>>Welcome back to the Cube's exclusive coverage of the Dell Technology Summit. I'm Dave Ante. We're going inside with Dell Execs to extract the signal from the noise. And right now we're gonna dig into customer requirements in a data intensive world and how cross cloud complexities get resolved from a product development perspective and how the ecosystem fits in to that mosaic to close the gaps and accelerate innovation. And with me now as friend of the cube, Jeff Boudreau, he's the president of the Infrastructure Solutions Group, ISG at Dell Technologies. Jeff, always good to see you. Welcome. >>You too. Thank you for having me. It's great to see you. And thanks for having me back on the cube. I'm thrilled to be here. Yeah, >>It's our pleasure. Okay, so let's talk about what you're observing from customers today. You know, we talk all the time about operating in a data driven multi-cloud world, blah, blah, blah, blah. But what does that all mean to you when you have to translate that noise into products that solve specific customer problems, Jeff? >>Sure. Hey, great question. And everything always starts with our customers. They're our motivation, They're top of mind, everything we do. My leadership team and I spend a lot of time with our customers. We're listening, we're learning, we're really understanding their pain points, and we want to get their feedback in regards to our solutions, both turn and future offerings, really ensure that we're aligned to meeting their business objectives. I would say from these conversations, I'd say customers are telling us several things. First, it's all about data. So no surprise going back to your opening. And second, it's about the multi-cloud world. And I'd say the big thing coming from all of this is that both of those are driving a ton of complexity for our customers. And I'll unpack that just a bit, which is first the data. As we all know, data is growing at unprecedented rates with more than 90% of the world's data being produced in the last two years alone. >>And you can just think of that in its everywhere, right? And so as it is, the IT world shifts towards distributed compute to support that data growth and that data gravity to really extract more value from that data in real time environments become inherently more and more hybrid and more and more multi-cloud. Which leads me to the second key point that I've been hearing from our customers, which it's a multi-cloud world, not new news. Customers by default have multiple clouds running across multiple locations. That's OnPrem and off, it's running at the edge and it's serving a variety of different needs. Unfortunately, for most of our CU customers, multicloud actually added to their complexity. As we've discussed, it's been a lot more of multi-cloud by default versus multicloud by design. If you really think about our customers, I mean, I, I, I'm talking to 'EM all the time. >>You think about the data complexity, that's the growth and the gravity. You think about their infrastructure complexity shifting from central to decentralized it, you think about multi-cloud complexity. So you have these walled gardens, if you will. So you have multiple vendors and you have these multiple contracts that all creates operational complexity for their teams around their processes of their tools. And then you think about the security complexity that that drives with the, just the increased tax service and the list goes on. So what are we seeing for our customers? They, what they really want from, also what they're asking us for is simplicity, not complexity. The mediacy, not latency. They're asking for open and align versus I'd say siloed and closed. And they're looking for a lot more agility and not rigidity in what we do. So they really wanna simplify everything. They're looking for a simpler IT in a more agile it, and they want more control of their data, right? >>And so, and they want to extract more of the value to enrich their business or their customer engagements, which all sounds pretty obvious and we've probably all heard it a bunch, but it's really hard to achieve. And that's where I believe, and we believe as Dell, that we, it creates a big opportunity for us to really help our customers as that great simplifier of it. We're already doing this today. Just a couple quick examples. First is Salesforce. We've supported recently, we've supported their global expansion with a multi-cloud solution to help them drive their business growth. Our solution delivered a reliable and consistent IT experience will go back to that complexity. And it was across a very distributed environment, including more than 60 data centers, 230 countries in hundreds of thousands of customers. It really provided Salesforce with the flexibility of placing workloads and data in an environment based on the right service level. >>Objective things like cost complexity or even security compliance considerations. The second customer A is a big new knowing little Patriot fan. And Dan, Dave, I know you are as well. Oh yeah, this one's near, near and data to my heart, it's the craft group. We just created a platform to span all their businesses that created more, I'd say data driven, immersive, secure experience, which is allowing them to capture data at the edge and use it for real time insights for things like cyber resiliency, but also like safety of the facilities. And as being a PA patron fan like I am, did they truly are meeting us where we are in our seats on their mobile devices and also in the parking lot. So just keep that in mind next time you're there. The bottom line, everything we're doing is really to make it simpler for our customers and to help them get the most of their data. I'd say we're gonna do this, is it through a multi-cloud by design approach, which we've talked a lot about with you and and others at Dell Tech world earlier this >>Year, right? And we had Salesforce on, actually at Dell Tech Group. The craft group is interesting because, you know, when you get to the stadium, you know, everybody's trying to get, get, get out to the internet and, and, but then the experience is so much better if you can actually, you know, deal with that edge. So I wanna talk about complexity though. You got data, you got, you know, the, the edge, you got multiple clouds, you got a different operating model across security model, different. So a lot of times in this industry we solve complexity with more complexity and it's like a bandaid. So I wanna, I wanna talk to, to how you're innovating around simplicity in ISG to address this complexity and what this means for Dell's long term strategy. >>Sure, I'd love to. So first I, I'd like to state the obvious, which are our investments in our innovations really focused on advancing, you know, our, our our customers needs, right? So we are really, our investments are gonna be targeted. We, we believe customers can have the most value. And some of that's gonna be around how we create strategic partnerships as well. Connecting to what we just spoke about. Much of the complexity of customers have or experiencing is the orchestration and management of all the data in all these different places. And customers, you know, they must be able to quickly deploy and operate across cloud environments. They need to increase their developer productivity, really enabling those developers that do what they do best, which is creating more value for their customers than for their businesses. Our innovation efforts are really focused on addressing this by delivering an open and modern IT architecture that allows customers to run and manage any workload in any cloud anywhere. >>Data lives we're focused on, also focused on consumption based solutions, which allow for a greater degree of simplicity and flexibility, which they're really asking for as well. The foundation for this is our software defined common storage layer. That common storage layer, You can think about this, Dave, as our ias if you will. It underpins our data access in mobility across all data types of locations. So you can think private, public, telecom, colo, edge, and it's delivered in a secure, holistic, and consistent cloud experience through Apex. We are making a ton of progress to let you, just to be, just to be clear, we made headway in things like Project Alpine, which you're very well aware of. This is our storage as a service. We announced us back in in January, which brings our unique software IP from our flagship storage platform to all the major public clouds. >>Really delivering the best of both worlds, allowing our customers to take advantage of Dell's enterprise class data services and storage software, such as performance at scale, resiliency, efficiency and security. But in addition to that, we're leveraging the breadth of the public cloud services, right? They're on demand scaling capabilities and access to analytical services. So in addition, we're really, we're, we're on our way to win at the edge as well with Project Frontier, which reduces complexity at the edge by creating an open and secure software platform to help our customers simplify their edge operations, optimize their edge environments and investments, secure that edge environment as well. I believe you're gonna be discussing Project Frontier here with Sam Broco in the very near future. So I won't give up more, too many more details there. And lastly, we're also scaling Apex, which, you know, well shifting from our vision, really shifting from vision to reality and introducing several new Apex service offerings, which are coming to market over the next month or so. And the intent is really supporting our customers on there as a service transitions by modernize the con consumption experience and providing that flexible as a service model. Ultimately, we're trying to help our customers achieve that multi-cloud by design to really simplify it in a, unlock the power of their data. >>So some good examples there. I I like to talk about the super Cloud as you, you know, you're building on top of the, you know, hyperscale infrastructure and you got Apex is your cloud, the common storage layer, you call it your ISAs. And that's, that's a ingredient in what we call the super cloud out to the edge. You have to have a common platform there and one of the hallmarks of a cloud company. And as you become a cloud company, everybody's a cloud company ecosystem becomes really, really important in terms of product development and, and innovation. Matt Baker always loves to stress it's not a zero sum game. And, and I think Super Cloud recognizes that, that there's value to be built on top of other clouds and, and, and of course on top of your infrastructure so that your ecosystem can add value. So what role does the ecosystem play there? >>For me, it's, it's pretty clear. It's, it's, it's critical. I can't say that enough above the having an open ecosystem. Think about everything we just discussed, and I agree with your super cloud analogy. I agree with what Matt Baker had said to you, I would assert no one company can actually address all the pain points and all the issues and challenges that customers are having on their own, not one. I think customers really want and deserve an open technology ecosystem, one that works together. So not these close stacks that discourage this interoperability or stifles innovation and productivity of our, of each of our teams. We Dell, I guess, have a long history of supporting open ecosystems that really put customers first. And to be clear, we're gonna be at the center of the multi-cloud ecosystem and we're working with partners today to make that a reality. >>I mean, just think of what we're doing with VMware. We continue to build on our first investment alliances with them in August at their VMware explorer, which I know you were at. We announced several joint engineering initiatives to really help customers more easily manage and gain value from their data in their infrastructure. For multi-cloud specifically, we strength our relationship with VMware and know with Tansu as part of that. In addition, just a few weeks ago we announced our partnership with Red Hat to simplify our multicloud deployments for managing containerized workloads. I'd say, and using your analogy, I could think of that as our multicloud platform. So that's kind of our PAs layer, if you will. And as you're aware, we have a very longstanding and strategic partnership with Microsoft and I'd say stay tuned. There's a lot more to come with them and also others in this multi-cloud space. >>Shifting a bit to some of the growth engines that my team's responsible for the edge, right? As you think about data being everywhere, we've established partnerships for the Edge as well with folks like PTC and Litmus for the manufacturing edge, but also folks like Deep North for the retail edge analytics in data management, using your Supercloud analogy data, the sa right? This is our SAS layer. We've announced that we're collaborating, partnering with folks like Snowflake and, and there's other data management companies as well to really simplify data access and accelerate those data insights. And then given customers choice of where they'd like to have their IT and their infrastructure, we've we're expanding our colo partnerships as well with folks like Equinox and, and they're allowing us to broaden our availability of Apex, providing customers the flexibility to take advantage of those as a service offerings wherever it's delivered and where they can get the most value. So those are just some you can hear from me. I think it's critical not only for, for us, I think it's critical for our customers. I think it's been critical, critical for the entire, you know, industry as a whole to really have that open technology ecosystem as we work with our customers on our multi-cloud solutions really to meet their needs. We'll continue to collaborate with whoever customers choose and you know, and who they want us to do business with. So I'd say a lot more coming in that space. >>So it's been an interesting three years for you, just, just over three years now since you've been made the president of the IS isg. And so you had to dig in and it was obviously strange time around the world, but, but you really had to look at, okay, how do we modernize the platform? How do we make it, you know, cloud first? You've mentioned the Edge, we're expanding. So what are the big takeaways? What do you want customers and our audience to understand? Just some closing thoughts and if you could summarize. >>Sure. So I'd say first, you know, we discuss, we're working in a very fast paced, ever changing market with massive amounts of data that needs to be managed. It's very complex and our customers need help with that complexity. I believe that Dell Technologies is uniquely positioned to help as their multi-cloud champion. No one else can solve the breadth and depth of the challenges like we can. And we're gonna help our customers move forward when they basically moving from a multi-cloud by default, as we've discussed before, to multicloud by design. And I'm really excited for the opportunity to work with our customers to help them expand that ecosystem as they truly realize the future of it and, and what they're trying to accomplish. >>Jeff, thanks so much. Really appreciate your time. Always a pleasure. Go pats and we'll see you on the blog. >>Thanks Dave. >>All right, you're watching Exclusive Inside Insights from Dell Technology Summit on the cube, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage.

>>As we said in our analysis of Dell's future, the transformation of Dell into Dell emc and now Dell Technologies has been one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the technology industry. After years of successfully integrated EMC and becoming VMware's number one distribution channel, the metamorphosis of Dell com culminated in the spin out of VMware from Dell and a massive wealth creation milestone pending, of course the Broadcom acquisition of VMware. So where's that leave Dell and what does the future look like for this technology powerhouse? Hello and welcome to the Cube's exclusive coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. My name is Dave Ante and I'll be hosting the program today In conjunction with the Dell Tech Summit. We'll hear from four of Dell's senior executives. Tom Sweet is the CFO of Dell Technologies. He's gonna share his views of the company's position and opportunities and answer the question, why is Dell good long term investment? >>Then we'll hear from Jeff Boudreau was the president of Dell's ISG business unit. He's gonna talk about the product angle and specifically how Dell is thinking about solving the multi-cloud challenge. And then Sam Grow Cot is the senior vice president of marketing's gonna come in the program and give us the update on Apex, which is Dell's as a service offering and a new edge platform called Project Frontier. By the way, it's also Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and we're gonna see if Sam has any stories there. And finally, for a company that's nearly 40 years old, Dell has some pretty forward thinking philosophies when it comes to its culture and workforce. And we're gonna speak with Jen Savira, who's Dell's chief Human Resource officer about hybrid work and how Dell is thinking about the future of work. We're gonna geek out all day and talk multi-cloud and edge and latency, but first, let's talk wallet. Tom Sweet cfo, and one of Dell's key business architects. Welcome back to the cube, >>Dave, it's good to see you and good to be back with you. So thanks for having me, Jay. >>Yeah, you bet. Tom. It's been a pretty incredible past 18 months. Not only the pandemic and all that craziness, but the VMware spin, you had to give up your gross margin binky as kidding, and, and of course the macro environment. I'm so sick of talking about the macro, but putting that aside for a moment, what's really remarkable is that for a company at your size, you've had some success at the top line, which I think surprised a lot of people. What are your reflections on the last 18 to 24 months? >>Well, Dave, it's been an incredible, not only last 18 months, but the whole transformation journey. If you think all the way back maybe to the LBO and forward from there, but, you know, stepping into the last 18 months, it's, you know, I, I think I remember talking with you and saying, Hey, you know, this scenario planning we did at the beginning of this pandemic journey was, you know, 30 different scenarios roughly, and none of which sort of panned out the way it actually did, which was a pretty incredible growth story as we think about how we helped customers, you know, drive workforce productivity, enabled their business model during the all remote work environment. That was the pandemic created. And couple that with the, you know, the, the rise then and the infrastructure spin as we got towards the tail end of the, of the pandemic coupled with, you know, the spin out of VMware, which culminated last November, as you know, as we completed that, which unlocked a pathway back to investment grade within unlocked, quite frankly shareholder value, capital allocation frameworks. It's really been a remarkable, you know, 18, 24 months. It's, it's never dull at Dell Technologies. Lemme put it that way. >>Well, well, I was impressed with you, Tom, before the leverage buyout and then what I've seen you guys navigate through is, is, is truly amazing. Well, let's talk about the challenging macro. I mean, I've been through a lot of downturns, but I've never seen anything quite like this with fed tightening and you're combating inflation, you got this recession looming, there's a bear market you got, but you got zero unemployment, you're rising wages, strong dollar, and it's very confusing. But it spending is, you know, it's somewhat softer, but it's still not bad. How are you seeing customers behave? How is Dell responding? >>Yeah, look, if you think about the markets we play in Dave, and we should start there as a grounding, you know, the, the total market, the core market that we think about is roughly 700 and, you know, 50 billion or so. If you think about our core IT services capability, you couple that with some of the, the growth initiatives that we're driving and the adjacent markets that that, that brings in, you're roughly talking a 1.4 to $1.5 trillion market opportunity, total addressable market. And so from from that perspective, we're extraordinarily bullish on where are we in the journey as we continue to grow and expand. You know, we have, we're number one share in just about every category that we plan, but yet when you look at that, you know, number one share in some of these, you know, our highest share position may be, you know, low thirties and maybe in the high end of storage you're at the upper end of thirties or 40%. >>But the opportunity there to continue to expand the core and, and continue to take share and outperform the market is truly extraordinary. So, so you step back and think about that, then you say, okay, what have we seen over the last number of months and quarters? It's been, you know, really great performance through the pandemic as, as you highlighted, we actually had a really strong first half of the year of our fiscal year 23 with revenue up 12% operating income up 12% for the first half. You know, what we talked about as you, if you might recall in our second quarter earnings, was the fact that we were starting to see softness. We had seen it in the consumer PC space, which is not a big area of focus for us in the sense of our, our total revenue stream, but we started to see commercial PC soften and we were starting to see server demand soften a bit and storage demand was, was holding quite frankly. >>And so we gave a a framework around guidance for the rest of the year as a, of what we were seeing. You know, the macro environment as you highlight it continues to be challenging. You know, if you look at inflation rates and the efforts by central banks across the globe to with through interest rate rise to press down and, and constrain growth and push down inflation, you couple that with supply chain challenges that continue principle, particularly in the ISG space. And then you couple that with the Ukraine war and the, and the energy crisis that that's created. And particularly in Europe, it's a pretty dynamic environment. And, but I'm confident, you know, I'm confident in the long term, but I do think that there is, you know, that there's navigation that we're going to have to do over the coming number of quarters, who knows quite how long, you know, to, to make sure the business is properly positioned and, you know, we've got a great portfolio and you're gonna talk to some of the team LA later on as you think your way through some of the solution capabilities we're driving what we're seeing around technology trends. >>So the opportunities there, there's some short term navigation that we're gonna need to do just to make sure that we address some of the, you know, some of the environmental things that we're seeing right >>Now. Yeah. And as a global company, of course you're converting local currencies back to appreciated dollars. That's, that's, that's another headwind. But as you say, I mean, that's math and you're navigating it. And again, I've seen a lot of downturns, but you know, the best companies not only weather the storm, but they invest in ways they that allow them to cut out, come out the other side stronger. So I wanna talk about that longer term opportunity, the relationship between the core, the the business growth. You mentioned the tam, I mean, even as a lower margin business, if, if you can penetrate that big of a tam, you could still throw off a lot of cash and you've got other levers to turn in potentially acquisitions and software. And, but so ultimately what gives you confidence in Dell's future? How should we think about Dell's future? >>Yeah, look, I, I think it comes down to we are extraordinarily excited about the opportunity over the long term digital transformation continues. I I am on numerous customer and CIO calls every week. Customers are continuing to invest in digital transformation and infrastructure to enable their business model. Yes, maybe it's gonna slow or, or pause or maybe they're not gonna invest quite at the same rate over the next number of quarters, but over the long term the needs are there. You look at what we're doing around the, the growth opportunities that we see, not only in our core space where we continue to invest, but also in the, what we call the strategic adjacencies. Things like 5G and modern telecom infrastructure as our, the telecom providers across the globe open up their, what a cl previous been closed ecosystems, you know, to open architecture. You think about, you know, what we're doing around the edge and the distribution now that we're seeing of compute and storage back to the edge given data gravity and latency matters. >>And so we're pretty bullish on the opportunity in front of us, you know, yes, we will and we're continuing to invest and you know, Jeff Boudreau talk about that I think later on in the program. So I'm excited about the opportunities and you look at our cash flow generation capability, you know, we are in, in, in normal times a, a cash flow generation machine and we'll continue to do so, You know, we've got a negative, you know, CCC in terms of, you know, how do we think about efficiency of working capital? And we look at our, you know, our capital allocation strategy, which has now returned, you know, somewhere in near 60% of our free cash flow back to shareholders. And so, you know, there's lots to, lots of reasons to think about why this, you know, we are a great sort of, I think value creation opportunity and a over the long term that the long term trends are with us, and I expect them to continue to be so, >>Yeah, and you guys, you, you, you do what you say you're gonna do. I mean, I said in my, in my other piece that I did recently, I think you guys put 46 billion on the, on the, on the balance sheet in terms of debt. That's down to I think 16 billion in the core, which that's quite remarking and that gives you some other opportunities. Give us your, your closing thoughts. I mean, you kind of just addressed why Dell is a good long term play, but I'll give you an opportunity to bring us home. >>Hey, Dave. Yeah, look, I, I just think if you look at the good, the market opportunity, the size and scale of Dell and how we think about the competitive advantages that we have, we com you know, if you look at, say we're a hundred billion revenue company, which we were a year, you know, last year, that as we reported roughly 60, 65 billion of that in the client, in in PC space, roughly, you know, 35 to 40 billion in the ISG or infrastructure space, those markets are gonna continue the opportunity to grow, share, grow at a premium to the market, drive, cash flow, drive, share gain is clearly there. You couple that with, you know, what we think the opportunity is in these adjacent markets, whether it's telecom, the edge, what we're thinking around data services, data management, you know, we, and you cut, you put that together with the long term trends around, you know, data creation and digital transformation. We are extraordinarily well positioned. We have the largest direct selling organization in in the technology space. We have the largest supply chain, our services footprint, you know, well positioned in my mind to take advantage of the opportunities as we move forward. >>Well Tom, really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us. Good to see you again. >>Nice seeing you. Thanks Dave. >>All right. You're watching the Cubes exclusive behind the scenes coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. In a moment, I'll be back with Jeff Boudreau. He's the president of Dell's ISG Infrastructure Solutions Group. He's responsible for all the important enterprise business at Dell, and we're excited to get his thoughts, keep it right there. >>Welcome back to the cube's exclusive coverage of the Dell Technology Summit. I'm Dave Ante and we're going inside with Dell execs to extract the signal from the noise. And right now we're gonna dig into customer requirements in a data intensive world and how cross cloud complexities get resolved from a product development perspective and how the ecosystem fits in to that mosaic to close the gaps and accelerate innovation. And with me now as friend of the cube, Jeff Boudreau, he's the president of the Infrastructure Solutions Group, ISG at Dell Technologies. Jeff, always good to see you. Welcome. >>You too. Thank you for having me. It's great to see you and thanks for having me back on the cube. I'm thrilled to be here. >>Yeah, it's our pleasure. Okay, so let's talk about what you're observing from customers today. You know, we talk all the time about operating in a data driven multi-cloud world, blah, blah, blah, blah. But what does that all mean to you when you have to translate that noise into products that solve specific customer problems, Jeff? >>Sure. Hey, great question. And everything always starts with our customers. There are motivation, they're top of mind, everything we do, my leadership team and I spend a lot of time with our customers. We're listening, we're learning, we're really understanding their pain points, and we wanna get their feedback in regards to our solutions, both turn and future offerings, really ensure that we're aligned to meeting their business objectives. I would say from these conversations, I'd say customers are telling us several things. First, it's all about data for no surprise going back to your opening. And second, it's about the multi-cloud world. And I'd say the big thing coming from all of this is that both of those are driving a ton of complexity for our customers. And I'll unpack that just a bit, which is first the data. As we all know, data is growing at unprecedented rates with more than 90% of the world's data being produced in the last two years alone. >>And you can just think of that in it's everywhere, right? And so as it as the IT world shifts towards distributed compute to support that data growth and that data gravity to really extract more value from that data in real time environments become inherently more and more hybrid and more and more multi-cloud. Which leads me to the second key point that I've been hearing from our customers, which it's a multi-cloud world, not new news. Customers by default have multiple clouds running across multiple locations that's on-prem and off-prem, it's running at the edge and it's serving a variety of different needs. Unfortunately, for most of our CU customers, multi-cloud is actually added to their complexity. As we've discussed. It's been a lot more of multi-cloud by default versus multi-cloud by design. And if you really think about our customers, I mean, I, I, I've talking to 'EM all the time, you think about the data complexity, that's the growth and the gravity. >>You think about their infrastructure complexity shifting from central to decentralized it, you think about multi-cloud complexity. So you have these walled gardens, if you will. So you have multiple vendors and you have these multiple contracts that all creates operational complexity for their teams around their processes of their tools. And then you think about security complexity that that dries with the, just the increased tax service and the list goes on. So what are we seeing for our customers? They, what they really want from us, and what they're asking us for is simplicity, not complexity. The immediacy, not latency. They're asking for open and aligned versus I'd say siloed and closed. And they're looking for a lot more agility and not rigidity in what we do. So they really wanna simplify everything. They're looking for a simpler IT and a more agile it. And they want more control of their data, right? >>And so, and they want to extract more of the value to enrich their business or their customer engagements, which all sounds pretty obvious and we've probably all heard it a bunch, but it's really hard to achieve. And that's where I believe, and we believe as Dell that we, it creates a big opportunity for us to really help our customers as that great simplifier of it. We're already doing this today on just a couple quick examples. First is Salesforce. We've supported recently, we've supported their global expansion with a multi-cloud solution to help them drive their business growth. Our solution delivered a reliable and consistent IT experience. We go back to that complexity and it was across a very distributed environment, including more than 60 data centers, 230 countries and hundreds of thousands of customers. It really provided Salesforce with the flexibility of placing workloads and data in an environment based on the right service level. >>Objective things like cost complexity or even security compliance considerations. The second customer A is a big New England Patriot fan. And Dan, Dave, I know you are as well. Oh yeah, this one's near, near data to my heart, it's the craft group. We just created a platform to span all the businesses that create more, I'd say data driven, immersive, secure experience, which is allowing them to capture data at the edge and use it for real time insights for things like cyber resiliency, but also like safety of the facilities. And as being a PA fan like I am, did they truly are meeting us where we are in our seats on their mobile devices and also in the parking lot. So just keep that in mind next time you're there. The bottom line, everything we're doing is really to make it simpler for our customers and to help them get the most of their data. I'd say we're gonna do this, is it through a multi-cloud by design approach, which we talked a lot about with you and and others at Dell Tech world earlier this year, >>Right? And we had Salesforce on, actually at Dell Tech group. The craft group is interesting because, you know, when you get to the stadium, you know, everybody's trying to get, get, get out to the internet and, and, but then the experience is so much better if you can actually, you know, deal with that edge. So I wanna talk about complexity though. You got data, you got, you know, the, the edge, you got multiple clouds, you got a different operating model across security model, different. So a lot of times in this industry we solve complexity with more complexity and it's like a bandaid. So I wanna, I wanna talk to, to how you're innovating around simplicity in ISG to address this complexity and what this means for Dell's long term strategy. >>Sure, I'd love to. So first I, I'd like to state the obvious, which are our investments in our innovations really focused on advancing, you know, our, our our customers needs, right? So we are really, our investments are gonna be targeted. We, we believe customers can have the most value. And some of that's gonna be around how we create strategic partnerships as well connected to what we just spoke about. Much of the complexity of customers have or experiencing is in the orchestration and management of all the data in all these different places and customers, you know, they must be able to quickly deploy and operate across cloud environments. They need to increase their developer productivity, really enabling those developers that do what they do best, which is creating more value for their customers than for their businesses. Our innovation efforts are really focused on addressing this by delivering an open and modern IT architecture that allows customers to run and manage any workload in any cloud anywhere. >>Data lives we're focused on, also focused on consumption based solutions, which allow for a greater degree of simplicity and flexibility, which they're really asking for as well. The foundation for this is our software to define common storage layer, that common storage layer. You can think about this Dave, as our ias if you will. It underpins our data access in mobility across all data types and locations. So you can think private, public, telecom, colo, edge, and it's delivered in a secure, holistic, and consistent cloud experience through Apex. We are making a ton of progress to let you just to be, just to be clear, we've made headway in things like Project Alpine, which you're very well aware of. This is our storage as a service. We announce this back in in January, which brings our unique software IP from our flagship storage platform to all the major public clouds. >>Really delivering the best of both worlds, allowing our customers to take advantage of Dell's enterprise class data services and storage software, such as performance at scale, resiliency, efficiency and security. But in addition to that, we're leveraging the breadth of the public cloud services, right? They're on demand scaling capabilities and access to analytical services. So in addition, we're really, we're, we're on our way to win at the edge as well with Project Frontier, which reduces complexity at the edge by creating an open and secure software platform to help our customers simplify their edge operations, optimize their edge environments and investments, secure that edge environment as well. I believe you're gonna be discussing Project Frontier here with Sam Gro Crop, the very near future. So I won't give up too many more details there. And lastly, we're also scaling Apex, which, oh, well, shifting from our vision, really shifting from vision to reality and introducing several new Apex service offerings, which are coming to market over the next month or so. And the intent is really supporting our customers on their as a service transitions by modernize the consumption experience and providing that flexible as a service model. Ultimately, we're trying to help our customers achieve that multi-cloud by design to really simplify it and unlock the power of their data. >>So some good examples there. I I like to talk about the super Cloud as you, you know, you're building on top of the, you know, hyperscale infrastructure and you got Apex is your cloud, the common storage layer, you call it your is. And that's, that's a ingredient in what we call the super cloud out to the edge. You have to have a common platform there and one of the hallmarks of a cloud company. And as you become a cloud company, everybody's a cloud company ecosystem becomes really, really important in terms of product development and, and innovation. Matt Baker always loves to stress it's not a zero zero sum game. And, and I think Super Cloud recognizes that, that there's value to be built on top of other clouds and, and, and of course on top of your infrastructure so that your ecosystem can add value. So what role does the ecosystem play there? >>For me, it's, it's pretty clear. It's, it's, it's critical. I can't say that enough above the having an open ecosystem. Think about everything we just discussed, and I agree with your super cloud analogy. I agree with what Matt Baker had said to you, I would certain no one company can actually address all the pain points and all the issues and challenges our customers are having on their own, not one. I think customers really want and deserve an open technology ecosystem, one that works together. So not these close stacks that discourages interoperability or stifles innovation and productivity of our, of each of our teams. We del I guess have a long history of supporting open ecosystems that really put customers first. And to be clear, we're gonna be at the center of the multi-cloud ecosystem and we're working with partners today to make that a reality. >>I mean, just think of what we're doing with VMware. We continue to build on our first and best alliances with them in August at their VMware explorer, which I know you were at, we announced several joint engineering initiatives to really help customers more easily manage and gain value from their data and their infrastructure. For multi-cloud specifically, we strength our relationship with VMware and with Tansu as part of that. In addition, just a few weeks ago we announced our partnership with Red Hat to simplify our multi-cloud deployments for managing containerized workloads. I'd say, and using your analogy, I could think of that as our multicloud platform. So that's kind of our PAs layer, if you will. And as you're aware, we have a very long standing and strategic partnership with Microsoft and I'd say stay tuned. There's a lot more to come with them and also others in this multicloud space. >>Shifting a bit to some of the growth engines that my team's responsible for the edge, right? As you think about data being everywhere, we've established partnerships for the Edge as well with folks like PTC and Litmus for the manufacturing edge, but also folks like Deep North for the retail edge analytics and data management. Using your Supercloud analogy, Dave the sa, right? This is our Sasa, we've announced that we're collaborating, partnering with folks like Snowflake and, and there's other data management companies as well to really simplify data access and accelerate those data insights. And then given customers choice of where they'd like to have their IT and their infrastructure, we've we're expanding our colo partnerships as well with folks like eex and, and they're allowing us to broaden our availability of Apex, providing customers the flexibility to take advantage of those as a service offerings wherever it's delivered and where they can get the most value. So those are just some you can hear from me. I think it's critical not only for, for us, I think it's critical for our customers. I think it's been critical, critical for the entire, you know, industry as a whole to really have that open technology ecosystem as we work with our customers on our multi-cloud solutions really to meet their needs. We'll continue to collaborate with whoever customers choose and you know, and who they want us to do business with. So I'd say a lot more coming in that space. >>So it's been an interesting three years for you, just, just over three years now since you've been made the president of the IS isg. And so you had to dig in and, and it was obviously a strange time around the world, but, but you really had to look at, okay, how do we modernize the platform? How do we make it, you know, cloud first, You've mentioned the edge, we're expanding. So what are the big takeaways? What do you want customers and our audience to understand? Just some closing thoughts and if you could summarize. >>Sure. So I'd say first, you know, we discussed we're working in a very fast paced, ever-changing market with massive amounts of data that needs to be managed. It's very complex and our customers need help with that complexity. I believe that Dell Technologies is uniquely positioned to help as their multicloud champion. No one else can solve the breadth and depth of the challenges like we can. And we're gonna help our customers move forward when they basically moving from a multi-cloud by default, as we've discussed before, to multicloud by design. And I'm really excited for the opportunity to work with our customers to help them expand that ecosystem as they truly realize the future of it and, and what they're trying to accomplish. >>Jeff, thanks so much. Really appreciate your time. Always a pleasure. Go pats and we'll see you on the blog. >>Thanks Dave. >>All right, you're watching exclusive insight insights from Dell Technology Summit on the cube, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage. >>Hello everyone, this is Dave Lanta and you're watching the Cubes coverage of the Dell Technology Summit 2022 with exclusive behind the scenes interviews featuring Dell executive perspectives. And right now we're gonna explore Apex, which is Dell's as a service offering Dell's multi-cloud and edge strategies and the momentum around those. And we have news around Project Frontier, which is Dell's vision for its edge platform. And there's so much happening here. And don't forget it's cyber security Awareness month. Sam Grot is here, he's the senior vice president of marketing at Dell Technologies. Sam, always great to see you. How you doing? >>Always great to be here, Dave. >>All right, let's look at cloud. Everybody's talking about cloud Apex, multi-cloud, what's the update? How's it going? Where's the innovation and focal points of the strategy? >>Yeah, yeah. Look Dave, if you think back over the course of this year, you've really heard, heard us pivot as a company and discussing more and more about how multi-cloud is becoming a reality for our customers today. And when we listen and talk with our customers, they really describe multi-cloud challenges and a few key threads. One, the complexity is growing very, very quickly. Two, they're having a harder time controlling how their users are accessing the various different clouds. And then of course, finally the cloud costs are growing unchecked as well. So we, we like to describe this phenomenon as multi-cloud by design. We're essentially, organizations are waking up and seeing cloud sprawl around their organization every day. And this is creating more and more of those challenges. So of course at Dell we've got a strong point of view that you don't need to build multicloud by by default, rather it's multicloud by design where you're very intentional in how you do multicloud. >>And how we deliver multicloud by design is through apex. Apex is our modern cloud and our modern consumption experience. So when you think about the innovation as well, Dave, like we've been on a pretty quick track record here in that, you know, the beginning of this year we introduced brand new Apex backup services that provides that SAS based backup service. We've introduced or announced project outline, which is bringing our storage software, intellectual property from on-prem and putting it and running it natively in the public cloud. We've also introduced new Apex cyber recovery services that is simplifying how customers protect against cyber attacks. They can run an Amazon Azure, aw, I'm sorry, Amazon, aws, Azure or Google. And then, you know, we are really focused on this multi-cloud ecosystem. We announce key partnerships with SaaS providers such as Snowflake, where you can now access our information or our data from on-prem through the Snow Snowflake cloud. >>Or if needed, we can actually move the data to the Snowflake cloud if required. So we're continuing to build out that ecosystem SaaS providers. And then finally I would say, you know, we made a big strategic announcement just recently with Red Hat, where we're not only delivering new Apex container services, but we announce the strategic partnership to build jointly engineered solutions to address hybrid and multi-cloud solutions going forward. You know, VMware is gonna always continue to be a key partner of ours at the la at the recent VMware explorer we announced new Tansu integration. So, So Dave, I, I think in a nutshell we've been innovating at a very, very fast pace. We think there is a better way to do multi-cloud and that's multi-cloud by design. >>Yeah, we heard that at Dell Technologies world. First time I had heard that multi-cloud by design versus sort of default, which is great Alpine, which is sort of our, what we called super cloud in the making. And then of course the ecosystem is critical for any cloud company. VMware of course, you know, top partner, but the Snowflake announcement was very interesting Red Hat. So seeing that expand, now let's go out to the edge. How's it going with the edge expansion? There's gotta be new speaking of ecosystem, the edge is like a whole different, you know, OT type, that's right, ecosystem, that's telcos what and what's this new frontier platform all about? >>Yeah, yeah. So we've talked a lot about cloud and multi clouds, we've talked about private and hybrid cloud, we've talked about public clouds, clouds and cos, telcos, et cetera. There's really been one key piece of our multi-cloud and technology strategy that we haven't spent a lot of time on. And that's the edge. And we do see that as that next frontier for our customers to really gain that competitive advantage that is created from their data and get closer to the point of creation where the data lives. And that's at the edge. We see the edge infrastructure space growing very, very quickly. We see upwards of 300% year of year growth in terms of amount of data being created at the edge. That's almost 3000 exabytes of data by 2026. So just incredible growth. And the edge is not really new for Dell. We've been at it for over 20 years of delivering edge solutions. >>81% of the Fortune 100 companies in the US use Dell solutions today at the Edge. And we are the number one OEM provider of Edge solutions with over 44,000 customers across over 40 industries and things like manufacturing, retail, edge healthcare, and more. So Dave, while we've been at it for a long time, we have such a, a deep understanding of how our customers are using Edge solutions. Say the bottom line is the game has gotta change. With that growth that we talked about, the new use cases that are emerging, we've got to un unlock this new frontier for customers to take advantage of the edge. And that's why we are announcing and revealing Project Frontier. And Project Frontier in its most simplest form, is a software platform that's gonna help customers and organizations really radically simplify their edge deployments by automating their edge operations. You know, with Project Frontier organizations are really gonna be able to manage, OP, and operate their edge infrastructure and applications securely, efficiently and at scale. >>Okay, so it is, first of all, I like the name, it is software, it's a software architecture. So presumably a lot of API capabilities. That's right. Integration's. Is there hardware involved? >>Yeah, so of course you'll run it on Dell infrastructure. We'll be able to do both infrastructure orchestration, orchestration through the platform, but as well as application orchestration. And you know, really there's, there's a handful of key drivers that have been really pushing our customers to take on and look at building a better way to do the edge with Project Frontier. And I think I would just highlight a handful of 'em, you know, freedom of choice. We definitely see this as an open ecosystem out there, even more so at the Edge than any other part of the IT stack. You know, being able to provide that freedom of choice for software applications or I O T frameworks, operational technology or OT for any of their edge use cases, that's really, really important. Another key area that we're helping to solve with Project Frontier is, you know, being able to expect zero trust security across all their edge applications from design to deployment, you know, and of course backed by an end and secure supply chain is really, really important to customers. >>And then getting that greater efficiency and reliability of operations with the centralized management through Project Frontier and Zero Touch deployments. You know, one of the biggest challenges, especially when you get out to the far, far reach of the frontier is really IT resources and being able to have the IT expertise and we built in an enormous amount of automation helps streamline the edge deployments where you might be deploying a single edge solution, which is highly unlikely or hundreds or thousands, which is becoming more and more likely. So Dave, we do think Project Frontier is the right edge platform for customers to build their edge applications on now and certain, excuse me, certainly, and into the future. >>Yeah. Sam, no truck rolls. I like it. And you, you mentioned, you mentioned Zero trust. So we have Mother's Day, we have Father's Day. The kids always ask When's kids' day? And we of course we say every day is kids' day and every day should be cybersecurity awareness day. So, but we have cybersecurity awareness month. What does it mean for Dell? What are you hearing from customers and, and how are you responding? >>Yeah, yeah. No, there isn't a more prevalent pop of mind conversation, whether it's the boardroom or the IT departments or every company is really have been forced to reckon with the cybersecurity and ransom secure issues out there. You know, every decision in IT department makes impacts your security profile. Those decisions can certainly, positively, hopefully impact it, but also can negatively impact it as well. So data security is, is really not a new area of focus for Dell. It's been an area that we've been focused on for a long time, but there are really three core elements to cyber security and data security as we go forward. The first is really setting the foundation of trust is really, really important across any IT system. And having the right supply chain and the right partner to partner with to deliver that is kind of the foundation in step one. >>Second, you need to of course go with technology that is trustworthy. It doesn't mean you are putting it together correctly. It means that you're essentially assembling the right piece parts together. That, that coexist together in the right way. You know, to truly change that landscape of the attackers out there that are gonna potentially create risk for your environment. We are definitely pushing and helping to embrace the zero trust principles and architectures that are out there. So finally, while when you think about security, it certainly is not absolute all correct. Security architectures assume that, you know, there are going to be challenges, there are going to be pain points, but you've gotta be able to plan for recovery. And I think that's the holistic approach that we're taking with Dell. >>Well, and I think too, it's obviously security is a complicated situation now with cloud you've got, you know, shared responsibility models, you've got that a multi-cloud, you've got that across clouds, you're asking developers to do more. So I think the, the key takeaway is as a security pro, I'm looking for my technology partner through their r and d and their, you mentioned supply chain processes to take that off my plate so I can go plug holes elsewhere. Okay, Sam, put a bow on Dell Technology Summit for us and give us your closing thoughts. >>Yeah, look, I I think we're at a transformative point in it. You know, customers are moving more and more quickly to multi-cloud environments. They're looking to consume it in different ways, such as as a service, a lot of customers edge is new and an untapped opportunity for them to get closer to their customers and to their data. And of course there's more and more cyber threats out there every day. You know, our customers when we talk with them, they really want simple, consistent infrastructure options that are built on an open ecosystem that allows them to accomplish their goals quickly and successfully. And look, I think at Dell we've got the right strategy, we've got the right portfolio, we are the trusted partner of choice, help them lead, lead their, their future transformations into the future. So Dave, look, I think it's, it's absolutely one of the most exciting times in it and I can't wait to see where it goes from here. >>Sam, always fun catching up with you. Appreciate your time. >>Thanks Dave. >>All right. A Dell tech world in Vegas this past year, one of the most interesting conversations I personally had was around hybrid work and the future of work and the protocols associated with that and the mindset of, you know, the younger generation. And that conversation was with Jen Savira and we're gonna speak to Jen about this and other people and culture topics. Keep it right there. You're watching the cube's exclusive coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. Okay, we're back with Jen Vera, who's the chief human resource officer of Dell, and we're gonna discuss people, culture and hybrid work and leadership in the post isolation economy. Jen, the conversations that we had at Dell Tech World this past May around the new work environment were some of the most interesting and engaging that I had personally. So I'm really eager to, to get the update. It's great to see you again. Thanks for coming on the cube. >>Thanks for having me Dave. There's been a lot of change in just a short amount of time, so I'm excited to, to share some of our learnings >>With you. I, I mean, I bet there has, I mean, post pandemic companies, they're trying, everybody's trying to figure out the return to work and, and what it looks like. You know, last May there was really a theme of flexibility, but depending, we talked about, well, millennial or not young old, and it's just really was mixed, but, so how have you approached the topic? What, what are your policies? What's changed since we last talked? You know, what's working, you know, what's still being worked? What would you recommend to other companies to over to you? >>Yeah, well, you know, this isn't a topic that's necessarily new to Dell technology. So we've been doing hybrid before. Hybrid was a thing. So for over a decade we've been doing what we called connected workplace. So we have kind of a, a history and we have some great learnings from that. Although things did change for the entire world. You know, March of 2020, we went from kind of this hybrid to everybody being remote for a while. But what we wanted to do is, we're such a data driven company, there's so many headlines out there, you know, about all these things that people think could happen will happen, but there wasn't a lot of data behind it. So we took a step back and we asked our team members, How do you think we're doing? And we asked very kind of strong language because we've been doing this for a while. >>We asked them, Do you think we're leading in the world of hybrid in 86% of our team members said that we were, which is great, but we always know there's nuance right behind that macro level. So we, we asked 'em a lot of different questions and we just went on this kind of myth busting journey and we decided to test some of those things. We're hearing about Culture Willow Road or new team members will have trouble being connected or millennials will be different. And we really just collected a lot of data, asked our team members what their experience is. And what we have found is really, you don't have to be together in the office all the time to have a strong culture, a sense of connection, to be productive and to have it really healthy business. >>Well, I like that you were data driven around it in the data business here. So, but, but there is a lot of debate around your culture and how it suffers in a hybrid environment, how remote workers won't get, you know, promoted. And so I'm curious, you know, and I've, and I've seen some like-minded companies like Dell say, Hey, we, we want you guys to work the way you wanna work. But then they've, I've seen them adjust and say, Well yeah, but we also want you to know in the office be so we can collaborate a little bit more. So what are you seeing at Dell and, and, and how do you maintain that cultural advantage that you're alluding to in this kind of strange, new ever changing world? >>Yeah, well I think, look, one approach doesn't fit all. So I don't think that the approach that works for Dell Technologies isn't necessarily the approach that works for every company. It works with our strategy and culture. It is really important that we listen to our team members and that we support them through this journey. You know, they tell us time and time again, one of the most special things about our culture is that we provide flexibility and choice. So we're not a mandate culture. We really want to make sure that our team members know that we want them to be their best and do their best. And not every individual role has the same requirements. Not every individual person has the same needs. And so we really wanna meet them where they are so that they can be productive. They feel connected to the team and to the company and engaged and inspired. >>So, you know, for, for us, it really does make sense to go forward with this. And so we haven't, we haven't taken a step back. We've been doing hybrid, we'll continue to do hybrid, but just like if you, you know, we talk about not being a mandate. I think the companies that say nobody will come in or you have to come in three days a week, all of that feels more limiting. And so what we really say is, work out with your team, work out with your role, workout with your leader, what really makes the most sense to drive things forward. >>I >>You were, so >>That's what we, you were talking before about myths and you know, I wanna talk about team member performance cuz there's a lot of people believe that if, if you're not in the office, you have disadvantages, people in the office have the advantage cuz they get FaceTime. Is is that a myth? You know, is there some truth to that? What, what do you think about that? >>Well, for us, you know, we look, again, we just looked at the data. So we said we don't wanna create a have and have not culture that you're talking about. We really wanna have an inclusive culture. We wanna be outcome driven, we're meritocracy. But we went and we looked at the data. So pre pandemic, we looked at things like performance, we looked at rewards and recognition, we looked at attrition rates, we looked at sentiment, Do you feel like your leader is inspiring? And we found no meaningful differences in any of that or in engagement between those who worked fully remote, fully in the office or some combination between. So our data would bust that myth and say, it doesn't, you don't have to be in an office and be seen to get ahead. We have equitable opportunity. Now, having said that, you always have to be watching that data. And that's something that we'll continue to do and make sure that we are creating equal opportunity regardless of where you work. >>And it's personal too, I think, I think some people can be really productive at home. I happen to be one that I'm way more productive in the office cause the dogs aren't barking. I have less distractions. And so I think we think, and, and I think the takeaway that in just in talking to, to, to you Jen and, and folks at Dell is, you know, whatever works for you, we're we're gonna, we're gonna support. So I I wanted to switch gears a little bit, talk about leadership and, and very specifically empathic leadership has been said to be, have a big impact on attracting talent, retaining talent, but, but it's hard to have empathy sometimes. And I know I saw some stats in a recent Dell study. It was like two thirds the people felt like their organization underestimates the people requirements. And I, I ask myself, I'm like, what am I missing? I hope, you know, with our folks, so especially as it relates to, to transformation programs. So how can human resource practitioners support business leaders generally, specifically as it relates to leading with empathy? >>I think empathy's always been important. You have to develop trust. You can have the best strategy in the world, right? But if you don't feel like your leader understands who you are, appreciates the the value that you bring to the company, then you're not gonna get very far. So I think empathetic leadership has always been part of the foundation of a trusting, strong relationship between a leader and a team member. But if I think we look back on the last two years, and I imagine it'll be even more so as we go forward, empathetic leadership will be even more important. There's so much going on in the world, politically, socially, economically, that taking that time to say you want your team members to see you as credible, that you and confident that you can take us forward, but also that, you know, and understand me as a human being. >>And that to me is really what it's about. And I think with regard to transformation that you brought up, I think one of the things we forget about is leaders. We've probably been thinking about a decision or transformation for months or weeks and we're ready to go execute, we're ready to go operationalize that thing. And so sometimes when we get to that point, because we've been talking about it for so long, we send out the email, we have the all hands and we just say we're ready to go. But our team members haven't always been on that journey for those months that we have. And so I think that empathetic moment to say, Okay, not everybody is on a change curve where I am. Let's take a pause, let me put myself in their shoes and really think about how we bring everybody along. >>You know, Jen, in the spirit of myth busting, I mean I'm one of those people who felt like that a business is gonna have a hard time, harder time fostering this culture of collaboration and innovation post isolation economy as they, they could pre covid. But you know, I noticed there's a, there's an announcement today that came across my desk, I think it's from Newsweek. Yes. And, and it's the list of top hundred companies recognized for employee motivation satisfaction. And it was really interesting because you, you always see, oh, we're the top 10 or the top hundred, But this says as a survey of 1.4 million employees from companies ranging from 50 to 10,000 employees. And it recognizes the companies that put respect, caring, and appreciation for their employees at the center of their business model. And they doing so have earned the loyalty and respect of the people who work for them. >>Number one on the list is Dell sap. So congratulations SAP was number two. I mean, there really isn't any other tech company on there, certainly no large tech companies on there. So I always see these lists, they go, Yeah, okay, that's cool, top a hundred, whatever. But top one in, in, in an industry where there's only two in the top is, is pretty impressive. And how does that relate to fostering my earlier skepticism of a culture of collaboration? So first of all, congratulations, you know, how'd you do it? And how are you succeeding in, in this new world? >>Well thanks. It does feel great to be number one, but you know, it doesn't happen by accident. And I think while most companies have a, a culture and a spouse values, we have ours called the culture code. But it's really been very important to us that it's not just a poster on the wall or or words on paper. And so we embed our culture code into all of our HR practices, that whole ecosystem from recognition of rewards to performance evaluation, to interviewing, to development. We build it into everything. So it really reflects who we are and you experience it every day. And then to make sure that we're not, you know, fooling ourselves, we ask all of our employees, do you feel like the behaviors you see and the experience you have every day reflects the culture code? And 94% of our team members say that, in fact it does. So I think that that's really been kind of the secret to our success. If you, if you listen to Michael Dell, he'll always say, you know, the most special thing about Dell is our culture and our people. And that comes through being very thoughtful and deliberate to preserve and protect and continue to focus on our culture. >>Don't you think too that repetition and, well first of all, belief in that cultural philosophy is, is important. And then kind of repeating, like you said, Yeah, it's not just a poster in the wall, but I remember like, you know, when we're kids, your parents tell you, okay, power positive thinking, do one to others as others, you know, you have others do it to you. Don't make the say you're gonna do some dumb things but don't do the same dumb things twice and you sort of fluff it up. But then as you mature you say, Wow, actually those were, >>They might have had a >>Were instilled in me and now I'm bringing them forward and, you know, paying it forward. But, but so i, it, it, my, I guess my, my point is, and it's kind of a point observation, but I'll turn it into a question, is isn't isn't consistency and belief in your values really, really important? >>I couldn't agree with you more, right? I think that's one of those things that we talk about it all the time and as an HR professional, you know, it's not the HR people just talking about our culture, it's our business leaders, it's our ceo, it's our COOs ev, it's our partners. We share our culture code with our partners and our vendors and our suppliers and, and everybody, this is important. We say when you interact with anybody at Dell Technologies, you should expect that this is the experience that you're gonna get. And so it is something that we talk about that we embed in, into everything that we do. And I think it's, it's really important that you don't just think it's a one and done cuz that's not how things really, really work >>Well. And it's a culture of respect, you know, high performance, high expectations, accountability at having followed the company and worked with the company for many, many years. You always respect the dignity of your partners and your people. So really appreciate your time Jen. Again, congratulations on being number one. >>Thank you so much. >>You're very welcome. Okay. You've been watching a special presentation of the cube inside Dell Technology Summit 2022. Remember, these episodes are all available on demand@thecube.net and you can check out s silicon angle.com for all the news and analysis. And don't forget to check out wikibon.com each week for a new episode of breaking analysis. This is Dave Valante, thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.

>>Welcome back to the Cube's exclusive coverage of the Dell Technology Summit. I'm Dave Ante. We're going inside with Dell Execs to extract the signal from the noise. And right now we're gonna dig into customer requirements in a data intensive world and how cross cloud complexities get resolved from a product development perspective and how the ecosystem fits in to that mosaic to close the gaps and accelerate innovation. And with me now is friend of the Cube, Jeff Boudreau. He's the president of the Infrastructure Solutions Group, ISG at Dell Technologies. Jeff, always good to see you. Welcome. >>You too. Thank you for having me. It's great to see you and thanks for having me back on the key. I'm thrilled to be here. >>Yeah, it's our pleasure. Okay, so let's talk about what you're observing from customers today. You know, we talk all the time about operating in a data driven multi-cloud world, blah, blah, blah, blah. But what does that all mean to you when you have to translate that noise into products that solve specific customer problems, Jeff? >>Sure. Hey, great question. And everything always starts with our customers. They're our motivation. They're top of mind in everything we do. My leadership team and I spend a lot of time with our customers. We're listening, we're learning, we're really understanding their pain points, and we wanna get their feedback in regards to our solutions. Both turn and future offerings really ensured that we're aligned to meeting their business objectives. I would say from these conversations, I'd say customers are telling us several things. First, it's all about data for no surprise going back to your opening. And second, it's about the multi-cloud world. And I'd say the big thing coming from all of this is that both of those is driving a ton of complexity for our customers. And I'll unpack that just a bit, which is first the data. As we all know, data is growing at unprecedented rates with more than 90% of the world's data being produced in the last two years alone. >>And you can just think of that in its everywhere, right? And so as it is, the IT world shifts towards distributed compute to support that data growth and that data gravity to really extract more value from that data in real time environments become inherently more and more hybrid and more and more multi-cloud. Which leads me to the second key point that I've been hearing from our customers, which it's a multi-cloud world, not new news. Customers by default have multiple clouds running across multiple locations. That's on-prem and off, it's running at the edge and it's serving a variety of different needs. Unfortunately, for most of our CU customers, multicloud actually added to their complexity. As we've discussed, it's been a lot more of multicloud by default versus multicloud by design. Really think about customers, I I, I'm talking to 'EM all the time. You think about the data complexity, that's the growth in the graph. >>You think about their infrastructure complexity, shifting from central to decentralized it, you think of a multi-cloud complexity. So you have these walled gardens, if you will. So you have multiple vendors and you have these multiple contracts that all creates operational complexity for their teams around their processes of their tools. And then you think about the security complexity that that drives with the, just the increased tax service and the list goes on. So what are we seeing for our customers? They, what they really want from, also what they're asking us for is simplicity, not complexity. The immediacy, not latency. They're asking for open and align versus I'd say siloed and closed. And they're looking for a lot more agility and not rigidity in what we do. So they really wanna simplify everything. They're looking for a simpler IT in a more agile it, and they want more control of their data, right? >>And so, and they want to extract more of the value to enrich their business or their customer engagements, which all sounds pretty obvious and we've probably all heard it a bunch, but it's really hard to achieve. And that's where I believe, and we believe as Dell that we, it creates a big opportunity for us to really help our customers as that great simplifier of it. We're already doing this today on just a couple quick examples. First is Salesforce. We've supported recently, we've supported their global expansion with a multi-cloud solution to help them drive their business growth. Our solution delivered a reliable and consistent IT experience. We go back to that complexity and it was across a very distributed environment, including more than 60 data centers, 230 countries in hundreds of thousands of customers. It really provided Salesforce with the flexibility of placing workloads and data in an environment based on the right service level. >>Objective things like cost complexity or even security compliance considerations. The second customer A is a big New England Patriot fan. And Dan, Dave, I know you are as well. Oh yeah, this one's near, near data, my heart, it's the craft group. We just created a platform to span all their businesses that created more, I'd say data driven, immersive, secure experience, which is allowing them to capture data at the edge and use it for realtime insights for things like cyber resiliency, but also like safety of the facilities. And as being a pare fan like I am Dave, they truly are meeting us where we are in, in our seats on their mobile devices and also in the parking lot. So just keep that in mind next time you're there. But bottom line, everything we're doing is really to make it simpler for our customers and to help them get the most of their data. I'd say we're gonna do this, is it through a multi-cloud by design approach, which we talked a lot about with you and and others at Dell Tech world earlier this year, >>Right? And we had Salesforce on, actually at Dell Tech Group. The craft group is interesting because, you know, when you get to the stadium, you know, everybody's trying to get, get, get out to the internet and, and, but then the experience is so much better if you can actually, you know, deal with that edge. So I wanna talk about complexity though. You got data, you got, you know, the, the edge, you got multiple clouds, you got a different operating model across security models, different. So a lot of times in this industry we solve complexity with more complexity and it's like a bandaid. So I wanna, I wanna talk to, to how you're innovating around simplicity in ISG to address this complexity and what this means for Dell's long term strategy. >>Sure, I'd love to. So first I, I'd like to state the obvious, which are our investments in our innovations really focused on advancing, you know, our, our our customers needs, right? So we are really, our investments are gonna be targeted. We, we believe customers can have the most value. And some of that's gonna be around how we create strategic partnerships as well connected to what we just spoke about. Much of the complexity of customers have or experiencing is in the orchestration and management of all the data in all these different places and customers, you know, they must be able to quickly deploy and operate across cloud environments. They need to increase their developer productivity, really enabling those developers that do what they do best, which is creating more value for their customers than for their businesses. Our innovation efforts are really focused on addressing this by delivering an open and modern IT architecture that allows customers to run and manage any workload in any cloud anywhere. >>Data lives we're focused on, also focused on consumption based solutions, which allow for a greater degree of simplicity and flexibility, which they're really asking for as well. The foundation for this is our software defined common storage layer. That common storage layer, You can think about this, Dave, as our ias if you will. It underpins our data access in mobility across all data types of locations. So you can think private, public, telecom, colo, edge, and it's delivered in a secure, holistic, and consistent cloud experience through Apex. We are making a ton of progress to let you, just to be, just to be clear, we made headway in things like Project Alpine, which you're very well aware of. This is our storage as a service. We announce us back in, in January, which brings our unique software IP from our flagship storage platform to all the major public clouds, really delivering the best of both world, allowing our customers to take advantage of Dell's enterprise class data services and storage software, such as performance at scale, resiliency, efficiency and security. >>But in addition to that, we're leveraging the breadth of the public cloud services, right? They're on demand scaling capabilities and access to analytical services. So in addition, we're really, we're on our way to win at the edge as well with Project Frontier, which reduces complexity at the edge by creating an open and secure software platform to help our customers simplify their edge operations, optimize their edge environments and investments, secure that edge environment as well. I believe you're gonna be discussing Cru in Frontier here with Sam Broco in the very near future. So I won't give up more, too many more details there. And lastly, we're also scaling Apex, which, you know, well shifting from our vision, really shifting from vision to reality and introducing several new Apex service offerings, which are coming to market over the next month or so. And the intent is really supporting our customers on their as a service transitions by modernize the consumption experience and providing that flexible as a service model. Ultimately, we're trying to help our customers achieve that multicloud by design to really simplify it and unlock the power of their data. >>So some good examples there. I I like to talk about the super Cloud as you, you know, you're building on top of the, you know, hyperscale infrastructure and you got Apex is your cloud, the common storage layer, you call it your ISAs. And that's, that's a ingredient in what we call the super cloud out to the edge. You have to have a common platform there and one of the hallmarks of a cloud company. And as you become a cloud company, everybody's a cloud company ecosystem becomes really, really important in terms of product development and, and innovation. Matt Baker always loves to stress it's not a zero sum game. And, and I think Super Cloud recognizes that, that there's value to be built on top of other clouds and, and, and of course on top of your infrastructure so that your ecosystem can add value. So what role does the ecosystem play there? >>For me, it's, it's pretty clear. It's, it's, it's critical. I can't say that enough above the having an open ecosystem. Think about everything we just discussed, and I agree with your super cloud analogy. I agree with what Matt Baker had said to you, I would certain no one company can actually address all the pain points and all the issues and challenges our customers are having on their own. Not one. I think customers really want and deserve an open technology ecosystem, one that works together. So not these close stacks that discourages interoperability or stifles innovation and productivity of each of our teams. We del I guess, have a long history of supporting open ecosystems that really put customers first. And to be clear, we're gonna be at the center of the multi-cloud ecosystem and we're working with partners today to make that a reality. I mean, just think of what we're doing with VMware. >>We continue to build on our first and best alliances with them in August at their VMware explorer, which I know you were at. We announced several joint engineering initiatives to really help customers more easily manage and gain value from their data and their infrastructure. For multi-cloud. Specifically, we strength our relationship with VMware and know with Tansu as part of that. In addition, just a few weeks ago we announced our partnership with Red Hat to simplify our multicloud deployments for managing containerized workloads. I'd say, and using your analogy, I could think of that as our multicloud platform. So that's kind of our PAs layer, if you will. And as you're aware, we have a very long standing and strategic partnership with Microsoft and I'd say stay tuned. There's a lot more to come with them and also others in this multi-cloud space. Shifting a bit to some of the growth engines that my team's responsible for the edge, right? >>As you think about data being everywhere, we've established partnerships for the Edge as well with folks like PTC and Litmus for the manufacturing edge, but also folks like Deep North for the retail edge analytics in data management, using your Supercloud analogy, Dave the sa, right? This is our SAS layer. We've announced that we're collaborating, partnering with folks like Snowflake and, and there's other data management companies as well to really simplify data access and accelerate those data insights. And then given customers choice of where they'd like to have their IT and their infrastructure, we've we're expanding our colo partnerships as well with folks like Equinox and, and they're allowing us to broaden our availability of Apex, providing customers the flexibility, take advantage of those as a service offerings wherever it's delivered and where they can get the most value. So those are just some you can hear from me. I think it's critical not only for, for us, I think it's critical for our customers. I think it's been critical, critical for the entire, you know, industry as a whole to really have that open technology ecosystem as we work with our customers on our multi-cloud solutions really to meet their needs. We'll continue to collaborate with whoever customers choose and you know, and who they want us to do business with. So I'd say a lot more coming in that space. >>So it's been an interesting three years for you, just, just over three years now since you've been made the president of the I isg. And so you had to dig in and it was obviously strange time around the world, but, but you really had to look at, okay, how do we mo modernize the platform? How do we make it, you know, cloud first? You've mentioned the edge, we're expanding. So what are the big takeaways? What do you want customers and our audience to understand? Just some closing thoughts and if you could summarize. >>Sure. So I'd say first, you know, we've discussed, we're working in a very fast paced, ever changing market with massive amounts of data that needs to be managed. It's very complex and our customers need help with that complexity. I believe that Dell Technologies is uniquely positioned to help as their multi-cloud champion. No one else can solve the breadth and depth of the challenges like we can. And we're gonna help our customers move forward when they basically moving from a multicloud by default, as we've discussed before, to multicloud by design. And I'm really excited for the opportunity to work with our customers to help them expand that ecosystem as they truly realize the future of it and, and what they're trying to accomplish. >>Jeff, thanks so much. Really appreciate your time. Always a pleasure. Go pats and we'll see you on the blog. >>Thanks Dave. >>All right, you're watching exclusive insights from Dell Technology Summit on the cube, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage.

>>Welcome back to Falcon 2022. This is Dave LAN. We get a special presentation segment for you today. This is Walter Wall day one of day two's cube coverage, JC Herrera. Here's my designated cohost. Who's the chief human resource officer at CrowdStrike. Craig Neri is to my left. He's the beneficiary and the beneficiary trustee and ambassador of, of operation Motorsport and former us air force. Thank you for your service. Thank you. And Deel Lauder, who is CEO and co-founder of operation Motorsport. Jen, welcome to the cube. Thanks so much for coming on. Great to be JC set this up for us. Explain your role, explain the corporate giving the whole student connection and the veterans take us through that. >>Yeah, sure. Yeah. So as, as head of HR, one of the, one of the things that we do is, is help manage part of the corporate giving strategy. And, and one of those things that, that we love to do is to also invest in students and in our veterans, it's just a part of our giving program. So this partnership with operation Motorsport is really critical to that. And if you want to dive a little bit deeper into that, we just see that there's a gigantic skills gap in cyber security. And so when we, when there's over millions of open roles around the world and 700,000 of 'em in the us alone, we've gotta go close that gap. And so our next gen scholarships that come out of the, that are giving funds are, are awarded to students who are studying cyber security or AI. And the other side of that is that this partnership with operation motor sport, then we get the opportunity to do some internships with veterans through operation motor sport as well, the >>Number 700,000 now, but pre pandemic. I remember number 3 50, 300 50,000. It's it's doubled now just in the us. Amazing. All right, diesel, tell us about the mission of operation motor sport, like who are the beneficiaries let's get into it. >>So operation motor sport engages ill, injured, wounded service members, those that are medically retiring from the service or disabled veterans, these individuals be taken out of their units. They lose their team identity, their purpose. And, and what we do is those that apply to the program and have a desire to work around shiny objects and fast cars and all the great smells or just car guys or gals that we have some of those as well. They, we, we bring them onto the teams as beneficiaries. So embed them into a race team and give them opportunity to find something new. We're a recovery program. We're not about, you know, finding jobs for these folks. It's about networking and getting outta that, you know, outta the dark places where some of them end up going, because this is a, a huge change for them. And, and in doing so, we now expose them to crowd strike. You know, that's, that's one of the new relationships that, that we have where potentially if they want to, they can pursue new opportunities in areas like cyber security. >>And they're chosen through an application process. You're I'm, I'm inferring. >>Yeah. They just go online and say, you know, through word of mouth or through a friend or through the, the USO and other organizations, they go online and they click the apply here and they fill it out. And our beneficiary trustee, Craig, and calls 'em up and says, Hey, tell me about what you're looking for. And, and we, we pair them up with the race team and Craig, >>You're also a, a beneficiary in addition to being the beneficiary trustee. So explain that, what's your story? >>Right. So I started in this organization as a beneficiary. I was the one that hit the button on the website. And, and then a few minutes later, I got a phone call from then Tiffany Lader, diesel's wife, who's our executive director in the organization. And, and I had that same conversation that I now have with beneficiaries today. I did a, I did a full season with them last year in 2021 as a beneficiary. But at the end I realized how big of an impact that this has with folks. Transition can be very difficult, especially if they're ill injured or wounded. And so I asked if I could help if I could give back, cuz it meant such it had such a big impact on me. I'd like to, to help other veterans as well. Can I >>Ask you what made you hit that button? What made you apply? >>That's a great question. So I was one of the very fortunate ones that had a transition coach. I was in the military for 29 years and had a lot of great connections in the military and, and was connected to a coach, a transition coach and just exploring, you know, what that, what that would look like. And she was the one who said, Hey, why don't we, why don't we explore this passion of Motorsports that you have? My family had been going to, to Motorsports events for, you know, 50 years. And so, so I thought back, all right, this is, I like this idea. Let's, let's pursue this. So a quick Google search and operation Motorsport popped up and I hit the button and >>What programs are available in operation >>Motorsport? Yeah. So diesel kind of outline outlined it. We have basically three different programs. We have the, our immersion program, which is exactly what diesel described, where we take that veteran. And we actually immerse them in a race team. They're doing the, exactly what I was doing, doing tires and fuel and whatever the team needs them to do. We also have our emo sports program where folks who can't do the immersion program, immersion program is takes a pretty big time commitment sometimes. And so they just don't have the capacity or abilities to be able to do those. We could put 'em in our emo sports program where they can do it all virtually we're actually, we have a season going on right now where we, we have veterans racing in that emo sports program. And then we have a, a diversionary therapy program where we have a, a Patriot car corral set up at all these tracks. So they can go out with like-minded individuals and spend the day out there with those folks, other veterans. And we do pit pit tours and, and we get 'em out on the track for a little bit of a, you know, highway speeds, nothing ridiculous. But we, we did doing some highway speeds. So we have a, a few, few different ways for them to be >>Involved. So, so the number three is like a splash in the pond, whereas number ones, the, to like full immersion. Right? Correct. And so what are you doing in the full immersion? What is, what is that like? I mean, you're literally changing tires and, and, and you're >>Yeah. You name it. You're >>In the you're you're you're in that sort of sphere of battle, if you will. Right. >>The beauty of this is we could take somebody's capabilities and skill set and we can match it to whatever that looks like on a race team. Some people come in and have no experience whatsoever. And so we find a team that needs, you know, that has a development opportunities where they could come in, their, their initial job might be to fuel fuel cans or, you know, take tires off the car, wipe the car down, it's little things in the beginning. And then slowly as they start to grow and learn, then they take on bigger roles. But we also have different positions. They can be immersed in, in teams, but they can also be immersed in the series. So we have folks that are doing like tech inspections. We have folks that are doing race control up in the, up in the tower, directing race operations. So we have lots of opportunities, tons of potential. We, we foster those relationships and take the folks, whatever their capabilities and, and abilities are and find the right position for >>'em think, thinking about your personal experience, how, how did it, how would you say it affected you? >>Yeah. To understand that you really have to understand military transition. And I think that's where a lot of the folks that have never experienced this really struggle transition from the military is really difficult. And it's really difficult, even if you're, if you're not broken or you don't have some kind of illness or injury, but you add that factor into at the same time and it could be extremely difficult. And that's why we see like the 22, a day suicide rates with veterans, it's very, very high. Right? And so when you, when you come into this program, it, it is a little bit of a leap of faith, right? This is very new experience for somebody, right? For somebody like myself who had 29 years of experience in the military, very senior person in the military. And now you're at the bottom of the totem pole and trying to figure it all out again, it's, it's a, it's a big jump. But what you realize really quickly is a lot of the things that you experience in the military, you experience in that Pata, same exact things, lots of small team environment, lots of diversity, lots of challenges, lots of roadblocks ups downs, you, you deploy just like you would deploy in, in the military, you bring the cars to a track, you execute a mission, then you pack it up and bring it home. So it's, there's so many similarities in >>The process. I mean, yeah. Diesel hearing Craig explained that there are the similarities sound very clear, but, but, but how did how'd you come up with this idea? It makes sense now in retrospect, but somebody just said, Hey, you know, we have this and we have this and we can marry him or no, not >>Really. And it it's a funny story because I always said, I, I, I don't believe in reinventing the wheel, I believe in stealing the car. And so there's a sister organization that we have in the UK called mission Motorsport. And, and, and they invented this five years before we did. And, and they were successful. And I was, you know, through, through friendships and opportunities, I got to witness it in, in 2016. So went over to, to Wales in the UK and, and watched it in action. And we were there for one race weekend, race of remembrance, which is where we go back to, we'll be going back to November, taking 13 beneficiaries over to race in our own race team for a 12 hour race. And that's a whole other story, but that's where it all started. You know, we, we saw the opportunities and said, wow, they're changing lives through recovery, you know, through motor sport and the similarities and what they were achieving. >>Our initial goal was let's just come back and do this again next year, because we need to bring north American transitioning members over to, to witness this and take part. And then fast forward, we said, why stop there? And we stood up an organization. Now I'll tell you that the organization is not what it was, the, the initial vision. This is not where, I mean, I never imagine that we get to this point this day, especially with the announcement this morning, you know, with the partnership with CrowdStrike, it it's huge for us, but we've evolved into something that was very similar to the initial vision. And that was helping, helping medically transitioning service members with their own personal struggles and recovery. You know, the reason we call it operation Motorsport is because operations have no beginning and no end and our, and what we do makes us so different in that we're not a one and done, we take care of these guys. Even when they become alumni, they, they still come back. They, they come back to volunteer, they come back to check in their friends and, and all kinds. It's really, really neat. And, >>And JC of course, CrowdStrike has an affinity for Motorsports, right? You got the logo on the Mercedes. You you've got the safety car at, this is, I think it's called the safety car. Right. That's it? Yeah. So, okay. So that's an obvious connection, but, but where did the idea germinate for this partnership? >>There's so many things, but first and foremost, I think that the, the values of CrowdStrike and those of operation motors were very much aligned. If you think about it, we, we focus a lot on teamwork. There's no way we do these jobs without the teamwork part. We all love data. These guys are all in the data all the time, trying to figure out, you know, what your adversaries are doing. So there's that kind of component to it. And I'd say the last bit is critical thinking. So when we think about our organizations and how well aligned they are, that was a, that was a no brainer. And into the other side of it, we get the opportunity to do mentorship programs. I mean, I think both ways, hopefully I get invited to the Patriot corral. At some point I can go, go work on a car, but we'll do those both ways or mentorship opportunities. If folks from operation motor sport win a team up with a crowd striker. So >>Do you ever get to drive the car? Or is that just an awful question? No, that's >>A good question. Actually I do from the, from the track to the pits, very slow >>Speeds. They don't let you out in the train. That's right. No, I don't get to go out on the track. Diesel, you ever, you ever drive one >>Of these? I, I, I I've been on, on the track on, on different cars, not in the race cars that, that, that, that are on the team, but something that's unique in the Patriot corral, for instance, because JC brought that up is that when we do these Patriot corrals, part of that program at lunchtime is, is taking the individuals and doing parade laps. And now, you know, a parade lap. Well, what's the fun in that, but you drive highway speeds on a racetrack and your own personal car, following a pace car. That's a pretty cool experience. Cool. >>Yeah, that's very cool guys. Congratulations on this program and all your success and all the, the giving that you do for the community and, and your peers really appreciate you guys coming on the cube and telling me great story. Thanks >>For having, thanks for the opportunity. You're very >>Welcome. All right. Keep it right there. Everybody. Dave ante and Dave Nicholson, we'll be back from Falcon 2022 at the area in Las Vegas. You watching the cube.

>> Welcome back to FalCon 2022. This is Dave Vellante. We get a special presentation segment for you today. This is Walter Wall day one of day two's cube coverage. JC Herrera is here, he's my designated cohost. He's the chief human resource officer at CrowdStrike. Craig Neri is to my left. He's the beneficiary and the beneficiary trustee and ambassador of, of operation Motorsport and former US air force. Thank you for your service. >> Thank you. >> And Diezel Lodder, who is CEO and co-founder of operation Motorsport. Gents, welcome to the cube. Thanks so much for coming on. >> Thank you, Great to be here >> JC, set this up for us. Explain your role, explain the corporate giving, the whole student connection, and the veterans, take us through that. >> Yeah, sure. Yeah, so as, as head of HR, one of the one of the things that we do is, is help manage part of the corporate giving strategy. And, and one of those things that, that we love to do is to also invest in students and in our veterans, it's just a part of our giving program. So this partnership with operation Motorsport is really critical to that. And if you want to dive a little bit deeper into that we just see that there's a gigantic skills gap in cybersecurity. And so when we, when there's over millions of open roles around the world and 700,000 of them in the us alone, we've got to go close that gap. And so our next gen scholarships that come out of the, are giving funds are, are awarded to students who are studying cyber security or AI. And the other side of that, is that this partnership with operation Motorsport then, we get the opportunity to do some internships with veterans through operation Motorsport as well. >> The number is 700,000 now, but pre pandemic I remember number 350, 350,000. It's, it's doubled now just in the US, amazing. All right, diezel, tell us about the mission of operation Motorsport like who are the beneficiaries let's get into it. >> So operation Motorsport engages ill, injured wounded service members, those that are medically retiring from the service or disabled veterans these individuals will be taken out of their units. They lose their team identity, their purpose. And, and what we do is those that apply to the program and have a desire to work around shiny objects and fast cars and all the great smells or just car guys or gals that we have some of those as well. They, we, we bring them onto the teams as beneficiaries. So embed them into a race team and give them opportunity to find something new. We're a recovery program. We're not about, you know, finding jobs for these folks. It's about networking and getting out of that, you know out of the dark places where some of them end up going because this is a, a huge change for them. And, and in doing so, we now expose them to CrowdStrike. You know, that's, that's one of the new relationships that, that we have where potentially if they want to they can pursue new opportunities in areas like cybersecurity. >> And they're chosen through an application process you're, I, I'm inferring. >> Yep. They just go online and say, you know through word of mouth or through a friend or through the, the USO and other organizations, they go online and they click the apply here and they fill it out. And, our beneficiary trustee Craig, and calls them up and says, Hey, tell me about what you're looking for. And, and we, we pair them up with the race team. >> And Craig you're also a, a beneficiary in addition to being the beneficiary trustee. So explain that, what's your story? >> Right. So I started in this organization as a beneficiary. I was the one that hit the button on the website. And, and then a few minutes later, I got a phone call from then Tiffany Lodder, Diezel's wife, who's our executive director in the organization. And, and I had that same conversation that I now have with beneficiaries today. I did a, I did a full season with them last year in 2021 as a beneficiary. But at the end I realized how big of an impact that this has with folks. Transition can be very difficult, especially if they're ill injured or wounded. And so I asked if I could help if I could give back cause it meant such, it had such a big impact on me. I'd like to, to help other veterans as well. >> Can I ask you what made you hit that button? What made you apply? >> Oh, that's a great question. So I was one of the very fortunate ones that had a transition coach. I was in the military for 29 years and had a lot of great connections in the military and, and was connected to a coach, a transition coach and just exploring, you know what that, what that would look like and she was the one who say, why don't we, why don't we explore this passion of Motorsports that you have? My family had been going to, to Motorsports events for you know, 50 years. And so, so I thought back, all right, this is I like this idea. Let's, let's pursue this. So a quick Google search and operation Motorsport popped up and I hit the button. >> And what programs are available in operation Motorsport? >> And so, Diezel kind of outline, outlined it. We have basically three different programs. We have the, our immersion program, which is exactly what Diezel described, where we take that veteran and we actually immerse them in a race team they're doing the, exactly what I was doing, doing tires and fuel and whatever the team needs them to do. We also have our E-motor sports program where folks who can't do the immersion program, immersion program is takes a pretty big time commitment sometimes. And so, they just don't have the capacity or abilities to be able to do those. We could put them in our E-motor sports program where they can do it all virtually. we're actually, we have a season going on right now where we're, we have veterans racing in that E-motor sports program. And then we have a, the diversionary therapy program where we have a, a Patriot car corral set up at all these tracks so, they can go out with like-minded individuals and spend the day out there with those folks, other veterans. And we do pit, pit tours and, and we get 'em out on the track for a little bit of a, you know, highway speeds nothing ridiculous, but we, we been doing some highway speeds. So we have a, a few, few different ways for them to be involved. >> So, so the number three is like a splash in the pond whereas number one's the, like full immersion. >> Yeah, correct, yes. >> And so what are you doing in the full immersion? What is, what is that like? I mean you're literally changing tires and, and you're, >> Yeah. You name it. >> In the, you're, you're in that sort of sphere of battle, if you will. >> The beauty of this is we could take somebody's capabilities and skill set and we can match it to whatever that looks like on a race team. Some people come in and have no experience whatsoever. And so we find a team that needs, you know, that has a development opportunities where they could come in, their, their initial job might be to fuel fuel cans or, you know, take tires off the car or wipe the car down, it's little things in the beginning. And then slowly as they start to grow and learn then they take on bigger roles. But we also have different positions. They can be immersed in, in teams, but they can also be immersed in the series. So we have folks that are doing like tech inspections. We have folks that are doing race control up in the, up in the tower, directing race operations. So, we have lots of opportunities, tons of potential. We, we foster those relationships and take the folks and whatever their capabilities and, and abilities are and find the right position for them. >> Think, thinking about your personal experience, how, how did it, how would you say it affected you? >> Yeah, um, to understand that you really have to understand military transition. And I think that's where a lot of the folks that have never experienced this really struggle. transition from the military is really difficult. And it's really difficult, even if you're, if you're not broke and, or you don't have some kind of illness or injury but, you add that factor into it at the same time and it could be extremely difficult. And that's why we see like the 22 a day suicide rates with veterans, it's very, very high, Right? And so when you, when you come into this program, it's, it is a little bit of a leap of faith, right? This is very new experience for somebody, right? For somebody like myself who had 29 years of experience in the military, very senior person in the military. And now you're at the bottom of the totem pole and trying to figure it all out again, it's, it's a it's a big jump. But, what you realize really quickly is a lot of the things that you experience in the military you experience in that paddock, same exact things, lots of, small team environment, lots of diversity, lots of challenges, lots of roadblocks ups downs, you, you'd deploy just like you would deploy in, in the military you bring the cars to a track, you execute a mission then you pack it up and bring it home. So it's, there's so many similarities in the process. >> I mean, yeah. Diezel hear, hearing Craig explained that there are, the similarities sound very clear, but, but, but how did how'd you come up with this idea? (Diezel laughs) It makes sense now in retrospect, but, somebody just said Hey, you know, we have this and we have this and we can marry them or... >> No, not really. And it, it's a funny story because I always said, I, I, I don't believe in reinventing the wheel I believe in stealing the car. And so there's a sister organization that we have in the UK called mission Motorsport. And, and, and they invented this five years before we did. And, and they were successful. And I was, you know, through, through friendships and opportunities, I got to witness it in, in 2016. So went over to, to Wales in, in the UK and, and watched it in action. And we were there for one race weekend, race of remembrance which is where we go back to we'll be going back to November, taking 13 beneficiaries over to race in our own race team for a 12 hour race. And that's a whole other story but that's where it all started. You know, we, we saw the opportunities and said, wow they're changing lives through recovery, you know through Motorsport and the similarities and what they were achieving, our initial goal was let's just come back and do this again next year, because we need to bring north American transitioning members over to, to witness this and take part. And then fast forward, we said, why stop there? And we, stood up an organization. Now, I'll tell you that the organization is not what it was the initial vision, this not where, I mean I never imagine that we get to this point this day especially with the announcement this morning, you know with the partnership with CrowdStrike, it it's huge for us but, we've evolved into something that was very similar to the initial vision. And that was, helping, helping medically transitioning service members with their own personal struggles and recovery. You know, the reason we call it operation Motorsport is because operations have no beginning and no end and our, and what we do makes us so different in that we're not a one and done, we take care of these guys. Even when they become alumni, they, they still come back. They, they come back to volunteer they come back to check in their friends and, and all kinds, it's really, really neat. >> And, and JC of course CrowdStrike has an affinity for Motorsports, right? You got the logo on the Mercedes. You, you've got the safety car at this. I think it's called the safety car, right? >> That's it, yeah. >> So, okay. So that's an obvious connection, but, but where did the idea germinate for this partnership? >> There's so many things, but first and foremost, I think that the, the values of CrowdStrike and those of operation motors were very much aligned. If you think about it, we, we focus a lot on teamwork. There's no way we do these jobs without the teamwork part. We all love data. These guys are all in the data all the time trying to figure out, you know, what your adversaries are doing. So there's that kind of component to it. And I'd say the last bit is critical thinking. So when we think about our organizations and how well aligned they are, that was a, that was a no brainer. And into the other side of it, we get the opportunity to do mentorship programs. I mean, I think both ways, hopefully I get invited to the Patriot corral at some point I can go, go work on a car but, we'll do those both ways or mentorship opportunities. If folks from operation Motorsport win a team up with a CrowdStrikers. >> Do you ever get to drive the car? Or is that just an awful question? >> No, it's a good question. Actually I do from the from the track to the pits at, you know, very slow speeds. >> They don't let you out on the track? >> That's right, no, I don't get to go out the track. >> Diezel You ever, you ever drive one of these? >> I, I, I, I've been on, on the track on, on different cars not in the race cars that, that, that that are on the team, but something that's unique in the Patriot corral, for instance, because JC brought that up, is that when we do these Patriot corrals part of that program at lunchtime is, is taking the individuals and doing parade laps. And I'll, you know, a parade lap, well, what's the fun in that? but you drive highway speeds on a racetrack and your own personal car following a pace car, that's a pretty cool experience. >> Yeah, that's very cool. Guys, congratulations on this program and all your success and all the, the giving that you do for the community and, and your peers, really appreciate you guys coming on The Cube and telling your story. >> Thanks for having us. >> Thanks for the opportunity. >> You're very welcome. All right, keep it right there everybody. Dave Vellante and Dave Nicholson, we'll be back from FalCon 2022, at the ARIA in Las Vegas. You're watching the cube. (relaxing music)

>>Welcome to the cube conversation here. I'm Sean ferry with the cube in Palo Alto, California. We've got two great guests here featuring armory who has with them Patrion open-source and talking open source and the enterprise. I'm your host, John ferry with the cube. Thanks for watching guys. Thanks for coming on. Really appreciate. I've got two great guests, Ben mapping, and SVP, a strategic partner in the armory and Ian Della horn, S staff SRE at Patrion gentlemen, you know, open source and enterprise is here and we wouldn't talk about thanks for coming. I appreciate it. >>Yeah. Thank you, John. Really happy to be here. Thank you to the Cuban and your whole crew. I'll start with a quick intro. My name is Ben Mappin, farmers founders, lead strategic partnerships. As John mentioned, you know, it all, it really starts with a premise that traditional businesses, such as hotels, banks, car manufacturers are now acting and behaving much more like software companies than they did in the past. And so if you believe that that's true. What does it mean? It means that these businesses need to get great at delivering their software and specifically to the cloud, like AWS. And that's exactly what armory aims to do for our customers. We're based on opensource Spinnaker, which is a continuous delivery platform. And, and I'm very happy that Ian from Patrion is here to talk about our journey together >>And introduce yourself what you do at Patriot and when Patrion does, and then why you guys together here? What's the, what's the story? >>Absolutely. Hi, John and Ben. Thanks for, thanks for having me. So I am Ian. I am a site reliability engineer at Patrion and Patrion is a membership platform for creators. And what we're our mission is to get creators paid, changing the way the art is valued so that creators can make money by having a membership relationship with, with fans. And we are, we're built on top of AWS and we are using Spinnaker with armory to deploy our applications that, you know, help, help creators get paid. Basically >>Talk about the original story of Ben. How are you guys together? What brought you together? Obviously patron is well-known in the creator circles. Congratulations, by the way, all your success. You've done a great service for the industry and have changed the game you were doing creators before it was fashionable. And also you got some cutting-edge decentralization business models as well. So again, we'll come back to that in a minute, but Ben, talk about how this all comes together. Yeah, >>Yeah. So Ian's got a great kind of origin story on our relationship together. I'll give him a lead in which is, you know, what we've learned over the years from our large customers is that in order to get great at deploying software, it really comes down to three things or at least three things. The first being velocity, you have to ship your software with velocity. So if you're deploying your software once a quarter or even once a year, that does no good to your customers or to your business, like just code sitting in a feature branch on a shelf, more or less not creating any business value. So you have to ship with speed. Second, you have to ship with reliability. So invariably there will be bugs. There will be some outages, but you know, one of the things that armory provides with Spinnaker open sources, the ability to create hardened deployment pipeline so that you're testing the right things at the right times with the right folks involved to do reviews. >>And if there is hopefully not, but if there is a problem in production, you're isolating that problem to a small group of users. And then we call this the progressive deployment or Canary deployment where you're deploying to a small number of users. You measure the results, make sure it's good, expand it and expand it. And so I think, you know, preventing outages is incredibly incredibly important. And then the last thing is being able to deploy multi target multi-cloud. And so in the AWS ecosystem, we're talking about ECS, EKS Lambda. And so I think that these pieces of value or kind of the, the pain points that, that enterprises face can resonate with a lot of companies out there, including ENN Patriot. And so I'll, I'll, I'll let you tell the story. >>Yeah, go ahead. Absolutely. Thanks. Thanks for the intro, man. So background background of our partnership with armory as back in the backend, February of 2019, we had a payments payments slowed down for payments processing, and we were risking not getting creators paid on time, which is a doc great for creators because they rely on us for income to be able to pay themselves, pay their rent or mortgage, but also pay staff because they have video editors, website admins, people that nature work with them. And there were, they're a very, there's a very many root causes to this, to this incident, all kind of culminate at once. One of the things that we saw was that deploying D point fixes to remediate. This took too long or taking at least 45 minutes to deploy a new version of the application. And so we've had continuous delivery before using a custom custom home built, rolling deploy. >>We needed to get that time down. We also needed to be secure in our knowledge of like that deploy was stable. So we had had to place a break in the middle due to various factors that that can happen during the deploy previously, I had used a Spinnaker at previous employers. I have been set it up myself and introduced it. And I knew about, I knew like, oh, this is something we could, this would be great. But the Patriot team, the patron SRE team at that time was two people. So I don't have the ability to manage Spinnaker on my own. It's a complex open-source product. It can do a lot of things. There's a lot of knobs to tweak a lot of various settings and stuff you need to know about tangentially. One of the co-founders of, of armory had been, had to hit, had hit me up earlier. I was like, Hey, have you heard of armory? We're doing this thing, opens our Spinnaker, we're packaging this and managing it, check us out if you want. I kind of like filed it away. Like, okay, well that might be something we can use later. And then like two weeks later, I was like, oh wait, this company that does Spinnaker, I know of them. We should probably have a conversation with them and engage with them. >>And so you hit him up and said, Hey, too many knobs and buttons to push what's the deal. >>Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I was, I was like, Hey, so by the way, I about that thing, how, how soon can you get someone get someone over here? >>So Ben take us through the progression. Cause that really is how things work in the open source. Open source is really one of those things where a lot of community outreach, a lot of people are literally a one degree or two separation from someone who either wrote the project or is involved in the project. Here's a great example. He saw the need for Spinnaker. The business model was there for him to solve. Okay. Fixes rolling deployments, homegrown all the things, pick your pick, your use case, but he wanted to make it easier. This tends to, this is kind of a pattern. What did you guys do? What's the next step? How did this go from here? >>Yeah. You know, Spinnaker being source is critical to armory's success. Many companies, not just pastry on open source software, I think is not really debatable anymore in terms of being applicable to enterprise companies. But the thing with selling open source software to large companies is that they need a backstop. They need not just enterprise support, but they need features and functionality that enable them to use that software at scale and safely. And so those are really the things that, that we focus on and we use open source as a really, it's a great community to collaborate and to contribute fixes that other companies can use. Other companies contribute fixes and functionality that we then use. But it's, it's really a great place to get feedback and to find new customers that perhaps need that enhanced level of functionality and support. And, and I'm very, very happy that Patrion was one of those companies. >>Okay. So let's talk about the Patrion. Okay. Obviously scaling is a big part of it. You're an SRE site, reliability engineers with folks who don't know what that is, is your, your job is essentially, you know, managing scale. Some say you the dev ops manager, but that's not really right answer. What is the SRE role at patriotics share with folks out there who are either having an SRE. They don't even know it yet or need to have SRS because this is a huge transition that, and new, new and emerging must have role in companies, >>Right? Yeah. We're the history of Patrion covers a lot. We cover a wide swath of a wide swath of, of, of things that we work with and, and areas that we consider to be our, our purview. Not only are we working on working with our AWS environment, but we also are involved in how can we make the site more reliable or performance so that, so that creators fans have a good experience. So we work with our content delivery numbers or caching strategies for caching caching assets. We work inside the application itself for doing performance performance, a hassle. This is also in proving observability with distributed tracing and metrics on a lot of that stuff, but also on the build and deploy side, if we can, if we can get that deploy time faster, like give engineers faster feedback on features that they're working on or bug fixes and also being secure and knowing that the, the code that they're working on it gets delivered reliably. >>Yeah. I think I, you have the continuous delivery is always the, the, the killer killer workflow as both the Spinnaker question here. Well, how has Spinnaker, well, what, how, how does Spinnaker being an open source project help you guys? I mean, obviously open source code is great. How has that been significant and beneficial for both armory and Patrion? >>Yeah, I'll take the first stab at this one. And it starts at the beginning. Spinnaker was created by Netflix and since Netflix open source that four or five years ago, there have been countless and significant contributions from many other companies, including armory, including AWS and those contributions collectively push the industry forward and allow the, the companies that, you know, that use open-source Spinnaker or armory, they can now benefit from all of the collective effort together. So just that community aspect working together is huge. Absolutely huge. And, you know, open source, I guess on the go-to-market side is a big driver for us. You know, there's many, many companies using open-source Spinnaker in production that are not our customers yet. And we, we survey them. We want to know how they're using open-source Spinnaker so that we can then improve open-source Spinnaker, but also build features that are critical for large companies to run at scale, deploy at scale, deploy with velocity and with reliability. >>Yeah. What's your take on, on the benefits of Spinnaker being open source? >>A lot of what Ben, it's been really beneficial to be able to like, be able to go in and look at the source code for components. I've been wondering something like, why is this thing working like this? Or how did they solve this? It's also been useful for, I can go ask the community for, for advice on things. If armory doesn't has the, it doesn't have the time or bandwidth to work on some things I've been able to ask the special interest groups in the source community. Like, can we, can we help improve this or something like that. And I've also been able to commit simple bug fixes for features that I've, that I've needed. I was like, well, I don't need to, I don't need to go engage are very on this. I can just like, I can just write up a simple patch on and have that out for review. >>You know, that's the beautiful thing about open sources. You get the source code and that's, and some people just think it's so easy, Ben, you know, just, Hey, just give me the open source. I'll code it. I got an unlimited resource team. Not, not always the case. So I gotta ask you guys on Patrion. Why use a company like armory, if you have the open source code and armory, why did you build a business on the open source project? Like Spinnaker? >>Yeah. Like I see. Absolutely. Yeah. Like I, like I said earlier, the atrium, the Patrion SRE team was wasn't is fairly small. There's two people. Now we're six. People are still people down. We're six people now. So being sure we could run a Spinnaker on our own if we, if we wanted to. And, but then we'd have no time to do anything else basically. And that's not the best use of our, of our creators money. Our fans, the fans being the creators artists. We have obviously take a percentage on top of that. And we, we need to spend our, that money well, and having armory who's dedicated to the Spinnaker is dedicated, involved the open source project. But also there are experts on this Sunday. It was something that would take me like a week of stumbling around trying to find documentation on how to set this thing up. They done this like 15, 20 times and they can just go, oh yeah, this is what we do for this. And let me go fix it for you >>At score. You know, you've got a teammate. I think that's where, what you're getting at. I got to ask you what other things is that free you up? Because this is the classic business model of life. You know, you have a partner you're moving fast, it slows you down to get into it. Sure. You can do it yourself, but why it's faster to go with it, go together with a partner and a wing man as we will. What things did does that free you up to work on as an SRE? >>Oh, that's freed me up to work on a bigger parts of our build and deploy pipeline. It's freed me up to work on moving from a usage based deploys onto a containerization strategy. It's freed me up to work on more broader observability issues instead of just being laser-focused on running an operating spending. >>Yeah. And that really kind of highlights. I'm glad you said that because it highlights what's going on. You had a lot of speed and velocity. You've got scale, you've got security and you've got new challenges you got to fix in and move fast. It's a whole new world. So again, this is why I love cloud native. Right? So you got open source, you got scale and you guys are applying directly to the, to the infrastructure of the business. So Ben, I got to ask you armory. Co-founder why did you guys build your business on an open source project? Like Spinnaker? What was the mindset? How did you attack this? What did you guys do? Take us through that piece because this is truly a great entrepreneurial story about open source. >>Yeah. Yeah. I'll give you the abridged version, which is that my co-founders and I, we solved the same problem, which is CD at a previous company, but we did it kind of the old fashioned way we home role. We handled it ourselves. We built it on top of Jenkins and it was great for that company, but, and that was kind of the inspiration for us to then ask questions. Hey, is this bigger? We, when at the time we found that Spinnaker had just been, you know, dog food inside of Netflix and they were open sourcing it. And we thought it was a great opportunity for us to partner. But the bigger reason is that Spinnaker is a platform that deploys to other platforms like AWS and Kubernetes and the sheer amount of surface area that's required to build a great product is enormous. And I actually believe that the only way to be successful in this space is to be open source, to have a community of large companies and passionate developers that contribute the roads if you will, to deploy into various targets. >>And so that's the reason, number one for it being open source and us wanting to build our business on top of open source. And then the second reason is because we focus almost exclusively on solving enterprise scale problems. We have a platform that needs to be extensible and open source is by definition extensible. So our customers, I mean, Ian just had a great example, right? Like he needed to fix something he was able to do so solve it in open source. And then, you know, shortly thereafter that that fix in mainline gets into the armory official build and then he can consume his fix. So we see a lot of that from our other customers. And then even, you know, take a very, very large company. They may have custom off that they need to integrate with, but that doesn't, that's not in open-source Spinnaker, but they can go and build that themselves. >>Yeah, it's real. It really is the new modern way to develop. And I, you know, last 80 with startup showcase last season, Emily Freeman gave a talk on, you know, you know, retiring, I call it killing the software, SDLC, the lifecycle of how software was developed in the past. And I got to ask you guys, and, and this cube conversation is that this is kind of like the, the kind of the big wave we're on now is cloud scale, open source, cloud, native data security, all being built in on this in the pipelines to your point is SRS enabling a new infrastructure and a new environment for people to build essentially SAS. So I got to ask you guys as, and you mentioned it Ben, the old way you hand rolled something, Netflix, open source, something, you got to look at Lyft with Envoy. I mean, large-scale comes, are donating their stuff into open source and people getting on top of it and building it. So the world's changed. So we've got to ask you, what's the difference between standing up a SAS application today versus say five to eight years ago, because we all see salesforce.com. You know, they're out there, they built their own data center. Cloud skills changed the dynamics of how software is being built. And with open-source accelerating every quarter, you're seeing more growth in software. How has building a platform for applications changed and how has that changed? How people build SAS applications, Ben, what's your take on this? It's kind of a thought exercise here. >>Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't even call it a thought exercise. We're seeing it firsthand from our customers. And then I'll, you know, I'll, I'll give my answer and you can weigh in on like practical, like what you're actually doing at Patrion with SAS, but the, the costs and the kind of entry fee, if you will, for building a SAS application has tremendously dropped. You don't need to buy servers and put them inside data centers anymore. You just spin up a VM or Kubernetes cluster with AWS. AWS has led the way in public cloud to make this incredible easy. And the tool sets being built around cloud native, like armory and like many other companies in the space are making it even easier. So we're just seeing the proliferation of, of software being developed and, and hopefully, you know, armory is playing a role in, in making it easier and better. >>So before we get to Unum for a second, I just want to just double down on it because there's great conversation that implies that there's going to be a new migration of apps everywhere, right. As tsunami of clutter good or bad, is that good or bad or is it all open source? Is it all good then? >>Absolutely good. For sure. There will be, you know, good stuff developed and not so good stuff developed, but survival of the fittest will hopefully promote those, the best apps with the highest value to the end user and, and society at large and push us all forward. So, >>And what's your take, obviously, Kubernetes, you seeing things like observability talking about how we're managing stateful and services that are being deployed and tear down in real time, automated, all new things are developing. How does building a true scalable SAS application change today versus say five, eight years ago? >>I mean, like you said, there's a, there's a lot, there's a lot of new, both open source. So SAS products available that you can use to build a scale stuff. Like if you're going to need that to build like secure authentication, instead of having to roll that out and you could go with something like Okta raw zero, you can just pull that off the shelf stuff for like managing push notifications before that was like something really hard to really hard to do. Then Firebase came on the scene and also for manic state and application and stuff like that. And also for like being, being able to deliver before >>You had Jenkins, maybe even for that, you didn't really have anything Jenkins came along. And then now you have open-source products like Spinnaker that you can use to deliver. And then you have companies built around that, that you can just go and say, Hey, can you please help us deliver this? Like you just help us, enable us to be able to build, build our products so that we can focus on delivering value to our creators and fans instead of having to focus on, on other things. >>So bill it builds faster. You can compose stuff faster. You don't have to roll your own code. You can just roll your own modules basically, and then exactly what prietary on top of it. Absolutely. Yeah. And that's why commercial open source is booming. Guys. Thank you so much, Ben, congratulations on armory and great to have you on from Patrion well-known success. So we'll accompany you congratulate. If we don't know patriarch, check it out, they have changed the game on creators and leading the industry. Ben. Great, great shot with armory and Spinnaker. Thanks for coming on. Thank you >>So much. Thank you >>So much. Okay. I'm Sean Ferrer here with the cube conversation with Palo Alto. Thanks for watching.

>> From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, bringing you data-driven insights from theCUBE in ETR. This is Breaking Analysis with Dave Vellante. >> Despite the more than $100 billion spent each year fighting Cyber-crime. When we do an end-of-the year look back and ask "How did we do?" The answer is invariably the same, "Worse than last year." Pre pandemic, the picture was disheartening, but since March of 2020 the situation has only worsened as cyber-criminals have become increasingly sophisticated, better funded and more brazen. SecOps pros continue to fight, but unlike conventional wars, this one has no end. Now the flip side of course, is that markets continue to value cybersecurity firms at significant premiums. Because this huge market will continue to grow by double digits for the foreseeable future. Hello and welcome to this week's Wikibon theCUBE Insights powered by ETR. In this Breaking Analysis, we look at the state of cybersecurity in 2021 and beyond. We'll update you with the latest survey data from enterprise technology research and share the fundamentals that have investors piling into the security space like never before. Let's start with the customer view. Cybersecurity remains the number one priority for CIOs and CSOs. This latest ETR survey, once again asked IT buyers to rank their top priorities for the next 12 months. Now the last three polling period dating back to last March. Cybersecurity has outranked every top spending category, including cloud, data analytics, productivity software, networking, AI, and automation or RPA. Now this shouldn't surprise anybody, but it underscores the challenges that organizations face. Not only are they in the midst of a non-optional digital transformation, but they have to also fund a cyber war that has no ceasefires, no truces, and no exit path. Now there's much more going on in cybersecurity than ransomware, but certainly that has the attention of executives. And it's becoming more and more lucrative for attackers. Here's a snapshot of some of the more well-documented attacks this decade many which have occurred in very recent months. CNA Financial, they got hit earlier this year and paid a $40 million ransom. The Ireland Health Service also got hit this year and refused to pay the ransom, but it's estimated that the cost to recover and the damage to the organization exceeded half a billion dollars. The request was for a $20 million ransom. The JBS meat company hack, they paid $11 million. CWT travel paid $5 million. The disruption from the Colonial Pipeline company, was widely reported they paid more than $4 million, as the Brenntag, the chemical company. The NBA got hit. Computer makers, Quanta and Acer also. More than 2,000 random attacks were reported to the FBI in the first seven months of 2021. Up more than 60% from 2020. Now, as I've said many times, you don't have to be a genius to be a ransomware as today. Anyone can go on the dark web, tap into ransomware as a service. Attackers, they have insidious names like darkside, evil, the cobalt, crime gang, wizard spider, the Lazarus gang, and numerous others. Criminals they have negotiation services is most typically the attackers, they'll demand a specific amount of money but they're willing to compromise in an exchange of cryptocurrency for decryption keys. And as mentioned, it's not just ransomware supply chain attacks like the solar winds hack hit organizations within the U.S government and companies like Mimecast this year. Now, while these attacks often do end up in a ransom situation. The attackers sometimes find it more lucrative to live off the land and stealth fashion and ex filtrates sensitive data that can be sold or in the case of many financial institution attacks they'll steal information from say a chief investment officer that signals an upcoming trading strategy and then the attackers will front run that trade in the stock market. Now, of course phishing, remains one of the most prominent threats. Only escalated by the work from home trend as users bring their own devices and of course home networks are less secure. So it's bad, worse than ever before. But you know, if there's a problem, entrepreneurs and investors, they're going to be there to solve it. So here's a LinkedIn post from one of the top investors in the business, Mike Speiser. He was a founding investor in Snowflake. He helped get pure storage to escape velocity and many, many other successes. This hit my LinkedIn feed the other day, his company Sutter Hill Ventures is co-leading a 1.3 Series D on an $8.3 billion valuation. They're putting in over $200 million. Now Lacework is a threat detection software company that looks at security as a data problem and they monitor exposures across clouds. So very timely. So watch that company. They're going to soar. Now the right hand chart shows venture investments in cybersecurity over the past several years. You can see it exploded in 2019 to $7.6 billion. And people thought the market was peaking at that time, if you recall. But then investments rose a little bit to $7.8 billion in 2020 right in the middle of lockdown. And then the hybrid work, the cloud, the new normal thesis kicked in big time. It's in full gear this year. You can see nearly $12 billion invested in cybersecurity in the first half of 2021 alone. So the money keeps coming in as the problem gets worse and the market gets more crowded. Now we'd like to show this slide from Optiv, it's their security taxonomy. It'll make your eyes cross. It's so packed with companies in different sectors. We'll put a link in our posts, so you can stare at this. We've used this truck before. It's pretty good. It's comprehensive and it's worth spending some time to see what that landscape looks like. But now let's reduce this down a bit and bring in some of the ETR data. This is survey data from October that shows net score or spending momentum on the vertical axis and market share or pervasiveness in the dataset on the horizontal axis. That's a measure of mentioned share if you will. Now this is just isolated on the information security sector within the ETR taxonomies. No filters in terms of the number of responses. So it's every company that ETR picks up in cybersecurity from its buyer surveys. Now companies above that red line, we consider them to have a highly elevated spending momentum for their products and services. And you can see, there are a lot of companies that are in this map first of all, and several above that magic mark. So you can see the momentum of Microsoft and Palo Alto. That's most impressive because of their size, their pervasiveness in the study, Cisco and Splunk are also quite prominent. They don't have as much spending momentum, but they're pretty respectable. And you can see the companies that have been real movers in this market that we've been reporting on for a while. Okta, CrowdStrike, Zscaler, CyberArk, SailPoint, Authzero, all companies that we've extensively covered in previous breaking analysis episodes as the up and comers. And isn't it interesting that Datadog is now showing up in the vertical axis. You see that in the left-hand side up high, they're becoming more and more competitive to Splunk in this space as an alternative and lines are blurring between observability, log analytics, security, and as we previously reported even backup and recovery. But now let's simplify this picture a bit more and filter down a little bit further. This chart shows the same X, Y view. Same data construct and framework, but we required more than a hundred responses to hit the chart. So the companies, they have to have a notable market presence in the ETR survey. It's perhaps a bit less crowded, but still very packed. Isn't it? You can see firms that are less prominent in the space like Datadog fell off. The big companies we mentioned, obviously still prominent Microsoft, Palo Alto, Cisco and Splunk and then those with real momentum, they stand out a little bit. There's somewhat smaller, but they're gaining traction in the market. As we felt they would Okta and Auth zero, which Okta acquired as we reported on earlier this year, both showing strength as our CrowdStrike, Zscaler, CyberArk, which does identity and competition with Okta and SentinelOne, which went public mid this year. The company SentinelOne uses AI to do threat detection and has been doing quite well. SalePoint and Proofpoint are right on that red elevated line and then there's a big pack in the middle. Look, this is not an easy market to track. It's virtually every company plays in security. Look, AWS says some of the most advanced security in the business but they're not in the chart specifically, but you see Microsoft is. Because much of AWS security is built into services. Amazon customers heavily rely on the Amazon ecosystem which is in the Amazon marketplace for security products. And often they associate their security spend with those partners and not necessarily Amazon. And you'll see networking companies you see right there, like Juniper and the bottom there and in the ETR data set and the players like VMware in the middle of the pack. They've been really acquisitive for example, with carbon black. And the, of course, you've got a lot of legacy players like McAfee and RSA and IBM. Look, virtually every company has a security story and that will only become more common in the coming years. Now here's another look at the ETR data it's in the raw form, but it'll give you a sense of two things; One is how the data from the previous chart is plotted. And two, it gives you a time series of the data. So the data lists the top companies in the ETR data sets sorted by the October net score in the right most column. Again, that measures spending momentum. So to make the cut here, you had to have more than a hundred mentions which is shown on the left-hand side of the chart that shared N, IE that's shared accounts in the dataset. And you can track the data from last October, July of this year and the most recent October, 2021 survey. So we, drew that red line just about at the 40% net score market coincidentally, there are 10 companies that are over that figure over that bar. We sometimes call out the four star companies. We give four stars to those companies that both are in the top 10 and spending momentum and the top in prominence are shared N in the dataset. So some of these 10 would fit into that profile by that methodology, specifically, Microsoft, Okta, CrowdStrike, and Palo Alto networks. They would be the four star companies. Now a couple of other things to point out here, DDoS attacks, they're still relevant, and they're real threat. So a company like CloudFlare which is just above that red line they play in that space. Now we've also shaded the companies in the fat middle. A lot of these companies like Cisco and Splunk for example, they're major players in the security space with very strong offerings and customer affinity. We sometimes give them two stars. So this is what makes this market so interesting. It's not like the high end discourage market where literally every vendor in the Gartner magic quadrant is up in the right, okay. And there's only five or four or five, six vendors there. This market is diverse with many, many segments and sub segments, and it's such a vital space. And there's so many holes to fill with an ever changing threat landscape as we've seen in the last two years. So this is in part which makes it such a good market for investors. There's a lot of room for growth and not just from stealing market share. That's certainly an opportunity there, but things like cloud, multi-cloud, shifting end points, the edge ,and so forth make this space really ripe for investments. And to underscore this, we put together this little chart of some of the pure play security firms to see how their stock performance has done recently. So you can see that here, you know, it's a little hard to read, but it's not hard to see that Okta, CrowdStrike, Zscaler on the left have been big movers. These charts where possible all show a cross here, starting at the lockdown last year. The only exception is SentinelOne which IPO mid this year. So that's the point March, 2020 when the whole world changed and security priorities really started to shift to accommodate the work from home. But it's quite obvious that since the pandemic, these six companies have been on a tear for the fundamental reason that hybrid work has created a shift in spending priorities for CSOs. No longer are organizations just spending on hardening a perimeter, that perimeter has been blown away. The network is flattening. Work is what you do, it's no longer a place. As such threats are on the rise and cloud, endpoint security, identity access tools there become increasingly vital and the vendors who provide them are on the rise. So it's no surprise that the players that we've listed here which play quite prominently in those markets are all on fire. So now in summary, I want to stress that while the picture is sometimes discouraging. The entire world is becoming more and more tuned in to the cyber threat. And that's a good thing. Money is pouring in. Look, technology got us into this problem and technology is a defensive weapon that will help us continue this fight. But it's going to take more than technology. And I want to share something. We get dozens and dozens of in bounds this time of the year because we do an annual predictions posts. So folks and they want to help us out. So now most of the in bounds and the predictions that we get, they're just kind of observations or frankly, non predictions that can't really be measured as like where you right, or where you're wrong. So for the most part I like predictions that are binary. For example, last December we predicted their IT spending in 2021 would rebound and grow at 4% relative to 2020. Well, it did rebound but that prediction really wasn't as accurate as I'd like. It was frankly wrong. We think it's actually the market's going to actually grow. Spending's going to grow more like 7% this year. Not to worry plenty of our predictions came true, but we'll leave that for another day. Anyway, I got an email from Dean Fisk of Fisk partners. It's a PR firm representing an individual named Lyndon Brown chief of strategy officer of Pondurance. Pondurance is a security consultancy. And the email had the standard, Hey, in case you're working on a predictions post this year end, blah, blah, blah. But instead of sharing with me, a bunch of non predictions, the notes said here's some trends in cybersecurity that might be worth thinking about. And there were a few predictions sprinkled in there, but I wanted to call it a couple of the comments from Linden Brown, whom I don't know, I never met the guy, but I really thought his trends were spot on. The first was a stat I'll share that the United Nations report cyber crime is up 600% due to the pandemic. If as if I couldn't feel worse already. His first point though was that the hybrid workplace will be the new frontier for cyber. Yes, we totally agree. There are permanent shifts taking place. And we actually predicted that last year, but he further cited that many companies went from zero to full digital transformation overnight and many are still on that journey. And his point is that hybrid work is going to require a complete overhaul of how we think about security. We think this is very true. Now the other point that stood out is that governments are going to crack down on this behavior. And we've seen this where criminals have had their critical infrastructure dismantled by governments. No doubt the U.S government has the capabilities to do so. And it is very much focused on this issue. But it's tricky as Robert Gates, who was the former defense secretary, told me a few years back in theCUBE. He said, well, we have the best offense. We also have the most to lose. So we have to be very careful, but Linden's key point was you are going to see a much more forward and aggressive public policy and new laws that give crime fighters more latitude . Again, it's tricky kind of like the Patriot act was tricky but it's coming. Now, another call-out from Linden shares his assertion that natural disasters will bring increased cyber risk. And I thought this was a really astute point because natural disasters they're on the rise. And when there's chaos, there's cash opportunities for criminals. And I'll add to this that the supply chain risk is far from over. This is going to be continuing theme this coming year and beyond. And one of the things that Linden Brown said in his note to me is essentially you can't take humans out of the equation. Automation alone can't solve the problem, but some companies operate as though they can. Just as bad human behavior, can tramp good security, Good human education and behavior is going to be a key weapon in this endless war. Now the last point is we're going to see continued escalation government crackdowns are going to bring retaliation and to Gates' point. The U.S has a lot at stake. So expect insurance premiums are going to go through the roof. That's assuming you can even get cyber insurance. And so we got to hope for the best, but for sure, we have to plan for the worst because it's coming. Deploy technology aggressively but people in process will ultimately be the other ingredients that allow us to live to battle for another day. Okay. That's a wrap for today. Remember these episodes they're all available as podcasts, wherever you listen just search "breaking analysis" podcast. Check out ETR his website at ETR.plus. We also publish a full report every week on Wikibond.com and siliconangle.com. You can get in touch. Email me @david.volante@tsiliconangle.com or you can DM me @dvellante. Comment on our LinkedIn posts. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE insights powered by ETR. Have a great week. everybody stay safe, be well. And we'll see you next time. (techno music)

(upbeat music) >> Okay, thanks to the studio there for the handoff. Appreciate it, we're here for breaking news and it's exciting that we have Amol Phadke who's the Managing Director, Google is breaking some hard news here, Dave, so we want to bring him in and get commentary while we end out day two. Obviously, the story here is CLOUD CITY. We are in the CLOUD CITY. Amol, thanks for coming on remotely into our physical hybrid set here. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you, John. I'm very excited to be here, virtually at MWC 21. >> Oh we got Bon Jovi ready to play. Everyone's waiting for that concert and you're the only thing standing between Bon Jovi and all the great stuff so. >> A lot of people watching. >> Thanks for coming on. Seriously you guys got some big news first Ericsson partners with you guys on 5G, platform deal with anthesis as well as open O-ran Alliance. You guys are joining huge testament to the industry. Obviously Google with all your innovation you guys have in the big three cloud hyperscalers. Obviously you guys invented SRE, so you know, you're no stranger to large scale. What's the news? Tell us why this Ericsson news is so important. Let's start with the Ericsson announcement. >> Sure, so, John, I mean, we are very excited today to finally bring to the market, the strategic partnership that we've been building with Ericsson for the last few months, the partnership, the reason we feel this is very important to the industry is we are actually doing this in conjunction with very large CSPs. So it's not done in isolation. You in fact saw in the press release that we have already launched something together with Telecom Italia in Italy. Because you will see that also in the press. And really the partnership is on three pillars. Number one, how can CSPs monetize 5G and Edge, which is a real team at the moment using Google Clouds solutions like the Edge computing platform and Anthos and Ericsson's cutting Edge 5G components, 5G solutions. And if we can onboard this together at the CSPs, such as Telecom Italia, that creates massive time to market efficiency. So that's point 1. Speed and agility is key John. But then point 2, it also unlocks a lot of Edge use cases for a bunch of verticals, retail, manufacturing, healthcare and so on. Which we are already starting to launch together with Ericsson. And so that's the second pillar. And then the final pillar of course, is this continuous wave of Cloud Native innovation that you just highlighted, John. We are going to try and double down on it between ourselves and Ericsson to really try and create this Cloud Native Application Suite for 5G over time. >> Talk about the innovations around Cloud, because the message we're hearing this year at Mobile World Congress is that the public cloud is driving the innovation and you know, I can be a little bit over the top and say, so the Telcos are slow, they're like glaciers, they move slow, but they're just moving packets. They are there, they're moving the network around. The innovation is happening on top. So there's some hardened operations operating the networks. Now you have a build concept, Cloud Native enables that. So you've got containers. You can put that, encapsulate that older technology and integrate it in. So this is not a rip and replace, someone has to die to win. This is a partnership with the Telco's. Can you share your thoughts on that piece? >> Spot on, John, spot on. We, we believe that it's a massive partnership opportunity. There's zero conflict or tensions in this sort of ecosystem. And the reason for that is, when you talk about that containerization and write once and deploy everywhere type architecture, that we are trying to do, that's where the Cloud Native be really helps. Like when you create Ericsson 5G solutions with the operators at Telecom Italia, once you build a solution, you don't have to worry about, do I need to go create that again and again for every deployment. As long as you have Anthos and Ericsson working, you should be able to have the same experience everywhere. >> Yeah, John and I talk all the time in theCUBE about how developers are really going to drive the Edge. You're clearly doing that with your Distributor Cloud, building out a Telco Cloud. I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about how you see that evolving and a lot of the AI that's done today is done in the cloud. A lot of modeling being done. When you think about Edge, you think about AI inferencing, you think about all these monetization opportunities. How are you thinking about that? >> Sure, so I think David first of all, it's a fantastic segue into how we are looking at analytics at the Edge, right? So we, we have realized that (connection disruption) is a very, very data computing, heavy operation. So certainly the training of the models is still going to stay in cloud for the foreseeable future. But the influencing part that you mentioned, is definitely something that we can offload to the Edge? Why is that so important? In the pandemic era think of running a shop or a factory floor, completely autonomously, needing zero minimal human intervention. And if you want to look at an assembly line and look at AI influencing as a way to find out assembly line defects on products and manufacturing. That's a very difficult problem to solve unless you actually create those influencing models at the Edge. So creating that ecosystem of an Ericsson and a Google Cloud and Telecom Italia type of carrier, gives you that Edge placement of the workloads that would fit right next to a factory floor in our manufacturing example. And then on top of that, you could run the AI influencing to really put in the hands of the manufacturer, a visual inspection capability to just bring this to life. >> Great, thank you for that and now the other piece of the announcement of course is the open, Open RAN. We've been talking about that all week. And you know, you well remember when Cloud first came out, people were concerned about security. And of course, now everybody's asking the question, can we still get the reliability and the security that we're used to with the Telcos? And of course over time we learned that you guys actually are pretty good at security. So how do you see the security component? Maybe first talk about the Open RAN piece, why that's important and how security fits? >> Sure, so first of all, Open RAN is something that we have taken great interest in the last year or so as it started evolving. And the reason for that is fairly simple Dave, this aggregation of networks has been happening for some time. In the radio layer, we believe that's the final frontier of sort of unlocking and desegregating that radio layer. And why is that so important? 80% of the operators spent globally is on radio across the entire infrastructure, 80% is on radio. If you disaggregate that and if you created synergies for your CSP partners and clients, that meant you have standard purpose hardware, standard purpose software with open interfaces, number one, massive difference in PCO. Number two, the supply chain gets streamlined and becomes a really, really simple way to manage a fairly large distribution, that's about to get larger with 5G and the capillarity that 5G needs. You're thinking of tens of thousands of micro cells and radio cells going everywhere. And having that kind of standardized hardware, software with open interfaces, is an extremely important cost dimension too. And on the revenue side, the things is that, the reason we got so excited with Open RAN was, you can now run a lot of API's on the radio net itself. That then suddenly brings a whole developer community on the radio layer. That then helps you do a bunch of things like closed loop automation for network optimization, as well as potentially looking at monetization opportunities by hyper personalizing yours and mine experiences at a device level, from the cell tower. And so that really is what is driving us towards this Open RAN type announcement. >> John: Amol, we've only got a minute and a half. I want to get your thoughts real quick on, on Open Source and the innovation. Danielle Royston, who's the CEO of TelcoDr. She's a keynote today. And she mentioned that the iPhone, 14 years ago was launched, okay. And you think about Open, and you mentioned proprietary with the 5G, and having O-RAN be more commodity and industry standard. That's going to lower the costs, increase the surface area of infrastructure. Everyone wins, 'cause everyone wants more connectivity options. Software is going to be the key to success for the telco industry, and Open Source is driving that. Is Android the playbook that you guys pioneered, obviously at Google with phones was very successful. How is that a playbook or an indicator to what could happen at Telco? >> Absolutely John and the parallel analogy that you raised is spot on. We believe in the Telco world Anthos multi-cloud as a unifying software development layer and the app development platform is the way that people will start to drive this innovation. Whether it's a radio or whether it's in the core or whether it's on the IT side of house. Same software running everywhere. That really allows you that whole CICD SRE type development models that we are familiar with, but on the telecom side. And that's where we are seeing some massive innovation opportunities for start, that would be for systems to come on. >> John: That's great stuff. And I was, just heard someone in the hallway just yesterday and say, you want to be the smartphone. You don't want to be the Blackberry going forward. That's pretty much the consensus here at Mobile World Congress. Amol, thank you for coming on and sharing the hard news with Google. Congratulations on the Ericsson Anthos platform deal as well as the Open Ran Alliance. Congratulations, good to see you. And by the way, you'll be keynoting tomorrow on theCUBE featured segments. So, watch that interview. >> Thank you John. Glad to be here. >> Thanks Amol. Managing Director, Telecom Industry Solutions at Google, obviously player, he's managing that business. Big opportunities for Google because they have the technology to get the chops Dave, and we're going to now, bring on Danielle Royston, she's here, I want to bring her up on the stage. Bon Jovi's about to go on, behind us, Bon Jovi's here. And this is like a nightclub, small intimate setting here in CLOUD CITY. Dave, Bon Jovi is right there. He's going to come on stage after we close down here, but first let's bring up the CEO of TelcoDR, Danielle Royston, great to see you. She's hot off the keynote. We're going to see you have a mic. Great to see you. >> Oh, it's great to be here, awesome. >> We are going to see you tomorrow for an official unpacking of the keynote but thanks for coming by and closing, swinging by. >> I know we're closing down the show. It's been a big, it's been a big day today at MWC and in CLOUD CITY. >> And Bon Jovi by the way. >> Day two, I mean really starting to get packed. >> And I mean, everyone's coming in, the band's warming up. You can kind of hear it. I think Elon Musk is about to go on as well. So I mean, it's really happening. >> A lot of buzz about CLOUD CITY out there in the hallway. >> Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I think everyone's talking about it. I'm really, really excited >> Awesome. >> with how it's going, so yeah. >> Well, this is awesome, while we got you here, we want to put you to work being theCUBE analyst for this segment. You just heard Google. We broke them in for a breaking news segment. Obviously, so hard news Ericsson partnership. We're in the, actually former Ericsson booth. They're not even here, it's now the TelcoDR booth. But that's and then Open RAN again, Open Source. You got 5G, you got Open Source all happening. What's your take on this, as you're seeing this? >> Yeah, I think, you know, there's two big, and I talked about in my keynote this morning, there's two big technological changes that are happening in our industry simultaneously. And I don't think we could have had it--MWC 21 I certainly wanted to make it about the Public Cloud. I think I'm sort of successful in doing that. And I think the other piece is Open RAN, right? And I think these two big shifts are happening and I'm really thrilled about it. And so, yeah, we saw these two. >> I loved your keynote, we were here live Chloe was here filling in for Dave while Dave was going to do some research and getting some breaking stories. But you are on stage and, and we were talking, Chloe's like, these there's trillions of dollars, John on the table. And I was making the point, that the money's in the middle of the table and it's changing hands. If people don't watch it. And then you onstage said there's trillions of dollars. This is a real competitive shift with dollars on the table. And you've got cultural collision. You've got operators and builders trying to figure out, it feels like Dev Ops is coming in here. >> Yeah. >> I mean, what's the, what's the holistic vibe. What's the, what do you? >> Yeah, I think my message is about, we can use the software and specifically the software, the Public Cloud, to double your ARPU without massive CapEx expenditure. And I think the CSPs has always viewed to get the increase in ARPU, I got to build out the network, I got to spend a lot of money. And with these two technologies that require might be dropped. And then in exchange for doubling our ARPU, why not? We should do that absolutely. >> You know, your message has been pretty clear that you got to get on, on the wave. Got to ride the wave or become driftwood, as John said yesterday. And I think it's pretty, it's becoming pretty clear that that's the case for the Telcos. I feel like Danielle, that they entering this decade, perhaps with a little bit more humility than they have in the past. And then, you know, maybe, especially as it relates to developers, we're just talking about building out the Edge. We always talk about how developers are really going to be a key factor in the Edge and that's not a wheelhouse necessarily. But, obviously they're going to have to partner for that to have, they're going to have to embrace Cloud Native. I mean, it's pretty clear that your premise is right on. We'll see how long it takes, but if it, if they don't move fast, you know, what's going to happen. >> Well, I think you look at it from the enterprise's perspective. And we just heard Google talking about it. We need to provide a tech stack that the enterprises can write to. Now, historically they haven't had this opportunity. Historically that CSPs have provided it. Now you're going to be able to write against Google's tech stack. And that's something that is documented, it's available. There's developers out there that know it. And so I think that's the big opportunity. And this might be the, the big use case that they've been looking for with 5G and looking forward to 6G. And so it's a huge opportunity for CSPs to do that. >> I think that's an important point because you've got to place bets. And if I'm betting on Google or Amazon, Microsoft, okay, those are pretty safe bets, right? Those guys are going to be around. >> You think, I mean, they're like, no, don't trust the hyperscalers. And like, are you guys nuts? They're safe bets. >> Safe bets in terms of your investment in technology, now you've got to move fast. >> Yeah. >> That's the other piece of it. >> Yeah. >> You got to change your business model. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Well, you got to be in the right side of history too. I mean, I mean, what is trust actually really mean? Does Snowflake trust Amazon? It sure did to get them where they are, but now they're looking at other options. >> That is a great example, John. It really is, because there's a company that can move fast, but the same time they compete, but the same time they add incremental value. >> And so here you can see the narrative like, oh no, we're partnering, Telcos aren't bad. No one needs to die to bring in the new. Well containers do, will help them manage that operational legacy, but culturally, if they don't move, they're going to have an asset that'll get rolled up into a SPAC or some sort of private equity deal. And because the old model of building CapEx and extract rents is kind of shifting because the value's shifting. So to me, I think this is what we're watching still kind of unknown. Danielle, love to get your thoughts on this, because if the value shifts to services, which is a consumption model like cloud, >> Yeah. >> Then you can, don't have to try to extract the rents out of the CapEx or, what's your thought, I mean. >> Yeah, I don't think you need to own the entire stack to provide value. And I think that's where we are today in Telco, right. There, I mean, nuts and bolts of the stack, the servers, you know, the cabling, everything. And I'm like, stand on the shoulders of these amazing tech giants that have solved, you know, mega data centers, right? Huge data centers at scale, and just leverage their investment and for your own benefit and start to focus, and we heard Amol talking about it, starts to focus on your subscriber and driving a great experience for us, right, yeah. >> Well, you've talking about that many times that you exhibit, you're right. If the conversation has been, has to go beyond, okay, we're just connectivity. It's got to be going to be like, oh, it's $10 a month for roaming charges, ah great. >> Yeah. >> Tick that box. Right, it's those value added services that you're talking about. And it's an infinite number of those that can be developed. And that's where the partnerships come in, and creativity in the industry. It's just a blank piece of paper. >> Well, we, you know, everyone thinks Google knows everything about you, right? We've had the experience on our phone where they're serving up ads and you're like, how did it? >> Facebook does? >> Right, Facebook. But you know who knows more about us than, than Google or your mother even, your Telco. >> Yeah. >> You take your phone with you everywhere, right? And so it's time to start unlocking all of that knowledge and using it to provide a really great experience. >> And by the way, congratulations on the CEO to Totogi and the investment hundred million dollars. That's a game changer statement again, back to the billing and the there's a good, there's a whole new team, even all up and down the stack of solutions, great stuff. And I want to unpack that tomorrow. I want to hold that, we're going to meet tomorrow. I want to, I want to, leave that here. >> Stay in the data for a second, because you made the point before in your keynote as well. That, it's that it's the data that drives the value of these companies. Why is it that Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook now trillion dollar valuations. >> Yeah. >> It's all about the data and the Telco's have the data, but they can't figure out how to turn that into valuation. >> I think there's two parts of the data problem, which is number one, the data is trapped in on-premise, siloed systems that are not open. You can't connect them, and you certainly do it without, and we talked about it, I think yesterday, you know, millions of dollars of expenditure. And I think the other piece that's really interesting is that it's not connected to a mechanism to get it out in a timely manner, right? This is data that's aging by the minute. And when it takes you weeks to get the insight , it's useless, right? And so to Totogi, we announced the launch of Totogi, I'll get a little to Totogi plug in there, right. Totogi is connecting that insight to the charger, to the engagement engine and getting it out to subscribers. I think that's the beginning of this connection. I think it's a hard problem to solve it would have been solved already. But I think the key is leveraging the Public Cloud to get your data out of on-premise and, and mashing it up against these great services that Google and Azure and Amazon provide to drive it into the hands of the subscriber, make it very actionable, very monetizeable right at the end, that's what they want. More ARPU, more revenue, right. And you know, we've heard some keynotes from GSMA yesterday, some big, big guys, you know, talking about how, you know, it's not fair that these other communication platforms are not regulated. You know, Telco is heavily regulated and they're like, it's not fair. And I'm like, yep, it's not fair. That's life, right? >> Yeah. >> Stop complaining about it and start treating your customers better. So they're happy to give you more money. >> Yeah, and I think that's the message about the assets too. But one thing I will say, this Mobile World Congress, is that we've been having a lot of fun here in CLOUD CITY. I have to ask you a personal question. Have you been having fun? You look great on the keynote. You have a spring to your step. CLOUD CITY is beautiful, spectacular here. >> Yeah. >> Give us some highlights, personal highlights from your trip so far. >> Well number one, I'm, I'm psyched that the keynote is delivered in and done. I mean, I think it takes my blood pressure down a bunch. You know, the spring in my step, I wore these fun little tennis shoes and that was really fun. But yeah, I'm having, I'm having, I think a lot of things, great conversations. Yes the attendance is reduced. You know, usually you see hundreds of people from the big group carriers, especially the European groups. And yeah the attendance is reduced, but the senior guys are here, right? The senior leadership teams are in the booth. We're having meetings, we're having amazing conversations. I think the last year we really did live a decade in one year. I think they woke up to the power of the Public Cloud. >> Yeah, the pandemic helped. >> I mean, there was no way that they got business done without cloud based tools. And I think the light bulb went off. I think I'm right in the right moment. It's Awesome. >> Do you think that, do you think that they'll think in there, like left money on the table because you look at the pandemic, there were three categories of companies, losers, people who held the line, struggled and then winners. >> Yeah. >> Big time tale wind, booming. Obviously the Zooms of the world. Telco's did well. They were up and running, business was good. You think they might've left some money on the table? They could have done more. >> Yeah, I think the ones that were, you know, people talk about digital transformation. We're digital Telco, we're digitally enabled. And I think the pandemic really tested this, right. Can you deliver a contactless SIM? Or do you need to go to a store, in person, to get to go pick it up? And I had a broken SIM during the pandemic. My provider made me go to the store and I'm like, is it even open? And so I heard other stories of Telcos that were very digitally enabled, right. They were using Uber to deliver sims, and all sorts of fun, crazy stuff and new ideas. And they were able to pivot. >> Agile. >> Right, agile. And so I think, I think that was a really big wake up call. >> Telemedicine booming. >> So If you were in a digital business during the pandemic. In general, you're out of business, maybe unless you were a Telco, but I think you're right. I think the light bulb went off. It was an aha moment. And they said, oh-oh, if we don't move. >> I mean, I am not kidding right. As an ex-CEO where I was trying to collect signatures on renewals, right. Here's a DocuSign, which for the world is like, duh. I mean, our school uses DocuSign. I had telcos that required an in-person signature, >> Facts. >> Right, in some country, once a month on Tuesday between 10 and 2. And I'm like, how are you doing business, like that? That's like the dark ages. >> Yeah, this is where the crypto guys got it right, with know your customer. >> Yeah, right. >> 'Cause they have the data. >> Well, they had to, they had to. >> Yeah. >> There's a lot of things that's going wrong on crypto, we don't want to, we could do a whole show on that. But Danielle great to have you drop by, obviously Bon Jovi's here. How did you get Bon Jovi? Huge fan, New Jersey boy, Patriot's fan. >> Yeah. >> Dave, we love him. >> Fantastic. >> Well, I mean, who doesn't love Bon Jovi, right? We knew we wanted a rocker, right. Rock and roll is all about challenging the status quo. That, I mean, since the beginning and that's what we're doing here, right. We're really challenging like the way things have been done in Telco. Kind of just shattering the glass ceiling in lots of different ways, right. Calling the old guys dinosaurs. I'm sure those guys love me, right. I mean, how much do they hate me right now? Or they're like that girl, oh, so. >> Well we are punk rock. They're rock and roll. >> Right, right. I mean, maybe we should have gotten The Clash, right. Black Flag, right. I'm a little bit older than you. >> Bon Jovi's good. >> Right, we'll go with Bon Jovi. >> We like both of them. >> Accessible, right. >> Once's more conservative rock and roll still edgy. >> Yeah, so really excited to get them here. I've met him before. And so hopefully he'll remember me. It's been a couple of years since I've seen him. So can't wait to connect with him again. I think we have Elon Musk coming up and that's going to be, it's always exciting to hear that guy talk, so yeah. >> Yeah, he's going to be inspiration he'll talk space, SpaceX, >> Oh yeah. >> And possibly Starlink. >> Talking about the edge. >> Starlink, right. >> Starlink. >> I mean, those guys are launching rockets and deploying satellites and I think that's really interesting for rural. For rural right in Telco, right. Being able to deploy very quickly in rural where the, maybe the cost, you know, per gig doesn't make sense. You know, the cost for deployment of tower, I think. I mean, that's an interesting idea right there, yeah. >> It's exciting, he's inspirational. I think a lot of people look at the younger generation coming in and saying why are we doing things? A lot of people are questioning and they see the cloud. They're saying, oh, A or B, why are we doing this? This is such an easier, better way. >> Yeah. >> I think eventually the generation shifts in time. >> It's coming. I'm so excited to be a part of it, yeah. >> Great, great leadership. And I want to say that you are real innovative, glad to have us here and presenting with you here. >> Awesome team. >> I'm excited to have you guys. We talked last night about how great this partnership is, so thank you so much, yeah. >> TheCUBE, theCUBE's rocking inside the CLOUD CITY. The streets of the CLOUD CITY are hustling and booming. >> Packed. >> Packed in here. All stuff, great stuff. Thanks for coming on. >> Yep, thanks so much. >> Bon Jovi is here, we got a shot of Bon Jovi. Do we have a screenshot of Bon Jovi? >> Yeah, there it is. >> There it is, yeah. >> Okay, he's about to come on stage and we're going to take a break here. We're going to take and send it back to Adam and the team in the studio. Thanks guys.

>>Hello and welcome back to the cubes coverage of dr khan 2021. I'm john for your host of the cube. Great guests here cube alumni Stephen Chin, vice president of developer relations for jay frog Stephen, great to see you again this remote this time this last time was in person. Our last physical event. We had you in the queue but great to see you. Thanks for coming in remotely. >>No, no, I'm very glad to be here. And also it was, it was awesome to be in person at our s a conference when we last talked and the last year has been super exciting with a whole bunch of crazy things like the I. P. O. And doing virtual events. So we've, we're transitioning to the new normal. We're looking forward to things getting to be hybrid. >>Great success with jay frog. We've been documenting the history of this company, very developer focused the successful I. P. O. And just the continuation that you guys have transitioned beautifully to virtual because you know, developer company, it runs virtual, but also you guys have been all about simplicity for developers and and we've been talking for many, many years with you guys on this. This is the theme that dr khan again, this is a developer conference, not so much an operator conference, but more of a deva deV developer focused. You guys have been there from the beginning, um nationally reported on it. But talk about jay Frog and the Doctor partnership and why is this event so important for you? >>Yeah. So I think um like like you said, jay Frog has and always is a developer focused company. So we we build tools and things which which focus on developer use cases, how you get your code to production and streamlining the entire devoPS pipeline. And one of the things which which we believe very strongly in and I think we're very aligned with with doctor on this is having secure clean upstream dependencies for your Docker images for other package and language dependencies and um you know, with the announcement of dr khan and dr Hubbs model changing, we wanted to make sure that we have the best integration with doctor and also the best support for our customers on with Docker hub. So one of the things we did strategically is um, we um combined our platforms so um you can get the best in class developer tools for managing images from Docker. Um everyone uses their um desktop tools for for building and managing your containers and then you can push them right to the best container registry for managing Docker Images, which is the jay frog platform. And just like Docker has free tools available for developers to use. We have a free tier which integrates nicely what their offerings and one of the things which we collaborate with them on is for anybody using our free tier in the cloud. Um there's there's no limits on the Docker images. You can pull no rate limiting, no throttling. So it just makes a clean seamless developer experience to to manage your cloud native projects and applications. >>What's the role of the container registry in cloud NATO? You brought that up? But can you just expand on that point? >>Yeah. So I think when you when you're doing deployments to production, you want to make sure both that you have the best security so that you're making sure that you're scanning and checking for vulnerabilities in your application and also that you have a complete um traceability. Basically you need a database in a log of everything you're pushing out to production. So what container registries allow you to do is um they keep all of the um releases all of the Docker images which are pushing out. You can go back and roll back to a previous version. You can see exactly what's included in those Docker images. And we jay frog, we have a product called X ray which does deep scanning of container images. So it'll go into the Docker Image, it'll go into any packages installed, it'll go into application libraries and it does kind of this onion peel apart of your entire document image to figure out exactly what you're using. Are there any vulnerabilities? And the funny thing about about Docker Images is um because of the number of libraries and packages and installed things which you haven't given Docker Image. If you just take your released Docker Image and let it sit on the shelf for a month, you have thousands of vulnerabilities, just just buy it um, by accruing from different reported zero day vulnerabilities over time. So it's extremely important that you, you know what those are, you can evaluate the risk to your organization and then mitigated as quickly as possible. If there is anything which could impact your customers, >>you bring up a great point right there and that is ultimately a developer thing that's been, that's generational, you know what generation you come from and that's always the problem getting the patches in the old days, getting a new code updated now when you have cloud native, that's more important than ever. And I also want to get your thoughts on this because you guys have been early on shift left two years ago, shift left was not it was not a new thing for you guys ever. So you got shift left building security at the point of coding, but you're bringing up a whole another thing which is okay automation. How do you make it? So the developments nothing stop what they're doing and then get back and say, okay, what's out there and my containers. So so how do you simplify that role? Because that's where the partnership, I think really people are looking to you guys and Dakar on is how do you make my life easier? Bottom line, what's it, what's it, what's it about? >>Yeah. So I I think when you when you're looking at trying to manage um large applications which are deployed to big kubernetes clusters and and how you have kind of this, this um all this infrastructure behind it. One of the one of the challenges is how do you know what you have that in production? Um So what, how do you know exactly what's released and what dependencies are out there and how easily can you trace those back? Um And one of the things which we're gonna be talking about at um swamp up next week is managing the overall devops lifecycle from code all the way through to production. Um And we we have a great platform for doing package management for doing vulnerability scanning, for doing um ci cd but you you need a bunch of other tools too. So you need um integrations like docker so you can get trusted packages into your system. You need integrations with observe ability tools like data, dog, elastic and you need it some tools for doing incident management like Patriot duty. And what we've, what we've built out um is we built out an ecosystem of partner integrations which with the J frog platform at the center lets you manage your entire and and life cycle of um devops infrastructure. And this this addresses security. It addresses the need to do quick patches and fixes and production and it kind of stitches together all the tools which all of the successful companies are using to manage their fast moving continuous release cycle, um and puts all that information together with seamless integration with even developer tools which um which folks are using on a day to day basis, like slack jeer A and M. S. Teams. >>So the bottom line then for the developer is you take the best of breed stuff and put it, make it all work together easily. That right? >>Yeah. I mean it's like it's seamless from you. You've got an incidents, you click a button, it sticks Ajira ticket in for you to resolve. Um you can tie that with the code, commits what you're doing and then directly to the security vulnerability which is reported by X ray. So it stitches all these different tools and technologies together for a for a seamless developer experience. And I think the great relationship we have with Docker um offers developers again, this this best in class container management um and trusted images combined with the world's best container registry. >>Awesome. Well let's get into that container issue products. I think that's the fascinating and super important thing that you guys solve a big problem for. So I gotta ask you, what are the security risks of using unverified and outdated Docker containers? Could you share your thoughts on what people should pay attention to because if they got unverified and outdated Docker containers, you mentioned vulnerabilities. What are those specific risks to them? >>Yeah, so I there's there's a lot of um different instances where you can see in the news or even some of the new government mandates coming out that um if you're not taking the right measures to secure your production applications and to patch critical vulnerabilities and libraries you're using, um you end up with um supply chain vulnerability risks like what happened to solar winds and what's been fueling the recent government mandates. So I think there's a there's a whole class of of different vulnerabilities which um bad actors can exploit. It can actually go quite deep with um folks um exploiting application software. Neither your your company or in other people's systems with with the move to cloud native, we also have heavily interconnected systems with a lot of different attack points from the container to the application level to the operating system level. So there's multiple different attack vectors for people to get into your software. And the best defense is an organization against security. Vulnerabilities is to know about them quickly and to mitigate them and fix them in production as quickly as possible. And this requires having a fast continuous deployment strategy for how you can update your code quickly, very quick identification of vulnerabilities with tools like X ray and other security scanning tools, um and just just good um integration with tools developers are using because at the end of the day it's the developers who both are picking the libraries and dependencies which are gonna be pushed into production and also they're the ones who have to react and and fix it when there's a uh production incident, >>you know, machine learning and automation. And it's always, I love that tech because it's always kind of cool because it's it's devops in action, but you know, it's it's not like a silver bullet, your machine, your machine learning is only as good as your your data and the code is written on staying with automation. You're not automating the right things or or wrong things. It's all it's all subjective based on what you're doing and you know Beauty's in the eye of the beholder when you do things like that. So I wanna hear your thoughts on on automation because that's really been a big part of the story here, both on simplicity and making the load lighter for developers. So when you have to go out and look at modifying code updates and looking at say um unverified containers or one that gets a little bit of a hair on it with with with more updates that are needed as we say, what do you what's the role of automation? How do you guys view that and how do you talk to the developers out there when posturing for a strategy on and a playbook for automation? >>Yeah, I think you're you're touching on one of the most critical parts of of any good devops um platform is from end to end. Everything should be automated with the right quality gates inserted at different points so that if there's a um test failure, if you have a build failure, if you have a security vulnerability, the the automatic um points in there will be triggered so that your release process will be stopped um that you have automated rollbacks in production um so that you can make sure that their issues which affect your customers, you can quickly roll back and once you get into production um having the right tools for observe ability so that you can actually sift through what is a essentially a big data problem. So with large systems you get so much data coming back from your application, from the production systems, from all these different sources that even an easy way to sift through and identify what are the messages coming back telling you that there's a problem that there's a real issue that you need to address versus what's just background noise about different different processes or different application alerts, which really don't affect the security of the functionality of your applications. So I think this this end to end automation gives you the visibility and the single pane of glass to to know how to manage and diagnose your devops infrastructure. >>You know, steve you bring up a great point. I love this conversation because it always highlights to me why I love uh Coop Con and Cloud Native con part of the C N C F and dr khan, because to me it's like a microcosm of two worlds that are living together. Right? You got I think Coop khan has proven its more operated but not like operator operator, developer operators. And you got dr khan almost pure software development, but now becoming operators. So you've got that almost those two worlds are fusing together where they are running together. You have operating concerns like well the Parachute open, will it work? And how do I roll back these roll back? These are like operating questions that now developers got to think about. So I think we're seeing this kind of confluence of true devops next level where you can't you can be just a developer and have a little bit of opposite you and not be a problem. Right? Or or get down under the under the hood and be an operator whenever you want. So they're seeing a flex. What's your thoughts on this is just more about my observation kind of real time here? >>Yeah, so um I think it's an interesting, obviously observation on the industry and I think you know, I've been doing DEVOPS for for a long time now and um I started as a developer who needed to push to production, needed to have the ability to to manage releases and packages and be able to automate everything. Um and this naturally leads you on a path of doing more operations, being able to manage your production, being able to have fewer incidents and issues. Um I think DEVOPS has evolved to become a very complicated um set of tools and problems which it solves and even kubernetes as an example. Um It's not easy to set up like setting up a kubernetes cluster and managing, it is a full time job now that said, I think what you're seeing now is more and more companies are shifting back to developers as a focus because teams and developers are the kingmakers ends with the rise of cloud computing, you don't need a full operations team, you don't need a huge infrastructure stack, you can you can easily get set up in the cloud on on amazon google or as your and start deploying today to production from from a small team straight from code to production. And I think as we evolve and as we get better tools, simpler ways of managing your deployments of managing your packages, this makes it possible for um development teams to do that entire site lifecycle from code through to production with good quality checks with um good security and also with the ability to manage simple production incidents all by themselves. So I think that's that's coming where devoPS is shifting back to development teams. >>It's great to have your leadership and your experience. All right there. That's a great call out, great observation, nice gym there. I think that's right on. I think to get your thoughts if you don't mind going next level because you're, you're nailing what I see is the successful companies having these teams that could be and and workflows and have a mix of a team. I was talking about Dana Lawson who was the VP of engineering get up and she and I were riffing on this idea that you don't have to have a monolithic team because you've got you no longer have a monolithic environment. So you have this microservices and now you can have these, I'm gonna call micro teams, but you're starting to see an SRE on the team, that's the developer. Right? So this idea of having an SRE department maybe for big companies, that could be cool if you're hyper scalar, but these development teams are having certain formations. What's your observation to your customer base in terms of how your customers are organizing? Because I think you nailed the success form of how teams are executing because it's so much more agile, you get the reliability, you need to have security baked in, you want end to end visibility because you got services starting and stopping. How are teams? How are you seeing developers? What's the state of the art in your mind for formation? >>Yeah, so I think um we we work with a lot of the biggest companies who were really at the bleeding edge of innovation and devoPS and continuous delivery. And when you look at those teams, they have, they have very, very small teams, um supporting thousands of developers teams um building and deploying applications. So um when you think of of SRE and deVOPS focus there is actually a very small number of those folks who typically support humongous organizations and I think what we're hearing from them is their increasingly getting requirements from the teams who want to be self service, right? They want to be able to take their applications, have simple platforms to deploy it themselves to manage things. Um They don't they don't want to go through heavy way processes, they wanted to be automated and lightweight and I think this is this is putting pressure on deVOPS teams to to evolve and to adopt more platforms and services which allow developers to to do things themselves. And I think over time um this doesn't this doesn't get rid of the need for for devops and for SRE roles and organizations but it it changes because now they become the enablers of success and good development teams. It's it's kind of like um like how I. T. Organizations they support you with automated rollouts with all these tools rather than in person as much as they can do with automation. Um That helps the entire organization. I think devops is becoming the same thing where they're now simplifying and automating how developers can be self service and organizations. >>And I think it's a great evolution to because that makes total sense because it is kind of like what the I. T. Used to do in the old days but its the scale is different, the services are different, the deVOPS tools are different and so they really are enabling not just the cost center there really driving value. Um and this brings up the whole next threat. I'd love to get your thoughts because you guys are, have been doing this for developers for a while. Tools versus platform because you know, this whole platform where we're a platform were control plane, there's still a need for tooling for developers. How do we thread the needle between? What's, what's good for a tool? What's good for a platform? >>Yeah, So I I think that um, you know, there's always a lot of focus and it's, it's easier if you can take an end to end platform, which solves a bunch of different use cases together. But um, I I think a lot of folks, um, when you're looking at what you need and how you want to apply, um, devops practices to your organization, you ideally you want to be able to use best in breed tools to be able to solve exactly what your use cases. And this is one of the reasons why as a company with jay frog, we we try to be as open as possible to integrations with the entire vendor ecosystem. So um, it doesn't matter what ci cd tool you're using, you could be using Jenkins circle, ci spinnaker checked on, it doesn't matter what observe ability platform you're using in production, it doesn't matter what um tools you're using for collaboration. We, we support that whole ecosystem and we make it possible for you to select the the best of breed tools and technologies that you need to be successful as an organization. And I think the risk is if, if you, if you kind of accept vendor lock in on a single platform or or a single cloud platform even um then you're, you're not getting the best in breed tools and technologies which you need to stay ahead of the curve and devops is a very, very fast moving um, um, discipline along with all the cloud native technologies which you use for application development and for production. So if you're, if you're not staying at the bleeding edge and kind of pushing things forward, then you're then you're behind and if you're behind, you're not be able to keep up with the releases, the deployments, you need to be secure. So I think what you see is the leading organizations are pushing the envelope on on security, on deployment and they're they're using the best tools in the industry to make that happen. >>Stephen great to have you on the cube. I want to just get your thoughts on jay frog and the doctor partnership to wrap this up. Could you take them in to explain what's the most important thing that developers should pay attention to when it comes to security for Docker images? >>Yeah. So I think when you're when you're developer and you're looking at your your security strategy, um you want tools that help you that come to you and that help you. So you want things which are going to give you alerts in your I. D. With things which are going to trigger your in your Ci cd and your build process. And we should make it easy for you to identify mitigate and release um things which will help you do that. So we we provide a lot of those tools with jay frog and our doctor partnership. And I think if you if you look at our push towards helping developers to become more productive, build better applications and more secure applications, this is something the entire industry needs for us to address. What's increasingly a risk to software development, which is a higher profile vulnerabilities, which are affecting the entire industry. >>Great stuff. Big fan of jay frog watching you guys be so successful, you know, making things easy for developers is uh, and simpler and reducing the steps it takes to do things as a, I say, is the classic magic formula for any company, Make it easier, reduce the steps it takes to do something and make it simple. Um, good success formula. Great stuff. Great to have you on um for a minute or two, take a minute to plug what's going on in jay frog and share what's the latest increase with the company, what you guys are doing? Obviously public company. Great place to work, getting awards for that. Give the update on jay frog, put a plug in. >>Yeah. And also dr Frog, I've been having a lot of fun working at J frog, it's very, very fast growing. We have a lot of awesome announcements at swamp up. Um like the partnerships were doing um secure release bundles for deployments and just just a range of advances. I think the number of new features and innovation we put into the product in the past six months since I. P. O. Is astounding. So we're really trying to push the edge on devops um and we're also gonna be announcing and talking about stuff that dr khan as well and continue to invest in the cloud native and the devops ecosystem with our support of the continuous delivery foundation and the C. N C F, which I'm also heavily involved in. So it's it's exciting time to be in the devoPS industry and I think you can see that we're really helping software developers to improve their art to become better, better at release. Again, managing production applications >>and the ecosystem is just flourishing. It's only the beginning and again Making bring the craft back in Agile, which is a super big theme this year. Stephen. Great, great to see you. Thanks for dropping those gems and insights here on the Cube here at Dr. 2021 virtual. Thanks for coming on. >>Yeah. Thank you john. >>Okay. Dr. 2020 coverage virtual. I'm John for your host of the Cube. Thanks for watching. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah.

>> Hi, my name is Andy Clemenko. I'm a Senior Solutions Engineer at StackRox. Thanks for joining us today for my talk on labels, labels, labels. Obviously, you can reach me at all the socials. Before we get started, I like to point you to my GitHub repo, you can go to andyc.info/dc20, and it'll take you to my GitHub page where I've got all of this documentation, socials. Before we get started, I like to point you to my GitHub repo, you can go to andyc.info/dc20, (upbeat music) >> Hi, my name is Andy Clemenko. I'm a Senior Solutions Engineer at StackRox. Thanks for joining us today for my talk on labels, labels, labels. Obviously, you can reach me at all the socials. Before we get started, I like to point you to my GitHub repo, you can go to andyc.info/dc20, and it'll take you to my GitHub page where I've got all of this documentation, I've got the Keynote file there. YAMLs, I've got Dockerfiles, Compose files, all that good stuff. If you want to follow along, great, if not go back and review later, kind of fun. So let me tell you a little bit about myself. I am a former DOD contractor. This is my seventh DockerCon. I've spoken, I had the pleasure to speak at a few of them, one even in Europe. I was even a Docker employee for quite a number of years, providing solutions to the federal government and customers around containers and all things Docker. So I've been doing this a little while. One of the things that I always found interesting was the lack of understanding around labels. So why labels, right? Well, as a former DOD contractor, I had built out a large registry. And the question I constantly got was, where did this image come from? How did you get it? What's in it? Where did it come from? How did it get here? And one of the things we did to kind of alleviate some of those questions was we established a baseline set of labels. Labels really are designed to provide as much metadata around the image as possible. I ask everyone in attendance, when was the last time you pulled an image and had 100% confidence, you knew what was inside it, where it was built, how it was built, when it was built, you probably didn't, right? The last thing we obviously want is a container fire, like our image on the screen. And one kind of interesting way we can kind of prevent that is through the use of labels. We can use labels to address security, address some of the simplicity on how to run these images. So think of it, kind of like self documenting, Think of it also as an audit trail, image provenance, things like that. These are some interesting concepts that we can definitely mandate as we move forward. What is a label, right? Specifically what is the Schema? It's just a key-value. All right? It's any key and pretty much any value. What if we could dump in all kinds of information? What if we could encode things and store it in there? And I've got a fun little demo to show you about that. Let's start off with some of the simple keys, right? Author, date, description, version. Some of the basic information around the image. That would be pretty useful, right? What about specific labels for CI? What about a, where's the version control? Where's the source, right? Whether it's Git, whether it's GitLab, whether it's GitHub, whether it's Gitosis, right? Even SPN, who cares? Where are the source files that built, where's the Docker file that built this image? What's the commit number? That might be interesting in terms of tracking the resulting image to a person or to a commit, hopefully then to a person. How is it built? What if you wanted to play with it and do a git clone of the repo and then build the Docker file on your own? Having a label specifically dedicated on how to build this image might be interesting for development work. Where it was built, and obviously what build number, right? These kind of all, not only talk about continuous integration, CI but also start to talk about security. Specifically what server built it. The version control number, the version number, the commit number, again, how it was built. What's the specific build number? What was that job number in, say, Jenkins or GitLab? What if we could take it a step further? What if we could actually apply policy enforcement in the build pipeline, looking specifically for some of these specific labels? I've got a good example of, in my demo of a policy enforcement. So let's look at some sample labels. Now originally, this idea came out of label-schema.org. And then it was a modified to opencontainers, org.opencontainers.image. There is a link in my GitHub page that links to the full reference. But these are some of the labels that I like to use, just as kind of like a standardization. So obviously, Author's, an email address, so now the image is attributable to a person, that's always kind of good for security and reliability. Where's the source? Where's the version control that has the source, the Docker file and all the assets? How it was built, build number, build server the commit, we talked about, when it was created, a simple description. A fun one I like adding in is the healthZendpoint. Now obviously, the health check directive should be in the Docker file. But if you've got other systems that want to ping your applications, why not declare it and make it queryable? Image version, obviously, that's simple declarative And then a title. And then I've got the two fun ones. Remember, I talked about what if we could encode some fun things? Hypothetically, what if we could encode the Compose file of how to build the stack in the first image itself? And conversely the Kubernetes? Well, actually, you can and I have a demo to show you how to kind of take advantage of that. So how do we create labels? And really creating labels as a function of build time okay? You can't really add labels to an image after the fact. The way you do add labels is either through the Docker file, which I'm a big fan of, because it's declarative. It's in version control. It's kind of irrefutable, especially if you're tracking that commit number in a label. You can extend it from being a static kind of declaration to more a dynamic with build arguments. And I can show you, I'll show you in a little while how you can use a build argument at build time to pass in that variable. And then obviously, if you did it by hand, you could do a docker build--label key equals value. I'm not a big fan of the third one, I love the first one and obviously the second one. Being dynamic we can take advantage of some of the variables coming out of version control. Or I should say, some of the variables coming out of our CI system. And that way, it self documents effectively at build time, which is kind of cool. How do we view labels? Well, there's two major ways to view labels. The first one is obviously a docker pull and docker inspect. You can pull the image locally, you can inspect it, you can obviously, it's going to output as JSON. So you going to use something like JQ to crack it open and look at the individual labels. Another one which I found recently was Skopeo from Red Hat. This allows you to actually query the registry server. So you don't even have to pull the image initially. This can be really useful if you're on a really small development workstation, and you're trying to talk to a Kubernetes cluster and wanting to deploy apps kind of in a very simple manner. Okay? And this was that use case, right? Using Kubernetes, the Kubernetes demo. One of the interesting things about this is that you can base64 encode almost anything, push it in as text into a label and then base64 decode it, and then use it. So in this case, in my demo, I'll show you how we can actually use a kubectl apply piped from the base64 decode from the label itself from skopeo talking to the registry. And what's interesting about this kind of technique is you don't need to store Helm charts. You don't need to learn another language for your declarative automation, right? You don't need all this extra levels of abstraction inherently, if you use it as a label with a kubectl apply, It's just built in. It's kind of like the kiss approach to a certain extent. It does require some encoding when you actually build the image, but to me, it doesn't seem that hard. Okay, let's take a look at a demo. And what I'm going to do for my demo, before we actually get started is here's my repo. Here's a, let me actually go to the actual full repo. So here's the repo, right? And I've got my Jenkins pipeline 'cause I'm using Jenkins for this demo. And in my demo flask, I've got the Docker file. I've got my compose and my Kubernetes YAML. So let's take a look at the Docker file, right? So it's a simple Alpine image. The org statements are the build time arguments that are passed in. Label, so again, I'm using the org.opencontainers.image.blank, for most of them. There's a typo there. Let's see if you can find it, I'll show you it later. My source, build date, build number, commit. Build number and get commit are derived from the Jenkins itself, which is nice. I can just take advantage of existing URLs. I don't have to create anything crazy. And again, I've got my actual Docker build command. Now this is just a label on how to build it. And then here's my simple Python, APK upgrade, remove the package manager, kind of some security stuff, health check getting Python through, okay? Let's take a look at the Jenkins pipeline real quick. So here is my Jenkins pipeline and I have four major stages, four stages, I have built. And here in build, what I do is I actually do the Git clone. And then I do my docker build. From there, I actually tell the Jenkins StackRox plugin. So that's what I'm using for my security scanning. So go ahead and scan, basically, I'm staging it to scan the image. I'm pushing it to Hub, okay? Where I can see the, basically I'm pushing the image up to Hub so such that my StackRox security scanner can go ahead and scan the image. I'm kicking off the scan itself. And then if everything's successful, I'm pushing it to prod. Now what I'm doing is I'm just using the same image with two tags, pre-prod and prod. This is not exactly ideal, in your environment, you probably want to use separate registries and non-prod and a production registry, but for demonstration purposes, I think this is okay. So let's go over to my Jenkins and I've got a deliberate failure. And I'll show you why there's a reason for that. And let's go down. Let's look at my, so I have a StackRox report. Let's look at my report. And it says image required, required image label alert, right? Request that the maintainer, add the required label to the image, so we're missing a label, okay? One of the things we can do is let's flip over, and let's look at Skopeo. Right? I'm going to do this just the easy way. So instead of looking at org.zdocker, opencontainers.image.authors. Okay, see here it says build signature? That was the typo, we didn't actually pass in. So if we go back to our repo, we didn't pass in the the build time argument, we just passed in the word. So let's fix that real quick. That's the Docker file. Let's go ahead and put our dollar sign in their. First day with the fingers you going to love it. And let's go ahead and commit that. Okay? So now that that's committed, we can go back to Jenkins, and we can actually do another build. And there's number 12. And as you can see, I've been playing with this for a little bit today. And while that's running, come on, we can go ahead and look at the Console output. Okay, so there's our image. And again, look at all the build arguments that we're passing into the build statement. So we're passing in the date and the date gets derived on the command line. With the build arguments, there's the base64 encoded of the Compose file. Here's the base64 encoding of the Kubernetes YAML. We do the build. And then let's go down to the bottom layer exists and successful. So here's where we can see no system policy violations profound marking stack regimes security plugin, build step as successful, okay? So we're actually able to do policy enforcement that that image exists, that that label sorry, exists in the image. And again, we can look at the security report and there's no policy violations and no vulnerabilities. So that's pretty good for security, right? We can now enforce and mandate use of certain labels within our images. And let's flip back over to Skopeo, and let's go ahead and look at it. So we're looking at the prod version again. And there's it is in my email address. And that validated that that was valid for that policy. So that's kind of cool. Now, let's take it a step further. What if, let's go ahead and take a look at all of the image, all the labels for a second, let me remove the dash org, make it pretty. Okay? So we have all of our image labels. Again, author's build, commit number, look at the commit number. It was built today build number 12. We saw that right? Delete, build 12. So that's kind of cool dynamic labels. Name, healthz, right? But what we're looking for is we're going to look at the org.zdockerketers label. So let's go look at the label real quick. Okay, well that doesn't really help us because it's encoded but let's base64 dash D, let's decode it. And I need to put the dash r in there 'cause it doesn't like, there we go. So there's my Kubernetes YAML. So why can't we simply kubectl apply dash f? Let's just apply it from standard end. So now we've actually used that label. From the image that we've queried with skopeo, from a remote registry to deploy locally to our Kubernetes cluster. So let's go ahead and look everything's up and running, perfect. So what does that look like, right? So luckily, I'm using traefik for Ingress 'cause I love it. And I've got an object in my Kubernetes YAML called flask.doctor.life. That's my Ingress object for traefik. I can go to flask.docker.life. And I can hit refresh. Obviously, I'm not a very good web designer 'cause the background image in the text. We can go ahead and refresh it a couple times we've got Redis storing a hit counter. We can see that our server name is roundrobing. Okay? That's kind of cool. So let's kind of recap a little bit about my demo environment. So my demo environment, I'm using DigitalOcean, Ubuntu 19.10 Vms. I'm using K3s instead of full Kubernetes either full Rancher, full Open Shift or Docker Enterprise. I think K3s has some really interesting advantages on the development side and it's kind of intended for IoT but it works really well and it deploys super easy. I'm using traefik for Ingress. I love traefik. I may or may not be a traefik ambassador. I'm using Jenkins for CI. And I'm using StackRox for image scanning and policy enforcement. One of the things to think about though, especially in terms of labels is none of this demo stack is required. You can be in any cloud, you can be in CentOs, you can be in any Kubernetes. You can even be in swarm, if you wanted to, or Docker compose. Any Ingress, any CI system, Jenkins, circle, GitLab, it doesn't matter. And pretty much any scanning. One of the things that I think is kind of nice about at least StackRox is that we do a lot more than just image scanning, right? With the policy enforcement things like that. I guess that's kind of a shameless plug. But again, any of this stack is completely replaceable, with any comparative product in that category. So I'd like to, again, point you guys to the andyc.infodc20, that's take you right to the GitHub repo. You can reach out to me at any of the socials @clemenko or andy@stackrox.com. And thank you for attending. I hope you learned something fun about labels. And hopefully you guys can standardize labels in your organization and really kind of take your images and the image provenance to a new level. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music) >> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas It's theCUBE. Covering AWS re:Invent 2019. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services and Intel along with it's ecosystem partners. >> Okay, welcome back everyone theCUBE's live coverage of AWS re:Invent 2019. This is theCUBE's 7th year covering Amazon re:Invent. It's their 8th year of the conference. I want to just shout out to Intel for their sponsorship for these two amazing sets. Without their support we wouldn't be able to bring our mission of great content to you. I'm John Furrier. Stu Miniman. We're here with the chief of AWS, the chief executive officer Andy Jassy. Tech athlete in and of himself three hour Keynotes. Welcome to theCUBE again, great to see you. >> Great to be here, thanks for having me guys. >> Congratulations on a great show a lot of great buzz. >> Andy: Thank you. >> A lot of good stuff. Your Keynote was phenomenal. You get right into it, you giddy up right into it as you say, three hours, thirty announcements. You guys do a lot, but what I liked, the new addition, the last year and this year is the band; house band. They're pretty good. >> Andy: They're good right? >> They hit the queen notes, so that keeps it balanced. So we're going to work on getting a band for theCUBE. >> Awesome. >> So if I have to ask you, what's your walk up song, what would it be? >> There's so many choices, it depends on what kind of mood I'm in. But, uh, maybe Times Like These by the Foo Fighters. >> John: Alright. >> These are unusual times right now. >> Foo Fighters playing at the Amazon Intersect Show. >> Yes they are. >> Good plug Andy. >> Headlining. >> Very clever >> Always getting a good plug in there. >> My very favorite band. Well congratulations on the Intersect you got a lot going on. Intersect is a music festival, I'll get to that in a second But, I think the big news for me is two things, obviously we had a one-on-one exclusive interview and you laid out, essentially what looks like was going to be your Keynote, and it was. Transformation- >> Andy: Thank you for the practice. (Laughter) >> John: I'm glad to practice, use me anytime. >> Yeah. >> And I like to appreciate the comments on Jedi on the record, that was great. But I think the transformation story's a very real one, but the NFL news you guys just announced, to me, was so much fun and relevant. You had the Commissioner of NFL on stage with you talking about a strategic partnership. That is as top down, aggressive goal as you could get to have Rodger Goodell fly to a tech conference to sit with you and then bring his team talk about the deal. >> Well, ya know, we've been partners with the NFL for a while with the Next Gen Stats that they use on all their telecasts and one of the things I really like about Roger is that he's very curious and very interested in technology and the first couple times I spoke with him he asked me so many questions about ways the NFL might be able to use the Cloud and digital transformation to transform their various experiences and he's always said if you have a creative idea or something you think that could change the world for us, just call me he said or text me or email me and I'll call you back within 24 hours. And so, we've spent the better part of the last year talking about a lot of really interesting, strategic ways that they can evolve their experience both for fans, as well as their players and the Player Health and Safety Initiative, it's so important in sports and particularly important with the NFL given the nature of the sport and they've always had a focus on it, but what you can do with computer vision and machine learning algorithms and then building a digital athlete which is really like a digital twin of each athlete so you understand, what does it look like when they're healthy and compare that when it looks like they may not be healthy and be able to simulate all kinds of different combinations of player hits and angles and different plays so that you could try to predict injuries and predict the right equipment you need before there's a problem can be really transformational so we're super excited about it. >> Did you guys come up with the idea or was it a collaboration between them? >> It was really a collaboration. I mean they, look, they are very focused on players safety and health and it's a big deal for their- you know, they have two main constituents the players and fans and they care deeply about the players and it's a-it's a hard problem in a sport like Football, I mean, you watch it. >> Yeah, and I got to say it does point out the use cases of what you guys are promoting heavily at the show here of the SageMaker Studio, which was a big part of your Keynote, where they have all this data. >> Andy: Right. >> And they're data hoarders, they hoard data but the manual process of going through the data was a killer problem. This is consistent with a lot of the enterprises that are out there, they have more data than they even know. So this seems to be a big part of the strategy. How do you get the customers to actually wake up to the fact that they got all this data and how do you tie that together? >> I think in almost every company they know they have a lot of data. And there are always pockets of people who want to do something with it. But, when you're going to make these really big leaps forward; these transformations, the things like Volkswagen is doing where they're reinventing their factories and their manufacturing process or the NFL where they're going to radically transform how they do players uh, health and safety. It starts top down and if the senior leader isn't convicted about wanting to take that leap forward and trying something different and organizing the data differently and organizing the team differently and using machine learning and getting help from us and building algorithms and building some muscle inside the company it just doesn't happen because it's not in the normal machinery of what most companies do. And so it always, almost always, starts top down. Sometimes it can be the Commissioner or CEO sometimes it can be the CIO but it has to be senior level conviction or it doesn't get off the ground. >> And the business model impact has to be real. For NFL, they know concussions, hurting their youth pipe-lining, this is a huge issue for them. This is their business model. >> They lose even more players to lower extremity injuries. And so just the notion of trying to be able to predict injuries and, you know, the impact it can have on rules and the impact it can have on the equipment they use, it's a huge game changer when they look at the next 10 to 20 years. >> Alright, love geeking out on the NFL but Andy, you know- >> No more NFL talk? >> Off camera how about we talk? >> Nobody talks about the Giants being 2 and 10. >> Stu: We're both Patriots fans here. >> People bring up the undefeated season. >> So Andy- >> Everybody's a Patriot's fan now. (Laughter) >> It's fascinating to watch uh, you and your three hour uh, Keynote, uh Werner in his you know, architectural discussion, really showed how AWS is really extending its reach, you know, it's not just a place. For a few years people have been talking about you know, Cloud is an operational model its not a destination or a location but, I felt it really was laid out is you talked about Breadth and Depth and Werner really talked about you know, Architectural differentiation. People talk about Cloud, but there are very-there are a lot of differences between the vision for where things are going. Help us understand why, I mean, Amazon's vision is still a bit different from what other people talk about where this whole Cloud expansion, journey, put ever what tag or label you want on it but you know, the control plane and the technology that you're building and where you see that going. >> Well I think that, we've talked about this a couple times we have two macro types of customers. We have those that really want to get at the low level building blocks and stitch them together creatively however they see fit to create whatever's in their-in their heads. And then we have the second segment of customers that say look, I'm willing to give up some of that flexibility in exchange for getting 80% of the way there much faster. In an abstraction that's different from those low level building blocks. And both segments of builders we want to serve and serve well and so we've built very significant offerings in both areas. I think when you look at microservices um, you know, some of it has to do with the fact that we have this very strongly held belief born out of several years of Amazon where you know, the first 7 or 8 years of Amazon's consumer business we basically jumbled together all of the parts of our technology in moving really quickly and when we wanted to move quickly where you had to impact multiple internal development teams it was so long because it was this big ball, this big monolithic piece. And we got religion about that in trying to move faster in the consumer business and having to tease those pieces apart. And it really was a lot of impetus behind conceiving AWS where it was these low level, very flexible building blocks that6 don't try and make all the decisions for customers they get to make them themselves. And some of the microservices that you saw Werner talking about just, you know, for instance, what we-what we did with Nitro or even what we did with Firecracker those are very much about us relentlessly working to continue to uh, tease apart the different components. And even things that look like low level building blocks over time, you build more and more features and all of the sudden you realize they have a lot of things that are combined together that you wished weren't that slow you down and so, Nitro was a completely re imagining of our Hypervisor and Virtualization layer to allow us, both to let customers have better performance but also to let us move faster and have a better security story for our customers. >> I got to ask you the question around transformation because I think that all points, all the data points, you got all the references, Goldman Sachs on stage at the Keynote, Cerner, I mean healthcare just is an amazing example because I mean, that's demonstrating real value there there's no excuse. I talked to someone who wouldn't be named last night, in and around the area said, the CIA has a cost bar like this a cost-a budget like this but the demand for mission based apps is going up exponentially, so there's need for the Cloud. And so, you see more and more of that. What is your top down, aggressive goals to fill that solution base because you're also a very transformational thinker; what is your-what is your aggressive top down goals for your organization because you're serving a market with trillions of dollars of spend that's shifting, that's on the table. >> Yeah. >> A lot of competition now sees it too, they're going to go after it. But at the end of the day you have customers that have a demand for things, apps. >> Andy: Yeah. >> And not a lot of budget increase at the same time. This is a huge dynamic. >> Yeah. >> John: What's your goals? >> You know I think that at a high level our top down aggressive goals are that we want every single customer who uses our platform to have an outstanding customer experience. And we want that outstanding customer experience in part is that their operational performance and their security are outstanding, but also that it allows them to build, uh, build projects and initiatives that change their customer experience and allow them to be a sustainable successful business over a long period of time. And then, we also really want to be the technology infrastructure platform under all the applications that people build. And we're realistic, we know that you know, the market segments we address with infrastructure, software, hardware, and data center services globally are trillions of dollars in the long term and it won't only be us, but we have that goal of wanting to serve every application and that requires not just the security operational premise but also a lot of functionality and a lot of capability. We have by far the most amount of capability out there and yet I would tell you, we have 3 to 5 years of items on our roadmap that customers want us to add. And that's just what we know today. >> And Andy, underneath the covers you've been going through some transformation. When we talked a couple of years ago, about how serverless is impacting things I've heard that that's actually, in many ways, glue behind the two pizza teams to work between organizations. Talk about how the internal transformations are happening. How that impacts your discussions with customers that are going through that transformation. >> Well, I mean, there's a lot of- a lot of the technology we build comes from things that we're doing ourselves you know? And that we're learning ourselves. It's kind of how we started thinking about microservices, serverless too, we saw the need, you know, we would have we would build all these functions that when some kind of object came into an object store we would spin up, compute, all those tasks would take like, 3 or 4 hundred milliseconds then we'd spin it back down and yet, we'd have to keep a cluster up in multiple availability zones because we needed that fault tolerance and it was- we just said this is wasteful and, that's part of how we came up with Lambda and you know, when we were thinking about Lambda people understandably said, well if we build Lambda and we build this serverless adventure in computing a lot of people were keeping clusters of instances aren't going to use them anymore it's going to lead to less absolute revenue for us. But we, we have learned this lesson over the last 20 years at Amazon which is, if it's something that's good for customers you're much better off cannibalizing yourself and doing the right thing for customers and being part of shaping something. And I think if you look at the history of technology you always build things and people say well, that's going to cannibalize this and people are going to spend less money, what really ends up happening is they spend less money per unit of compute but it allows them to do so much more that they ultimately, long term, end up being more significant customers. >> I mean, you are like beating the drum all the time. Customers, what they say, we encompass the roadmap, I got that you guys have that playbook down, that's been really successful for you. >> Andy: Yeah. >> Two years ago you told me machine learning was really important to you because your customers told you. What's the next traunch of importance for customers? What's on top of mind now, as you, look at- >> Andy: Yeah. >> This re:Invent kind of coming to a close, Replay's tonight, you had conversations, you're a tech athlete, you're running around, doing speeches, talking to customers. What's that next hill from if it's machine learning today- >> There's so much I mean, (weird background noise) >> It's not a soup question (Laughter) And I think we're still in the very early days of machine learning it's not like most companies have mastered it yet even though they're using it much more then they did in the past. But, you know, I think machine learning for sure I think the Edge for sure, I think that um, we're optimistic about Quantum Computing even though I think it'll be a few years before it's really broadly useful. We're very um, enthusiastic about robotics. I think the amount of functions that are going to be done by these- >> Yeah. >> robotic applications are much more expansive than people realize. It doesn't mean humans won't have jobs, they're just going to work on things that are more value added. We're believers in augmented virtual reality, we're big believers in what's going to happen with Voice. And I'm also uh, I think sometimes people get bored you know, I think you're even bored with machine learning already >> Not yet. >> People get bored with the things you've heard about but, I think just what we've done with the Chips you know, in terms of giving people 40% better price performance in the latest generation of X86 processors. It's pretty unbelievable in the difference in what people are going to be able to do. Or just look at big data I mean, big data, we haven't gotten through big data where people have totally solved it. The amount of data that companies want to store, process, analyze, is exponentially larger than it was a few years ago and it will, I think, exponentially increase again in the next few years. You need different tools and services. >> Well I think we're not bored with machine learning we're excited to get started because we have all this data from the video and you guys got SageMaker. >> Andy: Yeah. >> We call it the stairway to machine learning heaven. >> Andy: Yeah. >> You start with the data, move up, knock- >> You guys are very sophisticated with what you do with technology and machine learning and there's so much I mean, we're just kind of, again, in such early innings. And I think that, it was so- before SageMaker, it was so hard for everyday developers and data scientists to build models but the combination of SageMaker and what's happened with thousands of companies standardizing on it the last two years, plus now SageMaker studio, giant leap forward. >> Well, we hope to use the data to transform our experience with our audience. And we're on Amazon Cloud so we really appreciate that. >> Andy: Yeah. >> And appreciate your support- >> Andy: Yeah, of course. >> John: With Amazon and get that machine learning going a little faster for us, that would be better. >> If you have requests I'm interested, yeah. >> So Andy, you talked about that you've got the customers that are builders and the customers that need simplification. Traditionally when you get into the, you know, the heart of the majority of adoption of something you really need to simplify that environment. But when I think about the successful enterprise of the future, they need to be builders. how'l I normally would've said enterprise want to pay for solutions because they don't have the skill set but, if they're going to succeed in this new economy they need to go through that transformation >> Andy: Yeah. >> That you talk to, so, I mean, are we in just a total new era when we look back will this be different than some of these previous waves? >> It's a really good question Stu, and I don't think there's a simple answer to it. I think that a lot of enterprises in some ways, I think wish that they could just skip the low level building blocks and only operate at that higher level abstraction. That's why people were so excited by things like, SageMaker, or CodeGuru, or Kendra, or Contact Lens, these are all services that allow them to just send us data and then run it on our models and get back the answers. But I think one of the big trends that we see with enterprises is that they are taking more and more of their development in house and they are wanting to operate more and more like startups. I think that they admire what companies like AirBnB and Pintrest and Slack and Robinhood and a whole bunch of those companies, Stripe, have done and so when, you know, I think you go through these phases and eras where there are waves of success at different companies and then others want to follow that success and replicate it. And so, we see more and more enterprises saying we need to take back a lot of that development in house. And as they do that, and as they add more developers those developers in most cases like to deal with the building blocks. And they have a lot of ideas on how they can creatively stich them together. >> Yeah, on that point, I want to just quickly ask you on Amazon versus other Clouds because you made a comment to me in our interview about how hard it is to provide a service to other people. And it's hard to have a service that you're using yourself and turn that around and the most quoted line of my story was, the compression algorithm- there's no compression algorithm for experience. Which to me, is the diseconomies of scale for taking shortcuts. >> Andy: Yeah. And so I think this is a really interesting point, just add some color commentary because I think this is a fundamental difference between AWS and others because you guys have a trajectory over the years of serving, at scale, customers wherever they are, whatever they want to do, now you got microservices. >> Yeah. >> John: It's even more complex. That's hard. >> Yeah. >> John: Talk about that. >> I think there are a few elements to that notion of there's no compression algorithm for experience and I think the first thing to know about AWS which is different is, we just come from a different heritage and a different background. We ran a business for a long time that was our sole business that was a consumer retail business that was very low margin. And so, we had to operate at very large scale given how many people were using us but also, we had to run infrastructure services deep in the stack, compute storage and database, and reliable scalable data centers at very low cost and margins. And so, when you look at our business it actually, today, I mean its, its a higher margin business in our retail business, its a lower margin business in software companies but at real scale, it's a high volume, relatively low margin business. And the way that you have to operate to be successful with those businesses and the things you have to think about and that DNA come from the type of operators we have to be in our consumer retail business. And there's nobody else in our space that does that. So, you know, the way that we think about costs, the way we think about innovation in the data center, um, and I also think the way that we operate services and how long we've been operating services as a company its a very different mindset than operating package software. Then you look at when uh, you think about some of the uh, issues in very large scale Cloud, you can't learn some of those lessons until you get to different elbows of the curve and scale. And so what I was telling you is, its really different to run your own platform for your own users where you get to tell them exactly how its going to be done. But that's not the way the real world works. I mean, we have millions of external customers who use us from every imaginable country and location whenever they want, without any warning, for lots of different use cases, and they have lots of design patterns and we don't get to tell them what to do. And so operating a Cloud like that, at a scale that's several times larger than the next few providers combined is a very different endeavor and a very different operating rigor. >> Well you got to keep raising the bar you guys do a great job, really impressed again. Another tsunami of announcements. In fact, you had to spill the beans earlier with Quantum the day before the event. Tight schedule. I got to ask you about the musical festival because, I think this is a very cool innovation. It's the inaugural Intersect conference. >> Yes. >> John: Which is not part of Replay, >> Yes. >> John: Which is the concert tonight. Its a whole new thing, big music act, you're a big music buff, your daughter's an artist. Why did you do this? What's the purpose? What's your goal? >> Yeah, it's an experiment. I think that what's happened is that re:Invent has gotten so big, we have 65 thousand people here, that to do the party, which we do every year, its like a 35-40 thousand person concert now. Which means you have to have a location that has multiple stages and, you know, we thought about it last year and when we were watching it and we said, we're kind of throwing, like, a 4 hour music festival right now. There's multiple stages, and its quite expensive to set up that set for a party and we said well, maybe we don't have to spend all that money for 4 hours and then rip it apart because actually the rent to keep those locations for another two days is much smaller than the cost of actually building multiple stages and so we thought we would try it this year. We're very passionate about music as a business and I think we-I think our customers feel like we've thrown a pretty good music party the last few years and we thought we would try it at a larger scale as an experiment. And if you look at the economics- >> At the headliners real quick. >> The Foo Fighters are headlining on Saturday night, Anderson Paak and the Free Nationals, Brandi Carlile, Shawn Mullins, um, Willy Porter, its a good set. Friday night its Beck and Kacey Musgraves so it's a really great set of um, about thirty artists and we're hopeful that if we can build a great experience that people will want to attend that we can do it at scale and it might be something that both pays for itself and maybe, helps pay for re:Invent too overtime and you know, I think that we're also thinking about it as not just a music concert and festival the reason we named it Intersect is that we want an intersection of music genres and people and ethnicities and age groups and art and technology all there together and this will be the first year we try it, its an experiment and we're really excited about it. >> Well I'm gone, congratulations on all your success and I want to thank you we've been 7 years here at re:Invent we've been documenting the history. You got two sets now, one set upstairs. So appreciate you. >> theCUBE is part of re:Invent, you know, you guys really are apart of the event and we really appreciate your coming here and I know people appreciate the content you create as well. >> And we just launched CUBE365 on Amazon Marketplace built on AWS so thanks for letting us- >> Very cool >> John: Build on the platform. appreciate it. >> Thanks for having me guys, I appreciate it. >> Andy Jassy the CEO of AWS here inside theCUBE, it's our 7th year covering and documenting the thunderous innovation that Amazon's doing they're really doing amazing work building out the new technologies here in the Cloud computing world. I'm John Furrier, Stu Miniman, be right back with more after this short break. (Outro music)

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: From the CUBE studios in Palo Alto, in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is theCUBE Conversation. >> Hey, welcome back everybody Jeffrey Frick with theCUBE. We are getting through the COVID crisis. It continues and impacting the summer. I can't believe the summer's almost over, but there's a whole lot of things going on in terms of privacy and contact tracing and this kind of this feeling that there's this conflict between kind of personal identification and your personal privacy versus the public good around things like contact tracing. And I was in a session last week with two really fantastic experts. I wanted to bring them on the show and we're really excited to have back for I don't even know how many times Michelle has been on Michelle Dennedy, She is the former chief privacy officer at Cisco and now she's running the CEO of Identity, Michelle great to see you. >> Good to see you always Jeff >> Yeah and for the first time Dr. Ann Cavoukian and she is the executive director Global Privacy & Security By Design Center. Joining us from Toronto, worked with the government and is not short on opinions about privacy. (laughing) Ann good to see you. >> Hi Jeff thank you >> Yes, so let's jump into it cause I think one of the fundamental issues that we keep hearing is this zero-sum game. And I know and it's a big topic for you that there seems to be this trade off this either or and specifically let's just go to contact tracing. Cause that's a hot topic right now with COVID. I hear that it's like you're telling everybody where I'm going and you're sharing that with all these other people. How is this even a conversation and where do I get to choose whether I want to participate or not? >> You can't have people traced and tracked and surveil. You simply can't have it and it can't be an either or win lose model. You have to get rid of that data. Zero-sum game where only one person can win and the other one loses and it sums to a total of zero. Get rid of that, that's so yesterday. You have to have both groups winning positive sum. Meaning yes, you need public health and public safety and you need privacy. It's not one versus the other. We can do both and that's what we insist upon. So the contact term tracing app that was developed in Canada was based on the Apple Google framework, which is actually called exposure notification. It's totally privacy protective individuals choose to voluntarily download this app. And no personal information is collected whatsoever. No names, no geolocation data, nothing. It's simply notifies you. If you've been exposed to someone who is COVID-19 positive, and then you can decide on what action you wish to take. Do you want to go get tested? Do you want to go to your family doctor, whatever the decision lies with you, you have total control and that's what privacy is all about. >> Jeffrey: But what about the person who was sick? Who's feeding the top into that process and is the sick person that you're no notifying they obviously their personal information is part of that transaction. >> what the COVID alerts that we developed based on the Apple Google framework. It builds on manual contact tracing, which also take place the two to compliment each other. So the manual contact tracing is when individuals go get to get tested and they're tested as positive. So healthcare nurses will speak to that individual and say, please tell us who you've been in contact with recently, family, friends, et cetera. So the two work together and by working together, we will combat this in a much more effective manner. >> Jeffrey: So shifting over to you Michelle, you know, there's PIN and a lot of conversations all the time about personal identifiable information but right. But then medical has this whole nother class of kind of privacy restrictions and level of care. And I find it really interesting that on one hand, you know, we were trying to do the contract tracing on another hand if you know, my wife works in a public school. If they find out that one of the kids in this class has been exposed to COVID somehow they can't necessarily tell the teacher because of HIPAA restriction. So I wonder if you could share your thoughts on this kind of crossover between privacy and health information when it gets into this kind of public crisis and this inherent conflict for the public right to know and should the teacher be able to be told and it's not a really clean line with a simple answer, I don't think. >> No and Jeff, and you're also layering, you know, when you're talking about student data, you layering another layer of legal restriction. And I think what you're putting your thumb on is something that's really critical. When you talk about privacy engineering, privacy by design and ethics engineering. You can't simply start with the legal premise. So is it lawful to share HIPAA covered data. A child telling mommy I don't feel well not HIPAA covered. A child seeing a doctor for medical services and finding some sort of infection or illness covered, right? So figuring out the origin of the exact same zero one. Am I ill or not, all depends on context. So you have to first figure out, first of all let's tackle the moral issues. Have we decided that it is a moral imperative to expose certain types of data. And I separate that from ethics intentionally and with apologies to true ethicists. The moral imperative is sort of the things we find are so wrong. We don't want a list of kids who are sick or conversely once the tipping point goes the list of kids who are well. So then they are called out that's the moral choice. The ethical choice is just because you can should you, and that's a much longer conversation. Then you get to the legal imperative. Are you allowed to based on the past mistakes that we made. That's what every piece of litigation or legislation is particularly in a common law construct in the US. It's very important to understand that civil law countries like the European theater. They try to prospectively legislate for things that might go wrong. The construct is thinner in a common law economy where you do, you use test cases in the courts of law. That's why we are such a litigious society has its own baggage. But you have to now look at is that legal structure attempting to cover past harms that are so bad that we've decided as a society to punish them, is this a preventative law? And then you finally get to what I say is stage four for every evaluation is isn't viable, are the protections that you have to put on top of these restrictions. So dire that they either cannot be maintained because of culture process or cash or it just doesn't make sense anymore. So does it, is it better to just feel someone's forehead for illness rather than giving a blood assay, having it sent away for three weeks and then maybe blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. >> Right. >> You have to look at this as a system problem solving issue. >> So I want to look at it in the context of, again kind of this increased level of politicization and or, you know, kind of exposure outside of what's pretty closed. And I want to bring up AIDS and the porn industry very frankly right? Where people behaving in the behavior of the business risk a life threatening disease of which I still don't think it as a virus. So you know why, cause suddenly, you know, we can track for that and that's okay to track for that. And there's a legitimate reason to versus all of the other potential medical conditions that I may or may not have that are not necessarily brought to bear within coming to work. And we might be seeing this very soon. As you said, if people are wanting our temperatures, as we come in the door to check for symptoms. How does that play with privacy and healthcare? It's still fascinates me that certain things is kind of pop out into their own little bucket of regulation. I'm wondering if you could share your thoughts on that Ann. >> You know, whenever you make it privacy versus fill in the blank, especially in the context of healthcare. You end up turning it to a lose lose as opposed to even a win lose. Because you will have fewer people wanting to allow themselves to be tested, to be brought forward for fear of where that information may land. If it lands in the hands of your employer for example or your whoever owns your house if you're in renting, et cetera. It creates enormous problems. So regardless of what you may think of the benefits of that model. History has shown that it doesn't work well that people end up shying away from being tested or seeking treatment or any of those things. Even now with the contact tracing apps that have been developed. If you look globally the contact tracing apps for COVID-19. They have failed the ones that identify individuals in the UK, in Australia, in Western Canada that's how it started out. And they've completely dropped them because they don't work. People shy away from them. They don't use them. So they've gotten rid of that. They've replaced it with the, an app based on the Apple Google framework, which is the one that protects privacy and will encourage people to come forward and seek to be tested. If there's a problem in Germany. Germany is one of the largest privacy data protection countries in the world. Their privacy people are highly trusted in Germany. Germany based their app on the Apple Google framework. About a month ago they released it. And within 24 hours they had 6.5 million people download the app. >> Right. >> Because there is such trust there unlike the rest of the world where there's very little trust and we have to be very careful of the trust deficit. Because we want to encourage people to seek out these apps so they can attempt to be tested if there's a problem, but they're not going to use them. They're just going to shy away from them. If there is such a problem. And in fact I'll never forget. I did an interview about a month ago, three weeks ago in the US on a major major radio station that has like 54 million people followers. And I was telling them about the COVID alert the Canadian contact tracing app, actually it's called exposure notification app, which was built on the Apple Google framework. And people in hoard said they wouldn't trust anyone with it in the US. They just wouldn't trust it. So you see there's such a trust deficit. That's what we have to be careful to avoid. >> So I want to hold on the trust for just a second, but I want to go back to you Michelle and talk about the lessons that we can learn post 9/11. So the other thing right and keep going back to this over and over. It's not a zero-sum game. It's not a zero-sum game and yet that's the way it's often positioned as a way to break down existing barriers. So if you go back to 9/11 probably the highest profile thing being the Patriot Act, you know, where laws are put in place to protect us from terrorism that are going to do things that were not normally allowed to be done. I bet without checking real exhaustively that most of those things are still in place. You know, cause a lot of times laws are written. They don't go away for a long time. What can we learn from what happened after 9/11 and the Patriot Act and what should be really scared of, or careful of or wary of using that as a framework for what's happening now around COVID and privacy. >> It's a perfect, it's not even an analogy because we're feeling the shadows of the Patriot Act. Even now today, we had an agreement from the United States with the European community until recently called the Privacy Shield. And it was basically if companies and organizations that were, that fell under the Federal Trade Commissions jurisdiction, there's a bit of layering legal process here. But if they did and they agreed to supply enough protection to data about people who were present in the European Union to the same or better level than the Europeans would. Then that information could pass through this Privacy Shield unencumbered to and from the United States. That was challenged and taken down. I don't know if it's a month ago or if it's still March it's COVID time, but very recently on basis that the US government can overly and some would say indifferent nations, improperly look at European data based on some of these Patriot Act, FISA courts and other intrusive mechanisms that absolutely do apply if we were under the jurisdiction of the United States. So now companies and private actors are in the position of having to somehow prove that they will mechanize their systems and their processes to be immune from their own government intrusion before they can do digital trade with other parts of the world. We haven't yet seen the commercial disruption that will take place. So the unintended consequence of saying rather than owning the answers or the observations and the intelligence that we got out of the actual 9/11 report, which said we had the information we needed. We did not share enough between the agencies and we didn't have the decision making activity and will to take action in that particular instance. Rather than sticking to that knowledge. Instead we stuck to the Patriot Act, which was all but I believe to Congress people. When I mean, you see the hot mess. That is the US right now. When everyone but two people in the room vote for something on the quick. There's probably some sort of a psychological gun to your head. That's probably well thought out thing. We fight each other. That's part of being an American dammit. So I think having these laws that say, you've got to have this one solution because the boogeyman is coming or COVID is coming or terrorists or child pornographers are coming. There's not one solution. So you really have to break this down into an engineering problem and I don't mean technology when I say engineering. I mean looking at the culture, how much trust do you have? Who is the trusted entity? Do we trust Microsoft more than we trust the US government right now? Maybe that might be your contact. How you're going to build people, process and technology not to avoid a bad thing, but to achieve a positive objective because if you're not achieving that positive objective of understanding that safe to move about without masks on, for example, stop, just stop. >> Right, right. My favorite analogy Jeff, and I think I've said this to you in the past is we don't sit around and debate the merits of viscosity of water to protect concrete holes. We have to make sure that when you lead them to the concrete hole, there's enough water in the hole. No, you're building a swimming pool. What kind of a swimming pool do you want? Is it commercial, Is it toddlers? Is it (indistinct), then you build in correlation, protection and da da da da. But if you start looking at every problem as how to avoid hitting a concrete hole. You're really going to miss the opportunity to build and solve the problem that you want and avoid the risk that you do not want. >> Right right, and I want to go back to you on the trust thing. You got an interesting competent in that other show, talking about working for the government and not working directly for the people are voted in power, but for the kind of the larger bureaucracy and agency. I mean, the Edelman Trust Barometer is really interesting. They come out every year. I think it's their 20th year. And they break down kind of like media, government and business. And who do you trust and who do you not trust? What what's so fascinating about the time we're in today is even within the government, the direction that's coming out is completely diametrically opposed oftentimes between the Fed, the state and the local. So what does kind of this breakdown of trust when you're getting two different opinions from the same basic kind of authority due to people's ability or desire to want to participate and actually share the stuff that maybe or maybe not might get reshared. >> It leaves you with no confidence. Basically, you can't take confidence in any of this. And when I was privacy commissioner. I served for three terms, each term that was a different government, different political power in place. And before they had become the government, they were all for privacy and data protection believed in and all that. And then once they became the government all that changed and all of a sudden they wanted to control everyone's information and they wanted to be in power. No, I don't trust government. You know, people often point to the private sector as being the group you should distrust in terms of privacy. I say no, not at all. To me far worse is actually the government because everyone thinks they're there to do good job and trust them. You can't trust. You have to always look under the hood. I always say trust but verify. So unfortunately we have to be vigilant in terms of the protections we seek for privacy both with private sector and with the government, especially with the government and different levels of government. We need to ensure that people's privacy remains intact. It's preserved now and well into the future. You can't give up on it because there's some emergency a pandemic, a terrorist incident whatever of course we have to address those issues. But you have to insist upon people's privacy being preserved. Privacy forms the foundation of our freedom. You cannot have free and open societies without a solid foundation of privacy. So I'm just encouraging everyone. Don't take anything at face value, just because the government tells you something. It doesn't mean it's so always look under the hood and let us ensure the privacy is strongly protected. See emergencies come and go. The pandemic will end. What cannot end is our privacy and our freedom. >> So this is a little dark in here, but we're going to lighten it up a little bit because there's, as Michelle said, you know, if you think about building a pool versus putting up filling a hole, you know, you can take proactive steps. And there's a lot of conversation about proactive steps and I pulled Ann your thing Privacy by Design, The 7 Foundational Principles. I have the guys pull up a slide. But I think what's really interesting here is, is you're very, very specific prescriptive, proactive, right? Proactive, not reactive. Privacy is the default setting. You know, don't have to read the ULAs and I'm not going to read the, all the words we'll share it. People can find it. But what I wanted to focus on is there is an opportunity to get ahead of the curve, but you just have to be a little bit more thoughtful. >> That's right, and Privacy By Design it's a model of prevention, much like a medical model of prevention where you try to prevent the harms from arising, not just deal with them after the facts through regulatory compliance. Of course we have privacy laws and that's very important, but they usually kick in after there's been a data breach or privacy infraction. So when I was privacy commissioner obviously those laws were intact and we had to follow them, but I wanted something better. I wanted to prevent the privacy harms from arising, just like a medical model of prevention. So that's a Privacy By Design is intended to do is instantiate, embed much needed privacy protective measures into your policies, into your procedures bake it into the code so that it has a constant presence and can prevent the harms from arising. >> Jeffrey: Right right. One of the things I know you love to talk about Michelle is compliance, right? And is compliance enough. I know you like to talk about the law. And I think one of the topics that came up on your guys' prior conversation is, you know, will there be a national law, right? GDPR went through on the European side last year, the California Protection Act. A lot of people think that might become the model for more of a national type of rule. But I tell you, when you watch some of the hearings in DC, you know, I'm sure 90% of these people still print their emails and have their staff hand them to them. I mean, it's really scary that said, you know, regulation always does kind of lag probably when it needs to be put in place because people maybe abuse or go places they shouldn't go. So I wonder if you could share your thoughts on where you think legislation is going to going and how should people kind of see that kind of playing out over the next several years, I guess. >> Yeah, it's such a good question Jeff. And it's like, you know, I think even the guys in Vegas are having trouble with setting the high laws on this. Cameron said in I think it was December of 2019, which was like 15 years ago now that in the first quarter of 2020, we would see a federal law. And I participated in a hearing at the Senate banking committee, again, November, October and in the before times. I'm talking about the same thing and here we are. Will we have a comprehensive, reasonable, privacy law in the United States before the end of this president's term. No, we will not. I can say that with just such faith and fidelity. (laughing) But what does that mean? And I think Katie Porter who I'm starting to just love, she's the Congresswoman who's famous for pulling on her white board and just saying, stop fudging the numbers. Let's talk about the numbers. There's about a, what she calls the 20% legislative flip phone a caucus. So there are 20% or more on both sides of the aisle of people in the US who are in the position of writing our laws. who are still on flip phones and aren't using smart phones and other kinds of technologies. There's a generation gap. And as much as I can kind of chuckle at that a little bit and wink, wink, nudge, nudge, isn't that cute. Because you know, my dad, as you know, is very very technical and he's a senior citizen. This is hard. I hope he doesn't see that but... (laughing) But then it's not old versus young. It's not let's get a whole new group and crop and start over again. What it is instead and this is, you know, as my constant tome sort of anti compliance. I'm not anti compliance. You got to put your underwear on before your pants or it's just really hard. (laughing) And I would love to see anyone who is capable of putting their underwater on afterwards. After you've made the decision of following the process. That is so basic. It comes down to, do you want the data that describes or is donated or observed about human beings. Whether it's performance of your employees. People you would love to entice onto your show to be a guest. People you'd like to listen and consume your content. People you want to meet. People you want to marry. Private data as Ann says, does the form the foundation of our freedom, but it also forms the foundation of our commerce. So that compliance, if you have stacked the deck proactively with an ethics that people can understand and agree with and have a choice about and feel like they have some integrity. Then you will start to see the acceleration factor of privacy being something that belongs on your balance sheet. What kind of data is high quality, high nutrition in the right context. And once you've got that, you're in good shape. >> I'm laughing at privacy on the balance sheet. We just had a big conversation about data on the balance sheets. It's a whole, that's a whole another topic. So we can go for days. I have Pages and pages of notes here. But unfortunately I know we've got some time restrictions. And so, and I want to give you the last word as you look forward. You've been in this for a while. You've been in it from the private side, as well as the government side. And you mentioned lots of other scary things, kind of on the horizon. Like the kick of surveillance creep, which there's all kinds of interesting stuff. You know, what advice do you give to citizens. What advice do you give to leaders in the public sector about framing the privacy conversation >> I always want to start by telling them don't frame privacy as a negative. It's not a negative. It's something that can build so much. If you're a business, you can gain a competitive advantage by strongly protecting your customer's privacy because then it will build such loyalty and you'll gain a competitive advantage. You make it work for you. As a government you want your citizens to have faith in the government. You want to encourage them to understand that as a government you respect their privacy. Privacy is highly contextual. It's only the individual who can make determinations relating to the disclosure of his or her personal information. So make sure you build that trust both as a government and as a business, private sector entity and gain from that. It's not a negative at all, make it work for you, make it work for your citizens, for your customers, make it a plus a win win that will give you the best returns. >> Isn't it nice when doing the right thing actually provides better business outcomes too. It's like diversity of opinion and women on boards. And kind of things- >> I love that. we cover these days. >> Well ladies, thank you very very much for your time. I know you've got a hard stop, so I'm going to cut you loose or else we would go for probably another hour and a half, but thank you so much for your time. Thank you for continuing to beat the drum out there and look forward to our next conversation. Hopefully in the not too distant future. >> My pleasure Jeff. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> Thank you too. >> All right She's Michelle. >> She's Ann. I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: From the CUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Welcome to this special CUBE conversation. I'm John Furrier here in Palo Alto, California. In our remote studio, we have a quarantine crew here during this COVID-19 crisis. Here talking about the crisis and the impact to business and overall work. Joined by a great guest Dustin Kirkland, CUBE alumni, who's now the chief product officer at Apex Clearing. This COVID-19 has really demonstrated to the mainstream world stage, not just inside the industry that we've been covering for many, many years, that the idea of at-scale means something completely different, and certainly DevOps and Agile is going mainstream to survive, and people are realizing that now. No better guest than have Dustin join us, who's had experiences in open source. He's worked across the industry from Ubuntu, Open Stack, Kubernetes, Google, Canonical. Dustin, welcome back to the CUBE here remotely. Looking good. >> Yeah, yeah, thanks, John. Last time we talked, I was in the studio, and here we are talking over the internet. This is a lot of fun. >> Well, I really appreciate it. I know you've been in your new role since September. A lot's changed, but one of the things why I wanted to talk with you is because you and I have talked many times around DevOps. This has been the industry conversation. We've been inside the ropes. Now you're starting to see, with this new scale of work-at-home forcing all kinds of new pressure points, giving people the realization that the entire life with digital and with technology can be different, doesn't have to be augmented with their existing life. It's a full-on technology driven impact, and I think a lot of people are learning that, and certainly, healthcare and finance are two areas, in particular, that are impacted heavily. Obviously, people are worried about the economy, and we're worried about people's lives. These are two major areas, but even outside that, there's new entrepreneurs right now that I know who are working on new ventures. You're seeing people working on new solutions. This is kind of bringing the DevOps concept to areas that quite frankly weren't there. I want to get your thoughts and reaction to that. >> Yeah, without a doubt, I mean, the whole world has changed in 30 short days. We knew something was amiss in China. We knew that there was a lot of danger for people. The danger for business, though, didn't become apparent until vast swathes of the work force got sent home. And there's a number of businesses and industries that are coping relatively well with this. Certainly those who have previously adopted, or have experienced, doing work remotely, doing business by video, teleconference, having resources in the cloud, having people and expertise who are able to continue working at nearly 100% capacity in 100% remote environments. There's a lot of technology behind that, and there are some industries, and in particular, some firms, some organizations, that were really adept and were able to make that shift almost overnight. Maybe there were a couple bumps along the way, some VPN settings needed to be tweaked, and Zoom settings needed to be changed a little bit, but for many, this was a relatively smooth transition, and we may be doing this for a very long time. >> Yeah, I want to get your thoughts, before we get into some of the product stuff that you guys are working on and some other things. What's your general reaction to people in your circles, inside industry and tech industry, and outside, what are you seeing a reaction to this new scale, work from home, social distancing, isolation, what are your observations? >> Yeah, you know, I think we're in for a long haul. This is going to be the new normal for quite some time. I think it's super important to check on the people you care about, and before we get into dev and tech, check on the people you care about, especially people who either aren't yet respecting the social distancing norms and impress upon them the importance that, hey, this is about you, this is about the people you care about, it's about people you don't even know, because there are plenty of people who can carry this and not even know. So definitely check on the people that you care about. And reach out to those people and stay in touch. We all need one another more than ever, right? I manage a team, and it's super important, I think, to understand how much stress everyone is under. I've got over a dozen people that report to me. Most of them have kids and families. We start out our weekly staff meeting now, and we bring the kids in. They're curious, they want to know what's going on. First five, 10 minutes of our meeting is meet the family. And that demystifies some of what we're doing, and actually keeps the other 50 minutes of the meeting pretty quiet in our experience. But it's really humanized an aspect of work from home that's always been a bit taboo. We laugh about the reporter in Korea whose kid and his wife came in during the middle of a live on-air interview. There's certainly, I've worked from home for almost 12 years, like, those are really uncomfortable situations. Until about a month ago, when that just became the norm. And from that perspective, I think there's a humanization that we're far more understanding of people who work from home now than ever before. >> It's funny, I've heard people say, you know, my wife didn't know what I did until I started working at home. And comments to seeing people's family, and saying, wow, that's awesome, and just bringing a personal connection, not just this software mechanism that connects people for some meeting, and we've all been on those meetings. They go long, and you're sitting there, and you're turning the camera off so you can sneeze. All those things are happening. But when you start to think about, beyond it being a software mechanism, that it's a social equation right now. People have shared experiences. It's been an interesting time. >> Yeah, and just sharing those experiences. We do a think internal on our Slack channel every day. We try to post a picture. We call it hashtag recess, and at recess we take a picture of walking the dogs, or playing with the kids, or gardening, or whatever it is, going for a run. Again, just trying to make the best of this, take advantage of, you know, it's hard working from home, but trying to take advantage of some of those once in a lifetime opportunities we have here. And my team has started pub quiz on Fridays, so we're mostly spread across, in the U.S., so we're able to do this at a reasonable hour, but the last couple of Fridays, we've jumped on a Zoom, downloaded a pub trivia game, most of us a crack a beer, or glass of wine, or a cocktail, and you know, it's just, it actually puts a punctuate mark on the end of the week, puts a period on the end of the week. Because that's the other thing about this, man, if you don't have some boundaries, it's easy to go from an eight or nine hour normal day to 10, 12, 14, 16 hour days, Saturday bleeds into Sunday bleeds into Monday, and then the rat race takes over. >> You got to get the exercise. You have a routine. That's my experience. What's your advice for people who are working at home for the first time? Do you have any best practices? >> I actually had a blog post on this about two weeks ago and put up almost a shopping list of some of the things that I've assembled here in the work from home environment. It's something I've been doing since 2008, so it's been there for a good long while. It's a little bit hard to accumulate all the technology that you need, but I would say, most important, have a space, some kind of space. Some people have more room or less, but even just a corner in a master bedroom with a standup desk, some space that is your own, that the family understands and respects. The other best practice is set some time boundaries. I like to start my day early. I'll try to break more a little bit for that recess, see the family some, and then knock off at a reasonable hour, so establish those boundaries. Yeah, I've got a bunch of tips in that blog post I can shoot you after this, but it's the sort of thing that, be a bit understanding, too, of other people in this situation for the first time, perhaps. So you know, offer whatever help and assistance you can, and be understanding that, man, things just aren't like they used to be. >> That's great advice. Thanks for the insights. Want to get to something that I see happening, and this always kind of happens when you see these waves where there's a downturn, or there's some sort of an event. In this case it's catastrophic in the way it vectored in like this and the impact that we just discussed. But what comes out of it is creativity around entrepreneurial activity, and certainly reinvention, businesses reforming, retrenching, resetting, whatever word, pivot, digital transformation, there's plenty of words for it. But this is the time where people can actually get a lot done. I always comment, in my last interview I did, you know, Shakespeare wrote Macbeth when he was sheltering in place, and Isaac Newton invented calculus, so you can actually get some work done. And you're starting to see people look at the new technology and start disrupting old incumbent markets, because now more than ever, things are exposed. The opportunity of recognition becomes clearer. So I wanted to get your thoughts on this. You're a product person, you've got a lot of product management skills, and you're currently taking this DevOps to financial market with fintech and your business, so you're applying known principles and software and tech and disrupting an existing industry. I think this is going to be a common trend for the next five years. >> Yeah, so on that first note, I think you're exactly right. There will be a reckoning, and there will be a ton of opportunities that come out of this for the already or the rapidly transformed digital native, digital focused business. There will be some that survive and thrive here. I think you're seeing a lot of this with the popularity of Zoom that has spiked recently. I think you're going to see technologies like DocuSign being used in places that, some of those places that still require wet signatures, but you just can't get to the notary and sign a, I don't know, a refi on your mortgage or something like that. And so I think you're going to see a bunch of those. The biggest opportunities are really around our education system. I've got two kids at home, and I'm in a pretty forward thinking school district in Austin, Texas, you know, but that's not the norm where our teachers are conducting classes and assignments over Zoom. I've got a kindergartener and a second grader. There's somewhat limits to what they can do with technology. I think you're going to see a lot of entrepreneurial solutions that develop in that space, and that's going to go from K through 12, and then into college. You think about how universities have had to shift and cancel classes, and what's happening with graduation. I've got a six and an eight year old, and I've been told I need to save $200,000 apiece for each of them to go to college, which is just an astounding number, especially to someone like me, who went to an inexpensive public university on a scholarship. Saving that kind of money for college, and just thinking about how much more efficient our education system might be with a lot more digital, a lot more digital education, digital testing and classes, while still maintaining the college experience, what that's going to look like in 10 years. I think we're going to see a lot of changes over these next 18 months to our educational system. >> Dustin, talk about the event dynamics. Physical events don't exist currently. Certainly, when they do come back, they should, and they will, the role of the virtual space is going to be highlighted and new opportunities will emerge. You mentioned education. People learn, not just for school, whether they're kids, whether they're professionals, learning and collaboration, work tools are going to reshape. What's your take on that marketplace, because we got to do virtual events. You can't just replicate a physical event and move it to digital. It's a complex system. >> Yeah, you're talking about an entire industry. We saw the Google Events, Google Next, Google IO, the Microsoft Events, just across the, I'm here in Austin, Texas, all of South by Southwest was canceled, which is just, it's breathtaking. When does that come back, and what does it look like? Is it a year or two or more from now? Events is where I spend my time, and when I get on a plane, and I fly somewhere, I'm usually going to a conference or trade show. Think about the sports industry. People who get on a plane, they go to an NFL game. John, I don't have all the answers, man, but I'm telling you, that entire industry is rapidly, rapidly going to evolve. I hope and pray that one day we're back to a, I can go back to a college football game again. I hope I can sit in a CUBE studio at a CUBE Con or an Open Stack or some other conference again. >> Hey, we should do a rerun, because I was watching the Patriots game last night, Tom Brady beating the Chiefs, October from last year. It was one of the best games of the season, went down to the wire, and I watched it, and I'm like, okay, that's Tom Brady, he's still in the Patriot uniform on the TV. Do we do reruns? This is the question. Right now, there's a big void for the next three months. What do we do? Do we replay the highlights from the CUBE? Do we have physical get togethers with Zoom? What's your take on how people should think about these events? >> Yeah, you know, the reruns only go so far, right? I'm a Texas Aggie, man. I could watch Johnny Football in his prime anytime. But I know what happened, and those games are just not as exciting as something that's a surprise. I'm actually curious about e-sports for the first time. What would it look like to watch a couple of kids who are really good at Madden Football on a Playstation go at it? What would other games that I've never seen look like? In our space, it's a lot more about, I think, podcasts and live content and staying connected and apprised of what's going on, making-- Oh, we locked up there for a second. It's, I think it's going to be really interesting. I'm still following you guys. I certainly see you active on social media. I'm sort of more addicted than ever to the live news, and in fact, I'm ready to start seeing some stuff that doesn't involve COVID-19, so from that perspective, man, keep churning out good content, and good content that's pertinent to the rest of our industry. >> That's great stuff. Well, Dustin, take a minute to explain what you're doing at Apex Clearing, your mission, and what are you guys excited about. >> Yeah, so Apex Clearing, we're a fintech. We're a very forward-focused, digitally-focused fintech. We are well positioned to continue servicing the needs of our clients in this environment. We went fully remote the first week of March, long before it was mandatory, and our business shifted pretty seamlessly. We worked through a couple of hiccups, provisioning extra VPN IP addresses, and upgrading a couple of service plans on some of the softwares, the service we buy, but besides that, our team has done just a marvelous job transitioning to remote. We are in the broker, dealer, and registered advisor space, so we provide the clearing services, which handles stock trades, equity trades, in the back end, and the custodial services. We actually hold, safeguard, the equities that our correspondents, we call our clients correspondents, their retail customers end up holding. So we've been around in our current form since about 2012. This was a retread of a previous company that was bought and retooled as Apex Clearing in 2012. Very shortly after that, we helped Robinhood, Wealthfront, Betterment, a whole bunch of really forward-looking companies reinvent what it meant to buy and sell and trade securities online, and to hold assets in a robo advisor like Betterment. Today, we are definitely well-known, well-respected for how quickly and seamlessly our APIs can be used by our correspondents in building really modern e-banking and e-brokerage experiences. >> So you guys-- >> So that went-- >> Are you guys like a DevOps platform-- >> We're more like software as a service for fintech and brokerage. So our products are largely APIs that our correspondents use their own credentials to interact with, and then using our APIs, they can open accounts, which means get an account number from the systems that allows them to then fund that account, connect via ACH and other bank connectivity platforms, transfer cash into those accounts, and then start conducting trades. Some of our correspondents have that down to a 60-second experience in a mobile app. From a mobile app, you can register for that account, if you need to, take a picture of an IED, have all of that imported, add your tax information, have that account number associated with your banking account, move a couple hundred dollars into that banking account, and then if the stock market's open, start buying and selling stock in that same window. >> Great, well, I wanted to talk about this, because to the earlier bigger picture, I think people are going to be applying DevOps principles, younger entrepreneurs, but also, reborn, if you will, professionals who are old school IT or whatever, moving faster. And you wrote a blog post I want to get your thoughts on. You wrote it on April second. How we've adapted Ubuntu's time-based release cycles to fintech and software as a service. What is that all about? What's the meaning behind this post? You guys are doing something new, unique, or-- >> To this industry and to many of the people around me, even our clients and customers around me, this is a whole new world. They've never seen anything like it. To those of us who have been around Linux, open source, certainly Ubuntu, Open Stack, Kubernetes, it's just standard operating procedures. There's nothing surprising about it, necessarily. But either it's some combination of the financial services world, just the nature of proprietary software, but also the concept of software as a service, SaaS, which is very different than Ubuntu or Kubernetes or Open Stack, which is released software, right. We ship software at the end of an Ubuntu cycle or a Kubernetes cycle. It's very different when you're a software as a service platform, and it's a matter of rolling out to production some changes, and those changes then going live. So, I wrote a post mainly to give some transparency, largely to our clients, our correspondents. We've got a couple hundred customers that use the Apex platform. I've met with many of them in a sort of one-on-many, one-to-one, one-on-many basis, where I'll show up and deliver the product road map, a couple of product managers will come and do a deep dive. Part of what we communicate to those customers is around, now, around our release cycles, and to many of them, it's a foreign concept that they've just never seen or heard before, and so I put together the blog post. We shared it internally, and educated the teams, and it was well-received. We shared it externally privately with a number of customers, and it was well-received, and a couple of them, actually a couple of the Silicon Valley based customers said, hey, why don't you just put this out there on Medium or on your blog or under an Apex banner, because this actually would be really well-received by others in the family, other partners in the family. So I'm happy to kind of dive into a couple of the key principles here, and we can sort of talk through it if you're interested, John. >> Well, I think the main point is you guys have a release cycle that is the speed of open source to SaaS, and fintech, which again, proprietary stuff is slower, monolithic. >> Yeah, the key principle is that we've taken this, and we've made it predictable and transparent, and we commit to these cycles. You know, most people maybe familiar with Ubuntu releasing twice a year, right, April and October, Ubuntu has released every April and October since 2004. I was involved with Ubuntu between 2008 and 2018 as an engineer, an engineering manager, and then a product manager, and eventually a VP of product at Canonical, and that was very much my life for 10 years, oriented around that. In that time, I spent a lot of time around Open Stack, which adopted a very similar model. Open Stack's released every six months, just after the Ubuntu release. A number of the members of the technical team and the committee that formed Open Stack came out of either Ubuntu or Canonical or both, and really helped influence that community. It's actually quite similar in Kubernetes, which developed independent, generally, of Ubuntu. Kubernetes releases on a quarterly basis, about every three months, and again, it's the sort of thing where it's just a cycle. It happens like clockwork every three months. So when I joined Apex and took a look at a number of the needs that we had, our correspondents had, our relationship managers, our sales team, the client-facing people in the organization, one of the biggest items that bubbled straight to the top is our customers wanted more transparency into our road maps, tighter commitments on when we're going to deliver things, and the ability to influence those. And you know what, that's not dissimilar from any product managers plight anywhere in the industry. But what I was able to do is take some of those principles that are common around Ubuntu and Kubernetes and Open Stack, which by the way, are quite familiar. We use a lot of Ubuntu and Kubernetes inside of Apex, and many of our correspondents are quite familiar with those cycles, but they'd never really seen or heard of a software as a service, a SaaS vendor, using something like that. So that's what's new. >> You've got some cycles going now. You've got schedules, so just looking here, just to get this out there, 'cause I think it's data. You did it last year in October, November, mid-cycle in January of this year. You've got a couple summits coming up? >> Yeah, that's right, we've broken it down into three cycles per year, three 16-week cycles per year. So it's a little bit more frequent than the twice a year Ubuntu, not quite as frenetic as the quarterly Kubernetes cycles. 16 weeks time three is 48. That leaves us four weeks of slack, really to handle Thanksgiving and Christmas and end of year holidays, Chinese New Year, whatever might come up. I'll tell you from experience, that's always been a struggle in the Ubuntu and Open Stack and Kubernetes world, it's hard to plan around those cycles, so what we've done here is we've actually just allocated four weeks of a slush fund to take care of that. We're at three 16-week cycles per year. We version them according to the year and then an iterator. So 20A, 20B, 20C are our three cycles in 2020, and we'll do 21A, B, and C next year. Each of those cycles has three summits. So to your point about we get together, back in the before everyone stopped traveling, we very much enjoyed twice a year getting together for CUBE con. We very much enjoyed the Open Stack summits and the various Ubuntu summits. Inside of a small company like ours, these were physical. We'd get together in Dallas or New York or Chicago or Portland, which is the four places we have offices. We were doing that basically every six weeks or so for one of these summits. Now they're all virtual. We handle them over Zoom. When they were physical, we'd do the summit in about three days of packed agendas, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Now that we've gone to virtual, we've actually spread it a little bit thinner across the week, and so we've done, we've poked some holes in the day, which has been an interesting learning experience, and I think we're all much happier with the most recent summit we did, spreading it over the course of the week, accounting for time zones, giving ourself, everyone, lunch breaks and stuff. >> Well, we'll have to keep checking in. I want to certainly collaborate with you on the virtual digital, check your progress. We're all learning, and iterating, if you will, on the value that you can do with these digital ones. Try to get that success with physical, not always easy. Appreciate, and you're looking good, looking good and safe. Stay safe, and great to check in with you, and congratulations on the new opportunity. >> Yeah, thanks, John. >> Appreciate it. Dustin Kirkland, chief product officer at Apex Clearing. I'm John Furrier with the CUBE, checking in with a remote interview during this time when we are getting all the information of best practices on how to deal with this new at-scale, the new shift that is digital, that is impacting, and opportunities are there, certainly a lot of challenges, and hopefully, the healthcare, the finance, and the business models of these companies can continue and get back to work soon. But certainly, the people are still sheltered in place, working hard, being creative, be the coverage here in the CUBE. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (bright electronic music)

>>From San Francisco. It's the cube covering PagerDuty summit 2019 brought to you by PagerDuty. >>Okay, welcome back everybody. Jeffrey here with the Q. We're in San Francisco at the Western st Francis historical hotel. It's our third year coming to PagerDuty sound, but I think it's the fourth year of the show. Jennifer tahana just finished the keynote. You can see those places packed with people packed with energy. We're excited to be back and have our first guest of the day. He's Josh Cade and chief evangelists at Cherwell. Josh, great to see you. Great to see you. Thanks for having me today. Absolutely. So have you been to a PagerDuty, sung it before? This is actually my first event with PagerDuty. What do you think yeah, I mean they've really grown. I mean Patriot and he's been a partner of ours for awhile, but they have grown so much so rapidly and I think, you know after the IPO especially, you know, they've, they've really grown pretty crazy. >>A lot of gasoline on the fire with the IP. Exactly right. So let's jump into with the Cherwell for people aren't familiar with Cherwell, what are you guys all about? So Sheryl software is a company that we specialize in it service management and enterprise service management. So we recognize that the world of what we used to know is like help desk management and whatnot has grown. You know, digital transformation means that more people are involved in more revenue bearing activities across the company. And just like PagerDuty recognizes, you're always on, you've got to keep doing all of these things across the company. And so what we do is we act as a system of record to move request to move orchestration across an organization across all teams. So it's not just an it focus and we build a platform basically to enable the building out of all of your processes, automation, orchestration, et cetera. >>We focus in ITSs because the it group is, is the best entry point for this kind of functionality inside of an organization because they have the best broad kind of horizontal view across all departments. Um, but again, we've got customers that use it in a pretty much any kind of way from running public housing development to all kinds of just uses that we never even imagined. Right. Okay. So I think what's confusing to people, certainly the layman certainly me, is you know, there's kind of all these competing system of records, it appears from the outside and we know ITSMs space, we've covered it for a long time. You know, you need to have a single system of record to know what the answer is. And yet, you know, PagerDuty announces all these integrations with all these systems like Cherwell. How do those systems work together to still maintain kind of system of record integrity and yet leverage the capabilities of the different platforms? >>Yeah. You know, it's an interesting thing because we're seeing so much convergence in the industry and we're seeing that, you know, pretty much all of our software has to talk to all of our software, right? And so what we're seeing a lot is system of record doesn't necessarily mean the same thing that it used to. You may have a system of record for your customer data, you may have a system of record for your financial data, you may have a system of record for your request management and workflow data. And the key is really making those things talk to each other. And so, you know, between the, you know, the cloud and all of the growth that we've had there and, and the way that software just works, it's really about being able to handshake and talk to other companies. Software. Okay. And you know, so it's also about companies, one of the problems that happens in a lot of companies is you choose too many systems of record and you know, so you've got this team that all has different data. >>So I think that's part of what we'll see the kind of the future battle of the next few years is either we all got to talk together or somebody has to, you know, become more prevalent and become a bigger system of record if you get what I mean. So what are some of the use cases where the two systems, PagerDuty system, the Cherwell system would interact around a particular type of customer interaction? Yup. So there's a couple of different entry points, but uh, one of them is, so let's say a customer has a request so it's not even an incident for example. So they have a request and you've got SLS where you've got to fulfill a request very quickly. Um, you know, Sharewell is great at getting that request, interacting with the customer, making sure that they know, you know what to expect and whatnot. PagerDuty is great at getting the team together and getting people together to fulfill those things. >>And so there's that kind of transition point where that request goes to PagerDuty and PagerDuty gets to bring the team together, work on fulfilling that thing and get back to the customer, Hey, your thing has been fulfilled. Okay. So another one that happens, a great use case is, you know, we have a lot of links to different event monitoring. You know, just like PagerDuty does. But a lot of times those things will come to our system and turn into, uh, incidents, you know, in our system. So we're able to send that data over to PagerDuty and basically with up the team and get things moving so that we can resolve that event. And we have a upcoming integration to basically share that back and forth. I believe we're actually officially announcing it next week at our conference in Nashville. Um, but so we have an upcoming integration so that we'll be pushing stuff to directional and getting things from pager duty and pushing things back in. >>Great example. That's a great uh, example cause what you're basically doing is breaking the problem down into the pieces that each of the different software takes care of and PagerDuty's really good at figuring out kind of who the team needs to be pulling together the teams and having a relatively low impact, uh, task group to come in and fix that, that the resolution. Well, and you know, while being a system of record for request management and workflow and whatnot, you know, one of the things that we see in the industry is so many of the customers want best of breed. They don't necessarily want one piece of software to come in and try to be everything cause nobody can be everything. Right? And so that key of lets you know, PagerDuty does what they're really good at. We do what we're really good at. Um, our customers really like that. >>So that's how we partner with other companies. Okay. So later today I think you're giving a session on low code. Um, what does low code, I mean I I have an opinion but share would, do you guys think it's low code or why is low code so, so low code is really important for a few reasons, but the first is really, I would say time to value. So when you have to spin up a development team and spend a lot of time to build everything that you want to do in your organization, just a simple business process that can take a lot of time and expense. So the Sharewell platform is built in a low code way. Most of the things that you can do in our software you do through drag and drop interfaces. And a lot of times we'll have people a little skeptical. >>You know, when they first encounter us, no, we need to write Java script or we need to write some language and we bring them into the system and they find, no, not only do not have to, but you can accomplish what you needed to before you got done planning what code you were going to go. Right. You know, forget testing and all that kind of stuff. So most of what you can do in Sharewell is actually no code, but we call it low code because when it comes to integrating, oftentimes you need to speak to other API. So you know, not every piece of software out there is no code. So talking to rest API is talking to other API APIs, you know, integrating things together. That's where a little bit of code comes in. But we also have, you know, basically drag and drop interfaces for even integrating to other things. >>We have something in tune of 80 partnerships right now, partners that we integrate with and that number is growing all the time. Okay. So is the main benefit of low code just the existing developers being able to move faster or we're hearing a lot of conversation about is really kind of democratization and letting people at maybe kid code in the ed are not qualified to do that last integration step, but the start to build absolute lows and processes without having to figure out if I'm doing it in Java or Perl. Yeah, no, it's, it's definitely both of those things. I mean, you know, so you know, the time to value aspect is important for those devs, but often, you know, companies can be utilizing those resources in a much more fruitful manner. And so if you allow the service owners or business analysts to be able to go in and actually affect those processes, just like you're saying, that democratization really helps speed up a business. >>Right? So in terms of engines for your guys' growth, you know, there's a bunch of them that are talked about all the time. There's dev ops, um, which, which is clearly the right bet to make 10 years ago. There's cloud, which has worked out pretty well. Um, and then this whole thing, that digital transformation that everyone is, is, is a, is trying to get done. Yup. No. Which of those three do you think are most important? How do you see those kinds of playing out in your business? So, you know, I think all three are very important. I think digital transformation though is, you know, if you don't transform your business and take advantage of digital transformation right now, you're liking amoeba in the primordial goo. Watching those first fish walk on land and laughing at, that's just a trend. You know, I think all businesses need to transform themselves and take advantage of the digital technologies that they can get ahold of. >>So I think for us, you know, being an accelerator for that being a way that you can bring inputs and outputs into a singular platform and basically, you know, speed up that ability to transform and make it more predictable, uh, utilizing governance and auditability and all those things that don't generally happen in a dev ops or a transformation environment. Right. That's really our key and that's, I think where we're going to see the industry. You know, everybody has to transform to stay competitive and so we're focused on that transformation or I'm distracted. Jen just walked by the star of the show and really make it. Absolutely. All right, Josh, thanks for taking a few minutes. Good luck on your talk. No brag, good luck at your event in Nashville. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me, Josh on Jeff here watching the cube words PagerDuty summit at the historic Wetsons de France. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

>> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman, and this is special On the Ground of theCUBE here at the VTUG Summer Slam 2019. We've had the pleasure of knowing the VTUG team for quite awhile back actually, when it was the New England VMUG was when I started attending. When it switched to the VTUG at Gillette Stadium's when we started doing theCUBE there. And happy to bring back to the program first, Chris Harney, who is the one who created this as a true user event. And joining him is his wife Dawn Harney, who we know is behind the scenes organizing all of this event. So, Dawn and Chris, thank you so much for joining us and thank you for sharing this community and educational process with all of us. >> Thanks Stu, it's been a pleasure. >> All right, so, Chris, we really want this, it's a celebration. Sixteen years; back in 2003 the number one movie of the year was actually Finding Nemo. Of course we waited a long time for there. It goes without saying that all of us were a little bit younger. And boy, in those days, I started working with VMR in 2002, so that journey of virtualization was real early. There was no cloud talking we had kind of the XSP's and some of the earlier things. But so much has changed, and what I have loved is this journey that the users that are attending here. We're actually here in the Expo hall, and if you look, why are there no people in here right now? Because they are all in the break out sessions understanding what are the skill sets that they need today and tomorrow to help them in their journey; virtualization, cloud, DevOps, all of these changes there. Chris, you started this as a user to help share with your peers, so, we've had you on the program many times, bring us back. >> Yeah, so think back to 2003. There was no way to share information. There's no Google, no YouTube, no Facebook groups, Meetups, no Game of Thrones. >> We had to go to books and stuff like that. >> Exactly. >> Read the paper. >> So white papers, those were the big deal. You had the Microsoft books that were two inches thick and glossy. >> Yeah, I wonder how many of our younger audience would know the acronym RTFM? Read The Fine Manual please, is what we're doing. Dawn, this event, as I said, we've been at the winter event at Gillette Stadium, you brought in some of the Patriot players we've had the pleasure of interviewing. This Summer event is epic. I know people that come from very long distances to swim in the community, get the information. There's a little bit of lobster at the end of the day. >> There's a lot of lobster at the end of the day. >> So give us the community that you look to help build and foster, and what this event has meant to you over the years. >> For me it's really a place for everybody in the community to come together and share their knowledge with their peers. Something may work for me maybe it will work for you. Let's get together and talk about it. The best way to learn something is from somebody that may have done it, or done it, messed it up, learned something, like to share it with you. So, it really is about working with your peers, learning something from your sponsors and all these companies that you work with everyday. What's new, what's going on. So this is the place to go to get all that. >> Wait, Dawn, I thought you weren't a tech person. >> I'm not a tech person. >> That answer was spot on because one of the things I loved about the virtualization community, is we were all learning in the early days. And it required a little bit of work. There's this theory known as the IKEA effect. Sometimes if you actually help build it a little bit, you actually like it a little bit more. And this community really epitomizes that in the virtualization community and cloud. We've been talking about cloud now for a decade but it's still relatively early days on how this multi-hybrid cloud fits together, how operations are changing, so, Chris, bring us through a little bit of that arc. >> Well, I'll think about it, back in 2003, there was only VMwire. There was only one virtualization platform, if you didn't use VMwire, you were doing bare metal Windows install or Unix install on physical servers. Well, back when we changed, there was Hyper-V, that was coming out, AWS was just coming out, so that's when we kind of made the jump from just being a VMwire user to a virtual technology. So we could talk about the cloud, we could share those experiences and have that same journey together, and hopefully learn and lead, get smarter together as a group, you can learn faster as a group than you can by yourself. >> Yeah, and as we know, Chris, and we've talked about this, the IT industry is never "Hey, give me a clean "sheet of paper and we'll start everything." We know it is additive and all of these things go together, so cloud did not obviate the need for virtualization, so all of these things go together, and how do I make sure as my job doesn't get completely eliminated or, I was talking to somebody who said "If I've been doing the same thing for 10 years, "will I be out of a job?" They said, "Well hopefully you really really like "what you're doing cause if you think "you can keep doing what you're doing, "that is all you will ever be able to do." And I thought that was a very poignant comment. >> Yeah, Matt Broberg's talk this morning about what's your next job going to be, what skillsets do you need to be relevant in 10 years, and it's the same thing, I mean we said the same thing 10, 15 years ago. You can't be a Windows admin anymore, you can't be a VMwire admin anymore, you can't be a cloud admin anymore in five years. >> Yeah, so Dawn, give our audience a little bit of the scope of this event, as I said, I know people that have flown in from the Carolinas, from Colorado, from all over, from California and the like, 16 years of this event, this community is not just New England, it really has had a broad impact. >> Right, and it's huge, people plan their vacations around this, I've had people come from Europe, they fly over here, stay in the state of Maine, they go to L.L. Bean, they do all those things because they plan their vacation, they know they need to be here for the VTUG event, so it's meant a lot, because you do get so many different variety of people, you have the sponsors, you have the end users, you have media, you have bloggers, you have pretty much just everybody comes together to really be that community, so it's meant a lot to me, it's been a long 16 years but it's meant a lot. >> All right, so the question people are asking, this is the final VTUG, so no more winter event at Gillette, this is the final event tonight at Gritty's, so explain to us how that happened. >> It is the final event, 16 years, we're all getting older, it's bittersweet, but we've just realized that it takes a lot of time to put these together, it takes a lot of sponsors, it takes a lot of users, the users continue to come, but unfortunately the sponsors pay for it, and really don't have that following with the sponsors that we used to have, unfortunately. >> There are a lot more events, there are a lot more ways to find customers, so they're going to the meetups and they're doing their own events. >> Yeah, to your opening point Chris, 16 years ago it was much tougher to find sources. Now the challenge we have is there's too many options out there, there are too many events, trust me, I go to too many events, but this one has always been one that we've always looked forward, so please from the community, want to say thank you so much, it has always been one of our favorite things to kick off the year with when we do the winter one, and the summer one, I've made this trip a couple of times, it is a little warm in here, I think brings back to the roots of this event, remember it was four or five years ago it was 110 degrees out, and then you switched to this facility, so of course the air conditioning decides to go out, because we know in IT, sometimes things break. >> Start in the heat, end in the heat. >> So Chris, want to give you the final word for the final VTUG. >> You know, I'm just very proud and happy with this community, it truly is a community, it wasn't us, it wasn't theCUBE, it wasn't the vendors, it was everyone working together to make a community that helped each other out, so thanks to everyone. >> Chris and Dawn, thank you so much, we're happy to be a small piece of this community, and look forward to staying in touch with you in your future endeavors. Thanks so much, I'm Stu Miniman, we have a full day of coverage here, keynote speaker, some of the users that have traveled around, really focusing on the community here at the VTUG Summer Slam, as always, thank you for watching theCUBE.

>> From Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, if the queue covering Vita Winter warmer, twenty nineteen brought to you by Silicon Angle media. >> I'm stupid. And this is the cubes coverage of the V tug Winter warmer twenty nineteen here at Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots, and is my distinct pleasure to welcome to the program. Two time Super Bowl champion number fifty Patriots alumnae Rob Ninkovich. Rob may think you are doing great. Thanks for having awesome. You know, the team's a little bit of flutter. We brought, you know, one of the people here that help support the Patriots. The last two rings the Patriots had and you were on those teams, So yeah, >> it was, uh, you know, privileged and blessed to be on a couple Super Bowl winning teams. So >> did I hear right? Was the last one actually on your birthday to know that was the first >> one? That was really, really, really, really nice. >> Capable ring on your palm. My birthday. So your birthday's coming up here on February first, so >> I'll be the Big thirty five. Yeah, we'll have to sell me. I can't believe it. I'm almost seventy after seventy. >> Congratulations. Looking good and thank you. Feel good. Probably look out >> running climbing mountains. I'm gonna climb Mount Kilimanjaro with Chris Long here pretty soon in a month off. So I'll be in Africa raising money for water boys. So we'll be drilling for clean water, so it'll be cool. >> That's great. Yeah. I mean, let's hit on that. You know, you were you were drafted by the same. Believe you met your wife. Yeah. They're Southern Southern girls. Both of you are, you know, giving back to the community. Do a lot of charitable work. Would love to hear a little bit about that. >> Yeah. I mean, I think that the platform that athletes have is is tremendous. So if you can give back to your community, you know, that's that's one of the best things that I think an athlete can give back. And that's, you know, people that are in need and people that aren't as fortunate. So you know, for me, I work with Matt Light and the Light Foundation. So him on his board of directors and that basically brings kids in from troubled areas and backgrounds and they go into a camp and it's a four year program. So they start. And then they graduate, so to speak. When they get through high school and they're going into their college years, but it's a great program for trying to develop your skills. And you know, a lot of kids that don't have, you know, maybe a great family background that you know is a healthy background to where it's trying to bring kids together and show them some different things that could help them moving forward. And, you know, life skills that everyone needs. >> Yeah, this conference actually talk a lot about skills in career because and the technology field things were changing a lot. Now I've watched football. Most of my career were actually my season tickets. I can see across the field here and, you know, in your career, your eleven year career in the NFL changed a lot. I think you came into the NFL as an outside linebacker. And when you're here in the Patriots who switched the defensive end? No, you know what kind of things do you learn? And you know, how do you kind of have the mindset to say, like, Okay, well, this is the job and the skills and the things I'm looking to do. And now, like a weight, I need toe, you know, have a hand down and be facing off against some really big guys. >> Yes. So, I mean, I think the Toby the chameleon, so to speak and be able to change and adapt to your environment. I mean, that's what makes not just an athlete, but, you know, every every business person that can change with time and in with the trends of technology and how things were adapting over overtime, that's what's gonna continue your success. So if you stay, if you just one thing and you never want to change and you never adapt, you're goingto be overtaken by somebody else. So you have to have that mindset. When I arrived here with the Patriots, I knew that you had to be multiple. He had to continue toe, do different things with your career in position or else, you know, really, you don't stick around as long. So you know, for me, I was a defensive lineman, linebacker, special teams. You do it all, and it helps Not only your team, but it helps your career and, you know, have a long career that, >> yeah, not only do your job, but when you're called to do multiple jobs, you you're going to step in and do that. It kind of seems to be the Patriot. >> You have to. You have to. If you can't do the multiple job thing, it's This might not be the place. >> Yeah, So, you know, we just had, you know, one of the most amazing games and Patriot history that I think I've seen. I'm curious us now, an observer rather than player. You know what your thought looking at a game like that? You know, I know heart rates were a little bit high for those of us in New England, but, you know, it's really amazing win like that. >> Yeah. I mean, it goes to show you that the mental toughness and the that just never quit mentality is one of the main characteristics of this team this year in their story, you can't look at previous years or just you can't look att history. When it comes to football, it comes down. Who's going to play the best football in that particular day? And, you know, you look at what the defense has done so far. It's been tremendous going against the Chargers, who are a great team and you know, everyone was making the excuse of, you know, they travelled a lot in the time change was tough, but then them going on >> the road, >> which hadn't been a strong point form this year and getting a win and shutting out a team in the first half. The Chiefs that were really powerful and really explosive in one of the best in the NFL. It just goes to show you that, you know, in the playoffs, it's a completely different season. It's a new season. You've gotto just forget about what happened in the regular season. You know, moving on to this next game. I think that they just need to continue that high momentum and playing the way that they are playing, which is running the football, being tough and playing physical for four quarters. Being physical. That's that's what's going to win in this next one >> sixty minutes. And if it goes in over time, a little bit longer, >> you got it. Whatever it takes. >> Rob Ninkovich really appreciate you spending some time with that. Well, best of luck on Kilimanjaro this year. Exciting. Yeah, I know you do some social media. They're so sure people can follow along >> Yeah, I'll be on there. I got Instagram Nick five o. So And then I'm Niko. Five o for Twitter. So I'm out there. All right, all right. >> Thank you so much. And we, of course, are out there all the time. Go to the cube dot net to catch all the videos. Find me on Twitter. I'm just stew s to you and, uh, super pleasure to be able to have Rob Ninkovich. And thanks so much for the veto >> booth.