. So we're seeing anything public facing whether it's mobile, web-app properties, web applications, more and more micro-services style SOA applications. Those are the next wave that's going to cloud. Data residence tends to stay with private cloud for a longer term. But even that, over time we're seeing with VPC is, with the right security constructs, being a viable public cloud, being a viable option there. >> One of the top questions we have in our CrowdChat community, that comes up all the time around DevOps. So I'm going to get your thoughts on this. What advise would you give to operations practitioners who are afraid DevOps is going to automate away their jobs. >> Jim Bugwadia: Yeah (laughing) So, yeah, great great question, and that's very far away from the reality. What's happening with DevOps is now we're getting to a better definition of what Devs need to be concerned about and what Ops needs to be concerned about, right?. And again pointing to containers as one of the enablers, microservices as another. We're seeing where application developers want to operate their own applications. They want control of their destiny. But the furthest thing from their minds is to worry about IP addressing and security concerns and things like that. So there is, and it's interesting, because enterprise DevOps is very different than what you would find in a start-up or in a cloud or internet giant, right. And there is no mythical enterprise developer who can do all of this themselves. You need a Dev and you need an Ops. >> The mythical mammoth kind of goes out of the window. We had CMO, EVP earlier on. We had, it was Matt Howard, and he is an experienced guy. But he was saying, 100 developers have ten IT supports and one security person. He sees that completely flipping around. So if you take this whole notion of the jobs are going to go away. Which I think is BS. Certainly things have to be automated, machine learning is great for that. But you can see the shift happening. There're certainly more security guys. More operational IT guys not doing escalation, doing actual, real IT. So I think, there's going to be a shift of jobs. So you might be displaced functionally. You're a plumber, now you you're a machinist. I get that. Where are the hot jobs? If that's the case, if you believe, which I think you do. >> Right >> Where are they going to shift to, what does the job profile look like. >> Yes, much like we're seeing even in software development itself. The level of abstraction and the amount of knowledge that has to be absorbed, keeps increasing. So it's more similarly in operations what we're seeing, like you mentioned, rather than being something, doing something at a low level. Now its understanding what are the best policies for, let's take security as an example, in AWS, in Azure, in private cloud. How do you now make sure you have the right visibility and governance with things like containers, microservices, where the applications are so dynamic, it cross various environments. So it is a transformation in the type of role and skill-set, and I think it's for the better. Because now you really have time to step back and look at this holistically and contribute back to the business. >> Here's a philosophical question for you, and may be Peter you could weigh in too. What single misperception about DevOps would you like to see change out in there? As people try to grasp DevOps, we hear it's a movement, we hear it's a playbook, with this, it's an Agile Manifesto, grow organically, you know, Conway's Law, All kinds of stuff we've been talking about so bottom line, what is the most misunderstood or misperceived issue about DevOps >> Yeah >> That you would like to see changed. >> Yeah, so to us, the one issue that we always emphasize is there will be a Dev and there will be an Ops. And any product that tries to minimize one role or another is not a good fit for enterprises. So, what's needed is a transformation of that Ops role to the role, from just being the direct service provider, the hands-on ops person to more of a governance curation. In some ways an architect type of role, right? And that's what we're seeing, is that Ops role is not diminished. It's actually heightened and highlighted. >> John Furrier: Great point! >> We've already talked about it in 6many respects, the idea that we're going to go from application development to pushing a button and having the business suddenly run differently is just silly. At the end of the day-- >> You think people think that's what DevOps is? Just a magical, rub the bottom and the genie pops out. >> There is a lot of people that think that DevOps is a step on the path to no Ops. To having no people involved in operations at all. And that's just not going to happen. >> So you believe that Ops is still going to be relevant. >> I think Ops is always going to be relevant. I think that Dev is going to evolve to better understand, and have greater data and visibility on what's going on in Ops. And Ops going to have greater predictability in what's going to happen from a development standpoint. So I think we will see a combination of roles. We'll see the productivity of Ops continue to grow. But the idea that this is going to be, that there is magic in here, and Gandalf is going to wave his DevOps-- >> What would Trump say about DevOps? Oh we're great at it! I've done it 10 times! >> What would Trump say? Trump would say, I think Trump would say, "I've never been to Mexico." (laughing) >> I'm going to make it amazing. We'll build a wall of IT. (laughing) I needed to bring that in, sorry, laughing about Trump earlier with the whole thing going on. Okay. Good point. Some are saying in the community, not no Ops, but new Ops. It's a new kind of Ops. >> Yeah, the way we see it is that what we think of as DevOps is splitting more into functions like application operations, security operations, and infrastructure. So really all three need to be accommodated and they need to work together. And that's sort of how we have built up Nirmata as our private software. >> And there is ops for all three of them. In fact, the last conversation we had John was, and test you on this, is that, it is the inherent quality, or the inherent distributed quality of a lot of the new applications that we're building. Absolutely dictates that we start to parse Ops up differently. >> Jim Bugwadia: Right. >> That it's no longer running it on a single machine or on a single database with a network out in a client server domain. It is inherently distributed and therefore the tasks and the responsibilities and roles associated with the operations side of that are themselves going to be inherently distributed. Which requires new ways of thinking, new conventions, and new tools. >> Jim, I want to give you a final word. Give a plug about your company. Thanks for sharing your insight by the way. Appreciate you answering the questions. What do you guys do and what's up with the company? Talk about the status, the employees, how much funding you have, how much revenue you have, what's your goals. Go lay it all out. >> Yeah, so myself, my other co-founders, our background is enterprise software and we come from a network management background where we build centralized management systems for complex networks, distributed devices, etc. What we saw happening is with cloud applications are starting to mimic that complexity. And as applications move from back-office productivity functions to these hybrid distributed mission-critical, real-life functions that we use day-to-day, there is a need for this enterprise-grade management. So that's the type of centralized management we're delivering as a service to our customers. >> You have to become network of provides so you have to have app management. I mean that's pretty much what you're doing you're bringing network management paradigm to apps versus a monolithic app in some dashboard and now it's all over the place. Multiple form factors, access methods. It's a network in the app. >> It is. Yeah and today the customers are left to cobble together about 12 to 14 different tools correlate data across tools. And what we need to do is move beyond systems with just observe and report. To being able to observe, react and learn, and do things in real-time. >> John: Be actionable. >> Exactly! >> So you guys are simplifying that process. >> Jim Bugwadia: Absolutely. >> And is it a single pane of glass, is it a service, is it a software product? >> It's a cloud service. So you can think of us an overlay across any public or private cloud. And early on, we kind of decided, the best way to deliver infrastructure is as a service and we've learned that in real life. >> People who are doing that are winning. That's what Trump would say, winning. (laughing) He would say, I am going to the data lake swamp. >> Who knows what he'd say. (laughing) >> Of course I couldn't get that in there. Drain the swamp, he didn't get the data lake swamp. >> No I got it. >> Okay, go ahead. >> So we've built Nirmata completely as a cloud service because of that philosophy that we started with. And we want to give developers and DevOps teams the choice of any platform, right? And today it's all about cloud. The edge is also very real. We have industrial IoT customers who are looking at containers. >> Yes, your world is getting your TAM, your total customer market is getting bigger and bigger as every IoT device has data on it. Because data is an asset. It's part of the app. >> I want to bring that up. Just if we have just a second John. >> Yeah go ahead. >> I'm curious because on of the things that we believe is that increasingly the whole concept of digital business is how will data feature as an asset in your business? Especially if we're creating sustaining customers. Totally buy in to the idea of the external view versus the internal view. For customers versus for employees. That for customer side, the engagement side is really driving a lot of this. But at some point in time it makes me wonder if we're going to move from a DevOps orientation to a data ops orientation. Where at the end of the day, the physics of how things run is, where is the data, what saliency to get at it, how do you handle the state of it, etc. Do you foresee a... at least, or an extension of the DevOps concept so the data as an object is something that we act upon, and we understand what role it plays in this whole bringing together a lot of piece parts to create distributed digital systems. >> I think so. Starting point of that, that we're seeing is the split between data services and behavioral services. Look, any form of programming it's all about packaging behaviors and data, right? So whether it's in a programming language, and with object-oriented it was about putting things together in a object. Now with service oriented in microservices, it's the service bound rates. So having the data services and then having the behavioral services separated gives a lot of flexibility. And then being able to move the compute to the data versus the other way around that is also very interesting. So we're working with some partners where we're looking at cross cloud data. Can we, as even services in containers are spun up under one cloud. Can we clone an entire environment into another cloud. Can we migrate some of the data efficiently? Challenges like that. >> Well Jim, we're going to recruit you. I just made a note to ping you for tomorrow's CrowdChat. To see if you could make it or one of your co-founders. Love to get your input at the community as part of sharing insight into this really fast growing, changing world of management with all this complexity. I mean there are more tools out there than ever before. They are all different types, a lot of complexity. So we hope to bring you back in the studio, or have you come in via Skype, or CrowdChat. This is theCUBE's exclusive coverage. Cisco's inaugural event, DevNet Create. I'm John Furrier, Peter Burris. Stay with us for more coverage after this short break. (electronic music) Hi, I'm April Mitchell, and I'm the senior director of strategy and planning for--