>>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