(soft rock music) >> Announcer: Live from Los Angeles, it's theCUBE. Covering Open Source Summit North America 2017. Brought to you by the Linux Foundation and Red Hat. >> Hello everyone, welcome to a special Cube coverage here in Los Angeles, California for The Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit in North America. I'm John Furrier, co-host of The Cube. This week I'll be co-hosting with Jeff Frick and Stu Miniman who will be here shortly. He's out getting data from the keynotes and scouring the community for information. Two days of coverage of line up here. Open source is changing the world. More than ever, open source is continuing to accelerate. Over 23 million developers now actively programming with open source. Where the world economy is now based on open source, relies on open source, and where open source and code is changing culture. Jeff, had a great keynote from the Linux Foundation open source community, and really this is an accumulation of many, many years of coverage for us in the developer community. Kind of sitting above all the different communities like Stack Overflow, all the different source foundational communities: Open Stack Summit, Cooper Netty's, KubeCon, now CNCF, a variety of other shows, and obviously industry shows. And this is now, we're seeing where open source is becoming so mainstream on a global scale, we're seeing something unprecedented in the history of the computer industry and that is the role of open source in society. And I think the number one message we're seeing is that the Linux software has been around for 25 plus years. Linus Torvalds was on stage today kind of like reminiscing. He's been Time Man of the Year, he's won the Nobel Prize in Computer Science, the Millennial Award I think it's called. Essentially the top award. 17th most important person in this decade. Linux is now a main force. People are relying on open source, and then look no further than the Equifax pact that has changed 150 plus million people in terms of their, potentially identity fraud out there. It's from open source software, so you're starting to see the reliance of open source, where a sustainable ecosystem is continuing to grow, but security is a concern, and which projects to join. There's so much action, I called it open bar and open source. There's so much goodness flowing in from Google, IBM, you name the companies out there. People are being paid to learn and write code at this point in history. This is a historic moment for the open source community. As society starts to be molded by the shape of code in the keynote they call it a Do-Acracy. For doers and builders who are changing democracy on a global scale. This is the big theme and obviously a slew of announcements on a project basis: Certification for Cooper Netty's, new people joining, the CNCF and a variety of different projects. But certainly from our standpoint and theCUBE, we covered a lot of the game of this past eight years. Certainly the Cloud and big data, and the software ecosystem. Software-defined Data Center to software eating the world, Data Science eating the world. This is only going to continue with things like Blockchain, virtual reality. And as fake news and bought networks in the cloud continuing to change the notion of what the source is, not just source code, source of information. More than ever, the role of communities will play a front and center role in all of this. >> Yeah I think that's as big of a deal as the software piece, John, is the role of communities that open source creates. And it's a different way of thinking about things. It's a different way of trying to get more innovation. It's acknowledging that the smartest people aren't necessarily in your four walls. So it's really an attitude, but I want to get your take 'cause there's a couple models of stewardship in the open source world. We're here at Open Source Summit in L.A. Linux Foundation event. Linux Foundation is taking on more and more of the stewardship of many of these projects, kind of bringing it under one roof. We see another model where the stewardship is kind of driven by one particular company, right, that's trying to build a commercial business around an open source stack, but there's a couple companies that have become almost the defacto steward for a new and evolving open source space. How do you see the pros and the cons against those two models. Ya know it's great is you got a great steward, it's maybe not so great is the steward is not so terrific and you get a conflict between the steward of the technology and the actual open source project. >> Well, Jeff, and this is the fundamental question on everyone's mind here, as we continue to see the communities grow. And also the scale out of communities as well as the number of overall lines of code. So a couple of key things, one is: We call it the ruling class, that's the elephant in the room here at the show is, we see it in politics, identity politics shaping our national level and certainly on a global scale. China blocking all block chain, ICOs, and all virtual currencies as of today. You're starting to see the intersection of geopolitics with code. Where the notion of a democracy, or democratization, or do-acracy, as one of the speakers has called it. You can think of code, lines of code, as a vote. You write a line of code, that's a vote into an ecosystem. And we're starting to see these notion of distributed labor, distributed control changing the face of capitalism. Ya know, it's really happening, and the value that corporations are creating in this new model is a real dynamic. And really what's happening is the change from a ruling class, even in the software world. The success of open source has always been based upon self-governance. Self-governance implies a group collective that manages and approves things. That group collective, some would argue, has not been inclusive over the years. Certainly the role of women in tech has been an issue. And so what you have developing is the potential for a ruling class of what shapes the future culture. Certainly there's a no-brainer with women in tech that there should be more women in tech because half the people in the world are women. They're users of software. Software is going to be relied on by all aspects of our world. Not just in Earth but also in Space. So, the notion of ruling class is changing and the inclusion is a huge deal. Onboarding new people. Building on individual successes, and building it together as a group relies on inclusion. It relies on inlcusion of people, and requires inclusion of how the self-governance goes forward. And again, this is a major concept in this world as it evolves because like I said, open source is relied on, people are leaning on it at a tier one level. Software that's powering the telescope in the North Pole, in the Antarctic to Space stations all use Linux. And this is, again, what we're seeing. Getting technology in the hands so people can use code to shape culture. That is ultimately a big thing, we're at a tipping point right now, were at an inflection point, whatever you want to call it. Open source is continuing to grow, and that culture-shaping notion of code equals culture, is really what it's all about, and the role of community is more important than ever. And inclusion is the number one factor in my opinion. >> The other interesting thing to get your take, John, is Android. So Linux has been around for a long time, everybody knows about Linux, and there was lots of flavors and it all kind of aggregated. Android is really growing as a significant factor, and I think it was announced here that Samsung has now joined the project. And there's a really interesting little gizmo now that you can take your Samsung phone, stick it in a docking station, and have it power a big giant screen and a keyboard. And so, ya know, as Android has developed as the power in the handheld devices, it's closer and closer, it's not surpassing what we have in these things. It's another big kind of shot in the arm towards the open source ecosystem that really wasn't as significant as it is today. >> Well I mean the Android Operating System is again, just an operating system in the minds of the tech world. Obviously consumers use it, device, huge market share iOS Android and even other operating systems. Who knows, maybe it'll be the year of Linux on the phone, at some point. But you're starting to see software powering devices. This is the internet of things phenomenon. This is where you start to see trends that build out of that notion, like Blockchain, like A.I. are going to start impacting lives. And that's one thing that Linus Torvalds was saying on stage was, the most rewarding thing in his career with all the accolades aside; the fact that he's had an impact on people's lives has been the number one thing that motivates him. That's what motivates most people. So I would say that the Android significance is one of pure numbers. More market share, more penetration for the user experience. And the user experience is a cultural issue. Back to culture equals code. And, inclusively powering everyone to get involved and be part of it, either as a user or a participant in the community or a coder, really is about deciding the future, and if people do not get involved and are not included, then the ruling class will decide what's best for the culture, and that is not the theme here today. The theme here in open source for the next level is letting the code and the technologists in an open collaborative self-governing way be in communities, be inclusive and shape the culture, letting the code shape the culture. And Android, again, is another straw in the camel's back that allows for more penetration and more influence. More relevance, and continued relevance of technology. Providers, coders, communities and certainly individuals. And again, collective intelligence is a group phenomenon. That is a community powered theme. That is what's going on here and again, this is to me, is very radical disruption to the global society. >> Get your take John, 'cause then you get kind of forking and things kind of move and groove, it's kind of like a river, finds another path, right. And you had the container and docker really drove a lot of activation on the container side. Google comes out strong with Cooper Netty's, another open source project that we just heard at the VMworld a week ago. Pivotal get on stage with Michael Dell and Pat Gelsinger talking about kind of a new derivation that they're kicking out that's not Cooper Netty's. I forget what it's called, a different, cube-something >> John: PKS. >> PKS. >> John: A little container service. >> Continues to evolve and kind of fork. So what's your take on kind of how these things continue to morph. >> Well that's a good point, I mean you're talking about vendors in industry. Industry is a term that they use here it's kind of a polite term for saying companies with a vol for capitalism. And capitalism, one of the factors involved in what's going on here: corporate value is not a bad thing. But capitalism driving the culture is not what it wants. Distributed labor, distributed control, changing the face and capitalism is about the role of open source. So there's a role for industry and corporations. The issue is that as vendors, in the old model, which is put stuff out there, control the standards bodies and influence the industry through their proprietary mechanisms. That's changed and they don't have the proprietary nature but they can try to use their muscle and money. That's not happening anymore, and I think forking, as you mentioned, the ability to take a piece of code and build on it, whether it's a framework or libraries out there. And writing custom code is what Jim Zemlin was talking about with us is the code sandwich. That 90 percent of the software out there is open source and only ten percent is highly differentiated. That is the programming model. So, to me I think forking is a wonderful democracy dynamic in open source. If you don't like it, you can fork it. And if it doesn't make it, then the Do-Acracy voted with their code. So, this a term you call voting with your code. We can use the term in marketing called people vote with their wallet, vote with their feet. In communities, in open source they vote with their code. So to me, forking if a good thing that provides great opportunity for innovation. The issue of vendors pushing stuff out there is what I call the calling the bullshit factor. Communities that are vibrant and sustainable they can call bullshit on this right away. So, companies can't operate on the old model, they have to ingratiate in, they have to make real contribution, and they have to be community citizens. Otherwise you're going to get called out for pushing their vendorware. And that is interesting, and I'm not saying that they are doing that but Pivotal is a great example. Ya know, Pivotal put out a pretty good service, makes Cooper Netty's manageable, Google Cloud engines tied directly to it. So any updates coming from the Google Cloud engine gets updated into Pivotal, that's the value to users. If it sucks, if it doesn't work well, people won't use it. So, voting with your code, voting with your feet, is what people will do. So there's now a new level of triangulation or a heat shield if you will from vendor dominance, throwing their muscle around and even Microsoft is here with Linux. It's a huge testament to the success of Linux, and that's really what it's all about. >> Yeah, Microsoft is here, Intel is here. A lot of big companies are here and a lot of, in the early days, people had issues with the big companies coming in. But, clearly they're a huge part of the ecosystem, they write big checks, they help fund nice events like this. So the last question for you John, before we get into it: Two days of wall to wall coverage, what are you looking for? What are some of the questions that you've got on top of your mind that we'd hope to get some answers over the next couple weeks, or couple days, excuse me. >> Well I saw a great quote up on stage, was called May The Source Be With You. And, it was kind of a Star Wars reference: May the force be with, may the source code be with you, if you will. I'm looking for things that changed people's lives, 'cause the theme in open source now is the reliance of code in all aspects of global life here on earth and in space now as we see it. That the quality of life for society depends on open source. And again, 90 percent of most great software is written in open source, ten percent is differentiated and unique. That's the model they call the code sandwich. It's easy to code, it's easier to get involved. There's more communities that are robust and vibrant. If it impacts the quality of life, so that's one thing. The second thing I'm looking for is, we're looking at some of these new future trends and I've been really thinking a lot about lately as you know in theCUBE, is the role of Blockchains and these really disrupted technologies. We've started to see the power of the user in communities where there's technologies empowering the individual at the same time creating a group dynamic where the groups can build. So, individual success can be part of something that contributes to a group that can build on top of it. That's an open source flywheel that works great. I'm looking for Blockchain, I'm looking for those new technologies that are going to be in that vein. And of course, the outcome is: Does it impact lives, does it make the quality of life better? >> Alright. Well you heard it there, we'll be here for two days of wall to wall coverage. We're at the Open Source Summit North America in L.A. It's pretty funny, right next to Staples Center. John, I don't think we've ever been right downtown L.A. You're watching theCUBE, we'll be back with our next guest after this short break, thanks for watching. (light electronic music)

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering VMworld 2017. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners! (electronic music) >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman and my co-host John Troyer, you're watching SiliconANGLES' production of theCUBE here at VMworld 2017 in Las Vegas. Happy to welcome to the program two first-time guests, but from a company we've talked to many times. Rex Backman and Rob Young, both with Red Hat. Rex is the senior principal marketing manager and Rob is the senior manager of Red Hat product management, gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thanks for having us, we're happy to be here! >> So sorry, tripping over, sometimes, titles and things like that, just like acronyms go out there, sometimes. So you know, I go back, I started working with Red Hat before Red Hat Advanced Server came out, which became Red Hat Enterprise Server, then, when we talk about virtualization, it used to be RHEV, R-H-E-V, and now it's RHV! >> Yup, making it simpler! >> Sometimes the people stay in the same place and, you know, the badges change, other times things change a lot. So why don't we start with Rob, tell us a bit about how long you've been at Red Hat, your role there? >> So I've been with Red Hat now for two years, almost to the date. I come from an open source pedigree, so I worked with companies like MySQL, MongoDB, to develop not only the open source model but a community around those products, and a commercialized version that people trust in running their data centers. >> Alright, and Rex, yourself? >> I'm fairly new to Red Hat, joined about three months ago. Virtualization background, really, from the world of Microsoft. So happy to be at Red Hat, we've got a strong offering with RHEV, and we just want to help get people more educated on it and the opportunities we have to help solve their problems. >> Alright, it's always an interesting dynamic. You talk, you know, virtualization, we spent a decade, you know, VMware's ascendancy and the threat of Microsoft, you know, KVM and RHEV and everything were going to be there. There's a nice Red Hat booth on the show floor. Always, customers have had Linux sitting as guests in there and lots of those, I'm sure you probably have stats for me as to how much of that's been Red Hat over the years, but tell us about the relationship, you know, VMware, Red Hat, virtualization? >> So we see the relationship with VMware and other, you know, companies and partners within our ecosystem as very positive. If you look at the workloads that are running on VMware primarily, a lot of those are Red Hat Enterprise Linux, applications that are running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, so we see it as a very positive relationship. And moving ahead, we see a challenge in maintaining a virtualization footprint within VMware, within the market, because of the evolution of the market. And we see that virtualization is becoming more of a commodity-based feature and the challenges that it poses to partners like VMware, going forward, to evolve along with that model in the market. >> Well, if virtualization is a commodity, and it's becoming a commodity, what's the Red Hat approach with KVM et al in terms of, it is, parts of it are commodity, but certainly, the stack and the system it plugs into is not. >> Yeah. >> I would say, it's also very foundational. Virtualization is everywhere, and I think the value that Red Hat brings to it is, you know, the capabilities we have in our team, the capabilities we derive from the open source model. And then virtualization with RHEV, bundled in with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, it's foundational. And then if you bring in other aspects of the Red Hat stack, around manageability, cloud, things of that nature, I think we have a strong offering, a good offering that people can choose from. And I think that's really important for us, is our customers have choice. And us, we differentiate ourselves on the open source model, primarily. >> Rob, it keeps becoming a more and more complex world. We've been watching, for years, it was the pull of cloud against the data center, now we're even seeing Edge pulling at the cloud. But let's go back to the data center. What's Red Hat's viewpoints, what are you hearing from customers, what do they need in the data center, and how are they viewing that these days? >> So what we see in the modern data center, one, the workloads that we see around Mode One applications or Legacy applications, that footprint is not going away. It's going to continue to have a bare metal footprint as well as a virtualized and private cloud. So what we're doing, and what our customers are asking us for, is a transition from pure virtualization or bare metal to virtualization to hybrid cloud. And what we're doing now, with our engineering efforts, not only upstream but also from a proprietary and configuration standpoint, all open source by the way, is we are giving customers the option to standardize on that virtualization platform built on KVM that shares components with hybrid cloud technologies from Mode Two. So what we see, from our customers, is that they're maintaining a Mode One, but buying and planning for Mode Two. And that's how we see the on-premise data center market heading at this point. >> Okay, I'd like you to unpack that for our audience. Because, big discussion this week is, public cloud, yeah sure, it has virtualization, but it's not VMware. So now we've got this one option, VMware and AWS starting to roll out, are you saying that my data center can really be compatible with the public clouds and, you know, the Red Hat pieces on both sides, or is it native to what AWS and Google are doing? How does that dynamic work? >> So the way we're approaching it is, we look at it, not only as a software solution, but also as a paradigm shift in more openness, APIs, things are more generic. So if you want to plug into a common framework for management, as an example, or deployment, you can easily do that via the open APIs that are available in the open source community. So as an example, we provide a management solution called Cloud Forms. And with that platform, it's part of the Red Hat stack and solution, we allow customers to manage not only the virtualized environment but also, their hybrid or private clouds, but also AWS as well. So if they've got instances running on AWS, they can manage it through one pane of glass. And this is our strategy going forward, but it's not tomorrow, this is happening today with our Red Hat Stack platform. >> Rex, you've got a background in networking, networking front and center, and networking and security even more than ever, that I've seen at VMworld. How does that fit into Red Hat's whole story? >> You know, if you look at the world of virtualization, obviously, we've gone from the story of server virtualization, network virtualization, storage virtualization, and those are the antes into the game now, and I think, Red Hat, with what we provide, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, obviously the foundation started with, you know, the knowledge that our R&D team brings from their open source background around RHEV and server virtualization. But also, now, network virtualization capabilities, and also, what Red Hat has around storage. So I think we cover those three antes into the game of virtualization, and then, you know, it adds to the equation Rob was talking about, which is the whole Red Hat Stack, which I think is a good story, and a choice for our customers. >> I think, actually, 2017 is actually a really interesting year for virtualization. We're at an interesting era, right? 10 years ago you had some market dominance, you're looking at Microsoft and VMware like we talked about, we had Zen and KVM came up, and they were a little scary for people, right? They were developing, they weren't as mature of a stack. I do think, now, that the average admin in an average, you know, IT estate, is actually dealing with the fact that, oh, I could actually manage multiple hypervisors, look at a mixed estate, it's not as scary anymore, the technology is more mature, more manageable. Can you talk a little bit about that scenario of a mixed estate? Like, if you have, part of your data center is running VMware, what kinds of use cases and what kinds of management scenarios would you, as you start to add Red Hat virtualization to the mix? >> So the dynamic that we see and play right now is, there's a huge install-base on VMware. And a lot of customers, a lot of clients, a lot of partners are looking at that relationship now and deciding if they should invest elsewhere in other solutions. So what we provide is the ability to manage those environments, the clients for hyper-V, for VMware, for Red Hat, all within one pane of glass. But it allows customers who want the choice to manage that heterogeneous environment built on multiple hypervisors, but it allows them to evaluate if, maybe, the Red Hat solution is better for them. And if we can help them with V to V migrations as well, workload migration, mobility, I think that's the perfect scenario for Red Hat, an open source company, and choice. >> And I think some of the customers, you know, public case studies that we've promoted, some of the attributes that they've been looking at that shifted them over towards the Red Had side was performance, you know, was very important. Scalability was very important. So I think, it depends, customer to customer. >> I was actually wondering about, so do we see re-platforming as people are re-architecting? Are these green field opportunities? I imagine, again, it's all across the board. But have you seen any particularly common patterns of people standing up, maybe a new business-critical app on a new platform, maybe they're re-architecting it to be a little bit more cloud-native, any particular directions like that? >> I think, some of the things I've seen recently is an enterprise IT organization has decided to go down an open source path for their world. And then that kind of is a strong point for us. Mountain Health is a company that there's some news on, from last week, is an example of that. British Airways is another customer like that. And, you know, as Rob said. It's large companies, big brands, down to commercial companies as well, or governments, or education. So I think it could be performance, it could be open source, open source is definitely one of the drivers though. >> Yeah, and what we're seeing there with open source is, the more trust is built in open source, the more enterprise adoption, and the cost-effectiveness of working with a development team that's worldwide, a QE team that's worldwide, really helps to build the stability of the products that companies like Red Hat build subscription models around. So there's no vendor lock-in, as well, for proprietary licensing models. And we find that many customers are very open to that discussion, as opposed to, you know, the alternatives. >> One of the other discussions we've been having at VMworld for the last couple years is this whole containers discussion. VM versus containers, is it containers inside VMs, Red Hat Summit, there was huge discussion, there was the super popular t-shirt, on one side it said, Linux is containers, and on the other side it said, Containers are Linux. So where do you see that discussion? What do you think about how VMware's been looking at things? There was a big announcement about VMware and, through the pivotal activity, kind of embracing Kubernetes, Red Hat's, I'm sure, saying, welcome to the party, right? (laughing) >> So there's an interesting dynamic with containers, because containers, Kubernetes, you know, you name the project, is purely an open source play. And if you look at the projects, the contributors, most of this is going to be built on an open source model. So proprietary software companies, like VMware, are going to be challenged to adapt and evolve how they develop, how they contribute, their presence within those communities. Now, Red Hat is uniquely positioned in that our model has been, for the last 25 years, that we're purely open source. Everything we do is out in the community. And it lends itself very naturally, not only the way we've done commercialization of Linux, but we're doing that now with containers as well. And if you look at the dynamic in the market, a lot of people believe that there's VM or containers, and this is really a symbiotic or complimentary relationship. 85% of the workloads for containers runs within a virtualized environment, and containers and virtualization fill gaps for each other that's just a natural complement, and just because Red Hat is already comfortable operating in the open source environment in this way, we think we're just in a very good position to lead in both areas. >> You mentioned open source commercialization. And Jim Whitehurst, the CO of Red Hat, has been on theCUBE, Stu and I talked with him at the last Open Stack Summit. I was super impressed by his insight and grasp into the economics of open source and how Red Hat has been able to build a model like that. Can you talk at all about data centers, or IT spend in general, and capex, opex, where it's going in a more open source driven world? Where do you put your money then? >> So do you want to answer? (laughs) >> I'll take a stab at it. >> Can you now invest your money, that's a little better. >> Yeah, I think it's really interesting. And I'm going to answer this question from the perspective of a three-month Red Hat employee, but with, you know, a lot of experience in the industry with proprietary companies, if you will. I think the value, the commercialization of what Red Hat has done, there's the upstream aspects of open source and the programs available there. And then there's the downstream commercialization of what Red Hat has done, which is wrapping the value of a Red Hat subscription around that open source project. And I think what we see in our customers in terms of budget spend, you know, more on the opex side than the capex side, in our case, is looking at that price point. Because some of our customers, well, many of our customers, if not all of our customers, there is a price sensitivity. I think a lot of our customers right now, maybe this might be a crazy thing to say, may not be as price-sensitive as they used to be. Now it's more about innovation, agility, speed to market. But still, the economics is important. And I think the value Red Hat provides and the uniqueness in the model that Jim and his crew cracked early on to start Red Hat, is the ability to provide that Red Hat subscription at value for open source, and, what we see is that, most of the time, in cases, it's an attractive price point and that's how we win customers. So I think, long-winded answer to your question is, I think there's a strong future. You see more and more companies adopting open source in their programs. I think Red Hat is the leader of that and in good shape! >> Rob, why don't you just give us the final word. Conversations you're having at the show, how are people here in the VMware community embracing, is it an open source discussion, is it the innovation, and kind of, the new features, what's bringing them by to talk to Red Hat? >> I think it's a mixture. So what we're seeing is a lot of interest in Red Hat Solutions, the Red Hat Stack. And I think customers are now looking at Red Hat as a good enough alternative to more pricey alternatives, or more pricey options. And if you look at what we've done from a strategic standpoint is, much like we've done with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we are now using Enterprise Linux as a foundational support pillar, so to speak, for the Red Hat Stack. If you look at the APIs that we generated, a lot of the interest I'm getting, the question I'm getting not only from customers, but from folks out on the show floor, other vendors, is, what's your API look like? Can I learn more about it? And to me, that's the leading edge of a wave of, maybe that partner's looking a little more red (laughs) in the days to come. So, just, my opinion. >> Absolutely, I know John Troyer and I have been talking for a few years now, that API economy, something that's been coming into this world, and that intersection between what all the Linux admins have known for a long time as to their operational model matches a lot of what we're seeing in the cloud. So Rob Young, Rex Backman, really appreciate you joining us. For John Troyer, I'm Stu Miniman, we'll be back with lots more coverage here from VMworld 2017. You're watching theCUBE. (futuristic music)

>> Voiceover: Live from Boston, Massachusetts, it's the Cube covering Red Hat Summit 2017. Brought to you by Red Hat. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and welcome back to the three days of live coverage here at Red Hat Summit 2017. The sixth key note of the week just wrapped up. Everybody's streamin' out. We've got a couple more segments. Happy to welcome back to the program a couple gentlemen we had on actually the Open Stack Summit. John Allessio, who'd the vice president of - And Nick Hopman, who's the senior director of Emerging Technology Practices, both with Red Hat. Gentlemen, great to see you again. >> Great to see you again Stu, good afternoon. >> Yeah, so a year ago you guys launched this idea of the Open Innovation Labs. We're opening these labs this year. You've got some customers. We actually had Optum on earlier in the week. We're going to have the easiER AG guys on, I should say - I was corrected earlier this week. I shouldn't say guys, actually I think it's two doctors, a man and a woman that are on. >> Andre and Dorothy. Andre and Dorothy - so really amazing customer testimonials for working through. So John, why don't you start with, you know, give us the update on the innovation lab program. Open and innovation get, you know, discussed a lot. Give us the real meat of what happens. >> So, just maybe a quick recap. >> Yeah. >> So Stu, we had about oh a year and a half ago or so, our strategic advisory board tell us, Red Hat, we really are looking for you to help show us the way in how to develop software, but also kind of help us leverage this culture that Red Hat has and developing software the Red Hat way. And so we worked with about a dozen clients across the globe, got a lot of great feedback on what they were looking for. We created an offering and then we launched it, as you said in Austin at Open Stack Summit. And now we've done many engagements in Europe and in North America across multiple different industries. We had here at the Summit this week actually two clients talk on the main stage, both Optum and easiER AG. And both of them have been through innovation lab engagements. Very different industries, very different clients, but what it has proven in both cases is it's really been a great way and a great catalyst to kind of spark innovation, whether it's within an existing IT infrastructure or building out some capability in particular customer environments, like we did with Optum, or kind of taking some ideas. And I'll let Dorothy and Andre tell their story when they come on and work with you. I don't want to take their thunder. But a great way to show you how we can work with a start up and really help them kind of take their vision and make it reality in an application. >> Yeah, Nick, you know, we've done so many interviews about the various pieces, lots of interesting business. It reminds me of that kind of pipelining that you talk about. One of the announcements this week was Open Shift IO, which it helps with kind of the application modernization. Can you maybe help us, you know, put together how the products that Red Hat does and what you're doing in the Open Innovation Labs, how do those go together and mesh and new stuff come in? >> It's actually kind of at the core of what we do anyway. So, we are building on top of the foundation, the technologies at Red Hat's core platform. But in a residency with Open Innovation Labs we are tying in other technologies, other things outside of the Stack. But with like Open Shift IO, what we've created was what we called the push button infrastructure. How are we showing with the process and everything to innovate on top of the Red Hat technology? How do we accelerate that journey? And so we created what was called the push button infrastructure to show that foundational acceleration, and Open Shift IO is actually now kind of part of that core. And adding in other components, other technologies that Red Hat has, whether it's our ISV partners, things in Open Shift commons, all those things to accelerate the application development experience. And so I think with Open Shift IO and as Red Hat continues to evolve in the development kind of tooling landscape, you're going to see how we are helping our customers do cloud data of application development more so than ever before. >> Yep, and maybe to add to that too, Nick, we were talking to a client this morning about some of their challenges and their priorities for this current physical year, And that particular client was talking about Jenkins and a number of non-Red Hat technologies as well because at the end of the day, our customers have Red Hat products, have non-Red Hat products. I think the great thing that maybe you can mention is when you look at that push button infrastructure that we've built, it's not really a Red Hat thing, although it clearly is tied to the Red Hat technology. But it's even bigger than that. And I think that would be important for the team to understand. >> Yeah so we actually have online is what we call our text stack, and it allows the customer to kind of select the current technologies that we've currently got integrated into our push button infrastructure, and it's always evolving. So I think what we're trying to bring to the table from a technology perspective is our more prescriptive approach. But it's always changing, always evolving. So if customers are wanting to use x or y technology, we're able to integrate with that. But even more so, if you take that technology to the foundation, put a couple of droplets of the Red Hat DNA and the culture is really where that innovation and that inspiration kind of where it's - it's culminating on top of it. So they're building out the applications, like the easiER AG examples. >> John: Yeah, excellent. >> It's great, I always love - By the time we get to the end here, oh I see some of the common threads. You know, for example, Ansible's acquired a year and a half ago, boy we've seen Ansible you know weave it's way into a lot of products. >> Nick: Sure. >> Was talking to Ashush just a sort while ago. And the Open Stack commons, which reflected what you were just talking about is customers are coming, they're sharing their stories. And it's not all Red Hat pieces. One thing I think, I go to a lot of technology shows, and it's usually, "Oh, well we want to talk about solutions." But by these pieces, and Red Hat at it's core it's all open source, and therefore there's always going to be other pieces that tie in. How do you extend as to how much of this is driven by the Red Hat business versus you know the problems of the customer? I'm sure those mesh together pretty well, but maybe some learning you've had over the last year that you could share on that. >> Sure. I think one of the great starting points Stu is what we try and do in every case is start with what we call is a discovery session. So it's one of our consultants, or one of our solution architects really going into the client and having a discussion around what is the business problem we're trying to solve, or what is the business opportunity we're trying to capitalize upon. And from there, you know we have a half day to a day kind of discussion around what these priorities are, and then we come back to them with the deliverable that says okay, here's how we could solve that problem. Now there will be areas that we of course think we have Red Hat technology that absolutely is a perfect fit. We're going to put it in and make that as a recommendation. But there's going to be other technologies that we're also going to recommend as well. And I think that's what we've learned in these Innovation Lab engagements. Because often it's a discussion with IT of course, but also a discussion with line of business. And sometimes what happens in these discovery sessions is sometimes it's the line of business and IT perhaps connecting for the first time on this particular topic. And so we'll come back with that approach and it'll be an approach that's tailored to that customer environment. >> One thing kind of pivots a little bit from the topic of the technology, but I mean the culture and how we're doing this. I mean we are working with ISV's and things of how they could come through the residency to get things spun up into Open Shift commons and get their technology in the Stack or integrated with Red Hat's technical solutions. But on the other hand, you know really when they come in and they work with us, they're driving forward with looking at you know changes of their culture. They're trying to do digital transformation. They're trying to do these different types of things, but working with that cross-functional team. They're coming up with, oh wow, we were solving the problems the wrong way. And that's kind of just the point of the discovery session, figuring out what those business challenges are is really kind of what we're bubbling up with that process. >> Yeah, I'm curious. When I think to just open innovation, even outside of the technology world, sometimes we can learn a lot from people that aren't doing the same kind of things that we've been doing. I know you've got a couple of case studies here, customers sharing their stories, but how do we allow the community to learn more? When they get engaged in the innovation lab are customers sharing a little bit more? We know certain industries are more open to sharing than others, but what are they willing to share? What don't they share? How do you balance that kind of security if you will of their own IP as separate from the processes that they're doing? >> John: Sure. >> It's actually kind of interesting, we had a story this week, we have an engagement going on in our London space, which will be launching in a week and a half. But they're going on right now. And there was a customer that was kind of coming through for a regular executive briefing if you will. And we walked him through the space. And they saw the teams working in there and they were before in the sales kind of meaning, they were a little bit close-minded and close-sourced if you will. Trying to not want to share some of their core nuggets of their IP if you will. And once they saw kind of the collaborative landscape, and this is not even technology based, but just the culture of an open conversation. You know I hate to overuse - you know the sticky notes everywhere, the dev ops. I mean they were really doing a conversation with the customer that was engaging. And all of a sudden the customer that was there on the sales conversation goes, "I want to do this session, I want to go through this discovery session with you guys." And so I think customers are trying to do that. And the other thing is, in our spaces and in our locations, like Boston, we are actually having two team environments, and we've designed it to try and create collisions. So they're basically on two sides, but there's also a common area in the middle where we're trying to create those collisions to inspire that open conversation with our clients as well. Some may be comfortable with it, some might not be as comfortable with it, but we're going to challenge them. >> Nick, I love that term collisions. There's a small conference I go to in Providence. Haven't made it every year, but a few times. It's an innovation conference. And they call it the random collision of unusual suspects. It's the things we can learn from the people we don't know at all. Unfortunately, we're too much. You know, we know the people we know. We know a lot of the same information that we know. If somebody outside of the like three degrees of separation that you might find, that next really amazing thing that will help us move to the next piece, it brings me to my next point. You mentioned London and Boston, how do you decide where you're building your next centers, what's driving that kind of piece of it? And, you know, bring us up to speed as the two new locations, one of which if we had a good arm we might be able to throw a baseball and hit. >> Excellent, so let me just start by first of all saying, you know part of what we're doing here is it's this experiential residency is what it is. And that residency can happen at a client location, at a Red Hat location, or even a pop-up you know kind of third party location. And quite frankly, over the course of the last year, we've done all three of those scenarios. So all three of them are valid. As far as it relates to a Red Hat facility, what we try and do is find a location if we can that's either co-located with a large percentage of Red Hat clients, and or maybe Red Hat engineering. Because oftentimes we'll want to bring some of the engineers into these sessions. So, Mountain View, where we have a center today was a natural 'cause we have some engineering capability out on the west coast. And Boston is of course very natural as well because we have a very large engineering presence here in Boston. In fact, I'll let you talk a little bit about the Boston center 'cause that's going to be our next one that opens here in just a few weeks. So maybe Nick, talk a bit about you know what we're doing in the Boston center, which will be, if you will, our world wide hub for Red Hat innovation. It's not just going to be the Boston center, it's also going to be our world wide hub. >> No pun intended that it's in the hub that is Boston. >> You got it, you got it! >> Excellent. >> So you know, what are we doing in the innovation center, and the engineering center, and the customer briefing center all co-located in Boston. >> Yeah so it's actually going back to the collisions. We've even try and create collisions in our own organization. So it's actually an eight-shaped building. We've got four floors, or two floors on each side. So kind of effectively four floors. Engineering on one side on two floors, and an EBC on a floor above the Open Innovation Labs, and the Open Innovation Labs on the third floor if you will. And there's actually floor cut-outs, so people you know if they're coming in from an executive briefing, they can see down, see what's going on there. And then engineering on the other side. And the point there is that open culture just even within our organization, working with the engineers across the board, getting them over into our space, working with us to solving the problems. And showing, you know, I think the key point that I would hit on there is really trying to inspire customers what it's like to work in a community. So community powered innovation. All those types of things. And so the space is trying to do that. The collisions, the openness obviously, flexibility, but also what we're trying to do is create a platform or a catalyst of innovation. And whether or not it's in the location or pop-up location, we're trying to show the customer some of these principals that we're seeing that's effectively allowing Red Hat to drive the innovation, and how they can take that back into their own. So, you know the locations are great for driving a conversation from a sales perspective, and just overall showcasing it. But the reality is we've got this concept to innovate anywhere. We want to be able to take our technology, our open culture, everything you would want to use and go be able to take that back into your organization. 'Cause our immersive experience is only you know, it's kind of camp for coders or camp for the techies if you will. So you know that's working well, but that's not long term. Long term we have to show them how they can drive it forward, you know with themselves. >> Where do I sign up for the summer program? (all laugh) >> It's coming this summer. >> So Boston will launch in the end of June. >> End of June, early July. >> And the June timeframe we had, I don't know how many dozens of clients, and partners, and Red Hatters go through in hard hat tours this week, here at the Summit. And then in two weeks, we'll open in downtown or really in the heart of London. >> Stu: Alright, yeah, quick flat flight across the pond to get to London. Anything special about that location? >> I think just overall the locations all have a little bit of uniqueness to them. I they're definitely - we did design them to inspire innovation, thinking outside the box. So I think you know, if you go visit one of our locations you might a couple kind of hidden rooms if you will. Some other unique things. But overall, they are just hubs in general for the regions. Hubs of technology and innovation. And so from the go forward perspective I mean we are trying to say, you know, Red Hat is doing things different, thinking different. And these are kind of a way to show it. So trying to find that urban location that is a center point for people to be able to travel in and be able to experience that is really kind of the core. >> So London will open in two weeks, and then we're already working on blueprints for Singapore. >> Singapore, yeah. >> For our Asia hub, and had some great conversations with our leader for Latin America about some very initial plans for Latin America as well. So you know, we'll have great presence across the globe. We'll be able to bring this capability to customer sites. We've already done that. We'll be able to do pop ups. 'Cause even in some cases customers are saying you know we don't want to travel, but we want to get out of our home environment so we can really focus on this and have that immersive experience, and that intimate experience. So we'll do the pop ups as well. >> Driving change, we are seeing that that's the best way. Especially with this kind of, you know, the residency. It is a time box. So if we get them out of their day to day, some of the things, you know, sometimes are the things that are holding them out. Get them in the pop up location, get them outside of their space. All of a sudden their eyes open up. And we had a large retailer, international retailer that we did a project with on the west coast, and getting them out of their space got them coming back. The actual quotes from their executives and the key stakeholders were like they came back fired up. >> Stu: Yeah. >> And they came back motivated to try to make change without our organization. So it's disruption on every level. >> Yeah, you can't underestimate the motivation and the spirit that people come out of these engagements with. It's like a renewed sense of, "I can do this." And we saw that exactly with this retail engagement of really already working on preparing for Black Friday, and putting some great plans in place and really building that out for them. >> John Allessio, Nick Hopman; we always love digging in about the innovation. Absolutely something that excites most people of our industry. That doesn't? Maybe you're in the wrong industry. >> Exactly. >> We've got a couple more interviews. Stay tuned with us. I'm Stu Miniman, you're watching the Cube. (light music)

>> Narrator: Live from Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE. Covering Red Hat Summit 2017. Brought to you by Red Hat. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Red Hat Summit here in Boston, Massachusetts. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my cohost, Stu Miniman. We are joined by Jay Jamison, he is the Vice President for Strategy Software Defined and Cloud Division at HPE. Thanks so much for joining us Jay. >> Oh thanks for having me. >> So I was just in your keynote session and you talked about making hybrid IT simpler. You talked about the imperative that you heard from customers to bring solutions not silos. Can you tell our viewers a little bit about the specific feedback you were hearing from customers that really made you want to tighten your focus? >> Yeah, I think that, so, first off thanks for having me, and I would say that, absolutely, customers have been very clear at the excitement and the opportunity that they see ahead of them in terms of digital transformation and moving to cloud and taking advantage of all these new capabilities and technologies that seem to be showing up all the time. Whether it's containers, whether it's Kubernetes, whether it's internet of things, all that stuff's super exciting, but at the same time customers are saying, "You know, look, I've got thousands of applications "in a traditional estate, or a virtualized estate "that aren't going to be moving to anything "like a cloud any time soon. "And what I need is a way to start thinking about "how do I manage that whole estate "so that I can get my existing footprint optimized, "I can keep that running smoothly, "make sure it's secure, make sure it's reliable, "make sure it's low cost? "While I want to continue to reduce budget "where possible there and I want to start spinning up "more of my new efforts and more of my new investment "onto these new things so that I can be more responsive "to the business that I'm trying to run. "I can get new products and services out to my customers, "I can engage partners and my existing customer base "in ways that they want to be engaged. "I can enter new businesses." And so that challenge of how do I manage that hybrid estate, whether it's a mix of on-prem or off-prem, whether it's a mix of traditional and virtualized applications and workloads with new cloud native or containerized, or even server-less now, those kinds of things, that is really what I see as the problem of hybrid IT today. And our customers tell us that, "Geez, it's complicated "and getting more so each and every day." And that presents a tremendous opportunity for HPE, and partners like Red Hat, to be able to come forward and say, "Look, we can start helping you with solutions "that start bringing together a comprehensive approach "to trying to solve for making that entire estate simpler, "make it more solution oriented, "and less a set of different silos and people "that are all kind of sort of stuck "in whatever technology stack they might be running with." >> Jay, very interesting point. One of the messages we heard from Red Hat is that application spectrum you talked about. I've got most enterprises hundreds if not thousands of applications. They have the new ones that they're modernizing and building but even the old ones we need to at least re-platform them. The term, we used to call it lift and shift, re-platform seems to be the cool new way to kind of talk about it. But, you know, really modernizing the platform that I'm on, being more software driven, being ready to take that, if I'm breaking it down, and componentizing, containerizing it, starting to build micro services, but how are you working with Red Hat? How does HPE cloud offerings and infrastructure pieces playing in that re-platforming and then moving up the spectrum? >> Yeah, so I think really across the board, I think there are a couple of pieces. I think first of all you're absolutely right that customers will say, "Look, I have "an existing estate of applications and workloads "that I absolutely have to use." So for example I often think about if you think about a mobile application that you might use a lot from a mainstream customer. Like think of your, like getting your flight reservation on your mobile phone. Of course there are parts of that mobile application that are going to be very modern. Like I can order an Uber from the mobile app that I use on my airline often, and that's, of course, very modern, I'm using APIs, I'm using all this nice stuff to plug in what Uber offers that airline vendor to be able to say, "You can have that transaction "flow through a partner flow." But things like what time's the flight taking off, whether it's delayed, those are existing systems that aren't newfangled if you will. And so what customers are telling me is, "Look, I've got a corpus of data, "a corpus of application logic "that I absolutely need to be able to access "and use and deliver in new ways." And so in many senses I think that resonates very strongly, this notion of, re-platforming it's going on and it's a reality of, again, how do I make this mix of data application tools that may exist, and the desires I have to do new stuff. How do I bring it together in a way that lands effectively for a customer so that they have a delightful experience? Now what we're doing with Red Hat I think is really exciting in terms of providing opportunities for, in manners, where together we're sort of taking the best of both worlds. So a great example that I talked about in my keynote is saying, "Look, we're trying to take", we're working very closely with Red Hat, and specifically their Ansible team, to say, "Look, what customers, what users of Ansible love "is building playbooks that enable them "to automate infrastructure using Ansible playbooks", that's what's it all about. And what Ansible has been great with those playbooks is setting up and running and automating virtual machines, well what we're doing, because HPE tends to have infrastructure and great infrastructure management tools that say, "Look, down at the hardware level "we want to make it easier and more fungible "for IT shops to be able "to manage that physical infrastructure." And so what we've done is we've partnered up with Ansible to say, "Look, we want your users of Ansible "to just have their playbooks and we will "connect our OneView APIs", which is our infrastructure management software that sits on top of hardware. Say, "It connects, and so when your users "build an Ansible playbook that wants "to change how the infrastructure works "we'll take care of it all in OneView. "It's not something that your users have "to change or learn anything new "it's just all of a sudden Ansible gets more powerful "because it's connecting to HPE hardware and providing "a richer more flexible infrastructure experience." And so that's some of the stuff that we're doing now to make our hardware more flexible and more modern in the context of an Ansible developer, or Ansible user, but over time that's going to get even better. So the stuff, the things that we're doing with Synergy, which is our new brand that is focused on building hardware infrastructure that has composability, which basically says, "Look". It looks like hardware device but from an operators point of view it's very fungible, you can refactor and make your blend of compute, or storage, or networking, kind of shift on the fly. So a very cloud-like experience with on-premises infrastructure. And what we're doing is we want to work with great technologies that are very cloud-centric such as OpenShift from Red Hat to say, "Look, we want to be able to enable customers "to using APIs spin up bear metal instances of OpenShift." Very powerful in terms of time to value message for a cloud native customer that says, "Look, I need to run cloud native applications, "I want to have containers but I want to do it on-premise" This solution will be something that we think is a really powerful message for, particularly our Red Hat OpenShift style customer looking to build applications. >> Jay, and I'm familiar with the Synergy platform and composable infrastructure, like the ideas, you can break that down into smaller components. What we hear all the time is, "I need to build distributed architectures", and, as they talked in the keynote, predicting and forecasting where that's going to go is tough. So big challenge customers always have is like, "I buy these boxes and three years "into it I'm only using 40% of it." The utilization inside of data centers is horrible. Even with server virtualization it helped a little bit but not as much as what you see server founders in clouds and the like. So where are we with the rollout with Synergy? Do you have any proof points of customers that are saying, "Oh, I'm getting better utilization, "my OP-X is much better"? >> Yeah, what I would say is, so first of all I would strongly agree with you in the sense that if you talk to most mainstream enterprise customers today about their data center utilization rates it's often very poor. And I think one of the big draws that customers have when they look at public cloud opportunities is they'll say, "Well a nice thing about a public cloud is "I feel as though I'm getting much higher utilization rates "because of the way the payment structures work and so on." Now that may not always be true, you'll have, at times people will say, "Well these things are sitting dormant." But that's the instinct, right? >> We had server sprawl, we have VM sprawl, and now we have cloud sprawl. >> Now you have cloud sprawl, exactly right. >> And server less will fix it all too right? >> Exactly right, but you absolutely have the challenge of under-utilized data centers. And so it's imperative for HPE, and I think really the industry, to say, "Look, the solutions that we're putting forward, "whenever we talk about hybrid cloud solutions, "or hybrid IT solutions, or private cloud solutions or whatever to me it comes down to look, am I able to show you in concrete terms how am I increasing the utilization of your data center and how am I helping you lower your costs? And Synergy will, over time, become a great solution and platform in that manner because, for a couple of reasons. One, you've described, the fungibility and the composability of resources makes that something that is very much simpler from a technology standpoint. But then at the same time when you couple it with pay as you go style business models, that HPE makes available to its customers through our financial services, you start to then say, "Look, you're not "just sort of writing us a big check in CAPEX "and waiting three years and then being disappointed." "What you're doing is you're going to start getting the notion "that says, "Look this is going to show up, "you'll have a small amount of POD, "you're paying as you use." And we're able to then work together to forecast when will capacity requirements get to a place where you absolutely need to add more capability and refresh that hardware, or extend that hardware, excuse me. On the customer adoption, it's a new platform, and it's just coming out and we're getting great early adoption, and I think particularly from users that were in the beta. We had very satisfied beta users and we're starting to see, I think, really strong early adoption of the product. We actually had someone at our most recent Discover talk where I was talking with them later and they were, I think it was Hudson Alpha, which is a biotech researching style institute that often tries many of our things. And what they were saying that I thought was really interesting point which I'd not heard of in the context of, "Hey, what does composability do and how does "this drive up utilization rates and many of these things?" One of the things that he was saying that I thought was really interesting is he was starting to use Synergy to deliver what he called spot instant style on-premise infrastructure where someone could run a workload for a period of time and then if someone else needed the infrastructure more badly and he had a way to sort of basically just blast away the old thing and put in the new thing there. And he said, "This is great because during the day "there's a certain set of workloads we have to do. "At night there are a different set of workloads "I want to do and Synergy gives me the capability "to do all of that very simply." And so I think that those kinds of capabilities, while still early, will be very powerful value propositions for customers that are looking to solve the problem you're describing of, "How do I get out of a data center "that's under 20% utilized? "I need to get more efficiency here in order "to lower the cost and be responsive "to what my customers need." >> Jay before you were at HPE you worked as a venture capitalist at Blue Run Ventures, in particular looking at opportunities in mobile and consumer internet enterprise software. If you could put on your investor hat here and talk a little bit about the cloud market and the cloud industry, what excites you and what gives you pause in terms of where you see the market heading and where companies are putting their money? >> Oh that's a really good question. I think that, well I would say that putting an investor hat on, I think that particularly in the enterprise space, I think it's a really exciting time, particularly for, and not to be super self serving for what HPE is doing, but I think there is a set of problems that are out there that are big and broad where there will be large companies that get created. One area that we're very interested in at HPE that I think is an area of investor interest, whether it's HPE making the investment or whether it's venture capitalists or what have you. It's really in the notion of what I describe as hybrid management. And what that basically means is, "Look, I'm a user that's going to have some VMware. "I'm going to have some cloud stuff running on AWS, "I'm going to have a desire to use Kubernetes, "and containers and so on." "Help me get one pane of glass that gives "me a way to think about seeing "those different applications, understanding how they're running. "I want one way to do things like firmware updates "for the stuff that needs firmware updates. "I want one way to do application firewalls, "I want one way to do this." And I think that's going to be a very interesting and sticky market to go off an win. So if I were in the investment space that would be an area that I would be looking at very deeply. Another area that I think is going to be really interesting and important, we talk a lot about AI and machine learning in the context of everything in the world of enterprise, seems to have this label of, "Hey, we're using AI and machine learning." But I think what you really have to get back to is what about artificial intelligence and machine learning is actually going to help you solve a problem? How is it going to make your business actually better? And I think that often we're, I think right now at a place where we're a little bit too over our skis in terms of saying, "Look, these are really interesting technologies, "AI's going to do everything and drive out cars "and basically make us little house pets in the corners "'cause they're doing so much in our lives." But I think that there tends to be, one customer was saying to me, "You know what's really interesting is "dozens of startups will come and tell me "about how AI's going to solve "a hundred problems I didn't know I have. "What I'd really like someone to come "and talk to me about is about, "I want them to talk to me about "one of the problems I know I have. "'Cause I've got a hundred problems "I know I've got that I want solutions to." And so I think a big opportunity is really to try and figure out how do these new technologies particularly in that space and around big data and so on, how do those become things that are really truly impactful to making a mainstream business that may have a hybrid estate, how does it make them more effective? And that can have an impact in terms of how to make their IT ops more efficient, how to predict outages, how to be more secure, all that sort of stuff, all the way to "How do I do a better job delighting my customers "and predicting where the next new markets are going to be?" So those are some of the areas that I'd be most interested in as an investor and really as an operator and a strategist at HPE. >> And yet you remain a little skeptical of what you're hearing about the AI and machine learning in terms of where it really truly is at right now and the opportunities that? >> Yeah, what I would says is, I think it's if it's, the technology's really exciting and developing very very quickly. That I have no question about. What I often have questions about and I hear customers questioning is is this a technology in search of a solution or is it just kind of, we're saying, "Hey this is a really cool new thing "that it can go solve everything "but I haven't thought specifically about how "to actually solve this specific problem "that exists at hand." And that's the challenge. It's ultimately, I think of it, to dig in a little deeper, it's really a product management question or problem of "Hey, do I really understand what problem "my customer's trying to solve "and am I using this tactic to do a great job?" As a quick example machine learning, those kinds of things are great for what computers do well. One thing a computer does really well is the same repetitive task thousands and thousands of times. So things like email marketing automation, or thinking about how you use a business development manager to reach, do outbound selling. That you can have a computer do a lot that imitates a human being to say, "Hey I'm going to send you an email "and try and sell you something "and get you interested in a call." I don't need to have a human being do a lot of that stuff. That to me is really straight down the fairway, really clear business problem that AI and machine learning can do a great job, bots, all that sort of stuff, can do a great job starting to have an impact on. But to think it's just going to do everything out of the box is something that you have to think about. Okay where does this tool and technology really provide the value that customers are going to see. >> Jay. We've had HPE on theCUBE lots of time. You were at Discover in London, so I think we're pretty close to where you cloud strategy is but I look at next week's Open Stack Summit, some in the industry was like, "Oh, HPE pulled out completely of Open Stack." You've got HPE Discover coming up in Vegas, soon after that, and we'll have theCUBE there also. I know John and Dave are really looking forward to it. Give our audience a little bit of an update as to where HPE is and isn't when it comes to Open Stack, specifically and just kind of cloud positioning in general. >> Yeah, right, so what I would say is I think that it's a really good question because I think there's been a lot of transition and I think that customers are still, and the market, are still trying to figure out, "Okay, what and where does, is HPE playing?" And I think that what I was talking about today in the keynote and what I think represents where we're going and what we are doing is we're really focused in on this notion of saying, "Look we want to build a set of solutions that make a customer's hybrid estate simpler" and that hybrid estate, as I describe it, cuts across proprietary virtualization technologies like VMware of like Hyper view with Microsoft, it's going to cut across openstack, it's going to cut across doctor, it's going to cut across public clouds, et cetera. And I would say that where HPE is most focused, short of, when we look at how do we help customers get better leverage and value across that whole mix of estate, what we would talk about is, we think we're moving a little bit more up stack into this sort of notion of saying we want to invest and be really great at managing across that estate, so when I was talking about areas that I'd be interested in as an adventure investor, you know, it wouldn't surprise you that HPE were really, we talked a little bit about this concept of new stack and it really is this notion of saying, we want to be great at managing a hybrid estate across public and private, across proprietary and open source. So what that generally means, what that means then, as it pertains to, okay, what are we doing with openstack what are we doing with respect to cloud founder in this case or redhat, open ship, it means we're a lot more partner centric, because our assertion is that we believe the customers love a mix of, it's not going to be an all openstack world within a data center, we think it's going to be a mix openstack's going to be part of the estate, we also think doctor is going to be part of the estate, we think VMware is going to be part of the estate, we think that's where things are going, and so if you've seen us do in terms of the work we're doing with, whether it's red hat, at some levels, whether it's SUSA, whether it's even VMware, whether it's Microsoft, whether it's doctor, we've done, worked in partnership with all of them, and I think you'll see that partner centric approach continue. We certainly are interested in helping support customers that are existing and we'll move forward with respect to openstack with cloud founder in terms of what we're doing there, but I think that, increasingly over time, there's going to be a deep alliance on partners as we look at those infrastructures, service paz layers, because we look at that and say, there's a tremendous amount of world class talent, that's off building off those distributions in the openstack communities and other big opensource communities and those areas where we can most likely partner and have those take advantage of things like our infrastructure management layer of one view, can be very well leveraged within our new stack product and project that we're working on and so on, so that's really where we're heading and how we're approaching it. >> Jay Jameson, thank you so much for joining us, it's been great. >> It's been a pleasure thank you so much. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman and we will return with more of theCUBE after this.

>> Announcer: From Boston, Massachusetts, it's The Cube. Covering Red Hat summit 2017. Brought to you by Red Hat. >> Welcome back to The Cube's coverage of the Red Hat summit here in Boston, Massaachusetts. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my cohost, Stu Miniman. We are joined by Armughan Ahmad, he is the senior vice president and general manager solutions and alliances at Dell EMC. Thanks so much for joining us. >> It's my pleasure, good to see you, Rebecca. >> So we've had you on the program before, but your role has changed a bit at Dell EMC since then. Tell us what you're doing now. >> Sure, I have the pleasure to now lead our solutions business unit that we have under infrastructure solutions group. What we drive is focus areas of customer outcomes. Work load orientation around high performance computing. Driving data analytics, business critical applications, software defined solutions, and then also hybrid cloud. So those are our five big priorities. >> It's a big mandate. >> It is a big mandate, right? And as you know, Dell EMC is Number one in everything. That's all we talk about. You'll hear this at Dell EMC World next week. But you know, at Red Hat summit, we're really having this discussion, right, Red Hat open stack summit, which is really around our differentiation, how we're driving human progress forward, social innovation forward. So that's exciting. So as we take our applications and partner with our alliance partners, that's the differentiation we're excited to share with customers and partners here at Red Hat summit as well. >> So Dell EMC, as you said, is uniquely suited to do these things and lead in this way. But how do you make deployment easier? I mean, that's the big question that customers and partners need to know. >> Yeah, absolutely. So you as you know, being number One in everything, when I joked about this, not joking about this, if you really think about our market share in compute or servers, if you look at our market share in storage, external storage, internal storage, you look at our market share in converge infrastructure, hyperconverge infrastructure, if you see our market share in data protection, or our market share in open networking, right, so we're all the way to the far top right of the Gartner magic quadrants, number one in market shares and revenue. That's all interesting, but what's fascinating for the customers is really more about how do you make all of this real? If you envision like a pyramid almost, and you think that the bottom is all of these infrastructure layers, the next one above that is virtualization, the next one above that is orchestration, but really on the top, is a platform, top of the pyramid, that's where the business sits. Business wants a platform, and what we're doing is trying to make all of that easy. We know that customers will build and they would want to do a DIY solution. And we obviously have that, we've been doing it for decades. But we're really trying to move to that top end of the pyramid with our hybrid could solutions, our converge solutions, but more the solutions that my organization leads is the blueprint solutions. And the whole idea about blueprint solutions is that how can we offer ready offerings to customers so that they don't have to really worry about the bottom of the pyramid, but the top of a platform so that's it's easy to deploy. >> And customized for their business. >> Absolutely. >> Armughan, in the keynote on day one, we heard that one of the top priorities for customers is figuring out their cloud strategy. Now, at Dell EMC, you have a number of offerings, can you bring us up to date, where does open stack fit into that, and of course, we're going to want to talk about the Red Hat joint solution that you're after. >> Yeah, absolutely. You know, open stack, let me take it even a step back, you know Michael, 31 years ago, since he founded Dell, has always stood for choice for customers, open ecosystems for customers. And even though we have Dell technologies now, the acquisition of so many of the other assets that are under Dell technologies, we're really delighted to partner and ensure that we have the right kind of choice that we're offering to our customers. So open stack, Stu, puts a very big differentiation forward. You know, I'm here with our Dell EMC team at Red Hat open stack summit and our customers are telling us in a very, very clear way, and the channel partners who are here, is that they're looking for Dell EMC to really provide open source based solutions in telecom markets, in, you know, when you take a look at telecom and it's moving from 3G to 4G to now 5G coming on, it's really going to be the applications and how those applications become scaled out versus just infrastructure becoming scaled out. So now the evolution of open stack and how Dell EMC contributes to it, we never really wanted to build our own ecosystem of open stack like some of our other competitors have done. We've always stood by Red Hat open stack based solutions to say hey, if they're number one in open stack markets and they're already tuning that, why can't we tune our infrastructure solutions the exact same way so that one plus one equals five for the customers, and it becomes much easier for them to deploy that. >> Great, so absolutely, you mentioned some of the telecoms. NFV was probably the most talked about use case for open stack at last year's summit. We've got the open stack summit here in Boston next week, we'll be covering it. Is that a top use case for your solution with Red Hat, what are the real business drivers for people doing open stack, is it just private cloud solutions that they offer that you said mentioned the open source, people are still trying to figure out where this open stack fits compared to some of the other options that they have. >> Stu, what I'm finding, and you and I have had these discussions several times across the stack of server storage networking and others, the largest cost associated with deploying or consuming IT is really your OPEX cost. So if you envision for a second a pie chart and you look at a customer spend, a capital spend, about 25% of that is CAPEX oriented, which is how much you pay for infrastructure or software. About 75% of that is OPEX oriented, which is your human cost of managing it, your serviceability and others. The whole idea about us talking about this Dell EMC ready bundle solution that we're taking to market, so we announced yesterday our opportunity to really go out and simplify all of this for customers, for cloud solutions, or for their NFV or NFVI solutions, as we're seeing NFVI-- >> And for our audience that doesn't know NFVI, what's the differentiation there? >> Our opportunity to take network function virtualization, then taking VNF capabilities, and then also making sure that we're virtualizing a lot of those aspects on NFVI so that our customers are driving service provider opportunities to then containerize these opportunities as part of open shift and others. And we feel that our differentiation at Dell EMC really, then, ends up becoming our tested validated offerings so that customers don't really have to worry about the infrastructure layer, or even the software layer for that matter, and we can just give them a platform that I was referring to earlier. So that ready bundle for open stack that we have offered, and I will be taking about it in my keynote today, that whole ready bundle at Dell EMC solution has been validated, tested. It's got not just reference architectures, but deployment guides, run books. But we've also taken it one step forward, we actually internally called it jetstream. And the whole idea of jetstream internal codename was, if you guys are familiar with jetstreams around the world, and you catch one of those jetstreams, they usually go from west to east. And if you go from Boston to London, you can get there pretty quickly if you hit one of those because it's 160 miles an hour. That's why we selected the name jetstream. And the whole idea is if you actually imagine if you put a concord in that jetstream, you can actually do that trip now in three hours, or you could've done it in concords around at the time. So if we can actually create that concord-like style of a ready bundle solution that is running open stack platform, we can not only get the customers to deploy much faster and reduce their OPEX, but there's a tooling that's required. So for example, the customer wants to deploy an open stack solution. We actually created a jetpack, jetstream, jetpack, and the whole idea of a jetpack is very quickly us providing sizing tools and deployment tools for customers so that they can get to their destination very, very fast. >> And how fast are we talking here? >> So we're talking, I'll actually have a customer, East Carolina University, on stage with me. Something that would take three weeks, they've got it done in three days using this jetpack solution. So us creating these ready bundles and deploying open stack much faster, either for cloud environments or environments for NFV and eventually for NFVI. And then we're also working with our Dell EMC code group, which is now looking at containerization solutions as well. So that's sort of the differentiations that we're talking about. >> And Armughan, I know, we're really good usually at quantifying that kind of deployment, that shrinking months to days or days to hours, that operational efficiency though, once it's in there, do you have any metrics or cost savings that your customers in general are seeing of rolling this out versus the old kind of putting it together themselves. >> Great question, Stu, so we all measured, Rebecca, you know this, you've written for HBR, which is really about ROI, TCOs for customers, what is your return on investment and your total cost of ownership. And really, what we're finding is that we can do this about 30% more effective. I'd love to say it's 80% more effective where we can take your OPEX down and others. But realistically, if you really look at East Carolina University or many of the other customers who are deploying this, they're seeing on average about 30% improvement in their operating costs. Now, it's not just related to cloud or it's not just related to NFV and NFVI. We're also seeing a huge use case of open stack now as part of high performance computing. So as high performance computing is evolving from traditional research and moving more into machine learning and AI frameworks, we're also seeing customers leverage open stack in that environment as well. >> and I wonder also, I mean, just talking about the difficulties with calculating ROI, but talking about how it's having this big impact on high performance computing, what about high performance teams, the people who are actually doing the work? >> Absolutely, and so talking about high performance team, right, the web tech, it started in Silicon Valley, now it's in Dublin, Ireland, or it's in China or all of these other places, they've really figured out, right, how do you drive efficiency. I mean, at Facebook, I think one server admin manages 50,000 physical servers or something like that. That's a scale out ways. >> And the thing we always say, it's that person's job is varied, it's not just that their doing three orders of magnitude more than the poor guy running around the data center, they've changed really how they focus on the application, and that job is very different. So they don't really even have server admins, they just have the number of head count that they need. >> The number of head count that's required. >> Hyperscale model, very different from what we have in the enterprise world. >> Absolutely, absolutely. But there are lessons to be learned from the hyperscale model. And if you can drive, I mean, according to IDC, one server admin manages about 40 physical servers, somewhere between 30 to 40 physical servers versus the number that I just shared with you, right, from these big web tech providers. So if we can even improve that to 100 or 1,000 to one admin. I think sys admins still should continue to exist even though this whole public cloud is coming in. But the rise of edge computing for us is also a big, big phenomenon. And we want to ensure that the rise of edge computing, Dell EMC is at the forefront of ensuring that we're providing analytic solutions to our customers. And a lot of the analytics are really happening at the edge 'cause you need to make those analytics decisions very quick 'cant really have a lot of latency back to public cloud for that. So our hybrid cloud solutions, working very closely with open stack to drop OPEX costs down, all of that really matters to customer right now. >> Armughan, I want to go back to something you talked about in the very beginning, which is this element of human progress. It's a professional and personal passion of yours to use technology for good, to solve some of the world's most complex problems, educating young women, working in developing countries, curing cancer. Talk a little bit about what you're doing. >> You know, Rebecca, that's a huge passion of not just mine, but Michael, and all of our executive leadership team at Dell EMC. We were talking earlier before this interview started, it's a passion of yours and Stu's. We all love to, as human beings, contribute to society. And human progress is really technologies impacting human progress in different ways. Right, if you talk about manufacturing jobs versus what automation is. But at the same time, technology is also helping in many different areas. So if you look at developing countries, now I'm personally involved in girls' education in third world countries where they're not prioritized, and what can technology do at schools to really get them to learn coding and get a differentiation out very, very quickly. But at the same time, our Dell initiatives, we call it the legacy for good. The Dell initiatives are really, not just about diversity and inclusion, it's also about improving the human progress. I'll give you an example. We have a great customer, T-Gen. And T-Gen is in the healthcare field and they drive genome sequencing solutions, so they have scientists who drive genome sequencing. Now, if you think about genome sequencing before technology, how long it would take somebody to sequence certain genomes for the purpose of cancer research, that would take you years. Now, if you can get that done in minutes, and that technology will learn, and then next time you do it, it would be even seconds for the same platform. So we actually developed a life sciences genome sequencing high performance computing cluster for this customer. And now they're able to very quickly help young girls and young kids improve their longevity with their cancer treatment that they're going through. So those are the things that really matter to our teams. And I know it matters to our customers and our partners. Because now we're not talking about just open stack or Dell EMC and our great number one in everything solutions we have. Those are fantastic, but how do you relate that social innovation, how do you relate that to human progress. To me, that is really the differentiation that we all collectively need to continue to drive and talk about this a little bit more. But we do need to find more connection points that we know that technology can help, but it's really those medical professionals and those researchers, they're really the brainiacs who use our technology, our opportunity as tech geeks, or I call myself a geek, at least, is how do we take that and then take that out to them and then real researchers can build their platforms on top of it to cure cancer. Or to go drive manufacturing jobs for social innovation purposes in middle America or around the world. That's the difference and those are the solutions that my team, along with many others at Dell EMC, along with our partners with Red Hat, we're focused on, we talk about that a lot. And Jim Witers talked about social innovation and how Red Hat is also making that a priority this morning in his keynote. >> Armughan, it sounds like your team is quite busy. And I know you've got your big event coming up next week, so you finish the keynote here, you'll be jetting our to Las Vegas. Rebecca, a big set of our Cube team will all be out in Vegas to cover the show. So give our audience a little bit of a preview of what you can about what we should expect for the new Dell EMC world as kind of taking together what EMC world has been doing for many years and Dell world in the past. >> You know, we're really excited, Stu, about Dell EMC world because this is the first time Dell world and EMC world comes together in Vegas. So we'll look forward to having you guys there. We have great speakers lined up, it's really focused for customers and technical audiences. We've got lots of partners there. But more importantly, we're showcasing all the solutions and the culmination of Dell EMC merger that has happened along with our Dell technologies group of companies like Pivotal along with VMWare along with Secureworks along with Virtustream. And how do we differentiate not just the Dell brand, which is our client computing group that we have, but also our Dell EMC, that's server storage networking, and then with VMWare and Pivotal and others. What you'll see is not just great keynotes, but some great speakers, great entertainment. I don't know if that's been released, I think it's been released. Gwen Stefani, I think she's-- >> Andy Grammar, and yeah, Gwen Stefani. >> Gwen Stefani, yeah, so that's going to be pretty cool, so we're excited about that. But the speakers that we have lined up on main stage along with, I'm more excited, I geek out, I'm a nerd, I love going into these technical breakouts where we've got lab equipment set up where people can actually get to enjoy and, I call it enjoyment, which is really geek out with understanding what are all of those solutions that we have, kind of, you know, put together. And those blueprint solutions, what are they. We have obviously, our server storage networking and data protection. But then how do you get into those labs and run some demos and proof of concepts, that makes it easy for the customers. So we're excited about that as you can see. >> Well, we're looking forward to it, we'll see you there. >> Yeah, we look forward to hosting you there. >> Armughan, thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you, my pleasure. >> This has been Rebecca Knight and Stu Miniman, we will return with more from Red Hat summit after this.

>> Narrator: Live from Austin, Texas, it's theCUBE, covering DockerCon 2017, brought to you by Docker and support from it's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, I'm Stu Miniman, we're here at DockerCon 2017 in beautiful Austin, Texas, had a great party down on Rainy Street last night, 5500 people and many of them, a good majority of them made it to keynote this morning, but we're checking in with a lot of guests here, happy to welcome onto the program. I've got a returning guest in a new role and I have a new guest, so both of you from Puppet, Deepak Giridharagopal, who's the CTO and Omari Gazitt, who's the Chief Product Officer. We caught up with you at a previous cloud role that you had had. Deepak, since it's your first time on the program, you've been with Puppet for awhile now, can you give our audience a little bit about your background and your role? >> Sure, so, I've, software guy, I've been programming forever, done a bunch of different start-ups, actually lived in Austin and was part of the Austin start-up scene for quite some time, so I went to school here. So, I've been here for maybe 15 years, something like that. >> Is that a Hook'em Horns or is that a? >> It's Hook'em Horns, yeah, absolutely. So, UT computer science and also, fellow Texan, not UT but from Rice so, there you go. >> That's right. >> Owl's are okay too. But yeah, I've been working here for awhile, previous start-up I was at did a lot of email archival and stuff like that, so I was an early engineer there. We ended up getting acquired by Dell, but that was during an era where we charged people based on storage, so the more we could store, the more money we could make, but that was really early on into how you use software to scale out a bunch of systems and things like that, so that's how I got involved with Puppet the project before I actually joined the company, so I ended up using a lot of that stuff to build out all the systems that we had, maintained a lot of relationships with the community, have a lot of patches inside of Puppet core, so eventually joined the company. So now I've been there for about six years, I'm CTO and Chief Architect, so I'm responsible for all the ones and zeros, I guess and overall technical strategy. >> Alright, so Omri, how long ago did you find Puppet and tell us about your role. >> Absolutely, seven weeks ago, so, you know, fresh, brand new but very excited about this new role, as Deepak said, I'm also a fellow Texan. I went to school at the cross-town rival, maybe the different city rival at Rice but, I don't think we've ever beat UT in football, maybe once. So, I don't even know what the Rice equivalent of Hook'em Horns is. I spent many years at bit companies like Microsoft where I helped start .NET and was really deeply involved in Azure as well as well as HP where I ended up being the General Manager and Vice President for the Helium platform. For that I did a number of start-ups, including one here in Texas, in Houston that ended up going public and the fun thing about coming back to Texas. The last time I was here was Open Stack Summit in Austin. It's always going to get great Tex Mex, so really enjoyed that last night as well. >> Alright, so Deepak, you've been with Puppet long enough that you know, there was no Docker in there. >> That's true. >> Containers did exist, can you walk us through, you have an architect role, how does containers impact your product and how your customers are using you? >> I mean, I think it's, there's a lot of interest, I think. There's almost, I don't think there's a single customer or really user that I go and talk to and I talk to a lot of them that are unaware of containerization. They know it's a thing. I do think though that a lot of them are trying to fit it into their brains and I think that's kind of the main role that we kind of play because the products that we build and all the projects that we have, the open source or commercial stuff, it's all about helping people automate, deploy, manage all the software that they've got, no matter what kind of software it is. So containerization to a lot of these folks, they come to us kind of asking, okay, well, I've heard a lot about it or I'm getting a lot of pressure from development teams to start deploying stuff using it, how do we adopt that kind of technology in a way that comports with all the rest of our practices for managing our software, which for a lot of customers, they're still in the process of evolving because a lot of the people we talk to, they come to us to kind of move from more of the older way of managing deploying and automating their stuff into more of a DevOps kind of mindset where rapid iteration, continuous delivery, so the technology is definitely a big part of it, the processes are also a big part of it, but ultimately I think they come to us saying, this is really cool, it seems very different than virtualization, you know, so how do we actually deal with that? How do we enforce security policies on all these things? How do we deploy it? Can we share code? How do we stand up the container infrastructure itself? I don't know anything about software defined networking, now I have to. How do I get that expertise and how do I configure that, manage it and the applications themselves that are containerized now, they're just architected and built, and in many cases, fundamentally different ways than software of previous generations and that requires a lot of uplift of the rest of an organization in order to make that stuff possible. So it's happening, but I think there's definitely a gulf between the, you know, kind of leading edge and a lot of the stuff that we've seen here in the keynotes today, which have been awesome, there's a ton of great stuff they've announced for systems builders and things like that. I can build custom kernels and all kinds of stuff, that's great, but there's a huge gulf between the leading edge tech like that and that tool chain and what I think most enterprises can fit into their heads. What they understand, what they have established practices around and you know, we have to meet in the middle. Obviously we can't bring all the new tech and make it snap to this line of how we used to do things, 'cause that's not going to work, but simultaneously, we can't just shift everybody over to doing absolutely everything brand new because they have this thing called paying customers and revenue generating software that's already running, so, how do you bridge that gap and that's where I view our role is, being that bridge to the future. >> Actually one of the things I liked in the keynote, they said it would be great if we just had this kind of easy button, that we do things but I think, as you said, you help customers take what they have, move them forward, help make it easier. You joined the company, why is it exciting at Puppet these days, how do things like containerization fit into your thoughts going forward? >> Absolutely, I'm super excited to be at the company. I've worked most of my career really serving the developer customer, the developer constinuency, and one of the things that I saw working in the container ecostystem over the last few years is that there really is a lot of excitement from development in organizations around effectively packaging microservices in a new way and the advantages here are real. There is a lot of acceleration that you get but the larger movement of DevOps is actually how you get that agility, that velocity, that Ben was talking about in his keynote today. There's only one mode and that is quick, right, and that resonated strongly with me because we saw, we saw that exactly in large companies like HP and obviously at Puppet now where, at the core of the value that we bring to our customers is helping them transform, helping them do things in a more cross-functional way, in a way where they can accelerate delivery from taking months to taking days or even hours and Puppet's point of view largely comes from the Ops part of DevOps and our customers are asking us, what's our role, what's our evolving role in this new world and that's exactly why it's so exciting to be part of a company that is actually bringing that unique point of view and most of our customers are asking, great, containers, now what? What about all the things that we have to worry about? What about security? What about compliance? What about reporting? What about kind of having visibility into my entire estate of things? That doesn't change just because you go from running things on bare metal to running things in VM's, with containers, we have another order of magnitude increase of the number of things you're managing and so, the management challenges just become larger and our job, the way that we see our job is to really help our customers transition, employ these accelerate technologies like Docker, like containerization, and the container platforms, but do it in a way that, make sure that these operators continue to be able to their jobs, to get the visibility and the control they need to make sure that they deliver on the Dev of the business as well. >> Yeah, I had an interesting conversation with Soloman Hikes earlier on theCUBE here and he said his background was actually on the operations side and when they built Docker it was the developers as their customer, want to throw it out to the both of you, is to kind of that, that developer operator and then kind of your enterprise buyer, how's that dynamic changing? We've watched the whole DevOps discussion for many years as to kind of, who do you sell to, who's actually got budget, who makes decisions? Is it some c-level management that said, oh, I read about this and do it or the developers bubbling things up? Where are things today, what are you seeing? >> Well, I definitely think the sort of, the era of, you have one of two really high level buyers that make all these decisions about everything is going to be architected. It's all going to be built in this way, it's all going to work in this way, this is how, operationally, it's going to work, security is going to be enforced this way mostly by just saying no to things, the way we make things stable in production is to say no to making changes. If IT of the late '90's was a political party or the 2000's was a political party, it would be no, we can't, which doesn't make any sense anymore. So I think in 2017, I view, especially with respect to containerization, I think the big change is around empowerment and I think the DevOps movement, in many ways is about fostering collaboration and empowerment, so you don't want to have a separate security function that just puts, I'm going to secure this application at the very end of the assembly line, that doesn't work, just like it never worked for quality assurance or anything like that. We'll make it work, we'll put QA in at the very end, ideally you want all of that baked in as early as possible and I think stuff like containers, I think the rise of containerization has enabled developers to feel more empowered over a large swath of the staff then they previously maybe had the ability to be. So, if you believe in the idea of a container as being the unit of delivery of software in the future, I mean, that's a pretty powerful abstraction. So if I'm a developer at my laptop, I could put all kinds of stuff into this black box and the power is, I have all the autonomy inside that box. I can do whatever I want with it and that's very empowering, that's a lot of responsibility. I think the flip side though and I think something that we learned as part of the DevOps movement as well is that it can just be about developer empowerment. It has to also be about operation empowerment. It has to be about security empowerment. If you think about it, I think there's a future, I hope this isn't the one that we actually get, but I think there's a future where, for example, all developers are building everything with containers are like great, I can put all the stuff I want in this black box and then, here you go, here you go operations team, here's this black box that you can do anything you want with it, I mean, that's kind of a 2017 tech version of throwing it over the wall, right, because the people with the pager still have to care about what's inside that black box and now, if you have a hundred development teams doing thousands of containers all the time, that's way more black boxes that you have to manage. So if you're an IT director or a CIO or something like that and you have to deal with your entire estate of stuff, that's a pretty gnarly problem and then you have to combine that with all the previous generations of software that you still have and you still have to maintain. So, I understand why our customers come to us a lot of times and ask us, is there a unified way that we can kind of model and manage all the stuff that we've got? How do we see inside a lot of these things that are opaque and they are black boxes so, I'm aiming more for a future where the containers uses that unit of delivery for software but it's used as a coordination point where it's not just developers putting whatever they want in a Docker file, it's developers and Op staff coordinating to figure out, how do we stitch these containers together into a proper application? How do we secure it? Does it meet all of our standards and things like that and that's pretty great. I'm very optimistic about that. That's a place I want to be in. >> I, just to amplify a little bit, it's great to be at a company where the users love the software. Our selling motion typically is a bunch of practitioners at a company really love using our software and then we get a call from the CIO saying, hey, we have thousands of nodes under management, we would like to have a deeper relationship with you, let's go have a conversation about that, so that's a fantastic validation of the value of the product as a tool of empowerment and I would say that, just to echo Deepak's point, it's all about end to end velocity. If you're just making the dev's go faster, you're not necessarily relieving the right bottlenecks and we've seen that, even in our own development. As I've come up to speed on how Puppet does things, some of the impressive pieces of focus really are on our own value steam, how the technology, value stream, in terms of how we get ideas to our customers. We always think about inserting operations folks, security folks, QA, development, product management, project management altogether and collaborating from the beginning of a project or beginning of a sprint and that, in effect, speeds up everything. Again, to echo Deepak's point, if you just make the life of the dev better or faster, you may not actually be solving for total velocity. >> Great point about why you guys are sticky, why your customers love you. Omri, I'm sure you've got great viewpoint, but Deepak, feel free to chime in, the cloud providers themselves, I look at the platforms out there. I mean Docker is a platform provider, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, others out there, some of your previous employers build platforms and they're trying to simplify and add automation and do this thing, why are you guys, is this a big opportunity for you guys, where do you guys become relevant or even more relevant as time goes on with these platforms? You want to start, Omri? >> Absolutely, so, the cloud is the big platform disruption of our time, in our industry and you're either going to ride it or get washed over by it and the most important thing that brought me to a company like Puppet is just this huge opportunity as our customers are moving to cloud platforms with more and more of their workloads, the ability to manage a more heterogeneous set of things becomes even more imperative, right? The more complexity you have, the more you need tools to help you manage through that complexity and so, as we see our customers start managing those in the cloud, our job is to make that friction free for them, so, make it as easy as possible to adopt Puppet in AWS of in Azure or in any of these cloud platforms and on top of that, I would say, we are also moving our entire portfolio to the cloud, to become cloud native. To deliver in a way that again, takes a lot of the burden off of our customer's hands because if you see the move to cloud, one of the most attractive pieces of it for enterprises is that they can give up some or perhaps most of even all of the operations burden to another vendor and that's an incredible kind of efficiency gainer for these enterprises. They don't want to run software anymore. Now, the vast majority of our customers still run software and not just our software, a whole bunch of other software, but their aspiration long term is to be able to hand some of that or maybe most of that management burden to their vendors and that's exactly the journey that we're also on, so that's why it's super exciting to be at a company that sees that opportunity, that vision and the expansion of market that gives us. >> I agree 100%. I think the big change for people that build applications or manage applications if they want to put them on the cloud is like at the amusement park, they have the sign where you have to be this tall to ride, if you want to have your stuff work in the cloud, you have to be this automated to ride. You just have to because otherwise there's no point, I mean, what's the point of putting your stuff on EC2 and I can elastically bring up a zillion instances of something if I have to provision them by hand or if I have to reconfigure them by hand. It just becomes a really expensive, absurdly expensive way to run a traditional workload that isn't ready for something like the cloud so that's way I'm really optimistic about our role and our customers are really, we have a huge amount of coordination and involvement with them trying to get them that automated so that they can take advantage of a lot of this technology. I also think that just the idea of being able to, for a lot of our customers and users, moving stuff onto the cloud itself, that's challenging. I don't think it's as easy. I know there are plenty of people that have tools that do these kinds of things but I just don't find it that easy to simply say, yep, you can just forklift your thing and now it's a cloud app. There's more stuff you've got to do and, in my mind, I think step one, if you have an app and if you have a workload and you want to move it to somewhere else, step one is you got to model what that workload actually looks, how that works. You have to have an understanding of how that's supposed to behave. That way, after you move it, ideally automation helps you move it, that's where our software comes in, but at a minimum, if you've got an understanding of how it worked before, now after you've transplanted it, you can actually validate it works the way that you want it to work. So I think automation is, it's non-negotiable. You have to have that and if you're not using a platform that lets you do that, then, I don't know, you're going to have a really hard time and unless you're planning on having all over infrastructure, 100% of your estate with a single vendor in the cloud, you're going to need a platform that works across everything that you've got, from your mainframe processing all your trillions of dollars of currency transactions or something like that, all the way to the app you built a year ago that you thought was oh current, maybe before you picked up a book on containers and the stuff that you're going to build tomorrow that's going to be cloud native and you don't want 18 different tools for 18 different vendors managing stuff in 18 different ways 'cause that's not really, I don't see that as a path to scaling out what you can do. >> Yeah, it reminds me of another quote that Ben used in a keynote is you need to be past and future proof, so yeah, we're going to have to leave it there, Deepak and Omri, thank you so much for joining us and thank you for watching theCUBE. >> Omri: Thanks. >> Deepak: Thank you very much. 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(techno music) >> Narrator: From Austin, Texas It's theCUBE, covering DockerCon 2017. Brought to you by Docker, and support from EnSync System Partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, I'm Stu Miniman, here with Jim Kobielus. Happy to welcome back to the program. Someone we've had on theCUBE many times, Ben Golub, who is the CEO of Docker. Welcome Back. Hey, congratulations to you and the team. >> Oh hey, thank you, and I'd like to say, this is our favorite time of year. Followed very closely by the week after DockerCon and we no longer have to do it. >> Absolutely, I mean, look, I'd say the word that stuck out for me the most this morning is, 'scaleability'. So, we talk about how customers are thinking about scaleability, how you scale the different solutions you have. And, look at the scale of an event like this. So, you know, we've got, you know, this big event here, 5,500 people ... Which we were reminiscing back to like the first DockerCon and the growth of this. It's impressive and it's done really well. I haven't seen people griping about taking an hour to check in, the food's been good ... You know, the lines haven't been. >> Ben: Yeah, good. >> And, Austin always a fun place to come, >> Absolutely. >> Apropos for all the open source stuff that's going on. >> Yeah, the only problem is, this is the first place where we've had a Docker conference, where we haven't been at a port. So, like all of these great, look at the containers ships outside, you know, we can no longer do that. But, that's okay. >> Uh, Vancouver would maybe be good. I remember actually, I did puns for an entire week when we were at Open Stack Summit in Vancouver. Overlooking the bay there cause there is container ships everywhere. >> Ben: Is that right? >> So Ben, you know please just bring us up to speed ... Kind of you, the team, we've gone through a lot of the announcements but, so some of the highlights for it. >> Yeah, I mean, I mean obviously this morning we had a lot of fantastic announcements. We talked about Lenox Kit. We talked about Mobi. You saw, just huge improvements in the developer flow. Tomorrow is going to be a lot about enterprise. For me, that's really the most exciting change that we've seen over the past year. It's just an explosion of Docker and the enterprise. You know, Docker has brought on over 400 enterprise class customers. Some of the largest names uh, really in the industry right? And, some of them like, MetLife and VISA and Intuit, will be talking live tomorrow. Um, and what's been especially interesting for us is that, the use of Docker is not just for Greenfield projects. Um, Docker's being used to keep planes in the air, keep trains running on time, and it's being used in the largest, some of the largest financial transactions, handling, you know, millions and millions of transactions a day, right? And, that's really exciting for us, it's also very humbling. >> All those used cases you throw out, it's Docker cover lots of applications, from a wide variety of things. It reminds of what we've see. >> Right, right. A lot of them are, you know, they're 15 three year old applications as well as, you know, two minute old applications. >> Yeah, and it's something we've been picking at is how much is it the new stuff, and how much is it the platform, that can bring some of the older stuff in. And, then we look at how we change it over time. I think it's something we've been struggling with, kind of, whole cloud and app, you know, modernization, for years now. >> Yeah, well I think it's really good. I think, um, that there's this sort of, there's this fallacy, that sort of persisted for a while, where people thought, okay, you know if you're going to have BiModal IT, there's going to be the new cool stuff down in the containers running the cloud, and then all that old stuff is just going to wither and die in some dark data center somewhere. >> Yeah, right. >> It doesn't match what we hear. >> That's absolutely not the case actually, you know. If we look across our customer base, you know, about 50% of them are beginning their Docker journey with their traditional apps. Now that's not where it ends. But, you know, if you think about it just by taking 80% or 90% of the apps out there, our traditional applications run in, you know, traditional infrastructure. And, just by taking a traditional application, you put it inside of a Docker container, you know, automatically you're getting, without changing a single line of code, something between 75% and 5X better resource utilization. You're able to do simple things like, upgrade your data base, or move from an old machine to a new machine, or old data center to a new data center. Again, without changing a single line of code. But, then the magic starts. >> Right? Then you start taking that traditional application, and treating it in a more modern way. CICD, gradually breaking it down into smaller and smaller bits, and that's the way it goes. >> So, You know, some of has struggled. We said, remember back to virtualization. Virtualization has the easy low hanging fruit of, oh, I can consolidate. I can get great utilization. %I can save a lot of money. I think you did a good job laying out. You know, in your last statement there. But, it's not as simple, you know? When it gets bubbled up to the customers, you know, the board, the sea level, when they're doing this. What is it they're like? What's the initiative they're running? Cause, it's not ... Nobody says, oh I have a container problem. >> Ben: Uh, right, right, we fix it. >> What is that business need, you know, that you're helping to, you're helping them to itch? >> Well, it's something all they need to, they need to be more efficient. They need to be faster, right? >> And, Docker helps you do that if you're running brand spanking new applications. >> Yeah, but she loves that. We talked about that for a while. >> It's agility. But, you know, part of agility is also making sure that your existing applications don't weigh you down, right? And, and that they actually support your business gradually going forward. >> Yeah. And, I mean, one of the things, one of the things that excited me about containers in the early days, is ... I'm an infrastructure guy, and, infrastructure has always held us back. and, the atomic, you know, you know, containers bring the applications really as the atomic note. yIt's not the server or their VM. It's the app, or you know, the 12 factor, you know, app there so. So if the app's driving it, not that infrastructure matters, but, it's not the thing driving it. >> Right, well the ... by focusing on the app, we actually let people choose the infrastructure that they want, or migrate from, you know one style of infrastructure to another style, over time. Uh, what it also though means is, if you're focusing on the app, or on the container, then how do you think about security, and how do you think about networking, and how you think about compliance? Uh, all of those things need a refresh. But, the good news is &once you do that refresh, it's actually much faster, and much more efficient. >> Alright, So you know John Furrier wouldn't let this interview come without, you know popping in. So, he is just sending me a note, and he said, "What is the intersection between the cloud native, and the app developers, that you're seeing?" >> Uh, the internet intersection between the cloud native ... >> Cloud native and app developers. >> Um, you know, I think that developers want to build really cool stuff. And, if they build a cloud native, that's fantastic. Um, if they want to build it, not being cloud native, that's very cool too, right? We're seeing this whole generation of, of developers who, you know, may have been working in Java for the past 15 years, or working in, ah, dot net. Um, They're able to do really, really cool things. Um, With Docker, uh, and it actually helps bring them into the cloud native space. But, you don't have to rewrite an amazing application, just because of your architecture, your infrastructure is changing. >> Yeah, you can wrap and refactor, and migrate your existing applications at the pace that you wish. Uh, rather than being forcibly upgraded or migrated. >> That's right, that's right. You also don't need to know what cloud you're going to be running on four years from now. Or, what infrastructure you're going to be running on, or, what your apps going to be able to do, right? Um, you know, this stuff happens organically with Docker. And, that's really part of the beauty of it. >> You know you are developing for the multi-cloud. In other words, the cloud you're on today, and the clouds you might be on tomorrow, and a flexible or graceful transition. And, you know, it's really cloud churn over time you're going to be on a variety of clouds, and you just want to make sure your applications, and your data and all your assets are easily migrate-able. >> Yeah, I think you stated that really well, and I think especially as people start looking into, you know, applications where they want to burst, or applications that are sort of big data where they want to, you know, be moving the application to the data rather than the date to the applications, right? Um, it needs to be multi-cloud because actually, or multi-location, right? Um, and we're happy to help with that. >> Um, so, we've watched the maturity of the technology, and the growth of the system. I mean, I think a lot of us were really happy. Eco system, I mean, you know, Soloman did a great job of highlighting that. To be honest, some of the swarm stuff, with Docker data center last year, felt like ... >> Felt like we were fighting, yeah. >> It felt like a little bit of fighting, and it feels like we're healing, and we're coming together, and, we're growing that. So, maybe speak on that a little bit. But, the follow up question I have for you on kind of the business is, I think we're still pretty early in the modernization strategy for this. And, I think it's good for people to realize that. That, you know, all of this stuff doesn't happen over night. It's amazing to see how far it's come, you know, In just four years of the company. Um, but, you know, I'll let you riff on those two things. >> Yeah, yeah, I mean, so I'll start with the first one, which is, um, you know, fighting within the eco system. You know, there's this sort of this saying that, you know, people hate people of a slightly different sect, more than they hate pagans, right? (laughing) so I think sometimes within, within like the open source community, oh, you take a slightly different approach towards orchestration than I would of taken, therefore, we should be enemies. And, then suddenly you take a step back and say, "now wait a minute, we're all trying to do the same thing. Build great apps and make the world, uh, enable people to build great things, Right?" And, I think as Solomon laid out today, right? Orchestration, container run time, security, networking, various slavers of the security. These are all things, that actually should be really atomic, and we should be able to all collaborate on them. So, you're seeing a lot more of that. Cause also what we're seeing is in terms of modernization you know, modernization isn't a single, isn't driven by a single factor. It's not driven by orchestration, or it's not driven by networking. It's really, what we're seeing more and more is that it's being driven by the supply chain. And it's how do I as an enterprise, with lots of developers building lots of different types of apps. Some are old, some are new, some are Lenix, some are Windows, some are running on Prim, some are running in the cloud. How do I manage that supply chain, and have it be secure no matter where it's going? And, that's where we're able to add a lot of value. What we're finding as a business, to get to your point. Is that we'll meet the customer wherever they want to start. Our business model, our subscription model, we charge based off of you know, nodes per year, or nodes per minute, if you really want to go there. And, we just let them gradually start using more and more and more. So we're actually very excited. Not only do we have, you know, 400 large customers, and you know, 10,000 smaller customers. But, we're seeing every customer is expanding, is renewing, and so customers who were on 40 nodes six months ago, are now on 400, 500, a 1,000 nodes. We have on 12,000 node customer, uh, and that's really good for our business model. >> Yeah, the other question from Furrier is, you know, what KPI's are you tracking this year? Are you talking, 400 enterprise customers, you look at, you know, the size of how many employees you have, you know. What are some of the growth drivers and levers that you guys are playing with this year? >> Yeah, it's honestly for us, the most important metrics that we're looking at is, is obviously number of new users, how that translates into number of new customers. You know, within the customers, how many nodes are they deploying on, and most importantly, how many more of them? >> What about your host, is that growing too? >> That's growing too, right, right? So, designated containers for host is growing. Ah, and for us, the KPI is okay. You know, how are those customers doing? How many of them are renewing? How many of them are expanding? Um, and for us, you know, I think that sort of brings it back to the customer level. We do a good job with the customers, especially with this subscription business model. I think that sort of forces you to, if you invest in the customer, they're going to invest in you. >> Yeah, um, speaking of money, we've got Cherry Chen coming on next. And, as far as you're saying, there's a lot of top VC's here. What do you see that, what's driving investment in this area? Um, you know, where are you guys with dollars? Anything you can you say on that? Just kind of the VC investment end. >> Okay, tell Furrier if he wants to ask difficult questions, you've got to be sitting here, otherwise ... (laughing) Um, uh, no, so, so, we're seeing ... >> He's shy, he can only talk through an intermediary. >> Yeah. I understand. John is not shy. >> Talk for yourself John. >> Um, we're very happy about what's happening with our modernization. We're seeing the top line growing much, much faster than the expanse line growing. I mean, if we want them to cross right at a certain point. But, it looks like that's going to happen pretty soon here. But, I think there's so much interest in this area, because this is really is much broader than a single application, right? I mean, yeah, you can go out and you can invest in some great sales companies, or, you know, some great open source application companies. But, you know, containerization and dockerization, right? It's really a c-chain, and it's impacting infrastructure, and it's impacting apps. It's impacting networking and storage, and also the other traditional areas, but I think in a really exciting way. >> Yeah, can you speak to the culture of Docker? I remember that first show in 2014, 42 employees. And, now you've got a little over 300. What is, you know, the prototype? What do you look for in a docker, an employee there, you know, what do you see this company being when you're a 1,000 employees? >> That's a really good question? >> How do you motivate them? What is the vision that they're all ... >> Well something like this. This is incredibly motivating. And, I honestly, um, for people at Docker, we look for all different types, sort of say, hey, we kind of like people who are type A personalities, and type B bodies, you know? (laughing) We're really excited, but are able to, you know, run at sprint pace for a marathon. Um, but honestly the things that keep us really, really motivated is, I say, if you're ever feeling down at Docker, go talk to users, go talk to customers, and that will get you excited. I spoke this morning about, ah, TGN, which is this non-profit genomics company. The fact that Docker has enabled them to sequence individual pages of genomes, so much faster, and diagnose them, and cure them faster. You know, you heard the story of the young girl who spent the first 12 years of her life in a wheel chair, barely able to talk. And, now because of things that Docker helped enable, she's out, she's living life like a typical teenager. Wants to become a genomics scientist when she grows up. Going to main stream school. I mean that, that's motivating. And, that helps to deal with the normal trough of oh, okay the code didn't work, we missed the ship date, whatever the case may be. >> Yeah, yeah, you didn't help advertising clicks. You know, you're helping to improve lives. And to that, I love that the show here, you've got some charitable events, that you're contributing to. Are there activities you guys are doing at corporate to help to drive, kind of, civic engagement? >> Um, you know, we do, but what we found is the best is when it comes from, from inside our employee base. Of course, our employee base would really love nothing more than going out, and talking to users, and to some extent we do have a lot of charitable things that we do. It's really exciting to have, 14 and 13 year olds who are using your technology. I mean, who would ever thought? I spent my entire life trying to have something that my kids would think is cool, and actually now, they think Docker is. >> How does it tie in with education? Are you guys helping to, you know, the next generation of active people? >> Absolutely, Docker is actually being used very broadly in computer science courses. Just because, that's basically how teachers want students to submit their, submit their projects to them, submit within the Docker container, right? Of course, we're thrilled that they're learning how to use Docker. It also means that students, they don't need to worry about making sure the student's laptops are set up correctly. They can focus on writing great code. So, yeah, we engage in education. We're doing some educational work with people in San Francisco. Just because that's our home base. And, we're really happy to support you know, three, actually four wonderful charities that are here at DockerCon today. You know, some servicing, LGBT youth, we've got one in the genomics space. Uh, one focused on teaching coding. Uh, and that just kind of ... That really helps to stay motivated. To stay motivated. >> It's a shame that you're not having any fun. >> You know, I'm having a ton of fun. I'm exhausted. I'll probably collapse in a corner. You know, come Friday. >> And as you said, your second favorite week of the year is this week, right? >> Absolutely, absolutely. >> Alright Ben, I want to give you the final word, you know, we've got another day, I'm sure you've got a ton of stuff in the announcements tomorrow. We're going to have Solomon on right after the key note tomorrow, but when people leave Austin, what do you want them to know about, you know, the Docker community and Docker the company? >> You know, I'd say that, you know, Docker is here, Docker is now, Docker is for old and for new, for on premise, and for cloud, for Lenix and for Windows. Docker is here for you, and however you want to use us, we're going to help you do amazing things faster. >> Alright, I think that's wonderful Cube gem to end this on, Ben Golub, CEO of Docker, always a pleasure to talk with you. Congratulations on the show. We are thrilled to be able to be here to cover it. >> Okay. >> And we'll back with one more guest here, on our day one of two days of live coverage, you're watching theCUBE. (techno music)