Alan Cohen, DCVC | CUBEConversation, September 2019
>>from our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California It is a cute conversation. >>Hey, welcome back already, Jeffrey. Here with the cue, we're in our pal Amato Studios for acute conversation or excited, have ah, many Time Cube alone. I has been at all types of companies. He's moving around. We like to keep him close because he's got a great feel for what's going on. And now he's starting a new adventure. Eso really happy to welcome Alan Cohen back to the studio. Only great to see you. >>Hey, Draft, how are you >>in your new adventure? Let's get it right. It's the D C v c your partner. So this is ah, on the venture side. I'm gonna dark. You've gone to the dark side of the money side That is not a new firm, dark side. You know what's special about this town of money adventure right now, but you guys kind of have a special thesis. So tell us about yeah, and I think you've spoken >>to Matt and Zack. You know my partners in the past, So D. C. V. C is been in the venture business for about a decade and, um, you know, the 1st 5 years, the fund was very much focused on building, ah, lot of the infrastructure that we kind of take for granted. No things have gone into V m wear and into Citrix, and it's AWS, and hence the data collect of the D. C out of D. C. V. C. Really, the focus of the firm in the last five years and going forward is an area we call deep tech, which think about more about the intersection of science and engineering so less about. How do you improve the IittIe infrastructure? But how do you take all this computational power and put it to work in in specific industries, whether it's addressing supply chains, new forms of manufacturing, new forms of agriculture. So we're starting to see all that all the stuff that we've built our last 20 years and really apply it against kind of industrial transformation. So and we're excited. We just raise the $725 million fund. So we I got a little bit of ammunition to work with, >>Congratulate says, It's fun. Five. That's your eighth fund. Yeah, and really, it's consistent with where we're seeing all the time about applied a I and applied machine. Exactly. Right in New York, a company that's gonna build a I itt s'more the where you applying a i within an application, Where you applying machine, learning within what you do. And then you can just see the applications grow exactly right. Or are you targeting specific companies that are attacking a particular industrial focus and just using a eyes, their secret sauce or using deep taxes or secret uh, all of the above? Right. So, like I >>did when I think about D c v c like it's like so don't think about, um, I ops or throughput Orban with think about, um uh, rockets, robots, microbes, building blocks of effectively of human life and and of materials and then playing computational power and a I against those areas. So a little bit, you know, different focus. So, you know, it's the intersection of compute really smart computer science, but I'll give you a great example of something. It would be a little bit different. So we are investors and very active in a company called Pivot Bio, which is not exactly a household name. Pivot bio is a company that is replacing chemical fertilizer with microbes. And what I mean by that is they create microbes they used. So they've used all this big data and a I and computational power to construct microbes that when you plant corn, you insert the microbe into the planting cycle and it continuously produces nitrogen, which means you don't have to apply fertilizer. Right? Which fertilizer? Today in the U. S. A. $212 billion industry and two things happen. One you don't have. All of the runoff doesn't leech into the ground. The nitrous does. Nitrogen doesn't go into the air, and the crop yield has been a being been between about 12 and 15% higher. Right? >>Is it getting put? You know, the food industry is such a great place, and there's so many opportunities, both in food production. This is like beyond a chemical fertilizer instead of me. But it's great, but it's funny because you think of GMO, right? So all food is genetically modified. It's just It took a long time in the past because you had to get trees together, and yet you replant the pretty apples and throw the old apple trees away. Because if you look at an apple today versus an apple 50 years, 100 years, right, very, very different. And yet when we apply a man made kind of acceleration of that process than people, you know, kind of pushed back Well, this is this is not this is not nature, So I'm just curious in, in, in in, Well, this is like a microbe, you know? You know, they actually it is nature, right? So nature. But there'll be some crazy persons that wait, This is not, you know, you're introducing some foreign element into Well, you could take >>potash and pour it on corn. Or you could create a use, a microbe that creates nitrogen. So which one is the chemical on which one is nature, >>right, That that's why they get out. It's a funny part of that conversation, but but it's a different area. So >>you guys look, you guys spent a lot of time on the road. You talked a lot of startups. You talked a lot of companies. You actually talked to venture capitalists and most of the time where you know, we're working on the $4 trillion I t sector, not an insignificant sector, right? So that's globally. It's that's about the size of the economy. You know, manufacturing, agriculture and health care is more like 20 to $40 billion of the economy. So what we've also done is open the aperture to areas that have not gone through the technical disruption that we've seen an I t. Right now in these industries. And that's what's that mean? That's why I joined the firm. That's why I'm really excited, because on one hand you're right. There is a lot of cab you mentioned we were talking before. There is a lot of capital in venture, but there's not a CZ much targeted at the's area. So you have a larger part of global economy and then a much more of specific focus on it. >>Yeah, I think it's It's such a you know, it's kind of the future's here kind of the concept because no one knows, you know, the rate of which tech is advancing across all industries currently. And so that's where you wake up one day and you're like, Oh, my goodness, you know, look at the impacts on transportation. Look at the impacts on construction of the impacts on health care. Look at the impacts on on agriculture. So the opportunity is fantastic and still following the basic ideas of democratizing data. Not using a sample of old data but using, you know, real time analytics on hold data sets. You know, all these kind of concepts that come over really, really well to a more commercial application in a nightie application. Yeah. So, Jeff, I'm kind of like >>looking over your shoulder. And I'm looking at Tom Friedman's book The world is flat. And you know, if we think about all of us have been kind of working on the Internet for the last 20 years, we've done some amazing things like we've democratized information, right? Google's fairly powerful part of our lives. We've been able to allow people to buy things from all over the world and ship it. So we've done a lot of amazing things in the economy, but it hasn't been free. So if I need a 2032 c r. 20 to 32 battery for my key fob for my phone, and I buy it from Amazon and it comes in a big box. Well, there's a little bit of a carbon footprint issue that goes with that. So one of our key focus is in D. C V. C, which I think is very unique, is we think two things can happen is that weaken deal with some of the excess is over the economy that we built and as well as you know, unlock really large profit pulls. At the end of the day, you know, it has the word Venture Patrol says the word capital, right? And so we have limited partners. They expect returns. We're doing this obviously, to build large franchises. So this is not like this kind of political social thing is that we have large parts of the economy. They were not sustainable. And I'll give you some examples. Actually, you know, Jeff Bezos put out a pledge last week to try to figure out how to turn Amazon carbon neutral. >>Pretty amazing thing >>right with you from the was the richest person Now that half this richest person in the world, right? But somebody who has completely transformed the consumer economy as well as computing a comedy >>and soon transportation, right? So people like us are saying, Hey, >>how can we help Jeff meet his pledge? Right? And like, you know, there are things that we work on, like, you know, next generation of nuclear plants. Like, you know, we need renewables. We need solar, but there's no way to replace electricity. The men electricity, we're gonna need to run our economy and move off of coal and natural gas, Right? So, you know, being able to deal with the climate impacts, the social impacts are going to be actually some of the largest economic opportunities. But you can look at it and say, Hey, this is a terrible problem. It's ripping people across. I got caught in a traffic jam in San Francisco yesterday upon the top of the hill because there was climate protest, right? And you know, so I'm not kind of judging the politics of that. We could have a long conversation about that. The question is, how do you deal with these real issues, right and obviously and heady deal with them profitably and ethically, and I think that something is very unique about you know, D. C. V. C's focus and the ability to raise probably the largest deep tech fund ever to go after. It means that you know, a lot of people who back us also see the economic opportunity. And at the end of day there, you know, a lot of our our limited partners, our pension funds, you know, in universities, like, you know, there was a professor who has a pension fund who's gotta retire, right? So a little bit of that money goes into D C V C. So we have a responsibility to provide a return to them as well as go after these very interesting opportunities. >>So is there any very specific kind of investment thesis or industry focus Or, you know, kind of a subset within, you know, heavy lifting technology and science and math. That's a real loaded question in front of that little. So we like problems >>that can be solved through massive computational capability. And so and that reflects our heritage and where we all came from, right, you and I, and folks in the industry. So, you know, we're not working at the intersection of lab science at at a university, but we would take something like that and invest in it. So we like you know we have a lot of lessons in agriculture and health care were, surprisingly, one of the largest investors in space. We have investments and rocket labs, which is the preferred launch vehicle for any small satellite under two and 1/2 kilograms. We are large investors and planet labs, which is a constellation of 200 small satellites over investors and compel a space. So, uh, well, you know, we like space, and, you know, it's not space for the sake of space. It's like it's about geospatial intelligence, right? So Planet Labs is effectively the search engine for the planet Earth, right? They've been effectively Google for the planet, right? Right. And all that information could be fed to deal with housing with transportation with climate change. Um, it could be used with economic activity with shipping. So, you know, we like those kinds of areas where that technology can really impact and in the street so and so we're not limited. But, you know, we also have a bio fund, so we have, you know, we're like, you know, we like agriculture and said It's a synthetic biology types of investments and, you know, we've still invest in things like cyber we invest in physical security were investors and evolve, which is the lead system for dealing with active shooters and venues. Israel's Fordham, which is a drone security company. So, um, but they're all built on a Iot and massive >>mess. Educational power. I'm just curious. Have you private investment it if I'm tree of a point of view because you got a point of view. Most everything on the way. Just hear all this little buzz about Quantum. Um, you know, a censure opened up their new innovation hub in the Salesforce tower of San Francisco, and they've got this little dedicated kind of quantum computer quanta computer space. And regardless of how close it is, you know there's some really interesting computational opportunities last challenges that we think will come with some period of time so we don't want them in encryption and leather. We have lost their quantum >>investments were in literally investors and Righetti computing. Okay, on control, cue down in Australia, so no, we like quantum. Now, Quantum is a emerging area like it's we're not quite at the X 86 level of quantum. We have a little bit of work to get there, but it offers some amazing, you know, capabilities. >>One thing >>that also I think differentiates us. And I was listening to What you're saying is we're not afraid. The gold long, I mean a lot of our investments. They're gonna be between seven and 15 years, and I think that's also it's very different if you follow the basic economics adventure. Most funds are expected to be about 10 years old, right? And in the 1st 3 or four years, you do the bulk of the preliminary investing, and then you have reserves traditional, you know, you know, the big winners emerged that you can continue to support the companies, some of ours, they're going to go longer because of what we do. And I think that's something very special. I'm not. Look, we'd like to return in life of the fun. Of course, I mean, that's our do share a responsibility. But I think things like Quantum some of these things in the environment. They're going to take a while, and our limited partners want to be in that long ride. Now we have a thesis that they will actually be bigger economic opportunities. They'll take longer. So by having a dedicated team dedicated focus in those areas, um, that gives us, I think, a unique advantage, one of one of things when we were launching the fund that we realized is way have more people that have published scientific papers and started companies than NBA's, um, in the firm. So we are a little bit, you know, we're a little G here. That >>that's good. I said a party one time when I was talking to this guy. You were not the best people at parties we don't, but it is funny. The guy was He was a VC in medical medical tech, and I didn't ask him like So. Are you like a doctor? Did you work in a hospital where you worked at A at a university that doesn't even know I was investment banker on Wall Street and Michael, that's that's how to make money move. But do you have? Do you have the real world experience of being in the trenches? Were Some of these applications are being used, but I'm also curious. Where do you guys like to come in? ABC? What's your well, sweets? Traditionally >>we are have been a seed in Siri's. A investor would like to be early. >>Okay, Leader, follow on. Uh, everybody likes the lead, right? Right, right, right. You know what? Your term feet, you >>know? Yeah, right. And you have to learn howto something lead. Sometimes you follow. So we you know, we do both. Okay, Uh, there are increasing as because of the size of the fund. We will have the opportunity to be a little bit more multi stage than we traditionally are known for doings. Like, for example, we were seed investors in little companies, like conflict an elastic that worked out. Okay, But we were not. Later stage right. Investors and company likes companies like that with the new fund will more likely to also be in the later stages as well for some of the big banks. But we love seed we love. Precede. We'd like three guys in in a dog, right? If they have a brilliant >>tough the 7 50 to work when you're investing in the three guys in a dog and listen well and that runs and runs and you know you >>we do things we call experiments. Just you know, uh, we >>also have >>a very unique asset. We don't talk about publicly. We have a lot of really brilliant people around the firm that we call equity partners. So there's about 60 leaning scientists and executives around the world who were also attached to the firm. They actually are, have a financial stake in the firm who work with us. That gives us the ability to be early Now. Clearly, if you put in a $250,000 seed investment you don't put is the same amount of time necessarily as if you just wrote a $12 million check. What? That's the traditional wisdom I found. We actually work. Address this hard on. >>Do you have any? Do you have any formal relationships within the academic institutions? How's that >>work? Well, well, I mean, we work like everybody else with Stanford in M I t. I mean, we have many universities who are limited partners in the fund. You know, I'll give you an example of So we helped put together a company in Canada called Element A I, which actually just raised $150 million they, the founder of that company is Ah, cofounder is a fellow named Joshua Benji. Oh, he was Jeff Hinton's phD student. Him in the Vatican. These guys invented neural networks ing an a I and this company was built at a Yasha his position at the University of Montreal. There, 125 PhDs and a I that work at this firm. And so we're obviously deeply involved. Now, the Montreal A icing, my child is one of the best day I scenes in the world and cool food didn't and oh, yeah, And well, because of you, Joshua, because everybody came out of his leg, right? So I think, Yes, I think so. You know, we've worked with Carnegie Mellon, so we do work with a lot of universities. I would, I would say his university's worked with multiple venture firm Ah, >>such an important pipeline for really smart, heavy duty, totally math and tech tech guys. All right, May, that's for sure. Yeah, you always one that you never want to be the smartest guy in the room, right, or you're in the wrong room is what they say you said is probably >>an equivalent adventure. They always say you should buy the smallest house in the best neighborhood. Exactly. I was able to squeeze its PCB sees. I'm like, the least smart technical guy in the smartest technical. There >>you go. That's the way to go. All right, Alan. Well, thanks for stopping by and we look forward. Thio, you bring in some of these exciting new investment companies inside the key, right? Thanks for the time. Alright. He's Alan. I'm Jeff. You're watching the Cube. We're Interpol about the studios. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.
SUMMARY :
from our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, We like to keep him close because he's got a great feel for what's going on. You know what's special about this town of money adventure right now, but you guys kind of have a special thesis. um, you know, the 1st 5 years, the fund was very much focused on building, build a I itt s'more the where you applying a i within an application, So a little bit, you know, different focus. acceleration of that process than people, you know, kind of pushed back Well, this is this is not this Or you could create a use, It's a funny part of that conversation, but but it's a different area. You actually talked to venture capitalists and most of the time where you know, Yeah, I think it's It's such a you know, it's kind of the future's here kind of the concept because no one And you know, And at the end of day there, you know, a lot of our our limited partners, our pension funds, Or, you know, kind of a subset within, you know, heavy lifting technology So we like you know we have a lot of lessons in agriculture and health care Um, you know, a censure opened up their new innovation hub in the Salesforce tower of San Francisco, you know, capabilities. And in the 1st 3 or four years, you do the bulk of the preliminary investing, Do you have the real world experience of being in the trenches? we are have been a seed in Siri's. Your term feet, you So we you know, Just you know, uh, put is the same amount of time necessarily as if you just wrote a $12 million check. I'll give you an example of So we helped put together a company in Canada called Yeah, you always one that you never want to be the smartest guy in the room, They always say you should buy the smallest house in the best neighborhood. you bring in some of these exciting new investment companies inside the key, right?
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Tom Barton, Diamanti | CUBEConversations, August 2019
>> from our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California It is a cute conversation. >> Welcome to this Cube conversation here in Palo Alto, California. At the Cube Studios. I'm John for a host of the Cube. We're here for a company profile coming called De Monte. Here. Tom Barton, CEO. As V M World approaches a lot of stuff is going to be talked about kubernetes applications. Micro Service's will be the top conversation, Certainly in the underlying infrastructure to power that Tom Barton is the CEO of De Monte, which is in that business. Tom, we've known each other for a few years. You've done a lot of great successful ventures. Thehe Monty's new one. Your got on your plate here right now? >> Yes, sir. And I'm happy to be here, so I've been with the Amante GIs for about a year or so. Um, I found out about the company through a head turner. Andi, I have to admit I had not heard of the company before. Um, but I was a huge believer in containers and kubernetes. So has already sold on that. And so I had a friend of mine. His name is Brian Walden. He had done some massive kubernetes cloud based deployments for us at Planet Labs, a company that I was out for a little over three years. So I had him do technical due diligence. Brian was also the number three guy, a core OS, um, and so deeply steeped in all of the core technologies around kubernetes, including things like that CD and other elements of the technology. So he looked at it, came back and gave me two thumbs up. Um, he liked it so much that I then hired him. So he is now our VP of product management. And the the cool thing about the Amanti is essentially were a purpose built solution for running container based workloads in kubernetes on premises and then hooking that in with the cloud. So we believe that's very much gonna be a hybrid cloud world where for the major corporations that we serve Fortune 500 companies like banks like energy and utilities and so forth Ah, lot of their workload will maintain and be maintained on premises. They still want to be cloud compatible. So you need a purpose built platform to sort of manage both environments >> Yeah, we certainly you guys have compelling on radar, but I was really curious to see when you came in and took over at the helm of the CEO. Because your entrepreneurial career really has been unique. You're unique. Executive. Both lost their lands. And as an operator you have an open source and software background. And also you have to come very successful companies and exits there as well as in the hardware side with trackable you took. That company went public. So you got me. It's a unique and open source software, open source and large hardware. Large data center departments at scale, which is essentially the hybrid cloud market right now. So you kind of got the unique. You have seen the view from all the different sides, and I think now more than ever, with Public Cloud certainly being validated. Everyone knows Amazon of your greenfield. You started the cloud, but the reality is hybrid. Cloud is the operating model of the genesis. Next generation of companies drive for the next 20 to 30 years, and this is the biggest conversation. The most important story in tech. You're in the middle of it with a hot start up with a name that probably no one's ever heard of, >> right? We hope to change that. >> Wassily. Why did you join this company? What got your attention? What was the key thing once you dug in there? What was the secret sauce was what Got your attention? Yes. So to >> me again, the market environment. I'm a huge believer that if you look at the history of the last 15 years, we went from an environment that was 0% virtualized too. 95% virtualized with, you know, Vienna based technologies from VM Wear and others. I think that fundamentally, containers in kubernetes are equally as important. They're going to be equally as transformative going forward and how people manage their workloads both on premises and in the clouds. Right? And the fact that all three public cloud providers have anointed kubernetes as the way of the future and the doctor image format and run time as the wave of the future means, you know, good things were gonna happen there. What I thought was unique about the company was for the first time, you know, surprisingly, none of the exit is sick. Senders, um, in companies like Nutanix that have hyper converse solutions. They really didn't have anything that was purpose built for native container support. And so the founders all came from Cisco UCS. They had a lot of familiarity with the underpinnings of hyper converged architectures in the X 86 server landscape and networking, subsistence and storage subsystems. But they wanted to build it using the latest technologies, things like envy and me based Flash. Um, and they wanted to do it with a software stack that was native containers in Kubernetes. And today we support two flavors of that one that's fully open source around upstream kubernetes in another that supports our partner Red hat with open shift. >> I think you're really onto something pretty big here because one of things that day Volonte and Mine's too many men and our team had been looking at is we're calling a cloud to point over the lack of a better word kind of riff on the Web to point out concept. But cloud one daughter was Amazon. Okay, Dev ops agile, Great. Check the box. They move on with life. It's always a great resource, is never gonna stop. But cloud 2.0, is about networking. It's about securities but data. And if you look at all the innovation startups, we'll have one characteristic. They're all playing in this hyper converged hardware meat software stack with data and agility, kind of to make the original Dev ops monocle better. The one daughter which was storage and compute, which were virtualization planes. So So you're seeing that pattern and it's wide ranging at security is data everything else So So that's kind of what we call the Cloud two point game. So if you look at V m World, you look at what's going on the conversations around micro service red. It's an application centric conversation in an infrastructure show. So do you see that same vision? And if so, how do you guys see you enabling the customer at this saying, Hey, you know what? I have all this legacy. I got full scale data centers. I need to go full scale cloud and I need zero and disruption to my developer. Yeah, so >> this is the beauty of containers and kubernetes, which is they know it'll run on the premises they know will run in the cloud, right? Um and it's it is all about micro service is so whether they're trying to adopt them on our database, something like manga TB or Maria de B or Crunchy Post Grey's, whether it's on the operational side to enable sort of more frequent and incremental change, or whether it's on a developer side to take advantage of new ways of developing and delivering APS with C I. C. D. Tools and so forth. It's pretty much what people want to do because it's future proofing your software development effort, right? So there's sort of two streams of demand. One is re factoring legacy applications that are insufficiently kind of granule, arised on, behave and fail in a monolithic way. Um, as well as trying to adopt modern, modern, cloud based native, you know, solutions for things like databases, right? And so that the good news is that customers don't have to re factor everything. There are logical break points in their applications stack where they can say, Okay, maybe I don't have the time and energy and resource is too totally re factor a legacy consumer banking application. But at least I can re factor the data based here and serve up you know container in Kubernetes based service is, as Micro Service's database is, a service to be consumed by. >> They don't need to show the old to bring in the new right. It's used containers in our orchestration, Layla Kubernetes, and still be positioned for whether it's service measures or other things. Floor That piece of the shirt and everything else could run, as is >> right, and there are multiple deployments scenarios. Four containers. You can run containers, bare metal. Most of our customers choose to do that. You can also run containers on top of virtual machines, and you can actually run virtual machines on top of containers. So one of our major media customers actually run Splunk on top of K B M on top of containers. So there's a lot of different deployment scenarios. And really, a lot of the genius of our architecture was to make it easy for people that are coming from traditional virtualized environments to remap system. Resource is from the bm toe to a container at a native level or through Vienna. >> You mentioned the history lesson there around virtualization. How 15 years ago there was no virtualization now, but everything's virtualized we agree with you that containers and compares what is gonna change that game for the next 15 years? But what's it about VM? Where would made them successful was they could add virtualization without requiring code modification, right? And they did it kind of under the covers. And that's a concern Customs have. I have developers out there. They're building stacks. The building code. I got preexisting legacy. They don't really want to change their code, right? Do you guys fit into that narrative? >> We d'oh, right, So every customer makes their own choice about something like that. At the end of the day, I mentioned Splunk. So at the time that we supported this media customer on Splunk, Splunk had not yet provided a container based version for their application. Now they do have that, but at the time they supported K B M, but not native containers and so unmodified Splunk unmodified application. We took them from a batch job that ran for 23 hours down the one hour based on accelerating and on our perfect converged appliance and running unmodified code on unmodified K B m on our gear. Right, So some customers will choose to do that. But there are also other customers, particularly at scale for transaction the intensive applications like databases and messaging and analytics, where they say, You know, we could we could preserve our legacy virtualized infrastructure. But let's try it as a pair a metal container approach. And they they discovered that there's actually some savings from both a business standpoint and a technology tax standpoint or an overhead standpoint. And so, as I mentioned most of our customers, actually really. Deficiencies >> in the match is a great example sticking to the product technology differentiate. What's the big secret sauce describe the product? Why are you winning in accounts? What's the lift in your business right now? You guys were getting some traction from what I'm hearing. Yeah, >> sure. So look at the at the highest level of value Proposition is simplicity. There is no other purpose built, you know, complete hardware software stack that delivers coup bernetti coproduction kubernetes environment up and running in 15 minutes. Right. The X 86 server guys don't really have it. Nutanix doesn't really have it. The software companies that are active in this space don't really have it. So everything that you need that? The hardware platform, the storage infrastructure, the actual distribution of the operating system sent the West, for example. We distribute we actually distributed kubernetes distribution upstream and unmodified. And then, very importantly, in the combinations landscape, you have to have a storage subsystem in a networking subsystem using something called C s I container storage interface in C N I. Container networking interface. So we've got that full stack solution. No one else has that. The second thing is the performance. So we do a certain amount of hardware offload. Um, and I would say, Amazons purchase of Annapurna so Amazon about a company called Annapurna its basis of their nitro technology and its little known. But the reality is more than 50% of all new instances at E. C to our hardware assisted with the technology that they thought were offloaded. Yeah, exactly. So we actually offload storage and network processing via to P C I. D cards that can go into any industry server. Right? So today we ship on until whites, >> your hyper converge containers >> were African verge containers. Yeah, exactly. >> So you're selling a box. We sell a box with software that's the >> with software. But increasingly, our customers are asking us to unbundle it. So not dissimilar from the sort of journey that Nutanix went through. If a customer wants to buy and l will support Del customer wants to buy a Lenovo will support Lenovo and we'll just sell >> it. Or have you unbundled? Yetta, you're on bundling. >> We are actively taking orders for on bundling at the present time in this quarter, we have validated Del and Lenovo as alternate platforms, toothy intel >> and subscription revenue. On that, we >> do not yet. But that's the golden mask >> Titanic struggle with. So, yeah, and then they had to take their medicine. >> They did. But, you know, they had to do that as a public company. We're still a private company, so we can do that outside the limelight of the public >> markets. So, um, I'm expecting that you guys gonna get pretty much, um I won't say picked off, but certainly I think your doors are gonna be knocked on by the big guys. Certainly. Delic Deli and see, for instance, I think it's dirty. And you said yes. You're doing business with del name. See, >> um, we are doing as a channel partner and as an OM partner with them at the present time there, I wouldn't call them a customer. >> How do you look at V M were actually there in the V M, where business impact Gelsinger's on the record. It'll be on the Cube, he said. You know Cu Bernays the dial tone of the Internet, they're investing their doubling down on it. They bought Hep D O for half a billion dollars. They're big and cloud native. We expect to see a V M World tons of cloud Native conversation. Yes, good, bad for you. What's the take? The way >> legitimizes what we're doing right? And so obviously, VM, where is a large and successful company? That kind of, you know, legacy and presence in the data center isn't gonna go anywhere overnight. There's a huge set of tooling an infrastructure that bm where has developed in offers to their customers. But that said, I think they've recognized in their acquisition of Hep Theo is is indicative of the fact that they know that the world's moving this way. I think that at the end of the day, it's gonna be up to the customer right. The customer is going to say, Do I want to run containers inside? Of'em? Do I want to run on bare metal? Um, but importantly, I think because of, you know, the impact of the cloud providers in particular. If you think of the lingua franca of cloud Native, it's gonna be around Dr Image format. It's gonna be around kubernetes. It's not necessarily gonna be around V M, d K and BMX and E s X right. So these are all very good technologies, but I think increasingly, you know, the open standard and open source community >> people kubernetes on switches directly is no. No need, Right. Have anything else there? So I gotta ask you on the customer equation. You mentioned you, you get so you're taking orders. How you guys doing business today? Where you guys winning, given example of of why people while you're winning And then for anyone watching, how would they know if they should be a customer of yours? What's is there like? Is there any smoke signs and signals? Inside the enterprise? They mentioned batch to one hour. That's just music. Just a lot of financial service is used, for instance, you know they have timetables, and whether they're pulling back ups back are doing all the kinds of things. Timing's critical. What's the profile customer? Why would someone call you? What's the situation? The >> profile is heavy duty production requirements to run in both the developer context and an operating contact container in kubernetes based workloads on premises. They're compatible with the cloud right so increasingly are controlled. Plane makes it easy to manage workloads not just on premises but also back and forth to the public cloud. So I would argue that essentially all Fortune 500 companies Global 1000 companies are all wrestling with what's the right way to implement industry standard X 86 based hardware on site that supports containers and kubernetes in his cloud compatible Right? So that that is the number one question then, >> so I can buy a box and or software put it on my data center. Yes, and then have that operate with Amazon? Absolutely. Or Google, >> which is the beauty of the kubernetes standards, right? As long as you are kubernetes certified, which we are, you can develop and run any workload on our gear on the cloud on anyone else that's carbonated certified, etcetera. So you know that there isn't >> given example the workload that would be indicative. >> So Well, I'll cite one customer, Right. So, um, the reason that I feel confident actually saying the name is that they actually sort of went public with us at the recent Gardner conference a week or so ago when the customer is Duke Energy. So very typical trajectory of journey for a customer like this, which is? A couple years ago, they decided that they wanted re factor some legacy applications to make them more resilient to things like hurricanes and weather events and spikes in demand that are associated with that. And so they said, What's the right thing to do? And immediately they pick containers and kubernetes. And then he went out and they looked at five different vendors, and we were the only vendor that got their POC up and running in the required time frame and hit all five use case scenarios that they wanted to do right. So they ended up a re factoring core applications for how they manage power outages using containers and kubernetes, >> a real production were real. Production were developing standout, absolutely in a sandbox, pushing into production, working Absolutely. So you sounds like you guys were positioned to handle any workload. >> We can handle any workload, but I would say that where we shine is things that transaction the intensive because we have the hardware assist in the I o off load for the storage and the networking. You know, the most demanding applications, things like databases, things like analytics, things like messaging, Kafka and so forth are where we're really gonna >> large flow data, absolutely transactional data. >> We have customers that are doing simpler things like C I. C D. Which at the end of the day involves compiling things right and in managing code bases. But so we certainly have customers in less performance intensive applications, but where nobody can really touch us in morning. What I mean is literally sort of 10 to 30 times faster than something that Nutanix could do, for example, is just So >> you're saying you're 30 times faster Nutanix >> absolutely in trans actually intensive applications >> just when you sell a prescription not to dig into this small little bit. But does the customer get the hardware assist on that as well >> it is. To date, we've always bundled everything together. So the customers have automatically got in the heart >> of the finest on the hard on box. Yes. If I buy the software, I got a loaded on a machine. That's right. But that machine Give me the hardware. >> You will not unless you have R two p C I. D. Cards. Right? And so this is how you know we're just in the very early stages of negotiating with companies like Dell to make it easy for them to integrate her to P. C. I. D cards into their server platform. >> So the preferred flagship is the is the device. It's a think if they want the hardware sit, that they still need to software meeting at that intensive. It's right. If they don't need to have 30 times faster than Nutanix, they can just get the software >> right, right. And that will involve RCS. I plug in RCN I plug in our OS distribution are kubernetes distribution, and the control plane that manages kubernetes clusters >> has been great to get the feature on new company, um, give a quick plug for the company. What's your objectives? Were you trying to do. I'll see. Probably hiring. Get some financing, Any news, Any kind of Yeah, we share >> will be. And we will be announcing some news about financing. I'm not prepared to announce that today, but we're in very good shape with respected being funded for our growth. Um, and consequently, so we're now in growth mode. So today we're 55 people. I want to double back over the course of the next 4/4 and increasingly just sort of build out our sales force. Right? We didn't have a big enough sales force in North America. We've gotta establish a beachhead in India. We do have one large commercial banking customer in Europe right now. Um, we also have a large automotive manufacturer in a pack. But, um, you know, the total sales and marketing reach has been too low. And so a huge focus of what I'm doing now is building out our go to market model and, um, sort of 10 Xing the >> standing up, a lot of field going, going to market. How about on the biz, Dev side? I might imagine that you mentioned delicate. Imagine that there's a a large appetite for the hardware offload >> absolution? Absolutely. So something is. Deb boils down to striking partnerships with the cloud providers really on two fronts, both with respect the hardware offload and assist, but also supporting their on premises strategy. So Google, for example, is announced. Antos. This is their approach to supporting, you know, on premises, kubernetes workloads and how they interact with cool cloud. Right. As you can imagine, Microsoft and Amazon also have on premises aspirations and strategies, and we want to support those as well. This goes well beyond something like Amazon Outpost, which is really a narrow use case in point solution for certain markets. So cloud provider partnerships are very important. Exit E six server vendor partnership. They're very important. And then major, I s V. So we've announced some things with red hat. We were at the Red Hat Open summit in Boston a few months ago and announced our open ship project and product. Um, that is now G a. Also working with eyes, he's like Maria de be Mondo di B Splunk and others to >> the solid texting product team. You guys are solid. You feel good on the product. I feel very good about the product. What aboutthe skeptics are out there? Just to put the hard question to use? Man, it's crowded field. How do you gonna compete? What do you chances? How do you like your chances known? That's a very crowded field. You're going to rely on your fastballs, they say. And on the speed, what's the what's What's your thinking? Well, it's unique. >> And so part of the way or approve point that I would cite There is the channel, right? So when you go to the channel and channel is afraid that you're gonna piss off Del or E M. C or Net app or Nutanix or somebody you know, then they're not gonna promote you. But our channel partners air promoting us and talking about companies like Life Boat at the distribution level. Talking about companies like CD W S H. I, um, you know, W W t these these major North American distributors and resellers have basically said, Look, we have to put you in our line car because you're unique. There is no other purpose built >> and why that, like they get more service is around that they wrap service's around it. >> They want to kill the murder where they want to. Wrap service's around it, absolutely, and they want to do migrations from legacy environments towards Micro Service's etcetera. >> Great to have you on share the company update. Just don't get personal. If you don't mind personal perspective. You've been on the hardware side. You've seen the large scale data centers from racquetball and that experience you'll spit on the software side. Open source. What's your take on the industry right now? Because you're seeing, um, I talked a lot of sea cells around the security space and, you know, they all say, Oh, multi clouds a bunch of B s because I'm not going to split my development team between four clouds. I need to have my people building software stacks for my AP eyes, and then I go to the vendors. They support my AP eyes where you can't be a supplier. Now that's on the sea suicide. But the big mega trend is there's software stacks being built inside the premise of the enterprise. Yes, that not mean they had developers before building. You know, Kobol, lapse in the old days, mainframes to client server wraps. But now you're seeing a Renaissance of developers building a stack for the domain specific applications that they need. I think that requires that they have to run on premise hyper scale like environment. What's your take on it >> might take is it's absolutely right. There is more software based innovation going on, so customers are deciding to write their own software in areas where they could differentiate right. They're not gonna do it in areas that they could get commodities solutions from a sass standpoint or from other kinds of on Prem standpoint. But increasingly they are doing software development, but they're all 99% of the time now. They're choosing doctor and containers and kubernetes as the way in which they're going to do that, because it will run either on Prem or in the Cloud. I do think that multi cloud management or a multi multi cloud is not a reality. Are our primary modality that we see our customers chooses tons of on premises? Resource is, that's gonna continue for the foreseeable future one preferred cloud provider, because it's simply too difficult to to do more than one. But at the same time they want an environment that will not allow themselves to be locked into that cloud bender. Right? So they want a potentially experiment with the second public cloud provider, or just make sure that they adhere to standards like kubernetes that are universally shared so that they can't be held hostage. But in practice, people don't. >> Or if they do have a militant side, it might be applications. Like if you're running office 3 65 right, That's Microsoft. It >> could be Yes, exactly. On one >> particular domain specific cloud, but not core cloud. Have a backup use kubernetes as the bridge. Right that you see that. Do you see that? I mean, I would agree with by the way we agreed to you on that. But the question we always ask is, we think you Bernays is gonna be that interoperability layer the way T c p I. P was with an I p Networks where you had this interoperability model. We think that there will be a future state of some point us where I could connect to Google and use that Microsoft and use Amazon. That's right together, but not >> this right. And so nobody's really doing that today, But I believe and we believe that there is, ah, a future world where a vendor neutral vendor, neutral with respect to public cloud providers, can can offer a hybrid cloud control plane that manages and brokers workloads for both production, as well as data protection and disaster recovery across any arbitrary cloud vendor that you want to use. Um, and so it's got to be an independent third party. So you know you're never going to trust Amazon to broker a workload to Google. You're never going to trust Google to broker a workload of Microsoft. So it's not gonna be one of the big three. And if you look at who could it be? It could be VM where pivotal. Now it's getting interesting. Appertaining. Cisco's got an interesting opportunity. Red hats got an interesting opportunity, but there is actually, you know, it's less than the number of companies could be counted on one hand that have the technical capability to develop hybrid cloud abstraction that that spans both on premises and all three. And >> it's super early. Had to peg the inning on this one first inning, obviously first inning really early. >> Yeah, we like our odds, though, because the disruption, the fundamental disruption here is containers and kubernetes and the interest that they're generating and the desire on the part of customers to go to micro service is so a ton of application re factoring in a ton of cloud native application development is going on. And so, you know, with that kind of disruption, you could say >> you're targeting opening application re factoring that needs to run on a cloud operating >> model on premise in public. That's correct. In a sense, dont really brings the cloud to theon premises environment, right? So, for example, we're the only company that has the concept of on premises availability zones. We have synchronous replication where you can have multiple clusters that air synchronously replicated. So if one fails the other one, you have no service disruption or loss of data, even for a state full application, right? So it's cloud like service is that we're bringing on Prem and then providing the links, you know, for both d. R and D P and production workloads to the public Cloud >> block locked Unpack with you guys. You might want to keep track of humaneness. Stateville date. It's a whole nother topic, as stateless data is easy to manage with AP Eyes and Service's wouldn't GET state. That's when it gets interesting. Com Part in the CEO. The new chief executive officer. Demonte Day How long you guys been around before you took over? >> About five years. Four years before me about been on board about a year. >> I'm looking forward to tracking your progress. We'll see ya next week and seven of'em Real Tom Barton, Sea of de Amante Here inside the Cube Hot startup. I'm John Ferrier. >> Thanks for watching.
SUMMARY :
from our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, power that Tom Barton is the CEO of De Monte, which is in that business. And the the cool thing about the Amanti is essentially Next generation of companies drive for the next 20 to 30 years, and this is the biggest conversation. We hope to change that. What was the key thing once you dug I'm a huge believer that if you look at the history of the last 15 years, So if you look at V m World, But at least I can re factor the data based here and serve up you know Floor That piece of the shirt and everything else could run, as is And really, a lot of the genius of our architecture was to make it easy now, but everything's virtualized we agree with you that containers and compares what is gonna So at the time that we supported this media customer on Splunk, in the match is a great example sticking to the product technology differentiate. So everything that you need Yeah, exactly. So you're selling a box. from the sort of journey that Nutanix went through. it. Or have you unbundled? On that, we But that's the golden mask So, yeah, and then they had to take their medicine. But, you know, they had to do that as a public company. And you said yes. um, we are doing as a channel partner and as an OM partner with them at the present time there, How do you look at V M were actually there in the V M, where business impact Gelsinger's on the record. Um, but importantly, I think because of, you know, the impact of the cloud providers in particular. So I gotta ask you on the customer equation. So that that is the number one question Yes, and then have that operate with Amazon? So you know that there isn't saying the name is that they actually sort of went public with us at the recent Gardner conference a So you sounds like you guys were positioned to handle any workload. the most demanding applications, things like databases, things like analytics, We have customers that are doing simpler things like C I. C D. Which at the end of the day involves compiling But does the customer get the hardware assist So the customers have automatically got in the heart But that machine Give me the hardware. And so this is how you know we're just in the very early So the preferred flagship is the is the device. are kubernetes distribution, and the control plane that manages kubernetes clusters give a quick plug for the company. But, um, you know, the total sales and marketing reach has been too low. I might imagine that you mentioned delicate. This is their approach to supporting, you know, on premises, kubernetes workloads And on the speed, what's the what's What's your thinking? And so part of the way or approve point that I would cite There is the channel, right? They want to kill the murder where they want to. Great to have you on share the company update. But at the same time they want an environment that will not allow themselves to be locked into that cloud Or if they do have a militant side, it might be applications. On one But the question we always ask is, we think you Bernays is gonna be that interoperability layer the of companies could be counted on one hand that have the technical capability to develop hybrid Had to peg the inning on this one first inning, obviously first inning really And so, you know, with that kind of disruption, So if one fails the other one, you have no service disruption or loss of data, block locked Unpack with you guys. Four years before me about been on board about a year. Sea of de Amante Here inside the Cube Hot startup.
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