>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 sponsored by Intel, AWS and our community partners. Welcome back to the cubes Coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 The digital edition. I'm Lisa Martin, and I'm welcoming back one of our Cube alumni. Paul Saville joins me the S VP of product management and services from Lumen Technologies. Paul, welcome back to the Cube. >>Thank you, Lisa. It's great to be here. >>Last time I got to go to an event was aws reinvent 2019. You were there, but when you were there, you were with centurylink Centurylink. Lumen, What's the correlation? >>Yeah, well, thanks for asking that question. Yes. So we did Rand rebrand our company to loom in technologies. And there's a reason for that because, really, a few years ago, centurylink was largely a consumer telecom business. It's roughly half of its business was in the consumer space, delivering home broadband services, voice services. The other half of the business was around enterprise services and telecom services. But now our company has grown, and we've become much more than that. Now the consumer side of our business is much smaller it's. It's less than 25% of our business overall, and we brought in many more capabilities and technologies. And so we really felt like we were at a point where we and talking to our customers and doing brand analysis around the world because we're now a global, uh, company that has operations in over 100 countries around the world. Um, we felt like we needed to change that branding to represent who we are as terms of that, that large enterprise services company that does a lot more than just telecom services. And so that's why we came up with the name of Lumen Technologies. And as I said, the consumer side, the business still has a centurylink brand. But now the Enterprise Services piece of our company is called Lumen. >>So as that's transpired during this very dynamic time, just give me a little bit of perspective from your customers. How are they embracing this reading? Because we know rebrand is far more than simply rebranding product names and things like that. >>Yes, yeah, I think our customers we're really embracing it. Well, I mean, we've got great feedback from them on the new naming approach and our customers love the name. And but they also more than just the name they love, the idea of, of what we're doing and how we're positioning, how we're transforming our company to really represent what we do as being a company that delivers a platform for managing and distributing digital applications and digital assets across the world. And as you as this audience really knows, uh, enterprises values arm or and MAWR being being determined by their digital assets, whether that is content or whether it's applications. Or it could be, um, processes and things that the intellectual property that that companies own. And when we thought about our company and what it was that we really do for our customers, it really boils down to that is that customers trust us to move their their most valuable digital assets around the world to place them where they need to be when they need to be secured them in place and remove them when they don't need them there anymore. >>And that trust is absolutely critical. I want to get your perspective on something I noticed on Lumens website saying powering progress and the promise of the fourth Industrial Revolution. First of all, what is the promise of the fourth Industrial Revolution? And how is Lumen positioned to deliver progress on it? >>Yeah, So the fourth Industrial Revolution. Some of the audience may not understand what we mean by that when there's really been been. Up to now, there have been three industrial or industrial revolutions. The last one was the advent of the Internet and electron ICS And, you know, looming in its history plays a big role in the third Industrial Revolution because of the build out of the global Internet. You know, we operate one of the largest public Internet networks in the world, and but now we see that technology is pacing. Is taking a ramp up in the next phase of leveraging technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning i O. T technologies technologies that that require applications and data that need to be distributed in a much more wide basis because computers happening everywhere in the fourth Industrial Revolution. And when we say that we're enabling that and we're enabling the promise of that, we're looking at what we do as having a platform that enables enterprise customers to create capabilities that leverage Fourth Industrial Revolution Technologies and distribute those around the world on a dynamic basis in a real time basis, in in in the fashion of How Cloud has evolved over the last few years. >>So how are you guys working together with AWS to enable customers to be able to leverage that technology that power the ability to get data that they need all across the globe as quickly as possible? >>Yes, so we worked with AWS and a number of ways in that front. You know, of course, AWS makes some great products that are based in the cloud. And they do all these technologies that are speaking about in terms of artificial intelligence and machine learning and video analytics or things and tools that AWS is built to be run out of their out of their cloud services. But Lemon works with AWS in that distribution aspect of it, and taking those assets and those applications and making them operate on a much widely distributed basis and dropping them on customer premise locations at the deep edge in into different markets wherever it makes the most sense for customers, from a performance and economic standpoint to be running those, uh, those next generation types of applications. And so we work with in combination with a W s to build those solutions into end for customers. Lumen has a professional services I t services organization also, that helps customers put together complex solutions involving Internet of things. So we, for instance, we just deployed a factory environment that has a million square foot factory with high level of automation that's run using these types of analytics tools where we're we're putting together the integration on the factory floor back to, uh, the cloud a cloud like aws. >>So in the last, you know, nine months of the world being in such a different place with businesses overnight suddenly having to dio almost 100% remote operations, how does the technology that you just talked about? How does that facilitate a business to keep up and running to not just be able to survive and continue to pivot as they need to during this time, but also to be able to really become the drivers of tomorrow? >>Yes, you know, and from our position is having, you know, over 100,000 enterprise customers and operating in regions over the world are perspective. We've really been able to see how our customers have survived and thrived and those who have not thrived so well through this whole cove it pandemic. And, you know, one of the keys for the companies that have really kind of excelled during this time has been there how far along they were in the adoption curve of cloud technologies and things like the Fourth Industrial Revolution types of technologies. Because those companies were able to dynamically scale up re shift, their resource is they were able to act remotely and control things remotely without having to have humans on premise on site engaging. Um, you know, some of the factory things that we've seen some of the work from home situations that we've seen those companies that were not operating with the kind of flexibility and scale that the cloud environment and the the four ir environment enables have really have really struggled, while the others have really been able to step up on bond, even outperform in many ways from where they were before. >>Yeah, we've been talking for months on the Cube about this acceleration of digital transformation that this pandemic has really forced and seen those companies to your point. Those that were already poised to be agile to adopted are in a much better position. One of the companies I was talking to you recently has Webcams all over the globe, and they're providing, um, you could get it throughout your Apple TV or I think, in Amazon Fire Stick where you can have these virtual experiences going into what's going on in Paris right now, of course, helping us live vicariously since we can't travel. But that's the whole proliferation of the edge and the amount of data that's being generated and process at the edge to the cloud to the core and getting that quickly to the consumer, whether it's a business or an actual consumer, what are you guys doing to help your business is your customers leverage the edge in a in an efficient way so that this accelerated pace that we're living in is actually able to help them. Dr Value. >>Yeah, we we have seen a really uptick in terms of edge opportunities since the Kobe pandemic hit and s so I can give you a great example of one that we that we recently just publicly announced its with a interesting situation with a company called Cyber Reef. Cyber Reef Builds has security technology that they help protect school systems and kids that are now being educated at home instead of in the public schools. Physically, they're they're they're at home, and those kids need protection from the Internet because they're on the Internet all day now. And Cyber Reef provides security tools for the public school systems to help protect those Children and what they're doing and making sure that there focused on school and not, you know, getting. They're having bad actors reached them through the public Internet. They're doing that That is an edge application because they needed to place their security software control tools very close to the edge deep into these markets, with good connection into public Internet and close proximity to the eyeballs of these, uh, these schoolchildren that around in the area, and so they have deployed across the country across our footprint, their their their platform, basically on on our platform to support those deployments toe help our Children as they get educated, >>so important. And if you think about a year ago when we were all in Vegas for reinvent 2019, we wouldn't even have thought we would need something of that scale. I'm here we are with this massive need and companies like Lumet and A W s being able to enable that. Talk to me a little bit about though what you guys are doing with a W s outpost is that part of what you just talked about? >>It wasn't for that example that I just gave, but we are working a lot with AWS outpost. And so we have we see aws outpost, a za key part of our total edged portfolio of solutions that we that we deliver. We have been, uh, investing a lot in our data centers across the world, because looming has hundreds of data centers that are deeply distributed into all of these markets around the world and working with aided without the ws on certifying those locations as outpost deployment, uh, locations. We have also used that I T services organization that that can provide consultation and I t management services for our enterprise customers. Thio. We've been certifying them on outpost configurations. So we've been training our I T professionals on, uh, the AWS solution and on the outpost solution in getting those certification credentials so that we can bring joint products to market with AWS that involved outposts as part of the solution and build in the end capabilities that combine our our services and capabilities with AWS and outpost for for combined solution. >>And can that combined solution to help your customers your joint customers get faster access to their data? Because we know data volume is only going up and up and up, and businesses need to be able to gain insights in real time. Is this the technology that could help get faster insights or access data faster? >>Absolutely. You know, that's and that's one of the key value propositions of ah, a solution like an outpost. Is that because you can drop them pretty much anywhere in the world that you that you need to put compute close to the point of digital interaction? Then, uh, it makes an ideal solution for customers that, uh, that want to work in that AWS environment and also leverage all of the other tools that eight of us can bring to bear from the cloud, uh, platform that that they that they offer but yeah, the place and compute close to that. That point of digital interaction is what it's all about, and it isn't just driven by performance, and performance is a really key part of it because they wanna have that fast interaction at the edge. But there are other things there, too. I mean, sometimes there are economics that play out for many companies that just make it make more sense to act on on compute or storage that it sits, sits more centrally, too many notes that could be aggregated in a market to that one essential location. We're running across use cases where customers, uh, they want to keep that data local because of governance issues or because of privacy issues or because of some kind of a regulatory requirement that they've got that they don't. They need to know exactly where that that data resides at all times, and it needs to be localized in a certain market or country. And eso they're the types of reasons why they would want to use an outpost to really there's there numerous. >>So last question. When you're talking with customers, I imagine the conversations quite different the last nine months or so. Maybe even the level of which you're having these conversations has gone up to the C suite or maybe even to the board. What do you what's your advice to businesses in any industry that really need to move forward quickly, transform to be able to start harnessing the power that four er can deliver but are just not sure where to start. >>Yeah, so, you know, we're just my advice is that they're gonna have to embrace the future embrace that, you know, embrace change. We're Look, we we have never been in a period of time where the pace of change has been assed fast as it is now, and it's not going to slow down. And so you do have to embrace that. But when you But if you're sitting there struggling, I appreciate the dilemma that they're in because, like, Well, where do I start? What do I what do I try? The thing is that that you can you you should pick a project that you can manage and deploy it. But when you deploy it and test it, make sure that you've got really measurable results. that you have really clear KP eyes of what you're trying to achieve and what you know. Are you out for financial goals or you out for performance improvement? Are you out for I t. Greater I t agility. Build the measures around that, Then test the technology that you want to try because we find that some companies approach it and they're kind of like doing it as a science experiment. And then they go, Wow, this was This was cool. It was a good science experiment, but it didn't, but it didn't wind up. They didn't capture the the actual benefit of it. And so then they don't They can't go in and prove it in anymore. And it's kind of like it sets them back because they didn't take that extra preparation >>and businesses in any industry. Nobody has. Has the time Thio face a setback because there's gonna be somebody right behind you in the rear view mirror who's gonna be smaller, agile, more nimble to take advantage. Paul. Great advice for businesses in every industry, and thank you for talking to us about what Lumen Technologies is what you guys are doing with a W s to help customers really embrace the capabilities of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We appreciate your time. >>All right. Thank you. And thank you to the Cuba. It's good to see you all again. >>Good to see you too. Glad you're safe. And hopefully next time we'll get to see you in person soon For Paul Saville. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cubes coverage of aws reinvent 2020? Yeah.

>>long from Las Vegas. It's the Q covering a ws re invent 2019. Brought to you by Amazon Web service is and in along with its ecosystem partners. >>Welcome back Inside the Sands. Here's to continue our coverage here. Live on the Cube of AWS Reinvent 2019 Absolutely jam packed isles. Great educational sessions and one of the feature presenters now joins us well. Dave Alana John Walls with Paul Saville. Who's the SPP of court networking technology solutions at Caen. Freely. Paul, Good to see you again. >>Yeah, let's see you, John. >>So you just finished up. We'll get in that just a little bit. First off, just give me your impression of what's going on here and the energy and the vibe that you're getting. >>Yeah, I think it's fantastic. I mean, it's very high energy here, you know, there's a lot of new things that that are emerging terms of the applications that we're seeing the use cases for the cloud. And of course, exciting stuff happened around ej compute with the announcement of AWS with the outpost, Long >>will jump in Najaf. Everybody has a different idea, right? You weren't so I mean, if you define the edge, at least. How do you see it? >>Yeah, it's very simple definition of how we see the edge. It's putting compute very close to the point of interaction, and the interaction could be with humans or the inner action could be with devices or other electron ICS that need toe that need to be controlled or that need to communicate. But the point is getting that that computers close as possible to it from a performance standpoint that's needed. >>Okay, so we heard that a lot from Andy Jassy ethic yesterday. Right now compute to the data. I mean, with all due respect, it's like he was talking about like it was a new concept, right? We've been here for quite some time, so talk more about how you see the edge evolving. I mean, look, I have a lot of credit to Amazon because, you know, they used to not talk about hybrid. I predict a couple years to talk about multi cloud. Guarantee it because that's what customers are doing, so they respond to customers at the same time. I like their edge strategy because it's all about developers. Infrastructures code on the edge But you guys are about, you know, moving that data on or not necessarily bring in the computer that. So how do you see the edge >>evolving? Yeah, so the reason this whole trend is happening is because what's happening with the new technologies that are enabling a whole new set of applications out there? Things like What's going on with artificial intelligence and machine learning and virtual reality those the robotics control Those things are basically driving this need to place compute as close as possible to that point of interaction. The problem is that when you do that, costs go up. And that's the conundrum that we've kind of been in because when Compute gets housed at the customer premise in a home in a business in an enterprise, then that's the most expensive real estate that that there is, and you can't get the economies of scale that's there. The only other choice to date has been the public cloud, and that could be hundreds or thousands of miles away. And these new applications that require really tight control and interaction can't operate in that kind of environment, And yet it's too expensive to run those applications at the very edge at the premise itself. So that's why this middle ground now of a place and compute nearby, where conserve many locations or must be house more cost effectively. >>Okay, so you got the speed of light problem, right? So you deal with that later by making the compute proximate to the data, but it doesn't have to be like right next to it. Correct. But But what are we talking distance wise? It's that to be synchronised distance or >>when we think of the distance, we think about it in terms of milliseconds of delay, from where the edge device, the thing that needs to interact with the computer, the application needs to interact with. And we have not seen any applications that from the customers we talked to that really get beyond our need tighter than five milliseconds of delay. Now that's one way. So if we get into that range of place and compute within five milliseconds of the of the edge interaction, the device that it needs to interact with, that is enough to meet some of the most tightest requirements that we've seen around robotics control, video analytics and another >>like I could ship code to the data. But the problem is, if it needs to be real time, right, it's still too much. It's too much late, right? That's the problem that you're solving. That's right. Okay, >>so what's what you were talking about? Why milliseconds matter? That's right. So give me some examples, if you will, then about why, why five matters more than 10 or five matters more than eight or 20 or whatever, because we're talking about such an infant testable difference. But yet it does matter. In some respects. It does, >>because so give you an example of robotics, for example, robotics control. You know that is one of things that requires the most tight Leighton see requirement because it depends upon the robotics itself. If it's a machining tools that's working on a laid, then that doesn't require a tide of response time to the controller as, say, a scanning device that Israel time pushing things around very fast in doing an optical read on it to make the decision about how about where it pushes the device next, that type of interaction of control requires a much tighter, late and see performance, and that's why you get start, you start to see these ranges. But as I said, we're not seeing anything below that kind of five millisecond type of range from >>the other thing that's changing it and help me understand. This is yeah, Okay, you're moving the compute closer to the data, which increases costs. And I want to understand how you're addressing that. Maybe one of the ways addresses you're bringing the cloud model, the operating model to the data. So right patches, security patches, maintenance, things like that are reduced. Is that how you're addressing costs? >>Yeah, that is part of it. And that's why the eight of US outpost is very interesting because it is really a complete instance of AWS that is in a much smaller form factor that you can deploy very close to that point of interaction close to the customer to the customer premise, and that enables customers to leverage pretty much the full power of AWS in engaging with those devices and coding to those devices and dropping those applications closed. >>Now you lose the multi tenant aspect Is that right down unnecessarily >>from our understanding of outpost, it's a single 10 a device coming out the gate. But ultimately it's gonna be a multi tenant device. >>Yeah, okay, so near term, it's easier to manage. But it's it's multi instance, I guess, yeah, over time, maybe you could share that. That resource is still not getting. >>The interesting thing is that even though it's a single tenant device, there's still many great use cases because even a single Tenet device in set in one market could serve multiple enterprise locations. So it still has that kind of a sense of scale because you concert as long as it's it's one enterprise. Conserve many locations off of that one. That one device. >>Okay, so you don't get the massive economies of scale, but you're opening abuse cases that never existed before. >>That's right. But what about what do you do with the data supplied basically held something data scale and edge devices creating that much more data. All of a sudden speed becomes a little more challenging, taking in a lot more information, trying to process in different ways after feeding off of that, so a sudden you have a much more complex challenge because it's not static, right? This is a very dynamic environment, >>That's right. Yeah, and there's a very big trend that's happening now, which is that data is being created at the edge, and it's staying at the edge for a whole number of reasons. You know, in the Old World you would pretty much collect data and you'd ship it off to the centralized data center or to the public cloud to be housed there. And that's today. That's where 80% of data resides. But there's a big shift happening where that data now needs to reside at the deep edge because it needs to have that fast interaction with something that's that's working with or because of government regulations that are now coming in that are having much stricter tolerances around. You have to know exactly where your data is can't cross state lines. It can't, you know, get out of certain security zone. Things like that are forcing companies now to keep that massive amount of data in a very understand known localized position. >>You gotta act on it in real time. Yeah, some of it will go back to the cloud, but you see folks persist. The data at the edge or not so much persistent data. People want to store it at the edges. Well, >>uh, people in the story at the edge where where it's going to have a lot of interaction. So if you're running A if you're running a chemical plant, you may not need to have access to a lot of data outside that chemical plant. But you you're intensively analyzing that data in the chemical plant, and you don't want to ship it off someplace centrally, 1000 miles away. To be access from there. It needs to be acted on locally, and that's why it's compute this movement toward EJ computers really building and becoming stronger. >>Talk about your tech. You know what? What's the real value of what you do? You obviously reducing late, sees they gotta secure all this stuff but >>central and brings the number of tools to help in this whole space. So the first of all, the network that we provide that could tie it all together from the enterprise location to the to the edge location where compute can be housed all the way back to the public cloud core way have a network that spans the entire U. S. Fiber all over the place, and we can use those lonely and see fiber optic connections to change those those areas together in the most optimal fashion. To get the kind of performance that you need to handle these distributed computing environments, we also bring compute technology itself. We have our own variety of EJ compute, where we can build custom edge compute solutions for customers that meet their very specific SPECT requirements that could be dedicated to them. We can incorporate AWS computer technology as well, and we have way have I t service's and skilled people, thousands of employees that are focused on the space that build these solutions together. For customers that tie together, the public cloud resource is the edge. Compute resource is the network resource is the wireless connectivity capabilities that's needed on customer premise and the management solutions to tie it all together in that very mixed environment. >>We were just on a session with Teresa Carlson runs public sector for AWS, telling the SAT in a session. Marty Walsh, the mayor of Boston, has got this big smart city initiative going on. I know that's one of the cases you're working on. Maybe talk about that a little bit. And maybe some of the other interesting use cases. >>Yeah, that's right. Definitely. Smart cities are a big our big use case, though. The one and we're we're actually actively working on a number of them. I would say that those used the smart City use cases tend to move very slowly because you're talking about municipalities and long decision making cycle, I'll tell you that. We've seen >>there's a 50 year plan he put forward, >>but the use cases that we're really seeing the most traction with our interestingly is robotics is a really big one, and Video Analytics is another big one. So we're actually deploying edge used case solutions right now. In those scenarios, the Robotics one is a great one because those devices need to be. Those robotic devices need to be controlled within a really tight millisecond tolerance, and but the computer needs to be housed in a very it's much more reliable economic location. The video Analytics piece is a really interesting one that we're seeing very, very big demand for, because retailers have now reached the point with the technology where they can do things like they can, they can figure out by doing video analytics whether somebody is acting suspiciously in the store and we're hearing that they can, they think they can now cut Devery out of retail locations dramatically by using video analytics. And when you talk about big savings to the bottom line of a company that makes a big savings to them so that those very to good use cases we're seeing that a real today. You >>know what the other things you were talking about earlier was about the disappearance of Compute Divide. So where to go? Wait. >>I like to say that in the old days, if you've been around long enough like I know you're old because watching you on TV >>way get out of college, Does that make you feel way get out of college? >>Everything was in the mainframe, right? You essentially. Yet when you went to work, you had a terminal, and everything was house Essentially. Then we went to distributed where client server model, where you everybody was working on desktops and a lot of the compute was on the desk tops and very little went back to a mainframe. Then we made the ship to the cloud where he pushed his much in the centralized location as we can, too. So he's shifted way back to centralized. That's the compute divide. I'm talking about goat, that big ship from decentralized, centralized, decentralized. Now we're actually moving to a new world where that pendulum swing that compute divide is disappearing because compute isn't most economically stored. Anyone location, it's everywhere. It's gonna be at the Io ti edge. It's gonna be at the premise it's going to be in market locations. They were essential. Eyes is gonna be in the public cloud core. It's gonna be all around us. And that's what I mean by the by the disappearance of the compute >>divine. And, you know, I wantto come back on that. You talk about a pendulum. A lot of people talk about the pendulum swings mainframe and distributed. A lot of people say it's the pendulum is swinging back, but you just described it differently. It's It's a ubiquitous matrix. Now you'd is everywhere. >>That's where you hear the term fog computing the idea of the fog. Now it's not the cloud that you can see off in the distance. It's just everywhere, right, surround you and that's how combines we can start to think about how >>I first heard that you're like, I don't know eight years ago. What the heck is this? It was ahead of its time, but now it's really starting to show. This is sort of new expansion of what we know is cloud reading redefining? Yes, exactly. Net ej five g. That's, you know, another big piece of it. You know, Amazon's obviously excited about that with wavelength, right? What do you see for five G? How's that? It can affect this whole equation. >>Yeah, I think five G is gonna have a have a number of EJ applications and was primarily gonna be around the mobile space. You know, it's the the advantage of it is that it increases band with and support smoke mobility, and it allows for a little bit higher resilience because they can take the part of the spectrum and make sure that they're carving it out and dedicating it for particular applications that are there. But I tell you that the five G gets a lot of attention in terms of being how EJ computer's gonna roll out. But we're not saying that at all. edge compute is available today and that we're providing those edge compute solutions through our fiber optic networks. What we're seeing is that every enterprise that we're talking to once fiber into their into their enterprise location. Because once you have fiber there, that's gonna be the most secure, reliable and scalable solutions fiber kin can effectively scale as Bigas. Any customer could ever consume the bandwidth. And they know that once they get fiber into that application into their location that they're good for for the future because they can totally scale with that. And that's how we're deploying edge solutions today, >>Paul. I know you got a plane to catch, and you got to go. But after that age comment, we're gonna keep you for another hour. No, I think it's great. You're doing all right. All right, Hang on. We're about to say goodbye to Paul now. Well, you have a free event. 2019. Coverage continues. Right here on the right

>> Man: Live from San Francisco celebrating 10 years of high tech coverage, it's the Cube. (music) Covering VMworld 2019. (music) Brought to you by VMware and it's ecosystem partners. >> And welcome, indeed, here to the cube and our coverage of VMworld 2019. We are in the Moscone Center in San Francisco. They're open, they're back in business and so is VMware. And we're watching the folks stream out from this morning's keynote session, Pat Gelsinger hosting that session. And it was an impressive setup to say the least. Thousands packing that ballroom downstairs for a plethora of announcements, all from Pat Gelsinger. I'm John Walls, Justin Warren joins us. We haven't been together for a while, it's good to see you.- It's been a little while, yeah. >> How've you been? >> I've been well, I've been well. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> I'm surprised they brought us back together after the last time. >> I don't believe... let's not talk about that incident. >> I thought it went so well, we just end on a high note. But it is a pleasure to be with Justin, we'll be with him throughout the week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, our coverage here. We're joined right now by two guests, Paul Savill, whose the SVP of Network and Technology Solutions at CenturyLink and Omar Sunna who is the Director of Digital Products at GE Health care. And gentlemen thanks for being with us, it's good to have you here on the Cube. >> Thank you John. >> First off, let's just, gimme, your both, your take just on VMWorld 2019. What you're looking for, what you're expecting, and kind of the early vibe that you have going on. Paul, why don't you take that first? >> Sure, one of the things I've really been impressed with is how VMware is expanding, the kind of open nature of it's relationships, it's developing it's ecosystem, really broadening it out, it's making a number of acquisitions to enable new capabilities. And we're really excited about that. CenturyLink and VMware have been partners for, I think, around 12, 15 years. As we've been building out our own cloud services and so it's a very exciting time to see all this technology coming together in the way that it is. >> I love with the way you put it too, acquisitions. Pat made a little comment about that, it's like, "I can't wait to find out who I'm "going to buy next." >> Yes. >> And they've been, certainly been in a full speed ahead modefor the past year, year and a half. Omar, you're take, early. >> Yeah, man, I think I look at it from a health care solutioning perspective and it's exciting to see this level of technology and kind of the building out of the ecosystem and what could it enable for health care consumers. Especially with the big focus around privacy and and data management. I think some of their, and security, some of their latest acquisitions could actually help grow that ecosystem and offer more options especially to the health care industry. >> All right, well now let's talk about your portfolio at work then, a little bit, at GE Healthcare. Obviously health systems, health care's a huge user you know, these days, well it's kind of simplifying it a bit, but just talk about what you're concerns are, what your attention is, and kind of the things that are keeping you up at night, these days, in terms of health care and what you're doing in the IT space. >> You know, I mean, I think the, you know when we look at our customer environment globally, you know, we tend to kind of summarize some of the key challenges for our customers around three pillars. Access, so being able to provide access to all the patients that need it, regardless of location. With aging population in a lot of developed countries, with also a lot of people having the means to receive more proactive health care, it is challenging the health systems to be able to provide adequate access to patients. Capacity, providing capacity when the resources, including the human capital resources, that health systems have. So how do you free up your specialists to make sure that they're able to provide the right level of patients who need it, patient care for the patients that need it. As well as clinical efficacy. How do we help with software applications, with technology, to help reduce the variation of care, and improve patient outcomes, regardless where the patient is receiving care, within the rural community or with advanced academic medical centers. So we try to kind of think of our solution technologies as helping our customers solve for access, capacity, and clinical efficacy. >> Yeah, so a lot of health care, it's kind of a retail setup in that there's lots of hospitals and other allied health professionals who have lots of different locations that they need to provide heath care for them and that technology needs to live where the patients are and where the doctors are. So it was interesting to see, in the key note, earlier this morning, talking about edge and different kinds of edge as well. We've got thin, medium, and thick edge, according to VMware. So how do you see that rise of edge computing effecting the way that you deal with health care. >> Yeah, I mean tremendous, actually, opportunity for us. And GE is working on capitalizing on the technology, on edge technology, to allow us to bring in AI application right to, where kind of within the customer network. And that is, that's helping us solve for a lot of concerns around private security as well as moving large data sets to the cloud to process, to be able to get benefit out of algorithm and additional applications. So that's actually an exciting area. And agree with you, I mean we're seeing more and more large distributed health care networks emorph, in the U.S. we've definitely seen huge merger and acquisition movement that we continue to see, and consolidation. And then we also see that globally. With regional delivery networks coming up and being able to have software applications live within this distributed network and provide information for the right clinician at the right time is a big initiative for us. And for us this makes a huge difference in the way our providers are able to deliver care for their patients. >> This seems like an ideal opportunity for the folks at CenturyLink to help you with that. >> Abso-- (nervous laughter) >> Yeah, that's right, I mean CenturyLink really, to that point, sees this landscape evolving rapidly. And we even have a phrase internally we use that, "The network is the data center." We believe that in the future, compute is going to be distributed so widely, in such a broad geography and dropped in places where it's most efficient to run it and where it's most efficient to connect it with network, that really, the data centers we think about it today, becomes this very widely distributed platform that is connected together with high performance networking solutions. And that's part of what we're working with GE Healthcare on. >> I'm old enough to remember when "The network is the computer" was the slogan that we're all following now, and it seems that's actually coming true now. Where we have this idea of it, it's not just cloud, and it's not just data centers, and it's not just edge, it's actually a combination of all of them. And you need to be able to deal with that technology wherever it needs to live. Which is, I think, is a positive change from what we were talking about a few years ago, where it seemed to be, we had to make one choice. Now the choice is you actually need a bit of everything. >> Right. >> Tell me about your decision, or at least in terms of on-prem, off-prem, and health care, I would assume, extremely sensitive, obviously, to security concerns and management and certain policies about who can access what, where, when and how, whatever. How are you going about making that decision in this new multi-cloud environment, this hybrid-cloud environment, when people are making migrations, you know, with their businesses, and they're going off-prem. But you, I would assume, have to be a lot more sensitive, or more sensitive to other factors than, perhaps, other businesses have to be. >> Yeah, we definitely do. There is, you know, with regulations, you know, and, for example in Europe, GDPR, there's in country regulations around where data resides. All of that kind of plays a factor in customer adoption of technologies and where they're comfortable. We've talked a lot of CIOs in the health care sector and a lot of them say, "Hey, listen we're on a journey, "we're used to hugging our servers, "we're used to controlling it, and technology has evolved. "But, in terms of our policies, ability to accept liability "of data breaches and what technology providers are willing "to sign up for. "All of that plays a roll in that journey." Like Justin had mentioned, it is actually a, in developing an ecosystem, where you have combination of on-prem and off-prem, is a lot of where health care health systems are investing their money. So we're seeing certain data that resides on-prem that is mission critical versus more historic data can go into cloud technology, cloud storage technology and others. But, there's no doubt that we're at an inflection point, we're seeing a lot more health systems sign up to cloud based SAS applications. Invest in private cloud hosting service, invest in also public cloud hosting services. And all of that actually will create, as a software provider, all that could actually help us create more opportunities and more solutioning for our customers. I love listening to some of the cloud computing power that would allow us to develop newer applications. So it's actually exciting, it's a journey with our customers, you know, we're choosing to kind of be alongside of our customers and help them. Doing a lot of education. And being able to have a relationship with CenturyLink, be able to see the advances and availability of resources that CenturyLink makes available for us as well as other partners that we have help us really make sure that we're able to build the right level of technology meeting the health care customer needs. >> So Paul, fill in the gaps a little bit about where CenturyLink is in trying to solve this, I wouldn't say dilemma, but it certainly is a puzzle of some sort, right, as decisions are made about what's going to be off loaded, what's not, how are we going to access, what do we allow. How do you see CenturyLink's role when you have a customer like Omar, like GE Healthcare, coming to you with their unique needs, and addressing those? >> Sure, well, as unique as GE Healthcare is in the health care industry, there are some common characteristics about how we are seeing enterprise customers look at these situations. And one of them is that placing compute on the premise itself, that, that is generally the most expensive real estate that an enterprise has when it has to go in the hospital, when it has to go at the retail store location. And a lot of enterprises today are doubling the amount of compute and storage that they're having at their premise locations every year because the volume is just growing so much. That's becoming a problem, because you don't want your, you don't want your hospital becoming a bigger and bigger data center, so to speak, right? And so the way that we're approaching the problem and working with this, is in VMware was actually, you know, expressing a very similar viewpoint about the edge and about how the thick edge and the thin edge, and the thin edge of the customer premise is where you want to have the lightest load, but you want to have the most critical applications that are sitting there, you want to have the information that you have to protect the most in a most guarded way that's most important for your operations there. But from there you can more efficiently run things from a distance backing out going all the way back to the public cloud core, if you connect it with high performance networking from end to end. And so what CenturyLink has been doing is putting together these solutions that make that balance of trade, so to speak, between the cost of compute, the cost of where you have to put it, to where it best can be housed, what kind of latency performance that it needs to have to meet it to the performance specification, all the way back to the public cloud design and how to tie it in to the public cloud. And that's where we've been building our competency and the solutions we've been putting together for customers. >> You mentioned the need for high performance networks in there so I've got to ask you about 5G. From what I know about 5G it looks like the kind of situation you have with health care, where you've got lots of mobile tablet devices, you've got lots of other actual equipment IoT devices in a health care situation. That seems like an ideal use case for 5G. Is that what hot 5G is actually for, is the hype real? >> Well, 5G is certainly going to transform the world in terms of it's ability to provide wireless high bandwidth connectivity and low latency connectivity to devices. But, edge compute is not about 5G. You can have edge compute without 5G. In fact, it's a bit of a myth that edge compute can't arrive until 5G comes, because edge compute is something that is available to do today. And, in fact, CenturyLink is deploying edge compute solutions with, by basically building fiber into enterprise locations and then housing compute at different areas of the network at the point that's most optimal for the solution. And there are a variety of wireless solutions that can be used in that campus environment other than 5G to connect wireless devices back securely and safely to that edge compute that sits there. >> But it seems like it still should be, or at least looks like it could be a game changer in what it's going to allow in terms of, I guess, advancing edge computing. >> Right? I mean, you're still going to provide new capabilities and new reach and new functionalities that don't currently exist. >> I take Paul's point, though, because there are other technologies like Wi-Fi 6, for example, which is, it's basically the same thing as 5G, it just uses a different radio communications mechanism. But, and I also take your point that you can do edge computing today, absolutely. You can put computing into retail situations and you can have, I mean we have tablet devices now. We have laptops. So we kind of have edge computing. We always have, it just now, now it has a name. >> Yes, that's correct. >> So, tell me before we let you go, Catalyst Award winner from CenturyLink and VMware, Paul, first off let's talk about how you assess that, what's the determination, the criteria, for that and then I'm going to let crow a little bit Omar, about receiving that award. But tell us about the Catalyst Award first. >> Yes, well we call it the Catalyst Award because, when you think about it, a catalyst is something that excites a chemical process. Technically that is the definition of catalyst. But catalyst, in the way we view it, is something that we wanted to recognize a person or a company, that we felt like was really driving innovation, that was really solving a problem and working, also collaboratively together with VMware and CenturyLink in solving some of these problems. So we looked at GE Healthcare and really felt like, in a place where certainly we have seen such great advances in health care administration and building to save people's lives. Oddly, medical errors is becoming an increasing amount of now the problems in terms of death rates. Because, while we have so many ways to solve problems, so many ways to address it, that portion of what's causing deaths is actually on the rise. And so GE Healthcare is taking the technology that they're deploying and helping to solve that problem, that's why we wanted to recognize Omar and the company today. >> An honor for you I would assume you're all pretty proud of that. >> Yeah, absolutely, and thank you, and, yeah, I mean it's was really fantastic to be recognized by our partners. And a great testimony to the team at GE Healthcare. And our team wakes up in the morning and our mission is to improve lives in the moment that matters. A lot of our technology is used in mission critical and the way we're able to deliver that to our customers relies heavily on our ability to leverage advances in technology and be able to improve our ability to deliver our different applications for our customers. So this, actually been fantastic, the relationship has been tremendous for us. Where we have hosted our solutions in CenturyLink, the level of support that we have received have really enabled us to deliver important application for our customers and meet their SLAs and meet their clinical use cases and the needs of software uptime. So that has been tremendous for us. >> Well congratulations. >> Thank you. >> Well then thanks for your time, both of you. And enjoy the show, enjoy San Francisco, we've got good weather this week. >> That's right, yeah. >> So get out and enjoy that, thank you Paul and Omar. Back with more on the Cube, you're watching our coverage here live in San Francisco in VMWorld 2019. (music)

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering AWS re:Invent 2018. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services, Intel, and their ecosystem partners. >> Hey everyone, I'm John Furrier, co-host of theCUBE here live in Las Vegas where Amazon Web Services, AWS re:Invent 2018. Our sixth year covering it, presented by Intel and AWS. Our next guest is Paul Savill, Senior Vice President of core network and technology for CenturyLink. Welcome to theCUBE, good to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks, really glad to be here. >> So one of the things we've been covering on SiliconANGLE and theCUBE is that the holy trinity of infrastructure is storage, network, and compute, never going away but it's evolving as the market evolves. You guys have been providing connectivity and core network. >> Right. >> Really high availability bandwidth and connectivity for many, many years. Now you guys are in the middle of a seat change, what's your story? What are you guys doing at re:Invent? You guys are partners, your logo is everywhere, What's your story? Why are you here? What are you talking about at re:Invent this year? >> Sure, yeah. You know I really do believe it is a seat change. We've actually been working with AWS for many years and when AWS first started, we were one of the major internet service providers for AWS and access into AWS cloud services, but a few years ago we really started seeing this seat change start to happen because Enterprise customers started asking for weird things from us. They actually wanted to order dedicated 10 gigabit optical waves from their Enterprise location into the AWS platform, and we were thinking everything should come through the public internet, why are people doing this? And really, what was driving it, was issues around performance, concerns around security, and so we're starting to see the network really start to play a major role in how cloud services and how performance of cloud-based applications are delivered. >> We're here in day two of re:Invent, we've got two more days to go. Andy Jackson's got his big keynote, he's the CEO he's got his big keynote tomorrow morning. We're expecting to hear latency to be a big part of his keynote. Specifically as Amazon evolves their strategy from being public cloud, where all the action is, to having a cloud version on premise. >> Right >> Because of latency and heritage or legacy workloads on premise aren't going away certainly. Maybe their footprint might be smaller, I'd buy that, but it's not going away. But connectivity and latency is now at the front of the conversation again because data and compute have that relationship. I don't want to be moving date around, if I do it better be low latency, but I want to run compute over the network, I want to send some compute to the edge. So latency is important. Talk about this, because you gave a talk here around milliseconds matter, I love that line, because they do matter now. >> They do, yeah. >> Talk about that concept. >> Sure, yeah. We're absolutely seeing it and the reason we kind of came up with that tag line is because more and more as we've been working with enterprises on networking solutions, we've found that this is really true in how well their applications perform in the cloud, and I really do applaud Jausi and AWS for working on that solution to deliver, to the prim, some of the AWS capabilities. But really we see the market evolving, where in the future it's a trade off between latency and the amount of bandwidth and how the performance needs to be applied across the field. Because we believe that some things will make a lot of sense to be hosted out of the cloud core, where there's major iron, major storage and compute, some things can be distributed on the prim, but then other things make more sense to be hosted out of somewhere on the far edge where it can serve multiple locations. It may be more efficient that way, because maybe you don't want to haul all the bandwidth, or huge amounts of data very long distances, that becomes expensive. >> Well bandwidths cost, it's a cost to you. >> It's still a cost, yeah. >> Latency, one, is a performance overhead cost on that that could hurt the application, but there's also a cost, there's actual financial cost. >> Yes, there is. >> Talk about this concept of latency in context to the new kinds of applications, because what's going on is that as compute, and as you mentioned, storage, start to get more functionality, specifically compute, >> Yes >> Things happen differently. I've been studying AI, I've been a computer science major since the 80's, and AI's been around since the 80's and earlier, but all those concepts just didn't have the compute capability and now they do, now machine learning is on fire, that's a renaissance. Compute can help connectivity, you just mentioned a huge case there, so this is powering new software applications that no one has ever seen before. >> That's right. >> How are these new networks workloads and applications changing connectivity? Give some examples, what are some of the things you guys are seeing as use cases running over the connectivity? >> Sure. So we're seeing a lot of different use cases, and you're right, it really is transforming. An example of this is retail robotics for instance. We're seeing very real applications where large retail customers want to drive robotics in their many retail store locations but it's just not affordable to put that whole hardware software stack in every single store to run those robotics, but then if you try to run those robotics from an application that hosted in a cloud somewhere a thousand miles away then it doesn't have the latency performance that it needs to accurately run those robotics in the store. So we believe that what we're starting to see is this transformation where applications are going to be broken up into these microservices where parts of it's going to run in the cloud core, part of it's going to run in the prim, and part of it's going to run on the near edge where things are more efficient to run for certain types of applications. >> It's kind of like a human. You got your brains and you got your arms and legs to move around. So the brains can be in the cloud, and then whatever is going on at the edge can have more compute. Give some other examples. You and I were talking before we came on camera about video retail analytics. >> Righ, uh huh. >> Pretty obvious when you think about it, but not obvious when you don't have cloud. So talk about video analytics. >> Yeah, that's another important driver is with all of the AI tools that are being developed and as AI advances and as other things, technology like machine learning, advances, then we want to apply AI to a whole new range of applications. So retail, like video analytics for instance, what we're starting to see is the art of the possible. You may have a retail store that has 30 different video cameras spread up around its store and it's constantly monitoring people's expressions, people's moods as they come in, there's an AI sitting somewhere that's analyzing how people feel when they walk in the store versus how they feel when they walk out. Are they happier when they walk out than when they walk in? Are they really mad when they're in the waiting line someplace, or is there a corner of the store where, real time, there's an AI that's detecting that, hey there's a problem in the corner of the store because people seem like they look upset. That type of analysis, you don't want to feed all of that video, all of those simultaneous video feeds to some AI that's sitting a thousand miles away. That's just too much of a lift in terms of bandwidth and in terms of cost. So the answer is there's this distributed model where portions of the application in the AI is acting at different locations in the network and the network is tying it all together. >> Microservice is going to create a whole new level of capabilities and change how they're implemented and deployed. >> Yes. >> And connectivity still feeds the beast called the application. Also the other thing we're seeing, as we're expected to hear Amazon announce, new kinds of connectivity, whether it be satellite and/or bandwidth to edges. IOT, or the network edge as it's called, where the edge network kind of ends with power and connectivity. Because without power and connectivity it's not on the network, it's not an edge. >> That's right. >> There's a trend to push the boundary of edge. Battery power is lasting longer, so now you need connectivity. How do you guys at Century look at this? So do you guys want to push the boundaries, how are you guys just pushing the boundaries? >> Sure. >> Yeah, IOT is another area that's really changing the business. It's opening up so many new opportunities. When you talk about the edge, it's really funny because people define the edge in so many different ways, and the truth is the edge can vary depending on what the application is. An IOT, if you have a bunch of remote devices that are battery powered that are signaling back to some central application, well then that IOT, those physical devices, are the new edge and they could be very deep into some kind of a market. But there's a lot of different communications technology that can access those. There's 5G wireless that's emerging, or regular wireless. There are applications like LauraNet, which is a very low bandwidth but very cost effective way for small IOT devices to communicate small amounts of data back to a central application. And then there's actual fiber that can be used to serve locations where IOT devices can be feeding very heavy amounts of bandwidth back to applications. >> So it's good for your business? >> It's great for our business. We really see it opening up so many other new avenues for us to serve our customers. >> So I'm going to put you on the spot here. If I asked you a question, what has cloudification done for CenturyLink? How has it changed your business? How would you respond to that question? >> I think that it's made what we do even more critical to the future of how enterprises operate. The reason for that is just the point that you made when we started, which is storage and compute and networking, it's all really coming back together in terms of how it boils down to those things. But networking is becoming a much more important factor in all of this because of the latency issues that are there and the bandwidth amount that is possible to generate. We believe that it's creating an opportunity for us to play a more pivotal role in the whole evolving cloud ecosystem. >> I still think this is such an awesome new area because, again, it's so early. And as storage, network, and compute continues to morph, all of us networking geeks and infrastructure geeks, software geeks are going to actually have an opportunity to reimagine how to use those parts. >> It is, yeah. >> And with microservices and custom silicon, you see what Amazon's done with amapertna. You can have data processing units, connectivity processing units, you can have all kinds of new capabilities. It's a whole new world. >> It is and, you know, interestingly enough organizations are going to have to change. One of the things we see with enterprises is that many enterprises are organized so that those three areas are still completely managed in separate departments. But in this new world of how cloud is crushing all of those things together, those departments are going to have to start working much more closely aligned. I had a customer visit me after our session yesterday and was saying I get the whole thing of how now when you deploy an application in the cloud, you can't just think about the application. You got to think about the network that ties it all togeher. But he says I don't know how to get my organization to do that. They're still so segmented and separated. It's a tough challenge. >> And silos are critical. I just saw a presentation with the FBI director, deputy director of counter terrorism, and they can't put the puzzle pieces together fast enough to evaluate threats because of the databases. She gave an example around the Las Vegas shooting here. Just to go through the video tape of the hotel took 12 people for 20 hours a day for a week to go through that video. They did it in twenty minutes with facial recognition. And they have all this data, so putting those puzzle pieces together is critical. I think connectivity truly is going to be a new kind of backbone. >> Yes, uh huh. >> You guys are doing some good work. Okay, lets get a plug in for you guys real quick. By the way, thanks for the insight. Great stuff here at re:Invent. One year anniversary CenturyLink with level three coming together. Synergies, what are you guys doing? Give the update on the coming one year anniversary of the Synergies. >> Sure. Uh huh. >> What are the Synergies? >> Yeah, we're getting tremendous synergies. In fact, I think if you listen to our analyst reports and our quarterly earnings calls, we're really ahead of plan in that area. We've actually raised our earnings guidance for the year as a result of what was originally expected of us. We're doing really well on that front. I'll tell you the thing that excites me more than synergies is the combined opportunity that we have because of these two companies coming together. Ways that, bringing the companies together, surprised me that we found new opportunities. For instance when you take level three, which is a globally distributed network covering Europe, and Latin America, and North America, and parts of the Pack Rim with fiber and sub sea systems, and combine it with CenturyLink's dense coverage of fiber in North America, then it really creates a stronger ability for this company to reach enterprises with very high performing network solutions. One of the main things that surprised me actually relates to this conference, and that is that CenturyLink was really focused around building out cloud services, working closely with companies like AWS on creating managed services around cloud, building performance tools around managing cloud based applications. Level three was really focused on building out network connectivity in a dynamic way to use the new software defined networking technologies to be the preferred provider of high performance networking to cloud service providers. >> The timing was pretty impeccable on the combination because you were kind of cloudifying before cloud native was called cloud native. You were thinking about it in kind of a dev ops mindset and they were kind of thinking of it from a software agility perspective out of infrastructure. Kind of bring those together. Did I get that right? >> That's exactly right. Level three was thinking about how to make the network consumable on a dynamic basis and on demand basis the same way cloud is. When you combine CenturyLink's capabilities with that then it's just opening up so many new things for us to do, so many new ways that we can deliver value to our enterprise customers. >> Well I'm always hungry for more bandwidth, so come on. You guys lighting up all that fiber? How's all the fiber? >> Yeah, we're expanding dramatically. We're investing heavily in that fiber network. We have around 160,000 enterprise buildings on our network today and we're growing that just as fast as we can. >> So Paul Sevill, you're the guy to call if I want to get some cord network action huh? >> That's right. >> Alright. Thanks for the insight, great to have you. Good luck at the show here at re:Invent. CenturyLink here inside theCUBE powering connectivity. Big part of the theme here at re:Invent this year is powering the edge, getting connectivity to places that need low latency for those workloads. That's the key theme. You guys are right on the trend line here. CenturyLink on theCUBE, I'm John Furrier. Stay with us for more wall to wall coverage after this short break. (upbeat techno music)