(upbeat music) >> Welcome back. We're here at Supercomputing 22 in Dallas. My name's Paul Gill, I'm your host. With me, Dave Nicholson, my co-host. And one thing that struck me about this conference arriving here, was the number of universities that are exhibiting here. I mean, big, big exhibits from universities. Never seen that at a conference before. And one of those universities is Indiana University. Our two guests, Dave Jent, who's the AVP of Networks at Indiana University, Aaron Neal, Deputy CIO at Indiana University. Welcome, thanks for joining us. >> Thank you for having us. >> Thank you. >> I've always thought that the CIO job at a university has got to be the toughest CIO job there is, because you're managing this sprawling network, people are doing all kinds of different things on it. You've got to secure it. You've got to make it performant. And it just seems to be a big challenge. Talk about the network at Indiana University and what you have done particularly since the pandemic, how that has affected the architecture of your network. And what you do to maintain the levels of performance and security that you need. >> On the network side one of the things we've done is, kept in close contact with what the incoming students are looking for. It's a different environment than it was then 10 years ago when a student would come, maybe they had a phone, maybe they had one laptop. Today they're coming with multiple phones, multiple laptops, gaming devices. And the expectation that they have to come on a campus and plug all that stuff in causes lots of problems for us, in managing just the security aspect of it, the capacity, the IP space required to manage six, seven devices per student when you have 35,000 students on campus, has always been a challenge. And keeping ahead of that knowing what students are going to come in with, has been interesting. During the pandemic the campus was closed for a bit of time. What we found was our biggest challenge was keeping up with the number of people who wanted to VPN to campus. We had to buy additional VPN licenses so they could do their work, authenticate to the network. We doubled, maybe even tripled our our VPN license count. And that has settled down now that we're back on campus. But again, they came back with a vengeance. More gaming devices, more things to be connected, and into an environment that was a couple years old, that we hadn't done much with. We had gone through a pretty good size network deployment of new hardware to try to get ready for them. And it's worked well, but it's always challenging to keep up with students. >> Aaron, I want to ask you about security because that really is one of your key areas of focus. And you're collaborating with counties, local municipalities, as well as other educational institutions. How's your security strategy evolving in light of some of the vulnerabilities of VPNs that became obvious during the pandemic, and this kind of perfusion of new devices that that Dave was talking about? >> Yeah, so one of the things that we we did several years ago was establish what we call OmniSOC, which is a shared security operations center in collaboration with other institutions as well as research centers across the United States and in Indiana. And really what that is, is we took the lessons that we've learned and the capabilities that we've had within the institution and looked to partner with those key institutions to bring that data in-house, utilize our staff such that we can look for security threats and share that information across the the other institutions so that we can give each of those areas a heads up and work with those institutions to address any kind of vulnerabilities that might be out there. One of the other things that you mentioned is, we're partnering with Purdue in the Indiana Office of Technology on a grant to actually work with municipalities, county governments, to really assess their posture as it relates to security in those areas. It's a great opportunity for us to work together as institutions as well as work with the state in general to increase our posture as it relates to security. >> Dave, what brings IU to Supercomputing 2022? >> We've been here for a long time. And I think one of the things that we're always interested in is, what's next? What's new? There's so many, there's network vendors, software vendors, hardware vendors, high performance computing suppliers. What is out there that we're interested in? IU runs a large Cray system in Indiana called Big Red 200. And with any system you procure it, you get it running, you operate it, and your next goal is to upgrade it. And what's out there that we might be interested? That I think why we come to IU. We also like to showcase what we do at IU. If you come by the booth you'll see the OmniSOC, there's some video on that. The GlobalNOC, which I manage, which supports a lot of the RNE institutions in the country. We talk about that. Being able to have a place for people to come and see us. If you stand by the booth long enough people come and find you, and want to talk about a project they have, or a collaboration they'd like to partner with. We had a guy come by a while ago wanting a job. Those are all good things having a big booth can do for you. >> Well, so on that subject, in each of your areas of expertise and your purview are you kind of interleaved with the academic side of things on campus? Do you include students? I mean, I would think it would be a great source of cheap labor for you at least. Or is there kind of a wall between what you guys are responsible for and what students? >> Absolutely we try to support faculty and students as much as we can. And just to go back a little bit on the OmniSOC discussion. One of the things that we provide is internships for each of the universities that we work with. They have to sponsor at least three students every year and make that financial commitment. We bring them on site for three weeks. They learn us alongside the other analysts, information security analysts and work in a real world environment and gain those skills to be able to go back to their institutions and do an additional work there. So it's a great program for us to work with students. I think the other thing that we do is we provide obviously the infrastructure that enable our faculty members to do the research that they need to do. Whether that's through Big Red 200, our Supercomputer or just kind of the everyday infrastructure that allows them to do what they need to do. We have an environment on premise called our Intelligent Infrastructure, that we provide managed access to hardware and storage resources in a way that we know it's secure and they can utilize that environment to do virtually anything that they need in a server environment. >> Dave, I want to get back to the GigaPOP, which you mentioned earlier you're the managing director of the Indiana GigaPOP. What exactly is it? >> Well, the GigaPOP and there are a number of GigaPOP around the country. It was really the aggregation facility for Indiana and all of the universities in Indiana to connect to outside resources. GigaPOP has connections to internet too, the commodity internet, Esnet, the Big Ten or the BTAA a network in Chicago. It's a way for all universities in Indiana to connect to a single source to allow them to connect nationally to research organizations. >> And what are the benefits of having this collaboration of university. >> If you could think of a researcher at Indiana wants to do something with a researcher in Wisconsin, they both connect to their research networks in Wisconsin and Indiana, and they have essentially direct connection. There's no commodity internet, there's no throttling of of capacity. Both networks and the interconnects because we use internet too, are essentially UNT throttled access for the researchers to do anything they need to do. It's secure, it's fast, easy to use, in fact, so easy they don't even know that they're using it. It just we manage the networks and organize the networks in a way configure them that's the path of least resistance and that's the path traffic will take. And that's nationally. There are lots of these that are interconnected in various ways. I do want to get back to the labor point, just for a moment. (laughs) Because... >> You're here to claim you're not violating any labor laws. Is that what you're going to be? >> I'm here to hopefully hire, get more people to be interested to coming to IU. >> Stop by the booth. >> It's a great place to work. >> Exactly. >> We hire lots of interns and in the network space hiring really experienced network engineers, really hard to do, hard to attract people. And these days when you can work from anywhere, you don't have to be any place to work for anybody. We try to attract as many students as we can. And really we're exposing 'em to an environment that exists in very few places. Tens of thousands of wireless access points, big fast networks, interconnections and national international networks. We support the Noah network which supports satellite systems and secure traffic. It really is a very unique experience and you can come to IU, spend lots of years there and never see the same thing twice. We think we have an environment that's really a good way for people to come out of college, graduate school, work for some number of years and hopefully stay at IU, but if not, leave and get a good job and talk well about IU. In fact, the wireless network today here at SC was installed and is managed by a person who manages our campus network wireless, James Dickerson. That's the kind of opportunity we can provide people at IU. >> Aaron, I'd like to ask, you hear a lot about everything moving to the cloud these days, but in the HPC world I don't think that move is happening as quickly as it is in some areas. In fact, there's a good argument some workloads should never move to the cloud. You're having to balance these decisions. Where are you on the thinking of what belongs in the data center and what belongs in the cloud? >> I think our approach has really been specific to what the needs are. As an institution, we've not pushed all our chips in on the cloud, whether it be for high performance computing or otherwise. It's really looking at what the specific need is and addressing it with the proper solution. We made an investment several years ago in a data center internally, and we're leveraging that through the intelligent infrastructure that I spoke about. But really it's addressing what the specific need is and finding the specific solution, rather than going all in in one direction or another. I dunno if Jet Stream is something that you would like to bring up as well. >> By having our own data center and having our own facilities we're able to compete for NSF grants and work on projects that provide shared resources for the research community. Just dream is a project that does that. Without a data center and without the ability to work on large projects, we don't have any of that. If you don't have that then you're dependent on someone else. We like to say that, what we are proud of is the people come to IU and ask us if they can partner on our projects. Without a data center and those resources we are the ones who have to go out and say can we partner on your project? We'd like to be the leaders of that in that space. >> I wanted to kind of double click on something you mentioned. Couple of things. Historically IU has been I'm sure closely associated with Chicago. You think of what are students thinking of doing when they graduate? Maybe they're going to go home, but the sort of center of gravity it's like Chicago. You mentioned talking about, especially post pandemic, the idea that you can live anywhere. Not everybody wants to live in Manhattan or Santa Clara. And of course, technology over decades has given us the ability to do things remotely and IU is plugged into the globe, doesn't matter where you are. But have you seen either during or post pandemic 'cause we're really in the early stages of this. Are you seeing that? Are you seeing people say, Hey, thinking about their family, where do I want to live? Where do I want to raise my family? I'm in academia and no, I don't want to live in Manhattan. Hey, we can go to IU and we're plugged into the globe. And then students in California we see this, there's some schools on the central coast where people loved living there when they were in college but there was no economic opportunity there. Are you seeing a shift, are basically houses in Bloomington becoming unaffordable because people are saying, you know what, I'm going to stay here. What does that look like? >> I mean, for our group there are a lot of people who do work from home, have chosen to stay in Bloomington. We have had some people who for various reasons want to leave. We want to retain them, so we allow them to work remotely. And that has turned into a tool for recruiting. The kid that graduates from Caltech. Doesn't want to stay in Caltech in California, we have an opportunity now he can move to wherever between here and there and we can hire him do work. We love to have people come to Indiana. We think it is a unique experience, Bloomington, Indianapolis are great places. But I think the reality is, we're not going to get everybody to come live, be a Hoosier, how do we get them to come and work at IU? In some ways disappointing when we don't have buildings full of people, but 40 paying Zoom or teams window, not kind the same thing. But I think this is what we're going to have to figure out, how do we make this kind of environment work. >> Last question here, give you a chance to put in a plug for Indiana University. For those those data scientists those researchers who may be open to working somewhere else, why would they come to Indiana University? What's different about what you do from what every other academic institution does, Aaron? >> Yeah, I think a lot of what we just talked about today in terms of from a network's perspective, that were plugged in globally. I think if you look beyond the networks I think there are tremendous opportunities for folks to come to Bloomington and experience some bleeding edge technology and to work with some very talented people. I've been amazed, I've been at IU for 20 years and as I look at our peers across higher ed, well, I don't want to say they're not doing as well I do want brag at how well we're doing in terms of organizationally addressing things like security in a centralized way that really puts us in a better position. We're just doing a lot of things that I think some of our peers are catching up to and have been catching up to over the last 10, 12 years. >> And I think to sure scale of IU goes unnoticed at times. IU has the largest medical school in the country. One of the largest nursing schools in the country. And people just kind of overlook some of that. Maybe we need to do a better job of talking about it. But for those who are aware there are a lot of opportunities in life sciences, healthcare, the social sciences. IU has the largest logistics program in the world. We teach more languages than anybody else in the world. The varying kinds of things you can get involved with at IU including networks, I think pretty unparalleled. >> Well, making the case for high performance computing in the Hoosier State. Aaron, Dave, thanks very much for joining you making a great case. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> We'll be back right after this short message. This is theCUBE. (upbeat music)

foreign greetings from San Francisco thecube is live this is our second day of wall-to-wall coverage of VMware Explorer 2022. Lisa Martin and Dave Nicholson here we're going to be talking with some ladies from Rackspace next please welcome Adriana Bustamante VP of strategic alliances and Hannah Deuce director of strategic alliances from Rackspace it's great to have you on the program thank you so much for having us good afternoon good morning is it lunchtime already almost almost yes and it's great to be back in person we were just talking about the keynote yesterday that we were in and it was standing room only people are ready to be back they're ready to be hearing from VMware it's ecosystem its Partners it's Community yes talk to us Adriana about what Rackspace is doing with Dell and VMware particularly in the healthcare space sure no so for us Partnerships are a big foundation to how we operate as a company and um and I have the privilege of doing it for over over 16 years so we've been looking after the dell and VMware part partnership ourselves personally for the last three years but they've been long-standing partners for for us and and how do we go and drive more meaningful joint Solutions together so Rackspace you know been around since since 98 we've seen such an evolution of coming becoming more of this multi-cloud transformation agile Global partner and we have a lot of customers that fall in lots of different verticals from retail to public sector into Healthcare but we started noticing and what we're trying trying to drive as a company is how do we drive more specialized Solutions and because of the pandemic and because of post-pandemic and everyone really trying to to figure out what the new normal is addressing different clients we saw that need increasing and we wanted to Rally together with our most strategic alliances to do more Hannah talk about obviously the the pandemic created such problems for every industry but but Healthcare being front and center it still is talk about some of the challenges that Healthcare organizations are coming to Rackspace going help yeah common theme that we've heard from some of our large providers Healthcare Providers has been helped me do more with less which we're all trying to do as we navigate The New Normal but in that space we found the opportunity to really leverage some of our expertise long-term expertise and that the talent and the resource pool that we had to really help in a some of the challenges that are being faced at a resource shortage Talent shortage and so Rackspace is able to Leverage What what we've done for many many years and really tailor it to the outcomes that Health Care Providers are needing nowadays that more with less Mantra runs across the gamut but a lot of it's been helped me modernize helped me get to that next phase I can't I can't I don't have the resources to DIY it myself anymore I need to figure out a more robust business continuity program and so helping with business continuity Dr you know third copies of just all all this data that's growing so it's not just covered pandemic driven but it's that's definitely driving the the need and the requirement to modernize so much quicker it's interesting that you mentioned rackspace's history and expertise in doing things and moving that forward and leveraging that pivoting focusing on specific environments to create something net new we've seen a lot of that here if you go back 10 years I don't know if that's the perfect date to go back to but if you go back 10 years ago you think about VMware where would we have expected VMware to be in this era of cloud we may have thought of things very very differently differently Rackspace a Pioneer in creating off-premises hey we will do this for you didn't even really call it Cloud at the time right but it was Cloud yeah and so the ability for entities like Rackspace like VMware we had a NetApp talking to us about stuff they're doing in the cloud 10 years ago if you I would say no they'd be they'll be gone they'll be gone so it's really really cool to see Rackspace making this transition and uh you know being aware of everything that's going on and focusing on the best value proposition moving forward I mean am I am I you know do I sound like somebody who would who would fit into the Rackspace culture right now or do I not get it yes you sound like a rocker we'll make you an honorary record that's what we call a Rackspace employees yes you know what we've noticed too and is budgets are moving those decision makers are moving so again 10 years ago just like you said you would be talking to sometimes a completely different Persona than we do than we do today and we've seen a shift more towards that business value we have a really unique ability to bring business and Technical conversations together I did a lot of work in the past of working with a lot of CMO and and digital transformation companies and so helping bring it and business seeing the same and how healthcare because budgets are living in different places and even across the board with Rackspace people are trying to drive more business outcomes business driven Solutions so the technical becomes the back end and really the ingredients to make all of that all of that happen and that's what we're helping to solve and it's a lot it's very fast paced everyone wants to be agile now and so they're leaning on us more and more to drive more services so if you've seen Rackspace evolve we're driving more of that advisement and those transformation service type discussions where where our original history was DNA was very much always embedded in driving a great experience now they're just wanting more from us more services help us how help us figure out the how Adriana comment on the outcomes that you're helping Healthcare organizations achieve as as we as we it's such a relatable tangible topic Healthcare is Right everybody's everybody's got somebody who's sick or you've been sick or whatnot what are some of those outcomes that we can ex that customers can expect to achieve with Rackspace and VMware oh great great question so very much I can't mentioned earlier it's how do I modernize how do I optimize how do I take the biggest advantage of the budgets and the landscape that I have I want to get to the Cloud we need to help our patients and get access to that data is this ready to go into the cloud is this not ready to go into the cloud you know how do we how do we help make sure we're taking care of our patients we're keeping things secure and accessible you know what else do you think is coming up yeah and one specific one uh sequencing genetic sequencing and so we've had this come up from a few different types of providers whether it's medical devices that they may provide to their end clients and an outcome that they're looking for is how do we get how do we leverage um here's rip here's what we do but now we have so many more people we need to give this access to we need them to be able to have access to the sequencing that all of this is doing all of these different entities are doing and the outcome that they're trying to get to to is more collaboration so so that way we can speed up in the face of a pandemic we can speed up those resolutions we could speed up to you know whether it's a vaccine needed or something that's going to address the next thing that might be coming you know um so that's a specific one I've heard that from a handful of different different um clients that that we work with and so trying to give them a Consolidated not trying to we are able to deliver them a Consolidated place that their application and tooling can run in and then all of these other entities can safely and securely access this data to do what they're going to do in their own spaces and then hopefully it helps the betterment of of of us globally like as humans in the healthcare space we all benefit from this so leveraging the technology to really drive a valuable outcome helps us all so so and by the way I like trying to because it conveys the proper level of humility that we all need to bring to this because it's complicated and anybody who looks you in the eye it pretends like they know exactly how to do it you need to run from those people no it is and and look that's where our partners become so significant we we know we're Best in Class for specific things but we rely on our Partnerships with Dell and VMware to bring their expertise to bring their tried and true technology to help us all together collectively deliver something good technology for good technology for good it is inherently good and it's nice when it's used for goodness it's nice when it's yeah yeah talk about security for a second you know we've seen the threat landscape change dramatically obviously nobody wants to be the next breach ransomware becoming a household term it's now a matter of when we get a head not F where has security gone in terms of conversations with customers going help us ensure that what we're doing is delivering data access to the right folks that need it at the right time in real time in a secure fashion no uh that's another good question in hot and burning so you know I think if we think about past conversations it was that nice Insurance offering that seemed like it came at a high cost if you really need it I've never been breached before um I'll get it when I when I need it but exactly to your point it's the win and not the if so what we're finding and also working with a nice ecosystem of Partners as well from anywhere from Akamai to cloudflare to BT it's how do we help ensure that there is the security as Hannah mentioned that we're delivering the right data access to the right people and permissions you know we're able to help meet multitude of compliance and regulations obviously health care and other regulated space as well we look to make sure that from our side of the house from the infrastructure that we have the right building blocks to help them Reach those compliance needs obviously it's a mutual partnership in maintaining that compliance and that we're able to provide guidance and best practices on to make sure that the data is living in a secure place that the people that need access to it get it when they when they need it and monitor those permissions and back to your complexity comment so more and more complex as we are a global global provider so when you start to talk to our teams in the UK and our our you know clients there specializing um kind of that Sovereign Cloud mentality of hey we need to have um we need to have a cloud that is built for the specific needs that reside within Healthcare by region so it's not just even I mean you know we're we're homegrown out of San Antonio Texas so like we know the U.S and have spent time here but we've been Global for many years so we just get down into the into the nitty-gritty to customize what's needed within each region well Hannah is that part of the Rackspace value proposition at large moving forward because frankly look if I if I want if I want something generic I can I can swipe credit card and and fire up some Services sure um moving forward this is something that is going to more characterize the Rackspace experience and I and I understand that the hesitancy to say hey it's complicated it's like I don't want to hear that I want to hear that it's easy it's like well okay we'll make it easy for you yes but it's still complicated is that okay that's the honest that's that's the honest yeah that's why you need help right that's why we need to talk about that because people people have a legitimate question why Rackspace yep and we don't I don't want to put you on the spot but no yeah but why why Rackspace you've talked a little bit about it already but kind of encapsulate it oh gosh so good good question why Rackspace it's because you can stand up [Laughter] well you can you do it there's many different options out there um and if I had a PowerPoint slide I'd show you this like lovely web of options of directions that you could go and what is Rackspace value it's that we come in and simplify it because we've had experience with this this same use case whatever somebody is bringing forward to us is typically something we've dealt with at numerous times and so we're repeating and speeding up the ability to simplify the complex and to deliver something more simplified well it may be complex within us and we're like working to get it done the outcome that we're delivering is is faster it's less expensive than dedicating all the resources yourself to do it and go invest in all of that that we've already built up and then we're able to deliver it in a more simplified manner it's like the duck analogy the feet below the water yes exactly and a lot of expertise as well yes a lot talk a little bit about the solution that that Dell VMware Rackspace are delivering to customers sure so when we think about um Healthcare clouds or Cloud specific to the healthcare industry you know there's some major players within that space that you think epic we'll just use them as an example this can play out with others but we are building out a custom or we have a custom clouds able to host epic and then provide services up through the Epic help application through partnership so that is broadening the the market for us in the sense that we can tailor what the what that end and with that healthcare provider needs uh do they do they have the expertise to manage the application okay you do that and then we will build out a custom fit Cloud for that application oh and you need all the adjacent things that come with it too so then we have reference architecture you know built out already to to tailor to whatever all those other 40 80 90 hundreds of applications that need to come with that and then and then you start to think about Imaging platforms so we have Imaging platforms available for those specific needs whether it's MRIs and things like that and then the long-term retention that's needed with that so all of these pieces that build out a healthcare ecosystem and those needs we've built those we've built those out and provide those two to our clients yesterday VMware was talking about Cloud chaos yes and and it's true you talk about the complexity and Dave talks about it too like acknowledging yes this is a very complex thing to do yeah there's just so many moving parts so many Dynamics so many people involved or lack thereof people they they then talked about kind of this this the goal of getting customers from cloud chaos to Cloud smart how does that message resonate with Rackspace and how are you helping customers get from simplifying the chaos to eventually get to that cloud smart goal so a lot of it I I believe is with the power of our alliances and I was talking about this earlier we really believe in creating those powerful ecosystems and Jay McBain former for Forester analyst talks about you know the people are going to come ahead really are serve as that orchestration layer of bringing everybody together so if you look at all of that cloud chaos and all of the different logos and the webs and which decisions to make you know the ones that can help simplify that bring it all together like we're going to need a little bit of this like baking a cake in some ways we're going to need a little bit of sugar we'll need this technology this technology and whoever is able to put it together in a clean and seamless way and as Hannah said you know we have specific use cases in different verticals Healthcare specifically and talking from the Imaging and the Epic helping them get hospitals and different you know smaller clinics get to the edge so we have all of the building blocks to get them what they need and we can't do that without Partners but we help simplify those outcomes for those customers yep so there's where they're Cloud smart so then they're like I want I want to be agile I want to work on my cost I want to be able to leverage a multi-cloud fashion because some things may may inherently need to be on Azure some things we inherently need to be on VMware how do we make them feel like they still have that modernized platform and Technology but still give the secure and access that they need right yeah we like to think of it as are you multi-cloud by accident or multi-cloud by Design and help you get to that multi-cloud by Design and leveraging the right yeah the right tools the right places and Dell was talking about that just that at Dell Technologies world just a couple months ago that most most organizations are multi-cloud by default not designed are you seeing any customers that are are able or how are you able to help customers go from that we're here by default for whatever reason acquisition growth.oit line of business and go from that default to a more strategic multi-cloud approach yes it takes planning and commitment you know you really need the business leaders and the technical leaders bought in and saying this is what I'm gonna do because it is a journey because exactly right M A is like inherited four different tools you have databases that kind of look similar but they're a little bit different but they serve four different things so at Rackspace we're able to help assess and we sit down with their teams we have very amazing rock star expertise that will come in and sit with the customers and say what are we trying to drive for it let's get a good assessment of the landscape and let's figure out what are you trying to get towards in your journey and looking at what's the best fit for that application from where it is now to where it is where it wants to be because we saw a lot of customers move to the cloud very quickly you know they went Cloud native very fast some of it made sense retailers who had the spikiness that completely made sense we had some customers though that we've seen move certain workloads they've been in the public Cloud now for a couple years but it was a static website it doesn't make as much sense anymore for certain things so we're able to help navigate all of those choices for them so it's interesting you just you just said something sort of offhand about having experts having them come in so if I am a customer and I have some outcome I want to achieve yes the people that I'm going to be talking to from Rackspace or from Rackspace and the people from Rackspace who are going to be working with the actual people who are deploying infrastructure are also Rackspace people so the interesting contrast there between other circumstances oftentimes is you may have a Global Systems integrator with smart people representing what a cloud provider is doing the perception if they try to make people perceive that okay everybody is working in lockstep but often there are disconnects between what the real capabilities are and what's being advertised so is that I mean I I know it's like a leading question it's like softball get your bats out but I mean isn't that an advantage you've got a single you know the saying used to be uh one throat to show now it's one back to pack because it's kind of Contour friendly yeah yeah but talk about that is that a real Advantage it does it really helps us because again this is our our this is our expertise this is where we where we live we're really close to the infrastructure we're great at the advisement on it we can help with those ongoing and day two management and Opera in operations and what it feels like to grow and scale so we lay this out cleanly and and clearly as possible if this is where we're really good we can we can help you in these areas but we do work with system integrators as well and part of our partner Community because they're working on sometimes the bigger overall Transformations and then we're staying look we understand this multi-cloud but it helps us because in the end we're doing that end to end for for them customer knows this is Rackspace and on hand and we we really strive to be very transparent in what it is that we want to drive and outcomes so sometimes at the time where it's like we're gonna talk about a certain new technology Dell might bring some of their Architects to the table we will say here is Dell with us we're doing that actively in the healthcare space today and it's all coming together but you know at the end of the day this is what Rackspace is going to drive and deliver from an end to end and we tap those people when needed so you don't have to worry about picking up the phone to call Dell or VMware so if I had worded the hard-hitting journalist question the right way it would have elicited the same responses that yeah yeah it drives accountability at the end of the day because what we advised on what we said now we got to go deliver yeah and it's it's all the same the same organization driving accountability so from a customer perspective they're engaging Rackspace who will then bring in dell and VMware as needed as we find the solution exactly we have all of the certification I mean the team the team is great on getting all of the certs because we're getting to handling all of the level one level two level three business they know who to call they have their dedicated account teams they have engagement managers that help them Drive what those bigger conversations are and they don't have to worry about the experts because we either have it on hand or we'll pull them in as needed if it's the bat phone we need to call awesome ladies thank you so much for joining Dave and me today talking about what Rackspace is up to in the partner ecosystem space and specifically what you're doing to help Healthcare organizations transform and modernize we appreciate your insights and your thoughts yeah thank you for having us thank you pleasure for our guests and Dave Nicholson I'm Lisa Martin you're watching thecube live from VMware Explorer 2022 we'll be back after a short break foreign [Music]

>>the Cube presents H p E discover 2022. Brought to you by H P E. >>Okay, we're back at HPD. Discovered 2022 This is Day Three. We're kind of in the mid point of day three. John Furry and Dave Volonte Wall to wall coverage. I think there are 14th hp slash hp Discover we've sort of documented the history of the company over the last decade. Plus, I'm not a is here is executive vice president at Infosys and Cejudo. Sankaran Kutty is the CEO and vice president of Infosys. Infosys doing some amazing work in the field with clients. Guys, Thanks for coming on the Cube. Thank >>you for the opportunity. >>Yeah, absolutely so. Digital transformation. It's all the buzz word kind of pre pandemic. It was sort of Yeah, you know, we'll get there a lot of lip service to it. Some Some started the journey and then, of course, pandemic. If you weren't digital business, you are out of business. What are the trends that you're seeing now that we're exiting the isolation economy? >>Yeah, um, again, as you rightly called out pre pandemic, it was all about using sort of you know innovation at scale as one of the levers for digital transformation. But if you look at now, post Pandemic, one of the things that we see it's a big trend is at a broad level, right? Digital transformation is not about cost. Take out. Uh, it's all about growth, right? So essentially, uh, like, uh, what we hear from most of the CEO s and most of the customers and most of the executives in the tech company, Digital transformation should be used for business growth. And essentially, it means three things that we see three trends in that space. One is how can you build better products and solutions as part of your transformation strategy? How can you basically use digital transformation to expand into new markets and new new territories and new regions? And the third is, how can you better the experience for your customers? Right. So I think that is broadly what we see as, uh, some other things. And essentially, if you have better customer experience, they will buy more. If you expand into new markets, your revenue will increase. If you actually build better products and solutions, consumers will buy it right, so It's basically like a sort of an economy that goes hand in hand. So I would say the trend is clearly going towards business growth than anything else when it comes to the, >>you know, follow up on that. We had I d. C on yesterday and they were sharing with some of their high level numbers. We've looked at this and and and it seems like I t spending is pretty consistent despite the fact that, for example, you know, the to see the consumer businesses sort of tanking right now. Are you seeing any pullback or any evidence that people are pulling the reins back on the digital transformation Or they just going because if they don't keep keep moving fast, they're gonna fall behind. What are you seeing there? Absolutely. >>In fact, you know what? What we call them as the secular headwinds, right? I mean, if you look at the headwinds here, we see digital transformation is in the minds of everybody, every customer, right. So while there are budget constraints, where are all these macro tailwinds as we call with respect to inflation, with respect to what's happening with Russia and Ukraine with respect to everything that's happening with respect to supply chain right. I think we see some of those tail headwinds. But essentially, digital transformation is not stopping. Everybody is going after that because essentially they want to be relevant in the market. And if they want to be relevant in the market, they have to transform. And if they have to transform, they have to adopt digital transformation. >>Basically, there's no hiding anymore. You know, hiding and you can't hide the projects and give lip service because there's evidence of what the consequences are. And it can be quantified. Yes, you go out of business, you lose money. You mentioned some of the the cost takeouts growth is yes. So I got given the trends and the headwinds and the tail winds. What are you guys seeing as the pattern of companies that came out of the pandemic with growth? And what's going on with that growth driver? What are the elements that are powering companies to grow? Is that machine learning? Is that cloud scales and integration? What are some of the key areas that's given that extra up into the right? >>Yes, I I would say there are six technologies that are defining how growth is being enabled, right? So I think we call it as cloud ai edge five g, Iot and of course, everything to do with a And so these are six technologies that are powering digital transformation. And, uh, one of the things that we are saying is more and more customers are now coming and saying that we want to use these six technologies to drive business outcomes. Uh, for example, uh, we have a very large oil and gas customer of ours who says that, you know, we want to basically use cloud as a lever to Dr Decarbonization. E S G is such a big initiative for everybody in the SGS in the minds of everybody. So their outcome of using technology is to drive decarbonization. And they don't make sure that, you know, they achieve the goals of E. S G. Right There is another customer of ours in the retail space. They are saying we want to use cloud to drive experience for our employees. So I would say that you know, there is pretty much, you know, all these drivers which are helping not just growing their business, but also bettering the experience and meeting some of the organisation goals that they have set up with respect to cloud. So I would say Cloud is playing a big role in every digital transformation initiative of the company. >>How do you spend your time? What's the role of the CEO inside of a large organisation like Infosys? >>So, um, one is in terms of bringing in an outside in view of how technology is making an impact to our customers. And I'm looking at How do we actually start liberating some of these technologies in building solutions, you know, which can actually drive value for our customers? That's one of the focus areas. You know what I do? Um, And if you look at some of the trends, you know what we have seen in the past years as well as what we're seeing now? Uh, there's been a huge spend around cloud which is happening with our customers and predominantly around the cloud Native application development, leveraging some of the services. What's available from the cloud providers like eh? I am l in Hyoty. Um, and and there's also a new trend. You know what we are seeing off late now, which is, um, in terms of improving the experience overall experience liberating some of the technologies, like technologies like block, block, chain as well as we are, we are right, and and this is actually creating new set of solutions. Um, new demands, you know, for our customers in terms of leveraging technologies like matadors leveraging technologies like factory photo. Um, and these are all opportunities for us to build solutions, you know, which can, you know, improve the time to market for our customers in terms of adopting some of these things. Because there has been a huge focus on the improved end user experience or improve experience improved, uh, productivity of, uh, employees, you know, which is which has been a focus. Uh, post pandemic. Right? You know, it has been something which is happening pre pandemic, but it's been accelerated Post pandemic. So this is giving an opportunity for for my role right now in terms of liberating these technologies, building solutions, building value propositions, taking it to our customers, working with partners and then trying to see how we can have this tightly integrated with partners like HP E in this case, and then take it jointly to the market and and find out you know, what's what's the best we can actually give back to our customers? >>You know, you guys have been we've been following you guys for for a long, long time. You've seen many cycles, uh, in the industry. Um, and what's interesting to get your reaction to what we're seeing? A lot of acceleration points, whether it's cloud needed applications. But one is the software business is no longer there. It's open source now, but cloud scale integrations, new hybrid environment kind of brings and changes the game, so there's definitely software plentiful. You guys are doing a lot of stuff with the software. How are customers integrated? Because seeing more and more customers participating in the open source community uh, so what? Red hat's done. They're transforming the open shift. So as cloud native applications come in and get scale and open source software, cloud scale performance and integrations are big. You guys agree with that? >>Absolutely. Absolutely. So if you if you look at it, um, right from the way we can't socialise those solutions, um, open source is something What we have embedded big way right into the solution. Footprint. What we have one is, uh, the ability for us to scale the second is the ability for us to bring in a level of portability, right? And the third is, uh, ensuring that there is absolutely no locking into something. What we're building. We're seeing this this being resonated by our customers to because one is they want to build a child and scalable applications. Uh, it's something where the whole, I would say, the whole dependency on the large software stacks. Uh, you know, the large software providers is likely diminishing now, right? Uh, it's all about how can I simplify my application portfolio Liberating some of the open source technologies. Um, how can I deploy them on a multi cloud world liberating open standards so that I'm not locked into any of these providers? Um, how can I build cloud native applications, which can actually enable portability? And how can I work with providers who doesn't have a lock in, you know, into their solutions, >>And security is gonna be embedded in everything. Absolutely. >>So security is, uh, emperor, right from, uh, design phase. Right? You know, we call it a secure by design And that's something What? We drive for our customers right from our solutions as well as for developing their own solutions >>as opposed to secure by bolt on after the fact. What is the cobalt go to market strategy? How does that affect or how you do business within the HP ecosystem? Absolutely. >>I think you know what we did in, uh, in 2000 and 20. We were the first ones, uh, to come out with an integrated cloud brand called Cobalt. So essentially, our thought process was to make sure that, you know, we talk one consistent language with the customer. There is a consistent narrative. There is a consistent value proposition that we take right. So, essentially, if you look at the Cobalt gold market, it is based on three pillars. The first pillar is all about technology solutions. Getting out of data centres migrating were close to cloud E r. P on Cloud Cloud, Native Development, legacy modernisation. So we'll continue to do that because that's the most important pillar. And that's where our bread and butter businesses right. The second pillar is, uh, more and more customers are asking industry cloud. So what are you specifically doing for my industry. So, for example, if you look at banking, uh, they would say we are focused on Modernising our payment systems. We want to reduce the financial risk that we have because of anti money laundering and those kind of solutions that they're expecting. They want to better the security portion. And of course, they want to improve the experience, right? So they are asking for each of these imperatives that we have in banking. What are some of those specific industry solutions that you are bringing to the table? Right. So that's the second pillar of our global go to market. And the third pillar of our go to market as soon as I was saying is looking at what we call us Horizon three offerings, whether it is metal wars, whether it is 13.0, whether it is looking at something else that will come in the future. And how do we build those solutions which can become mainstream the next 18 to 24 months? So that's essentially the global >>market. That's interesting. Okay, so take the banking example where you've got a core app, it's probably on Prem, and it's not gonna have somebody shoved into the cloud necessarily. But they have to do things like anti money, money laundering and know your ky. See? How are they handling that? Are they building micro services? Are you building for them microservices layers around that that actually might be in the cloud or cloud Native on Prem and Greenway. How is that? How are customers Modernising? >>Absolutely brilliant question. In fact, what we have done is, uh, as part of cobalt, we have something called a reference. Architecture are basically a blueprint. So if you go to a bank and you're engaging a banking executive, uh, the language that we speak with them is not about, uh, private cloud or public cloud or AWS or HP or zero, right? I mean, we talk the language that they understand, which is the banking language. So we take this reference architecture, and we say here is what your core architecture should look like. And, as you rightly called out, there is K. I see there is retail banking. There is anti money laundering. There is security experience. Uh, there are some kpi s and those kind of things banking a PSR open banking as we call, How do we actually bring our solutions, which we have built on open source and something that are specific to cloud and something that our cloud neutral and that's what we take them. So we built this array of solutions around each of those reference architectures that we take to our customers. >>Final question for you guys. How are you guys leveraging the H, P E and new Green Lake and all the new stuff they got here to accelerate the customers journey to edge the cloud? >>So I would say it on three areas right now. This is one is Obviously we are working very closely with HP in terms of taking out solutions jointly to the market and, um, leveraging the whole green late model and providing what I call it as a hyper scale of like experience for our customers in a hybrid, multi cloud world. That's the first thing. The second thing is Onion talked about the cobalt, right? It's an important, I would say, an offering from, uh, you know and offering around cloud from our side. So what we've done is we've closely integrated the assets. You know what I was referring to what we have in our cobalt, uh, under other Kobold umbrella very closely with the HP ecosystem, right? You know, it can be tools like the Emphasis Polly Cloud Platform or the Emphasis pollinate platform very tightly integrated with the HP stack, so that we could actually offer the value proposition right across the value chain. The thought of you know we have actually taken the industry period, like what again mentioned right in terms of rather than talking about a public cloud or a private cloud solution or an edge computing solution. We actually talk about what exactly are the problem statements? What is there in manufacturing today? Or it's there in financial industries today? Or or it's in a bank today or whatever it's relevant to the industry. That's an industry people. So we talk right from an industry problem and and and and and and build that industry, industry people solutions, leveraging the assets, what we have in the and the framework that we have within the couple, plus the integrated solutions. What we bring along with HB. That's that's Those are the three things, what we do along with >>it and that that industry pieces do. There's a whole data layer emerging those industries learning cos they're building their own clouds. Look, working with companies like you because they want to monetise. That's a big part of their digital strategy, guys. Thanks so much for coming on the cue. Thank you. Appreciate your time. Thank >>you. Thank you very much. Really appreciate. >>Thank you. Thank you for watching John and I will be back. John Ferrier, Development at HPD Discovered 2022. You're watching the queue? >>Yeah. >>Mm.

>>from around the globe, >>it's the cube with digital coverage of IBM >>Think 2021 brought to you by IBM Hello welcome back to the cubes coverage of IBM Think 2021. I'm john for your host of the cube had a great conversation here about cloud data, AI and all things. C X O from KPMG is Vinod Swaminathan who's the strategy head of strategy of Ai data and cloud as well as the C. I. O advisory at KPMG you know thanks for coming on the cube. >>My pleasure jOHn thanks for having me. >>So you guys have an interesting perspective, you sit between the business value being created from technology and the clients trying to put it to work um and KPMG impeccable reputation over the years obviously bringing great business value to clients. You guys do that. Um you're in the middle of the hot stuff cloud data and Ai um Ai is great if you have the data and the architecture do that in cloud scale brings so many new good things to the table. Um how is this playing out right now in your mind because we're here at IBM think where the story is transformed, transformation is the innovation. Innovation does set the table for net new capabilities at scale. This seems to be a common thread here. What's your take on the current situation? >>Well, let me start with the fundamental premise that we're seeing playing out with many of our clients and that is, clients are beginning to connect the different silos within their business to better respond to what their customers are asking for. Um you know, we we tend to work with large enterprises, very well established businesses and we're also fortunate to serve the needs of high growth companies as well. So we're in a very unique position as a trusted advisor to both legacy companies transforming and high growth companies looking to drive the transformation in the industry as well. So there are a few things that we're seeing right the first and foremost is responding quickly and effectively to very rapidly changing customer needs. And I think the pandemic really, you know put a spotlight on how fast organizations had to pivot and I have to commend a lot of these organizations and doing a phenomenal job, I would argue, spit band aiding and gluing together a response to what their customers expected. Right? So as I look at post pandemic, we're seeing a lot of clients now looking to take stock of things that they did during the pandemic, how they address customer demand to really smooth them out and streamline as a strategy, how they're going to become more customer driven KPMG. We call this the connected enterprise where you really work effectively across the front, middle and back office in an enterprise to seamlessly address the client. Right? Anything you do in finance really is driven by what your customers want. It's no longer, hey finance sit in the back office, right. Anything you do in marketing is no longer hey I'm doing it just to address the demand side of the equation, right? It's very integral to connect marketing with fulfillment. Right? So we call this the connected enterprise. So that transformation is only possible if customers and our clients are able to effectively leverage cloud from an architectural perspective. And when I say cloud, what we're seeing, smarter clients of ours start to think about is cloud in its entirety. So it's not just the public cloud, it's the cloud architecture, right? The ability to scale up scale out right scale down, right, irrespective of where all of this sits from an infrastructure perspective. So cloud is very critical for becoming that connected enterprise. Uh The data pieces integral, I think the data business today represents trillions of dollars. I think everybody has bought into the fact that data is the new oil and all of that good stuff that we've heard. Uh but it really is a trillion dollar business and it has some unique challenges. So being connected requires, right that are that an enterprise become very data driven? I think it's hard to escape ai it's everywhere to the point where we don't even uh we're not even conscious of ai at work, Right? So I think uh five years ago a I was a novel concept today. It's the expectation of customers who interact with big brands that ai is an integral part of how they are being served. Right? So cloud data ai architecture sort of the ingredients if you will. And then cool technology really starts to bring this connected concept together and post pandemic. We're going to start to see a lot of rationalization uh and big investments and moving forward in this trajectory. >>It's interesting cloud data now you, the way you talk about it makes me think about like this the constant of the old Os I stack right? You have infrastructure and cloud, you have data in the middle layer and then A. I is that that wonder area where the upside takes advantage of that data? Um Very cool insight. You know, Thanks for sharing that. The question I have for you put the pandemic I want to get your reaction to some conversations I've had in the industry and they tend to go like this. Um when we come out of the pandemic this is like a C X O. Talking to Ceo. Or C. I. O. Or C. So when we come out of the pandemic we need a growth strategy, we need to be hidden, we need to be on the upswing, okay? Not on the downswing or still trying to figure it out. Um And and that's a cool conversation because there's been to use cases that we've identified companies that had no has had a headwind because of the pandemic either because of business disruption or the second categories, they've had a tail when they had a business opportunity. So the ones that had a headwind, they would retool, they used the pandemic to retool and the ones that had the tailwind would use the pandemic to either bring net new capabilities or or transform and innovate. So either way that's a successful use case. The ones who didn't do anything aren't going to survive much. We know that, but in those two cases they're not mutually exclusive. That's what the smart money's been doing. The smart teams. What's your advice now that we're in that mode where we're coming around the corner? How do companies get on that uptick? What have you guys advise into clients? What are you hearing and what, what's your reaction to that concept? >>Well, I think every company that is going to be on the survivors list post pandemic actually has digitally transformed, um, you know, even if they don't want to acknowledge it right in a lot of different ways. Um, so I think that's here to stay. Um, what I, and I'll give you a simple example, um, you know, I, I belong to a local club, you know, kitchen shut down, you know, no activities. I was amazed that it took them only four days John four days to actually bring a digital reservation system online through their mobile app. So in the past, the mobile app was simply for me to go look at the directory. But now I can do so many more things. Right? And I was talking to my club CI. All right. I mean, really not a C I. O. But you know, it was uh, it was, it was a staff member who was charged with driving the digital transformation. So there you go. >>Good consultant, you, you know, uh >>but what he talked to me about was fascinating. And this is what we're going to see. Right? So first he said, another was so easy to bring some of those, you know, interactive experience type capabilities online to serve our customer base. It made us think, why the hell didn't we do it before. Alright, so, back to your question, I think post pandemic, we're going to see a lot of companies recognizing that low code, no code, right? Cloud AI capabilities are very much within the reach of the average business user, right? In companies like IBM have done a phenomenal job of demystifying the technology and trying to make it much more accessible for the business user. We're going to see continued momentum, right? And adopting these kinds of simple technologies to transform right business processes, customer interaction, so on and so forth. Right? So we we see that coming out of the pandemic, there's no stopping that. I think the second thing we see is a very firm commitment at the leadership level um that you know, stopping or slowing down these kinds of activities is a non starter at the board level. That's a nonstarter at the management committee level, right? Don't come to me saying we need to slow down things, Come to me saying we need to speed up things, right? But that said, we're seeing rationalization, conversations begin to happen and that starts with the strategy, right, tailwind or headwind, irrespective of which side of the equation you fell right in that, in that dynamic, what we're seeing is clients coming back and saying, all right, we know our strategy needs to be different. Let's make sure that we have a strategy that aligns better with um where our customers want to go, where the industry is headed. And let's acknowledge that there are technological capabilities now, but actually turbocharge the execution of the strategy. Technology is not the strategy, it's still connected enterprise thought. How do I serve my customers whose expectations have dramatically changed coming out of the pandemic? And that's why I gave you the club example. I never want to call anybody to make a reservation anymore. I mean, even the local hair salon has a queuing system and a reservation system because you know, that's just the way it is, Right? So there are some simple things that have happened on the customer side of uh, you know, the equation, which is forcing a lot of our clients to start, you know, accelerating their digital investments. Um, you know, rather than decelerating, >>it's interesting. That's great insight. I think just to summarize that, I think you're pointing out is the obvious, hey, it works the indifference of the digital to go the next level and see X O. S and C I O. S have had, you know, either politics or blockers or just will it work? And, and I think with the pandemic necessity is the mother of all inventions. You say, hey, we got to get back on business that the economics and the user experience is more than acceptable. It's actually preferred. I think that club example really highlights that expectation change and I >>think that's an interesting architecture discussion right? And I don't mean that technically I think businesses are starting to think about how are they architect right. And this is where the connected enterprise concept from KPMG is resonating because now you know we see our clients no longer thinking about finance, sales marketing right and fulfillment right? That's how the architect of their business before now they're realizing that they need to sort of put it on its side. Right, I love the cube analogy, I'm going to borrow it, they're flipping the cube on the side and pulling out a whole new business architecture which by the way is enabled and supported by an underlying technology architecture that's very different. Right? So I think businesses are going to get re architected in technology companies like IBM and Red Hot are going to be right there helping clients go through that re architected along with partners like us. >>The script has been flipped and the cube has been turned and I think this was the revelation. The economics are clear. So I gotta ask you, I mean I've always been I've been joking with IBM the president like it, but I've been saying that, you know, business now is software enabled and the operating systems, distributed computing. As you mentioned, these subsystems are part of this fabric and red hat there and operating systems company. Um so kind of in a good position with what Marvin's doing. If you think about if you look at squint through and connect the dots, I mean you're looking at an underlying operating system that's open and connected to business, it's not just software apps that run something like an ear piece system, it's an business software model for the entire company completely instrumented. This is what hybrid cloud is, could you, because you take a few minutes to talk about the relationship that you guys have with IBM on how you guys are working together to bring this hybrid cloud vision to their customers and to the market. >>So KPMG and IBM go back about 20 plus years long standing relationship. Um In fact, I kid around with many of my fellow partners here at KPMG that IBM is the only relationship that we did not divest off when we went through our let's flip management consulting off from our accounting business, so on and so forth that everybody went through, right? So very long standing relationship, you know, we're a trusted partner of IBM well we're very different from a lot of the partners that IBM has were business consultants, right? We don't have, you know, we help clients think through their business first before we get into the technology implementation. So I don't have armies of IBM certified engineers sitting on the bench looking for work to do. It's actually the other way around. Right? So it's been a great marriage when IBM has phenomenal technology in this case. You know, they have been leaders in AI, we've got an AI based relationship now going back five years, um you know, where we consumed Watson proved to ourselves and the world that it can be done very innovatively supporting business transformation. And now we're able to, together with IBM effectively have that conversation with clients, right? Because we're client number zero, uh we're big into a hybrid, multi cloud, um you know, we're big red hat customers. Uh you know, we use red hat in our own modernization of several different workloads. So our relationship with IBM is very strong, were a good supplier to them as well, so we help them with their strategy and go to market as well. So an interesting sort of relationship. Um look, when we work with clients, we typically tend to, you know, take a trusted advisor role uh with clients, our brand speaks to the trust that we're able to bring when we talk to clients. Uh I kid around um you know, when you're going through a transformation, you probably want the town skeptic holding your hand. That's us, right? We're very risk averse. We like working with clients who you know, kind of want that, you know, critical look when they're investing in technology driven transformation. Um you know, some of the things that IBM has done is pretty phenomenal. Right? So for example, I don't see um you know, I I don't see a lot of providers out there who give clients the kind of options that IBM gives with their multi cloud capabilities. Right? So, you know, show me conversational ai capability that can run on private cloud, that can run on google amazon IBM and a whole bunch of other cloud providers. Right? So I think as IBM invests in that open right philosophy and obviously the red hat acquisition only further enhances that, right, um it's a great opportunity for us to be able to take very powerful KPMG value propositions um you know, enabled by this kind of IBM technology, Right? So that's how we tend to go to market. Um one of the solutions were offering with IBM is called the KPMG data mesh. It's built on IBM cloud pack for data, which is enabled by red hats open shift and it's a very innovative solution in the marketplace that fundamentally asked the question to clients, why are you spending inordinate amount of time and resources moving data around in order to become data driven? Uh it just amazes me john how much money is being thrown at, you know, moving data around, particularly as you get into this complex hybrid, multi cloud world. Right. How many times am I going to move data from, you know, a mainframe database into my, you know, cloud repository before I can start doing uh real higher value work. Right, So KPMG data mesh enabled by the IBM cloud packed the data says, hey, legal data, wherever it is. You know, we can take up to 30 of costs out and really get you on this journey to become data driven without spending the first nine months of every project building a data warehouse or building an expensive data where data lake, Right? Because all of those, frankly our 20th century mindset, right? So if I can leave the data where it is, your favorite terminology virtually is the data and really focus on what do I do with the data as opposed to, you know, how do I move the data? Right. It really starts to change the mindset around becoming data driven. Right, so that's a great example of a solution where we've married our value proposition to clients around connected and trusted and leveraged IBM technology. Right? In a hybrid multi cloud one, >>you know, a great insight, love the focus. Hybrid cloud, congratulations on your KPMG mesh solution, their cloud mesh, awesome. Taking advantage of the IBM work and love your perspective on the industry. I think you you called it right? I think that's a great perspective. That's the way we're on big transformation innovation wave. Thanks for coming on the key, appreciate it. >>Absolutely my pleasure. Thanks for having me have a good day. >>Okay, Cube coverage of IBM think 2021. I'm John for your host of the Cube. Thanks for watching. Mhm >>mm.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 Special coverage sponsored by AWS Worldwide Public sector Welcome back to the cubes. Virtual coverage of eight of us Reinvent 2020 Virtual. This is the Cube virtual. I'm your host, John Ferrier. We are the Cube virtual. This year not only were in person but because of the pandemic. We're doing the remote interviews, doing the live coverage over the past couple weeks. We'll be covering it in depth. My next guest is Lynn Martin, vice president of government education. Health care for VM Ware Public Sector Thank you for coming on the Q. As part of the public sector day. Thanks for coming on. >>Thanks, John. It's my pleasure to be with you to that >>great to see last time you're on the Cube. We were in person and D. C is part of the Public Sector Summit, which is the reinvent for public sector is what I call it Theresa's big event. Teresa Carlson, who runs a U. S public sector. You guys a friend. You've been working together the partnership between VM where AWS has been so strong going back to 2016. I'll never forget. When I interviewed Pat and Andy, A lot of skeptics were like VM Ware E W s turned out to be great. Move at many levels. You're in the field for VM Ware driving the business. What's up? What's the update? >>So a couple exciting things. The partnership has been going great. Ah, lot of transformation work and co innovation between the two companies from the engineering side. And, as you mentioned, great a t the Pat Andy level on Ben. When you take it down to the field, support our government education, healthcare, customers. Great partnership with Theresa and her team. They've done a fabulous job, really, being at the forefront of the cloud transformation across those markets and our partnership together. No, it's pretty exciting. We have a lot of new product announced. It's coming out around our government. Go to market means jointly. So it's been a busy time with co vid and a lot of opportunity for both companies to really market differentiators for some of the challenges that are unique customers face >>when I want to ask you a little bit more on that piece because I know it's been interesting with the pandemic. You guys have had a nice overlay with 80. Invest with Teresa's organization obviously from it from a customer standpoint, Nice fit. Okay. Also, with the pandemic, we're seeing customers certainly doing more modern development. That's a big theme of reinvent also for VM World a few months ago as well. But the operator side of the I t piece is gonna be completely changed. I've been doing some reporting and stories around how not just the modern app site, but the I T portion operating these environments. It's hard in pant with the pandemic, so you start to see that operator meets software meets Cloud kind of world. Can you give your perspective of how that's impacted with the pandemic? Because it seems to have accelerated both i t operations in public sector and modern development of new APS and new surge. So, uh, interesting thoughts. I'd love to get your perspective. >>Yes. So I would say that when you kind of look back at the beginning of 2020 I don't think any of us envisioned quite what we were gonna be facing and what our customers, particularly in public and health care you know have faced. So we have customers jointly that are on the forefront of either providing civil services, national security, education to the students or commercial health care first responders right on the front line around patient care. And what I would say, the observation we had really early on in March was the acceleration of the digital transformation across all of those sectors. So lots of discussions have been taking place, and there were a lot of projects in place that would take a couple of years to probably implement. And I think what occurred with Covic is you really have to accelerate how you were gonna provide those civil services or patient care or education and parts of that digital transformation. I think we're taking for granted. So if you think of, like virtual desktop technology in the education space or, you know, SD when and network capability be of the cloud force for health care providers and things of that nature. So I think the portion played a bigger part in the country, responded to cove it in ensuring that we could do the things we needed to do virtually and quickly and out enabled, you know, speed to market and then infrastructure from companies like VM Ware teamed with an Amazon. We allow the acceleration for that journey. >>You know, the old expression. Necessity is the mother of all invention. Um, education and healthcare in particular really were impacted. They had a pressure points t do differently, things faster e education. We know what's going on there and health care with the pandemic. How how are you managing through this? Because, you know, you had a lot of business in flight prior before the pandemic. Now during and you've got maybe some visibility toe what growth looks like Post pandemic. You still got demand. So how are you managing it with from your perspective, your team? What's it like? How how are you as a leader dealing with this? But it's not like it's slowing down for you. It's increasing in >>demand. Yes, so are our segment was kind of on the forefront within bm where globally, um, we started working with different state, local governments and the federal government ahead of the close downs. You know, in one of the major large metropolitan cities, there were over a billion students that had to be able to be educated virtually and there were challenges around network capability, device capability, all kinds of things. So we've had a lot, a lot of activity and as a company. But you know, my segment, how to really work with corporate to kind of bend, how we do business business process rules as well, to be able to respond quickly and to be agile for our clients and provide different ways to support the needs of those customers. So then they could provide the kind of civil services that the country, you know, counts on them to dio. So I think from the internal perspective, in customer facing, we were able to flex, flex and move very quickly and then internally, within the organization as well. I would say, You know, February to June was almost a blur, were busy on weekend calls and things like that, dealing with all different kinds of situations and the organization as a whole. We were ableto flex and work remotely very quickly. I mean, we just used our own technology and literally upon the shutdown. The only difference is where you were working from, but all the tools, infrastructure and things we had were already in place. So anything from there and then as a leader, the third element, all out is kind of the human element. I think it's it's all an opportunity to connect our teams a little bit. Mawr. You know, you have to put more effort virtually more, all hands because more one on ones and kind of also adapt toe how they're dealing with the different personal things of educating their own Children and their family or caring with elders different types of situations as well. >>It's not business as usual, certainly, but it's, you know, challenging great leadership insight there. Thank you for sharing that. I wanna get back to the cloud impact I did. An interview is part of Amazon's Public Sector Awards program a few months ago or in late spring. Roughly, Um, there was a use case with the center and the Canada government, and the guy was kind of, uh, didn't wanna take sidewall Amazon. I'm not gonna be a spokesperson for Amazon. He ended up when the pandemic hit. He was so big fan of AWS and Cloud connectors example because he was skeptical, but he saw the benefit to speed can you give some examples of customers that you're working with that were getting immediate benefits from cloud in the pandemic. That literally made a big difference in what they did because you're seeing people highlight on, okay, just transmission. But people want to see examples. Can you share some examples where this is where cloud helped? It made a huge difference. And that's an example of what we're talking about here. >>Yes. So I would say, um, um example would be at M. D. Anderson Cancer Institute. Um, they had a need to really expand the connectivity off the facility to segregate patient care and ensure that patients that already, you know, had health issues were segregated from any other co vid patients. And very quickly we saw them scale and extend their data center in record time. I mean, things that traditionally would have taken years were done in months, you know, major accomplishments. In 30 days, a zai mentioned, you know, one of our large cities in the country had to really struggle with off 1.2 billion students in K through 12, many of which count on the school systems for, you know, their meals and things and how you deliver your virtual desktops in that environment. VMC on AWS for horizon is a great example that we saw across many state and local you know, entities in how they transform their education to those clients. Uh, and then the federal government. There's many examples, uh, you know, across some of the larger agencies as well, with BMC on AWS for both horizon and infrastructure as well. As you know, sometimes it wasn't one solution. They might have went a W s native for part vmc on AWS for part. And the combination of that really allows companies to come together in part to get things done very, very quickly. It's >>a great example of the VM Ware cloud on AWS success story. I think what's interesting and how I see you guys really doing well with Amazon. It will get to the partnership in a second. But I wanna call this out because you mentioned that earlier devices the network these air not usually associate with cloud usually clouds. You burst of the cloud clouds. Awesome. All these utility higher level services, Dev Ops Cloud native All goodness, But when you get down to what's going on the pandemic. It's the devices you're using. The desktops. It's the network working at home. How as much as that affected your team and your customers, Can you unpack that a little bit more? >>Yes. So what I would say on that is really when you look atyou out, you know the VMC on AWS offerings and you take it down to an example like the horizon platform horizon allows you with the V m c A W s power behind it to really present your virtual desktop on any device anywhere. And that allowed the education entities to be able to provide those curriculums to the students very quickly and, you know, not really have a big, disconnected downtime on how that was done. So I think you know, you're kind of taking cloud classic infrastructure that you reference and then layering in those unique use cases with the VMC on AWS offerings that then could be applied or telehealth. So you know, lots of examples across the health care industry with telehealth and deploying actually patient care via the M R solutions on BMC on aws is well, so it z really taking core. I t infrastructure layering on a software platform that then allows you to provide all those use cases, whether it be an NYPD or fire departments across the country or education entities or commercial patient care things of that nature as a second layer on top of that cloud infrastructure that you think of normally. >>Well, then I want to congratulate you and the team at VM. Where you guys doing? A great job. Like Teresa Carlson. You guys have a really good focus. Uh, you have a great understanding of how the public sector and commercial dynamics working with cybersecurity, going on all across there. And I just you guys there in space with them. You're doing stuff on the land and the ground station all across the public sector, and and they need faster solutions in the cloud. So congratulations. So I have to ask you, since we're here at reinvent, how is the relationship going? Um, where do you see it evolving? I'll see. We talked about the pressure of education, health care and other areas. I mean, case is gonna be re hall. That's gonna be a complete reinvention. Um, so a lot going on. What's supposed to give us the update. >>So I think that in general, you know the future off the public sector and healthcare space will never go backwards. And the acceleration that we've seen occur over 2020. You're gonna see that accelerate as we move forward. And I think the co innovation between Amazon and B M, where which are both innovative companies coming together to support those markets, I think we have more opportunity ahead of us then behind us. And I think when you look at just the great job Amazon has done in general, I was super excited to see Theresa pick up the health care sector. So we have a whole new space to work together on this year and really lots of exciting, innovative offerings to support both patient care and pharmaceuticals, life science and our payer community across the health care sector, as well as some of the work we've already been doing in the public sector. But given the dynamics in the future outlook of the industry, there's gonna require lots of innovation and different kinds of things to really partner together technically and, you know, aligning our go to market around primarily the customer needs. So I think what's very unique about our partnership in the public and healthcare space is we focus first on the customer needs and the mission of those customers and what they need to achieve. And both companies come to the table with, you know, incredible innovation around solutions to support that market. >>It's a great, great partnership, I gotta say, from a technology standpoint, after Raghu VM Ware when they did this, he's like It's a much deeper It's a real deal is not just the Barney deal is everyone kind of knows the old school, uh, phrases saying It's not really a deal. You guys have really integrated in the field on the customer activities. Strong final question for you You don't mind, um, here it reinvent. You know, people are remote. There's gonna be three weeks, a lot of live coverage. Cube Game day will be doing a lot of support and coverage. But for the audience watching this, what would you say is the most important story people should think about or, um, look at harder. I'm when it comes to cloud collision of public sector and what's gonna happen post pandemic because there's gonna be a new reality. There's gonna be growth strategies that will be in play. Some projects will be doubled down on some may not continue. What's your What's your advice to folks watching? What should they pay attention to this reinvent. >>So I think the number one thing is to really embrace the change going around you. And, you know, I think Amazon will be on the forefront of leading a lot of great innovation in that area. And it's really trying to be open minded about how you take advantage of the things that are coming out and be able to apply that into your infrastructure. So if you look across our customer base, you know there's lots of changes you mentioned. I don't think we'll ever go backwards. And those that will be able to move forward quicker are going to be the ones that embrace the change and really lead and drive that innovation within their organization in reinventing themselves through the kind of technology that a company like Amazon and beyond, where bring to the table >>great insight. Lynn And also there's a lot of great problems to solve and societal benefits a lot of need and you guys doing great work. Thanks for your leadership. And, uh, great conversation. Thank you. >>Thanks very much. >>Okay. Lynn Martin, head of vice president of Global public Sector Uh, government education Healthcare. Lynn Martin, the leader of VM Ware's public sector here in the Cube. I'm John Ferrier. Thanks for watching.

>>from the Cube Studios in Palo Alto and Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a cube conversation. >>Everyone. Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of AWS Summit Online. Virtual Conference Is the Virtual Cube doing the remote? Interviews from our studio in Palo Alto? I'm John Furrier, host of the Cube. We're here with our quarantine crew. We're getting all the interviews out there. Also covering all the greatest in the cloud. We're in the cloud or in the coverage. Our got a great guest here practitioner who's really riding the innovation wave at the same time, taking advantage of the scale of a ws and putting into practice. Chris Foster, who's the CEO of TC Energy. Chris, Thanks for spending the time to come on the Cube. Appreciate it. >>Pleasure, John. Thanks for the opportunity. >>So you've got a great innovation story. That's something that we've been reporting a lot on is how companies can really reinvent, reset, reinvent, grow and put things in place from a Dev Ops cloud scale perspective. You doing it within the energy area. Take a minute to first explain what TC energy is and your role. >>Yeah, for sure, John TC Energy. You know, we're one of the biggest energy companies in North America. So the fastest way to explain it, You know, we like to think we provide the energy that you know in a enables and powers people's lives and about one in four of every molecules that gets delivered in North America. That's us on my role there. I'm very fortunate I >>lead the the >>I s team I have done since January 1st of 2019. Um, and our AWS journey started a little bit before that. I've had the pleasure of sort of jumping on the ah, the exciting part of it. I like to think where we've got a lot of that enabled and we're moving toe a lot of the innovation phases of that implementation. >>I love the innovation story. We love talking about how the new reality that's upon us certainly were in this covert crisis where people are actually seeing the impact at scale problems. You have a job where your product really cannot have disruption, right? At the same time, there is a large scale to it. And so as you guys think about what's going on on the pressure under at the same time, you can't just cut project. You can just cut costs for cutting costs sake. They're actually really needs to be an investment or doubling down in this case, take us through that that process because if you're on the cloud native wave and the AWS way, which you are on, you've been rolling out thinking about Dev ops. You ever thinking about agility? But now, as these new pressures emerge and even more new realities, certainly not a new normal. I hate the term, but it's the people using it. It's a new reality, and that is the right projects need to be funded because of the consequences of not having everything in place. This >>is >>where cloud shines, and this is where innovation and good management kind of comes into play. Can you share your perspective on that? >>Yeah. Be happy to John. You know, safety is our number. One concern always has been, always will be. And so, you know, we we look at everything we do from that lens of doing things safely and reliability as well. Of course, it's not just the safety in the way people would you know, I think about every day. It's also the reliability of that energy people rely on every day. And that has to be almost in our in our thoughts and then everything that we do. Um so I mean, as an example, I would say, you know, some of the, you know, around the periphery of what we did with our AWS implementation. We also took a hard look at our network implementations and how things were working in the background, how we were connected up. And that's one of the reasons that when we transitioned, you know, literally we went from a hey, we should start thinking about working from home sort of on a Wednesday, Thursday, and by Monday, the entire company was working from home, right? And that was the story for a lot of folks. I think on it was seamless. You know, we were not just able todo Obviously the primary focus was safety, reliability, and of course, you know, that was what preoccupied people in the early days we went even beyond that, I would say very quickly we were actually talking to people about, you know, I asked projects that didn't reach the criticality of safety and reliability, but was still important. And we were telling our stakeholders the delivery dates haven't changed. I mean, we were working in the office on Friday. We're working up home on Monday. No big deal. >>So what? The agility piece of that? Because I think that puts an exclamation point around what agility is supposed to be unformed. Seen situation. You implement your business as usual in kind of a weird way. It's not usual, but Cloud allows you to put the speed and scale and reliability together. What was the partnership with Azure? How did that change things or help things? Can you just unpack that a little bit? >>Yeah, by the way, I explain it to my business partners That work within TC energy is Look, it used to take us, you know, several weeks to get you any kind of compute capacity. So when we start talking about innovation and trying new things, the entry cost was high in terms of time and in terms of money, right? Like you'd have to give us a pile of cash. Let us go away. Design servers, you know, get all the right equipment racket and everything else, and that's a huge impediment to trying new things and being truly agile. What AWS has really given us. Yes, we're out of the business of looking after our own servers. And so I'm able to move my people, too. What I would say is more valuable work for the company that really focuses on the outcomes. But what's also very cool for our business partners is I can say that. Look, if you want more compute power than you've ever had before this afternoon, you know, give me, give me an hour and we'll have it for you on the Great part. Two is if on Monday you change your mind and you decide that that idea you had wasn't so great after role and oops, that's fine. I'll just turn it off for you, right? And there's no big deal. Where is in the old days? You phoned me on Monday and said it was a bad idea and say, Well, that's great, But I already bought the server and you, you're living with it for five years. >>That's a great example. You know, I've seen both pieces of the puzzle here. One side, the waterfall provisioning is a lot of risk involved at many levels of processing at scale or if it fails, you got the costs and then the agility side. You've got those example that you just pointed out. But I got to ask you as a manager, you know, some enterprises that are going into this area get stressed out, and things seem to be last minute. How >>do you >>manage that? When does it tip over to be part of the culture where it's like, don't worry about it. It's gonna hurt, because when new things have a full of process, process is great, you know, Don't break anything sweet last minute. So experimentation, as you pointed out, is the key to innovation getting things out there. But managing it is a hard part. What's your experience and what your best practice? >>Yeah, I think if I understand your question right, the journey. A lot of this goes to me towards culture, and, you know, we you can be, I think, coming from a place where perhaps your your your view of risk needs to change to get you into this new space. So obviously, like I said at the outset, in the safety and reliability is number one. We never do anything that would compromise any of those things. The reality and I asked, if I look at it is that you know, 80 90% of what I do doesn't have those types of implications associated with it. And so it becomes, you know, a different conversation about about risk and saying What's the worst thing that could happen? And, you know, you know, if that's not going Teoh intact, any safety and reliability, then let's take a look at it. And so I think the other thing that people are frightened off when it comes to implementing a change like this is obviously the impact on people, right? And I take that part of it very seriously to what I've been really pleased by in our journey is that we've managed to bring people along and give them new skill sets, and we're continuing to do that. We actually introduced what I call next year or the team. Sorry they came up with us, not me. But it's called next TC University, and it's this fabulous, you know, ability for people start signing on and getting new skill sets, you know, retraining themselves. And so we're starting to try and give people that sense of what's in it for them. Because that's the human element, right? So for people that love servers, you know, a You know, it was a big change to say, I'm not gonna get to touch it anymore. I'm not going to get a rack. That server, that's what I'm good at. No, But you're still going to get to do these other skills, right? >>Yeah, that's a great point. Well, if you love service, you love compute. So when you see the compute in action, they got to get excited about that. And I think that's one of the things I think having that on demand compute, almost dial, start dialing it up. And you guys probably agree with that. And your business is having that on one hand. But the team piece, I want to get back to that, cause I think that's the thing you mentioned earlier. Your team can be deployed in new new things. You have a next TC, which is more of a learning aspirational ladder or kind of way to make people feel good about themselves by getting new skills and reapplying it. It's a nice flywheel for the people side of the business. People process technology, as they say, but talk about the impact of the teams working with AWS and Cloud in general. What are some of those things they're working on? How do you shift? How do u flex that with some of the commentary around team the work that they dio and value? >>Yeah, It's a great question, John, and it's what I like to talk about, because what we've been able to do is to draw much more of, ah, clear line for our people between you know what they do and how it impacts the business. And I like to talk to people about the fact that we're blurring the lines now between IOS and the business. I think like it's never been tree done before, right? You know, I love to tell a story about one of my earlier in career folks who was presenting to a very senior group of senior group of VPs, one of whom came to me at the end of the meeting and said, you know which which one of our business units is that young man from And I said he's a nice guy you know? He said, The guy that was talked about line, pack and all those other things And I said, No, he's he's and I asked, right? And he was in disbelief. And that's what I would tell you is the biggest impact of the teams is it's blurring that line now where they're getting much more engaged on the business side, but also the, You know, the business folks are getting much more engaged in the IAS sites. This this kind of meshing now that you know, I asked, People have always striven for I always said, You know, be a partner. Don't be an order taker in my mind. A lot of this makes that possible cause you're getting out of those technical conversations you're having connecting much more with the with the outcomes that you can produce for the business, because it's mostly >>for the action to with this do you get there near the business. They can see it. They can feel the victories and also participate in that upside, and also take some of the learnings doing a lot of steep learning curve that go on for through the experimentation that you mentioned. This is this >>is >>the fun part. But also, it could be rewarding if you look at it that way. So how do you guys deal with the failures and learnings? And you know a lot about failure. But in a sense, if you can try out that you've gotta have that mindset of growth mindset where you're like, Okay, we're to fail, we're not gonna take it. Personal zones, you learn from it. How do you handle >>that? Yeah, it's a great question, John. You mentioned your sort of sick of the words new normal. And I'm I get a little tired of the of the Fail fast for similar reasons. Right to me, it's it's not fail fast as much as fail small and fail. Quick. Well, fail fast. But it's it's making sure you fail on the small things. So we have had failures. What I say to my business partners is look, in the past, I would have failed off the nine months and a couple $1,000,000 of your money. And probably more importantly, you've lost nine months of getting to that solution. Now I'm going to fail in six weeks or less. Andi were going very quickly. Weed out ideas and what I try and get very excited about is, you know, stop worrying about women. Idea is a good idea or a bad idea and spending months of analysis and time trying to figure it out. Let's do things on. You'll find it's cheaper to do. Some of these ideas figure out quickly going to cost way too much money. So we had one that was targeting some improvements in our field experience, and we underestimated the complexity of the systems it was gonna tie back into and all the legacy stuff that was in there wasn't a Greenfield. Nice clean thing to do. We did. We found out after a couple months, this isn't gonna work, right? Um, well, better after two months than two years and several $1,000,000. And that's how we kind of position that internally, >>you know, the whole fail fast thing. You know, you got me going on that couple terms. I always first talk a lot of jargon, so it's always kind of calm. The pot black but fail fast is no one wants to fail, right? So this whole glamorization of failure, any entrepreneur, any leader, no one rebels and failure failure is avoided. No one loves to say no fails, but it's more engineering. It's more getting the iteration. That's that's That's the real issue Here is not so much I look at me. I failed, you know that's got to be put to the side. But what you're getting at is really engineer architect ing really working the problem. And you need to make those iterations which essentially failure. But this whole idea of failing is just And that Data Lake don't get me going. >>It was true that example I gave you. We've actually just launched a very successful pilot from the learnings of that so called failure. Not really. I was just >>talking to another entrepreneur. I'm like, you know, when you're in the business and you're ahead of the curve, the whole world realizes that all of the pandemic these are some things. There are some companies that have those deep learnings, and they have an advantage because those endeavors give them that that courage to try something. But when it's now something obvious to do, those learnings Aaron advantage not a disadvantage. So to your point, that's awesome stuff. Um, tell about the, um, the machine learning side. And I'd love to get your take on. Are you tapping into some of the Amazon machine learning outside the compute stuff? I can see that being killer for you guys. What are some of the higher level services that come out of having some of these new things available? Like sage maker? There's a machine learning a ton of stuff coming out of the the wood work, if you will, From an Amazon standpoint, How are you looking at that? >>Yeah, there's some fabulous tools in there that we're definitely you know, we're fairly early in the in the journey, I would say, but we're already starting to see some great opportunities and great possibilities. So, you know, for example, assess. People probably realize we're quite rightly ah, heavily regulated. And we, you know, quite correctly have to produce a lot of information for regulators to establish that we're doing all of the right things. You know, sometimes when you've grown by acquiring different companies, you know, putting your hands on the right information at the right time could be challenging on dso we're using things like machine learning to help us find documentation quicker and faster to make sure that we can pull out, you know, certificates or regulation. You know, testing results, things like that much faster than we could in the past. Right? Um so that's one use that we already see for that that has the potential to speed up our interactions of regulators, help us refocus some costs internally on, you know, safe initiatives and that type of thing. So that's one example. We're also using machine learning to tell us more about how you can continue to operate the pipe, you know, more safe, you know, always more safely, more reliably, all the time. And, you know, the I truly believe, you know, all roads lead back to the data and how you get at that data, right. And so machine learning is most people in this audience who understand is is really another way of getting that data to tell you everything that's hidden within it. >>Once you get your team set up with the mindset, the culture having that compute, working on new things, you take advantage machine learning. Then you've got things like Kendra just announced general availability. These become abstractions of services, so that kind of leads me to. My final question for you is we're living in a time where Post Pandemic is gonna be exposed, that there's a lot of gaps. People realize that, you know, the tide has pulled out and you can see all the rocks that exposed opportunities out there, and there's also challenges. So we expecting a lot of projects will be cut me personnel as But there's a lot of projects being funded. So the funding versus cutting is going to be, I think, going all level out. But as people get back in and want to go the cloud, how should they be thinking about this? Actually, they be coming into the market because at your level, the CSO levels. It's more visibility than ever on resetting, reinventing and growing right, getting back on track or doubling down on a win. So what's your advice to people out there? The practitioners of Google Amazon summit and other folks that really need to take the step into the cloud native scale world. What's your advice? >>Well, yeah, it's definitely a challenging world, John, for a lot of people, and we're not immune to that. You know, we are seeing in my local community for sure lots of lots of people pulling back on projects and, um, expenditures. Right now, my advice to any of the folks out there is when I talk to my business partners, I try and talk about funding outcomes and not funding projects. Right? And so, you know, rather than when you might my biggest concern. Whenever we talk about budgets, everyone has to go for budget conversations that I don't care what industry you're in or what your position is. I want to make sure that when we decide where we set the budget, if we're gonna set it here, do we know what's above the line and below the line in business terms, right. So it's very easy to cut technology and not really see a business impact on DSO. What I like to talk about with our business partners internally is to talk about everything in terms of the outcomes you're trying to fund. And so if for me it's a enhancement infield productivity, you know, reducing the windshield time of our people in the field because that's a primary safety issue. That's the outcome I'm going for and their bi projects behind it and that that's the biggest advice I can give people when it's now. There's so much scrutiny on, you know, is that a dollar that's worth spending? If you talk about technology in most you know, boardrooms or leadership tables around North America, you're gonna lose people. Very first, you gotta focus it back to what the business is trying to do with it and create teams that can really zero in together. You know, blur the lines. Like I said previously, between IOS and the business people, where everyone's got the outcome that's pasted up on the wall, that's what we're going to deliver. We're gonna, you know, come to ah, conclusion quickly on whether we can do it. >>Yeah, it's not a shiny new toy. It's how the engine of innovation hits the business object. That's great stuff. Final final question. What are you excited about these days? Obviously, we're in a tough time. Um, there are new realities we're gonna come out of this is going to be a hybrid world in this virtual interactions. We're having the cube virtual Amazon summit. Virtual life isn't now part of everybody's immersion. You've got the edge of the network exploding. You've got all the you know it's chaotic. But if you squint through that there's opportunities. Start up a big business. What are you excited about? >>I agree with you, John. I think you have to be glass half full. And I don't mean to be just the sort of overly optimistic, but I think you have to look at this as an opportunity for a bit of a rebirth of the shift, right? And, you know, I don't wanna downplay the fact that change is hard for people. I don't downplay the fact that people are going through some very tough things right now. So, you know, not not trying to put sort of, but too much of sweetener on things. But I think if you're looking for a positive angle, you look at it the rebirth of the opportunities that will come out of that right. I think there's incredible, you know, technology opportunities coming out of it. I talked to my people all the time about focus on what you can control on what you can control. This staying relevant right. We know we're entering a digital world. We know that things are gonna look differently when we come back. We may not know what they are yet, but companies are gonna continue to need great technology. You know, our partnership with AWS has given us access to great technology. Focus on that. Because that's what you can control on. I think you know, you'll see that some opportunities will come out of this. We probably didn't expect >>and also that it's an inflection point as well. 2000 and eight. When we had the financial crisis there, there were clear coming. They're on the up trajectory and stayed up here. I think we're going to see something similar. So I think there's gonna be a right side of history coming out of this. And it's going to be one of those things where you can tell by who's growing and who's the trajectories of their business outcomes. Um, well, tried a lot of that. >>Yeah, I would agree. A lot of there's a there's always someone that's that you don't realize till later was was quietly making making hay right? Well, this was happening, and I would encourage people to think about that. >>You don't want to be that company. As expression goes, Chris, thank you so much for taking the time to share your insights on the Cube virtual as part of our AWS summit coverage. This is the Cube virtual. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. >>Pleasure. Thanks for having me. >>I'm John Furrier here in the Palo Alto studios covering AWS Summit online. Virtual. Is the Cube virtual doing our part here with our quarantine crew getting all the data sharing that with you. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

from the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world this is a cube conversation hello everyone welcome to the cube conversation here in Palo Alto our studios of the cube I'm showing for your host we're here during the crisis of Cove in nineteen doing remote interviews I come into the studio we've got a quarantine crew or here getting the interviews getting the stories out there and of course the story we continue to talk about is the impact of Kovan 19 and how we're all getting back to work either working at home or working remotely and virtually certainly but as things start to change we can start to see events mostly digital events and we're here to talk about an event that's coming up called the failover conference from gremlin which is now gone digital because it's April 21st but I think what's important about this conversation that I want to get into is not only talk about the event that's coming up but talk about these scale problems that are being highlighted by this change in work environment working at home we've been talking about the at scale problems that we're seeing whether it's a flood of surge of traffic and the chaos that's ensuing across the world with this pandemic so I'm excited have two great guests Alberto Ferran auto senior vice president marketing gremlin and Tammy Bhutto principal site reliability engineer or SRE guys thanks for coming on appreciate it thank you Thank You Alberto I want to get to you first you know we've known each other before you've been in this industry we all we've been all been talking about the cloud native cloud scale for some time it's kind of inside the ropes it's inside baseball Tami your site reliability engineer everyone knows Google knows how well cloud works this is large-scale stuff now with The Cove in 19 we're starting to see the average person my brother my sister our family members and people around the world go oh my god this is really a high impact this change of behavior the surge of you know whether whether it's traffic on the internet or work at home tools that are inadequate you start to see these statistical things that were planned for not working well and this actually Maps the things that we've been talking about it in our industry Alberto you've been on this how you guys doing and what's your what's your take on this situation we're in right now yeah yeah we're we're doing pretty well as a company we were born as a distributed organization to begin with so for us working in a distributed environment from all over the world is is common practice day-to-day personally you know I'm originally from Italy my parents my family is Milan and Bergen audible places so I have to follow the news with extra care and so much in me it becomes so much clearer nowadays that technology is not just a powerful tool to enable our businesses but it also is so critical for our day-to-day life and thanks to you know video calls I can easily talk to my family back there every day Wow so that's that's really important so yes we've been talking for a long time as you mentioned about complex systems at scale and reliability often in the context of mission-critical applications but more and more these systems need to be reliable also when it comes to back office systems that enable people to continue to work on a daily basis yeah well our hearts go out to your family and your friends in Italy and hope everyone's stay safe there no that was a tough situation continues to be a challenge Tammy I want to get your thoughts how is life going for you you're a sight reliable engineer what you deal with on the tech side is now happening in the real world it's it's almost it's mind-blowing and to me that we're seeing these these things happen it's it's a paradigm that needs attention and whew look at it as a sre dealing a most from a tech side now seeing it play out in real life it's such an interesting situation really terrible so one of the things that I specialize in as a site reliability engineer is incident management and so for example I previously worked at Dropbox where I was you know the incident manager on call for 500 million customers you know it's like 24/7 and these large-scale incidents you really need to be able to act fast there are two very important metrics that we track and care about as a site reliability engineer the first one is mean time to detection how fast can you detect what something is happening obviously if you detect an issue faster and you've got a better chance of making the impact lower so you can contain the blast radius I like to explain it to people like if you have a fire in your sauce bin in your kitchen and you put it out that's way better than waiting until your entire house is on fire and the other metric is mean time to resolution so how long does it take you to recover from the situation so yeah this is a large-scale global incident right now that we're in yeah I know you guys do a lot of talk about chaos theory and that applies a lot of math involved we all know that but I think when you go look at the real world this is gonna be table stakes and you know there's now a line in the sand here you know pre-pandemic post pandemic and i think you guys have an interesting company gremlin in the sense that this is this is a complex system and if you think about the world we're going to be living in whether it's digital events that you guys are have one coming up or how to work at home or tools that humans are going to be using it's going to be working with systems right so you have this new paradigm gonna be upon us pretty quickly and it's not just buying software mechanisms or software it's a complex system it's distributed computing and operating so I mean this is kind of the world can you guys talk about the gremlin situation of how you guys are attacking these new problems and these new opportunities that are emerging one of the things that I've always specialized in over the last 10 years is chaos engineering and so the idea of chaos engineering is that you're injecting failure on purpose to uncover weaknesses so that's really important in distributed systems with distributed you know cloud computing all these different services that you're kind of putting together but the idea is if you can inject failure you can actually figure out what happens when I inject that small failure and then you can actually go ahead and fix it one of the things I like to say to people is you know focus on what your top 5 critical systems are let's fix those first don't go for low-hanging fruit fix the biggest problems first get rid of the biggest amount of pain that you have as a company and then you can go ahead and like actually if you think about Pareto principle the 80/20 rule if you fix 20% of your biggest problems you actually solve 80% of your issues that always works something that I've done while working at National Australia Bank doing chaos engineering also what gremlin at Dropbox and I help a lot of our customers do that to albariño talk about the mindset involved it's almost counterintuitive whoa-oh-oh risk the biggest system and I don't want to touch those there working fine right now and then these problems just gestate they kind of hang around to the bin in the kitchen fire you know mist okay I don't want to touch it the house is still working so this is kind of a new mindset could you talk about what your take is on that is the industry there I mean oh it was a kind of a corner case you know you had Netflix you had the chaos monkey those days and then now it's the DevOps practice for a lot of folks you guys are involved in that what's the what's the appetite what's the progress of chaos engineering and mainstream yeah it's interesting that you mentioned DevOps and you know recently Gartner came up with a new revisited devil scream work that has chaos engineering in the middle of the lifecycle of your application and the reality is that systems have become so complex in infrastructure so many layers of abstractions you have hundreds of services if you're doing micro services but even if you're not doing micro services you have so many applications connected to each other build really complex workflows and automation flows it's impossible for traditional QA to really understand well the vulnerability are in terms of resiliency in terms of quality too often the production environment is also too different from the staging environment and so you need a fundamentally different approach to go and find where your weaknesses are and find them before they happen before you end up finding yourself in a situation like the one we're in today and you're not prepared and so much of what we talk about is giving it >> and the methodology for people to go and find these vulnerabilities not so much about creating cause chaos but it's about managing sales that is built into our current system and exposing those vulnerabilities before they create problem and so that's a very scientific methodology and and and tooling that we would bring to market and we help customers with Tammy I want to get your thoughts on so you know we used to riff a lot of to our 10th you know cube we've had a lot of conversation we've ripped over the over the years but you know when the surge of Amazon Web Services came out as pretty obvious the clouds amazing and look at the startups that were born you mentioned Dropbox you work there these comings and all these born in the cloud these hyper scale comes built from scratch great way to scale up and we used to joke about Google people say I would like a cloud like Google but no one has Google's use cases and Google really pioneered the sre concept and you gotta give them a lot of props for that but now we're kind of getting to a world where it's becoming Google like there's more scale now than ever before it's not a corner case it's becoming more popular and more of a preferred architecture this large scale what's your assessment of the of the mainstream enterprises how far are they did in your mind our way are they there with Castle they clothed how they doing it how does someone take how does someone develop an SRE practice to get the Google like scale because Google has an amazing network they got large-scale cloud they have sres they've been doing it for years how does a company that's transforming their IT have expertise it's a great question I get asked this a lot as well one of our goals at Bremen is to help make Internet more reliable for everybody everyone using the Internet all of the engineers who are trying to build reliable services and so I'm often asked by you know companies all over the world how do we create an SRE practice and how do we practice chaos engineering and so actually how you can get started actually rolling out your sre program based on my experiences I've done it so when I worked at Dropbox I worked with a lot of people who had been at Google they've been at YouTube they were there when was rolled out across those companies and then they brought those learnings to Dropbox and I learned from them but also the interesting thing is if you look at enterprise companies so large banks say for example I worked at a National Australia Bank for six years we actually did a lot of work that I would consider chaos engineering and sre practices so for example we would do large-scale disaster recovery and that's where you fail over an entire data center to a secret data center in an unknown location and the reason is because you're checking to make sure that everything operates okay if there's a nuclear blast that's actually what you have to do and you have to do that practice every quarter so but but if you think about it it's not very good to only do it once a quarter you really want to be practicing chaos engineering and injecting failure on this I think actually my I prefer to do it three times a week do I do it a lot but I'm also someone who likes to work out a lot and be fit all the time so I know that do something regularly you get great results so that's what I always tell us yeah I get the reps in as we say you know get get stronger at the muscle memory guys talk about the event that's coming up you got an event that was schedules physical event and then you were right in the planning mode and then the crisis hits you going digital going virtual it's really digital but it's digital that's on the internet so how are you guys thinking about this I know I it's out there it's April 21st can you share some specifics around the event well who should be attending and how they get involved online yeah yeah they vent really came about about together about a month ago when we started to see all the cancellations happening across the industry because of code 19 and we are extremely engaged with in the community and we have a lot of talks and we are seeing a lot of conferences just dropping and so speakers losing their opportunity to share their knowledge with respect to how you do reliability and topics that we focus on and so we quickly people it as a company and created a new online event to give everyone in the community the opportunity to you know they'll over to a new event as the president as a as the conference name says and and have those speakers will have lost their speaking slots have a new opportunity to go share their knowledge and so that came together really quickly we share the idea with a dozen of our partners and everyone liked it and all the sudden this thing took off like crazy in just a month where we are approaching you know four thousand registrations we have over 30 partners signed up and supporting the initiative a lot of a lot of past partners as well covering the event so it was impressive to see the amount of interest that that we were able to generate in such a short amount of time and really this is a conference for anybody who is interested in resilience and if you want to know from the best on how to build business continuity of persistence people and processes this is a great opportunity at no cost we need some free conference and the target persona and the audience you want to have a ten is what Sree Zoar folks doing architectural work and what's that that's the target yes and to attend our cadets s Ari's developers business leaders who care about the quality and reliability of their applications who need to help create a framework and a mindset for their organization that speaks to what Tammy was saying a minute ago having that constant crap is on a daily basis about who and finding how to improve things you know Tammy we've been doing going to physical events with the cube and extracting the signal of the noise and distributing it digitally for ten years and I got to ask you because now that those are those events have gone away you talk about chaos and injecting failure these doing these digital events is not as easy it's just live streaming it's it's hard to replicate the value of a physical event years of experience and standards roles and responsibilities to digital different consumption environments a synchronous you're trying to create a synchronous environment it's its own complex system so I think a lot of people are experimenting and learning from these events because it's pretty chaotic so I'd love to get your thoughts on how you look at these digital events as a chaos engineer how should people be looking at these events how are you I was looking at it you know I also want to get the program going get people out there get the content but you have to iterate on this how do you view this it is really different so I actually like to compare it to fire drills in SRA so often what you do there is you actually create a fake incident or a fake issue so you just you know you're saying let's have a fire drill similar to like you know when you're in a building and you have a fire drill that goes off you have wardens and everything and you all have to go outside so we can do that in this new world that we're all in all of a sudden you know a lot of people have never run an online event and now all of a sudden they have to so what I would say is like do a fire drill um run up you know a baked one before you do the actual on one to make sure that everything does work okay my other tip is make sure that you have backup plans backup plans on backup plans on backup plans like as in SRA I always have at least three to five backup plans like I'm not just saying plan a and Plan B but there's also a C D and E and I think that's very important and you know even when you're considering technology one of the things we say with chaos engineering is you know if you're using one service inject failure and make sure that you can fail over to a different alternative service in case something goes wrong yeah hence the failover conference which is the name of the conference yeah yeah well we certainly are gonna be sending a digital reporter there virtually if you need any backup plans obviously we have the remote interviews here if you need any help let us know really appreciate it I'll great to see you guys and thanks for sharing any final thoughts on the conference how what what happens when we get through the other side of this I'll give you guys a final word we'll start with Alberto with you first yeah I think one when we are on the other side of this will will understand even more the importance of effective resilience architecting and and and testing I think you know as a provider of tools and methodologies for that we we think we will be able to help customers do we do a significant leap forward on that side and the conference is just super exciting I think it's going to be a great I encourage everyone to participate we have tremendous lineup of speakers that have incredible reputation in their fields so I'm really happy and and excited about the work that the team has being able to do with our partners put together this type of event okay Tammy yes ma'am I'm actually going to be doing the opening keynote for the conference and the topic that I'm speaking about is that reliability matters more now than ever and I'll be sharing some you know bizarre weird incidents that I've worked on myself that I've experienced you know really critical strange issues that have come up but yeah I just I'm really looking forward to sharing that with everybody else so please come along it's free you can join from your own home and we can all be there together to support each other you got a great community support and there's a lot of partners press media and an ecosystem and customers so congratulations gremlin having a conference on April 21st called the failover conference the qubits look at angle we'll have a digital reporter there we covering the news thanks for coming on and sharing and appreciate the time I'm Jeff we're here in the Palo Alto series with remote interview with gremlin around there failover conference April 21st it's really demonstrating in my opinion the at scale problems that we've been working on the industry now more applicable than ever before as we get post pandemic with kovin 19 thanks for watching be back [Music]