>>Welcome back everyone to the Cube's live coverage of VMware Explorer, 2022. I'm John furrier with Dave Valante host of the cube. We're here on the ground floor, Moscone west two sets Walter Wall coverage. Three days. We heard Laura Heisman, the senior vice president and CMO of VMware, put it all together. Great to see you. Nice, thanks for, to see you for spending time outta your very busy week. >>It is a busy week. It is a great week. >>So a lot of people were anticipating what world was gonna look like. And then the name changed to VMware Explorer. This is our 12th year covering VMware's annual conference, formerly known ASM world. Now VMware Explorer, bold move, but Raghu teased it out on his keynote. Some reason behind it, expand on, on the thought process. The name change, obviously multi-cloud big headline here. vSphere eight partnerships with cloud hyperscale is a completely clear direction for VMware. Take us through why the name changed. Exactly, exactly. And why it's all coming together. Think he kind of hinted that he kinda said exactly, you know, exploring the new things, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. But take us through that. You've architected it. >>Yeah. It is a, a change of, we have a great past at VMware and we're looking to our future at the same time. And so when you come back from a pandemic and things changing, and you're really looking at the expansion of the business now is the time because it wasn't just to come back to what we were doing before. And every company should be thinking about that, but it's what are we gonna do to actually go forward? And VMware itself is on our own journey as expanding in more into the cloud, our multi-cloud leadership and everything that we're doing there. And we wanted to make sure that our audience was able to explore that with us. And so it was the perfect opportunity we're back live. And VMware Explorer is for everyone. That's been coming Tom world for so many years. We love our community and expanding it to our new communities that maybe don't have that legacy and that history and have them here with us at >>VMware. You did a great job. I love the event here. Love how it turned out. And, and a lot of interesting things happened along the way. Prior to this event you had we're coming outta the pandemic. So it's the first face to face yes. Of the VMware community coming together, which this is an annual right of passage for everyone in the customer base. Broadcom buys VMware. No, no, if you name change it to VMware Explorer and then Broadcom buys VMware. So announces, announces the, the buyout. So, and all the certainty, uncertainty kind of hanging around it. You had to navigate those waters, take us through, what was that like? How did you pull it off? It was a huge success. Yeah, because everyone showed up. Yeah. It's, it's, it's the same event, different name, >>It's >>Same vibe. >>The only thing constant is change. Right? And so it's the, we've gotta focus on the business and our VMware customers and our partners and our community at large. And so it's really keeping the eye on what we're trying to communicate to our community. And this is for our VMware community. The VMO community is here in spades. It is wonderful to have the VMO community here. We have tons of different customers, new customers, old customers, and it's just being able to share everything VMware. And I think people are just excited about that. It's great energy on the show floor and all >>Around. And it's not like you had years to plan it. I mean, you basically six months in you, you went, you said you went on a six month listening tour the other day. What was the number one question you got on that listening tour? >>Well, definitely about the name change was one, but I would say also, it's not just the question. It was the ask of, we have we're in what we call our chapter three here. And it's really our move into multicloud and helping all of our customers with their complexities. >>So virtualization, private cloud, and now multi-cloud correct. The third chapter. >>Yeah. And the, the question and the ask is how do we let our customers and partners know what this is, help us Laura. Like that was the number one ask to me of help us explain it. And that was my challenge and opportunity coming into explore, and really to explain everything about our, if you watched the gen session yesterday, these was, was going through our multiple different chapters where we are helping our customers with their multi-cloud strategies. And so it is been that evolution gets us today and it doesn't end today. It starts today. And we keep going, >>Like, like a lot of companies, obviously in you in this new role, you inherited a hybrid world and, and you've got, you got two years of virtual under your belt, and now you're running a completely different event from that standpoint. How does the sort of the COVID online translate into new relationships and how you're cultivating those? What's that dynamic like? >>Well, let's start with how happy everyone is to see each other in person. No doubt. Yeah. It is amazing just to see people, the high fives in the hallways, the hugs, oh, some people just the fist pump, whatever people mats are there masks aren't there, right? It is something of where everyone's comfort level, but it is really just about getting everyone together and thinking about how do, how was it before the pandemic? You don't necessarily just wanna repeat coming back. And so how do you think about this from an in-person event? People have been sitting behind their screens. How do we engage and how are we interactive? Knowing that attention spans are probably a little bit shorter. People are used to getting up and going get their coffee. We have coffee in the conference rooms, right? Things like that, making the experience just a really great one for everyone. So they're comfortable back in person, but I mean, honestly the energy and seeing people's smiles on their faces, it's wonderful to be back in person. >>It's interesting, you know, the cube, we've had some transformations ourselves with the pandemic and, and living through and getting back to events, but hybrid cloud and hybrid events is now the steady state. So, and in a way it's kind of interesting how hybrid cloud and now multi-cloud the digital aspect of integrating into the physical events is now key. First class citizen thinking. Yeah. For CMOs, you guys did a great job of preserving the, the, the, the best part of it, which is face to face people seeing each other and now bringing in the digital and then extending this. So that it's an always on kind of explore. Is that the thinking behind it? Yes. What's your vision on where you go next? Because if it's not, it's not one and done and see you next year. No anymore, because no, the pandemic showed us that hybrid and digital and physical together. If design as first class citizens with each other. Yeah. One sub-optimize me obviously face to face is better than digital, but if you can't make it, it shouldn't be a bad experience. >>No, not at all. Good's your vision. And, and we're in a point where not everyone's gonna come back, that everyone has what's going on with their life. And so you have to think about it as in person and online, it's not necessarily even hybrid. And so it's, what's the experience for people that are here, you know, over 10,000 people here, you wanna be sure that that is a great experience for them. And then our viewers online, we wanna be sure that they're able to, to know what's going on, stay in touch with everything VMware and enjoy that. So the gen session that was live, we have a ton of on demand content. And this is just the start. So now we go on to essentially multiple other VMware explorers around the world. >>It's interesting. The business model of events is so tickets driven or sponsorship on site on the location that you can get almost addicted to the, no, we don't wanna do digital and kind of foreclose that you guys embraced the, the combo. So what's the attendance. I mean, probably wasn't as big as when everyone was physical. Yep. What are some of the numbers? Can you give us some D data on attendance? Some of the stats around the show, cuz obviously people showed up and drove. Yes. It wasn't a no show. That's sure a lot of great stuff here >>We have. So it's over 10,000 people that are registered and we see them here. The gen session was packed. They're walking the show floor and then I don't have the numbers yet for our online viewership, but everything that we're doing to promote it online, if anyone missed it online, the gen session is already up and they'll see more sessions going live as well as all the on demand content so that everyone can stay in the loop of what's happening. And all of our announcements, >>You're obviously not disappointed. Were you surprised? A little nervous. >>So I will say one thing that we learned from others, thank goodness others have gone before us. So as far as coming back in person is the big change is actually registration happens closer to the event, right. Is a very big change from pre so, >>So it's at the end. Yes. >>The last three weeks. And we had been told that from peers at RSA and other conferences, that that's what happens. So we were prepared for that, but people wanna know what's going on in the world. Yeah. Right. You wanna have that faith before you buy that ticket and book your travel. And so that has definitely been one of the biggest changes and one that I think that will maybe continue to see here. So that was probably the biggest thing that changed as far as what to expect as registration. But we planned for this. We knew it was not going to be as big in the past and that that's gonna be, I think the new norm, >>I think you're right. I think a lot of last minute decisions, you know, sometimes people >>Wanna know, I mean, it's, what's gonna happen another gonna be outbreak or, I mean, I think people have gotten trained to be disappointed >>Well and be flexible >>With COVID I and, and, and weirded out by things. So people get anxiety on the COVID you've seen that. Yeah. >>Yeah. Yeah. I wanna ask you about the developer messaging cause that's one of the real huge takeaways. It was so strong. And you said the other day in the analyst session, the developers of the Kings and the Queens now, you know, we, when we hear developers, we think we pictured Steve Bama running around on stage developers develop, but it's different. It's a different vibe here. It it's like you're serving the Kings in the, in the Queens with, through partnerships and embracing open source. Can you talk a little bit about how you approached or, and you are approaching developer messages? Yeah, >>I, so, you know, I came from GitHub and so developers have been on my mind for many years now. And so joining VMware, I got to join this great world of enterprise software background and my developer background. And we have such an opportunity to really help our developer community understand the benefits of VMware to make them heroes just like we made sort of virtualization professionals heroes in the past, we can do the same thing with developers. We wanna be sure that we're speaking with our developer community. That was very much on stage as well as many of the sessions. And so our, we think about that with our products and what we're doing as far as product development and helping developers be able to test and learn with our products. And it's really thinking about the enterprise developer and how can we help them be successful. >>And I think, I think the beautiful thing about that message is, is that the enterprises that you guys have that great base with, they're all pretty much leaned into cl cloud native and they see it and it's starting to see the hybrid private cloud public cloud. And now with edge coming, it's pretty much a mandate that cloud native drive the architecture and that came clear in the messaging. So I have to ask you on the activations, you guys have done how much developer ops customer base mix are you seeing transfer over? Because the trend that we're seeing is is that it operations and that's generic. I'll say that word generically, but you know, your base is it almost every company has VMware. So they're also enabling inside their company developers. So how much is developer percentage to ops or is they blending in, it's almost a hundred percent, which how would you see >>That it's growing? So it's definitely growing. I wouldn't say it's a hundred percent, but it is growing. And it is one where every company is thinking about their developer. There's not enough developers in the world per the number of job openings out there. Everyone wants to innovate fast and they need to be able to invest in their developers. And we wanna be able to give them the tools to be able to do that. Cuz you want your developers to be happy and make it easier to do their jobs. And so that's what we're committed to really being able to help them do. And so we're seeing an uptick there and we're seeing, you'll see that with our product announcements and what we're doing. And so it's growing. >>The other thing I want to ask you, we saw again, we saw a lot of energy on the customer vibe. We're getting catching that here, cuz the sessions are right behind us and upstairs the floor, we've heard comments like the ecosystem's back. I mean not to anywhere, but there was a definitely an ecosystem spring to the step. If you will, amongst the partners, can you share what's happening here? Observations things that you've noticed that have been cool, that that can highlight some trends in the partner side of it. Yeah. What's going on with partners. >>Yeah. I mean our partners are so important to us. We're thrilled that they're here with us here. The expo floor, it is busy and people are visiting and reuniting and learning from each other and everything that you want to happen on the expo floor. And we've done special things throughout the week. For example, we have a whole hyperscaler day essentially happening where we wanna highlight some of the hyperscalers and let them be able to, to share with all of our attendees what they're doing. So we've given them more time within the sessions as well. And so you'll see our partner ecosystem all over the place, not just on the expo >>Floor, a lot of range of partners. Dave, you got the hyperscalers, you have the big, the big whales and cloud whales. And then you have now the second tier we call 'em super cloud type customer and partners. And you got the multi-cloud architecture, developing a lot of moving parts that are changing and growing and evolving. How do you view that? How you just gonna ride the wave? Are you watching it? Are you gonna explore it through more, you know, kind of joint marketing. I mean, what's your, how do you take this momentum that you have? And by the way, a lot of stuff's coming outta the oven. I was talking with Joan last night at the, at the press analyst event. And there's a lot of stuff coming outta the VMware oven product wise that hasn't hit the market yet. Yep. That's that's that's I mean, you can't really put a number on that sales yet, but it's got value. Yep. So you got that happening. You got this momentum behind you, you just ride the wave and what's the strategy. Well, >>It is all about how do we pass to the partner, right? So it is about the partner relationship. And we think about that our partner community is huge to us at VMware. I'm sure you've been hearing that from everyone you've been speaking to. So it's not even it's ride the wave, but it's embrace. Got it. It's embrace our partners. We need their help, our customer base. We do touch everybody and we need them to be able to support us and share what it is that we're doing from our product E evolution, our product announcements. So it's continuous education. It's there in educating us. It's definitely a two way relationship and really what we're even to get done here at explore together. It's progress that you can't always do on a zoom or a teams call or a WebEx call. You can't do that in two weeks, two years sometimes. And we're able to even have really great conversations >>Here and, and your go to market is transforming as well. You, you guys have talked about how you're reaching many different touchpoints. We've talked about developers. I mean, the other thing we've seen at events, we talked about the last minute, you know, registrations. The other thing we've seen is a lot more senior members of audiences. And now part of that is maybe okay, maybe some of the junior folks can't travel, they can't get, but, but, but why is it that the senior people come, they, they maybe they wouldn't have come before maybe because they're going through digital transformations. They wanna lean in and understand it better. But it seemed, I know you had an executive summit, you know, on day zero and Hawk 10 was here and, and so forth. So, okay. I get that. But it seems in talking to the partners, they're like, wow, the quality of the conversations that we're having has really been up leveled compared to previous years in other conferences. >>So yeah. Yeah. I think it's that they're all thinking about their transformation as well. We had the executive summit on day zero for us Monday, right? And it was a hundred plus executives invited in for a day who have stayed because they wanna hear what's going on. When I joined VMware, I said, VMware has a gift that so many companies are jealous of because we have relationships with the executives and that's what every company's startup to large company wants. And they're, they're really trusted customers of ours. And so we haven't been together and they want to be here to be able to know what's going on and join us in the meetings. And we have tons of meetings happening throughout >>The event and they're loyal and they're loyal. They're absolutely, they're active, active in a good way. They'll give you great feedback, candid feedback. Sometimes, you know, you might not wanna hear, but it's truthful. They're rare, engaging feedback gift. And they stay with you and they're loyal and they show up and they learn they're in sessions. So all good stuff. And then we only have about a minute left. Laura. I want to get your thoughts and, and end the segment with your explanation to the world around explore. What's next? What does it mean? What's gonna happen next? What does this brand turn into? Yeah. How do you see this unfolding? How do people, how should people view the VMware Explorer event brand and future activities? >>Yeah. VMware Explorer. This is just the start. So we're after this, we're going to Brazil, Barcelona, Singapore, China, and Japan. And so it is definitely a momentum that we're going on. The brand is unbelievable. It is so beautiful. We're exploring with it. We can have so much fun with this brand and we plan to continue to have fun with this brand. And it is all about the, the momentum with our sales team and our customers and our partners. And just continuing what we're doing, this is, this is just the beginning. It's not the, it's a global >>Brand explore >>Global. Absolutely. Absolutely. >>All right, Dave, that's gonna be great for the cube global activities. There you go, Laura. Great to see you. Thank you for coming on. I know you're super busy. Final question. It's kind of the trick question. What's your favorite aspect of the event? Pick a favorite child. What's going on here? Okay. In your mind, what's the most exciting thing about this event that that's near and dear to >>Your heart? So first it's hearing the feedback from the customers, but I do have to say my team as well. I mean, huge shout out to my team. They are the hub and spoke of all parts of explore. Yeah. VMware Explorer. Wouldn't be here without them. And so it's great to see it all coming >>Together. As they say in the scoring and the Olympics, the degree of difficulty for this event, given all the things going on, you guys did an amazing job. >>We witnessed >>To it. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you for a great booth here. It looks beautiful. Thanks for coming. Wonderful. >>Thank you for >>Having me. Okay. The cues live coverage here on the floor of Moscone west I'm Trevor Dave. Valante two sets, three days. Stay with us for more live coverage. We'll be right back.

>>Everyone wants a cloud operating model. Since the introduction of the modern cloud. Last decade, the entire technology landscape has changed. We've learned a lot from the hyperscalers, especially from AWS. Now, one thing is certain in the technology business. It's so competitive. Then if a faster, better, cheaper idea comes along, the industry will move quickly to adopt it. They'll add their unique value and then they'll bring solutions to the market. And that's precisely what's happening throughout the technology industry because of cloud. And one of the best examples is Amazon's nitro. That's AWS has custom built hypervisor that delivers on the promise of more efficiently using resources and expanding things like processor, optionality for customers. It's a secret weapon for Amazon. As, as we, as we wrote last year, every infrastructure company needs something like nitro to compete. Why do we say this? Well, Wiki Bon our research arm estimates that nearly 30% of CPU cores in the data center are wasted. >>They're doing work that they weren't designed to do well, specifically offloading networking, storage, and security tasks. So if you can eliminate that waste, you can recapture dollars that drop right to the bottom line. That's why every company needs a nitro like solution. As a result of these developments, customers are rethinking networks and how they utilize precious compute resources. They can't, or won't put everything into the public cloud for many reasons. That's one of the tailwinds for tier two cloud service providers and why they're growing so fast. They give options to customers that don't want to keep investing in building out their own data centers, and they don't want to migrate all their workloads to the public cloud. So these providers and on-prem customers, they want to be more like hyperscalers, right? They want to be more agile and they do that. They're distributing, networking and security functions and pushing them closer to the applications. >>Now, at the same time, they're unifying their view of the network. So it can be less fragmented, manage more efficiently with more automation and better visibility. How are they doing this? Well, that's what we're going to talk about today. Welcome to changing the game for cloud networking made possible by pluribus networks. My name is Dave Vellante and today on this special cube presentation, John furrier, and I are going to explore these issues in detail. We'll dig into new solutions being created by pluribus and Nvidia to specifically address offloading, wasted resources, accelerating performance, isolating data, and making networks more secure all while unifying the network experience. We're going to start on the west coast and our Palo Alto studios, where John will talk to Mike of pluribus and AMI, but Donnie of Nvidia, then we'll bring on Alessandra Bobby airy of pluribus and Pete Lummus from Nvidia to take a deeper dive into the technology. And then we're gonna bring it back here to our east coast studio and get the independent analyst perspective from Bob Liberte of the enterprise strategy group. We hope you enjoy the program. Okay, let's do this over to John >>Okay. Let's kick things off. We're here at my cafe. One of the TMO and pluribus networks and NAMI by Dani VP of networking, marketing, and developer ecosystem at Nvidia. Great to have you welcome folks. >>Thank you. Thanks. >>So let's get into the, the problem situation with cloud unified network. What problems are out there? What challenges do cloud operators have Mike let's get into it. >>Yeah, it really, you know, the challenges we're looking at are for non hyperscalers that's enterprises, governments, um, tier two service providers, cloud service providers, and the first mandate for them is to become as agile as a hyperscaler. So they need to be able to deploy services and security policies. And second, they need to be able to abstract the complexity of the network and define things in software while it's accelerated in hardware. Um, really ultimately they need a single operating model everywhere. And then the second thing is they need to distribute networking and security services out to the edge of the host. Um, we're seeing a growth in cyber attacks. Um, it's, it's not slowing down. It's only getting worse and, you know, solving for this security problem across clouds is absolutely critical. And the way to do it is to move security out to the host. >>Okay. With that goal in mind, what's the pluribus vision. How does this tie together? >>Yeah. So, um, basically what we see is, uh, that this demands a new architecture and that new architecture has four tenants. The first tenant is unified and simplified cloud networks. If you look at cloud networks today, there's, there's sort of like discreet bespoke cloud networks, you know, per hypervisor, per private cloud edge cloud public cloud. Each of the public clouds have different networks that needs to be unified. You know, if we want these folks to be able to be agile, they need to be able to issue a single command or instantiate a security policy across all those locations with one command and not have to go to each one. The second is like I mentioned, distributed security, um, distributed security without compromise, extended out to the host is absolutely critical. So micro-segmentation and distributed firewalls, but it doesn't stop there. They also need pervasive visibility. >>You know, it's, it's, it's sort of like with security, you really can't see you can't protect what you can't see. So you need visibility everywhere. The problem is visibility to date has been very expensive. Folks have had to basically build a separate overlay network of taps, packet brokers, tap aggregation infrastructure that really needs to be built into this unified network I'm talking about. And the last thing is automation. All of this needs to be SDN enabled. So this is related to my comment about abstraction abstract, the complexity of all of these discreet networks, physic whatever's down there in the physical layer. Yeah. I don't want to see it. I want to abstract it. I wanted to find things in software, but I do want to leverage the power of hardware to accelerate that. So that's the fourth tenant is SDN automation. >>Mike, we've been talking on the cube a lot about this architectural shift and customers are looking at this. This is a big part of everyone who's looking at cloud operations next gen, how do we get there? How do customers get this vision realized? >>That's a great question. And I appreciate the tee up. I mean, we're, we're here today for that reason. We're introducing two things today. Um, the first is a unified cloud networking vision, and that is a vision of where pluribus is headed with our partners like Nvidia longterm. Um, and that is about, uh, deploying a common operating model, SDN enabled SDN, automated hardware, accelerated across all clouds. Um, and whether that's underlying overlay switch or server, um, hype, any hypervisor infrastructure containers, any workload doesn't matter. So that's ultimately where we want to get. And that's what we talked about earlier. Um, the first step in that vision is what we call the unified cloud fabric. And this is the next generation of our adaptive cloud fabric. Um, and what's nice about this is we're not starting from scratch. We have a, a, an award-winning adaptive cloud fabric product that is deployed globally. Um, and in particular, uh, we're very proud of the fact that it's deployed in over a hundred tier one mobile operators as the network fabric for their 4g and 5g virtualized cores. We know how to build carrier grade, uh, networking infrastructure, what we're doing now, um, to realize this next generation unified cloud fabric is we're extending from the switch to this Nvidia Bluefield to DPU. We know there's a, >>Hold that up real quick. That's a good, that's a good prop. That's the blue field and video. >>It's the Nvidia Bluefield two DPU data processing unit. And, um, uh, you know, what we're doing, uh, fundamentally is extending our SDN automated fabric, the unified cloud fabric out to the host, but it does take processing power. So we knew that we didn't want to do, we didn't want to implement that running on the CPU, which is what some other companies do because it consumes revenue generating CPU's from the application. So a DPU is a perfect way to implement this. And we knew that Nvidia was the leader with this blue field too. And so that is the first that's, that's the first step in the getting into realizing this vision. >>I mean, Nvidia has always been powering some great workloads of GPU. Now you've got DPU networking and then video is here. What is the relationship with clothes? How did that come together? Tell us the story. >>Yeah. So, you know, we've been working with pluribus for quite some time. I think the last several months was really when it came to fruition and, uh, what pluribus is trying to build and what Nvidia has. So we have, you know, this concept of a Bluefield data processing unit, which if you think about it, conceptually does really three things, offload, accelerate an isolate. So offload your workloads from your CPU to your data processing unit infrastructure workloads that is, uh, accelerate. So there's a bunch of acceleration engines. So you can run infrastructure workloads much faster than you would otherwise, and then isolation. So you have this nice security isolation between the data processing unit and your other CPU environment. And so you can run completely isolated workloads directly on the data processing unit. So we introduced this, you know, a couple of years ago, and with pluribus, you know, we've been talking to the pluribus team for quite some months now. >>And I think really the combination of what pluribus is trying to build and what they've developed around this unified cloud fabric, uh, is fits really nicely with the DPU and running that on the DPU and extending it really from your physical switch, all the way to your host environment, specifically on the data processing unit. So if you think about what's happening as you add data processing units to your environment. So every server we believe over time is going to have data processing units. So now you'll have to manage that complexity from the physical network layer to the host layer. And so what pluribus is really trying to do is extending the network fabric from the host, from the switch to the host, and really have that single pane of glass for network operators to be able to configure provision, manage all of the complexity of the network environment. >>So that's really how the partnership truly started. And so it started really with extending the network fabric, and now we're also working with them on security. So, you know, if you sort of take that concept of isolation and security isolation, what pluribus has within their fabric is the concept of micro-segmentation. And so now you can take that extended to the data processing unit and really have, um, isolated micro-segmentation workloads, whether it's bare metal cloud native environments, whether it's virtualized environments, whether it's public cloud, private cloud hybrid cloud. So it really is a magical partnership between the two companies with their unified cloud fabric running on, on the DPU. >>You know, what I love about this conversation is it reminds me of when you have these changing markets, the product gets pulled out of the market and, and you guys step up and create these new solutions. And I think this is a great example. So I have to ask you, how do you guys differentiate what sets this apart for customers with what's in it for the customer? >>Yeah. So I mentioned, you know, three things in terms of the value of what the Bluefield brings, right? There's offloading, accelerating, isolating, that's sort of the key core tenants of Bluefield. Um, so that, you know, if you sort of think about what, um, what Bluefields, what we've done, you know, in terms of the differentiation, we're really a robust platform for innovation. So we introduced Bluefield to, uh, last year, we're introducing Bluefield three, which is our next generation of Bluefields, you know, we'll have five X, the arm compute capacity. It will have 400 gig line rate acceleration, four X better crypto acceleration. So it will be remarkably better than the previous generation. And we'll continue to innovate and add, uh, chips to our portfolio every, every 18 months to two years. Um, so that's sort of one of the key areas of differentiation. The other is the, if you look at Nvidia and, and you know, what we're sort of known for is really known for our AI artificial intelligence and our artificial intelligence software, as well as our GPU. >>So you look at artificial intelligence and the combination of artificial intelligence plus data processing. This really creates the, you know, faster, more efficient, secure AI systems from the core of your data center, all the way out to the edge. And so with Nvidia, we really have these converged accelerators where we've combined the GPU, which does all your AI processing with your data processing with the DPU. So we have this convergence really nice convergence of that area. And I would say the third area is really around our developer environment. So, you know, one of the key, one of our key motivations at Nvidia is really to have our partner ecosystem, embrace our technology and build solutions around our technology. So if you look at what we've done with the DPU, with credit and an SDK, which is an open SDK called Doka, and it's an open SDK for our partners to really build and develop solutions using Bluefield and using all these accelerated libraries that we expose through Doka. And so part of our differentiation is really building this open ecosystem for our partners to take advantage and build solutions around our technology. >>You know, what's exciting is when I hear you talk, it's like you realize that there's no one general purpose network anymore. Everyone has their own super environment Supercloud or these new capabilities. They can really craft their own, I'd say, custom environment at scale with easy tools. Right. And it's all kind of, again, this is the new architecture Mike, you were talking about, how does customers run this effectively? Cost-effectively and how do people migrate? >>Yeah, I, I think that is the key question, right? So we've got this beautiful architecture. You, you know, Amazon nitro is a, is a good example of, of a smart NIC architecture that has been successfully deployed, but enterprises and serve tier two service providers and tier one service providers and governments are not Amazon, right? So they need to migrate there and they need this architecture to be cost-effective. And, and that's, that's super key. I mean, the reality is deep user moving fast, but they're not going to be, um, deployed everywhere on day one. Some servers will have DPS right away, some servers will have use and a year or two. And then there are devices that may never have DPS, right. IOT gateways, or legacy servers, even mainframes. Um, so that's the beauty of a solution that creates a fabric across both the switch and the DPU, right. >>Um, and by leveraging the Nvidia Bluefield DPU, what we really like about it is it's open. Um, and that drives, uh, cost efficiencies. And then, um, uh, you know, with this, with this, our architectural approach effectively, you get a unified solution across switch and DPU workload independent doesn't matter what hypervisor it is, integrated visibility, integrated security, and that can, uh, create tremendous cost efficiencies and, and really extract a lot of the expense from, from a capital perspective out of the network, as well as from an operational perspective, because now I have an SDN automated solution where I'm literally issuing a command to deploy a network service or to create or deploy our security policy and is deployed everywhere, automatically saving the oppor, the network operations team and the security operations team time. >>All right. So let me rewind that because that's super important. Get the unified cloud architecture, I'm the customer guy, but it's implemented, what's the value again, take, take me through the value to me. I have a unified environment. What's the value. >>Yeah. So I mean, the value is effectively, um, that, so there's a few pieces of value. The first piece of value is, um, I'm creating this clean D mark. I'm taking networking to the host. And like I mentioned, we're not running it on the CPU. So in implementations that run networking on the CPU, there's some conflict between the dev ops team who owned the server and the NetApps team who own the network because they're installing software on the, on the CPU stealing cycles from what should be revenue generating. Uh CPU's. So now by, by terminating the networking on the DPU, we click create this real clean DMARC. So the dev ops folks are happy because they don't necessarily have the skills to manage network and they don't necessarily want to spend the time managing networking. They've got their network counterparts who are also happy the NetApps team, because they want to control the networking. >>And now we've got this clean DMARC where the DevOps folks get the services they need and the NetApp folks get the control and agility they need. So that's a huge value. Um, the next piece of value is distributed security. This is essential. I mentioned earlier, you know, put pushing out micro-segmentation and distributed firewall, basically at the application level, right, where I create these small, small segments on an by application basis. So if a bad actor does penetrate the perimeter firewall, they're contained once they get inside. Cause the worst thing is a bad actor, penetrates a perimeter firewall and can go wherever they want and wreak havoc. Right? And so that's why this, this is so essential. Um, and the next benefit obviously is this unified networking operating model, right? Having, uh, uh, uh, an operating model across switch and server underlay and overlay, workload agnostic, making the life of the NetApps teams much easier so they can focus their time on really strategy instead of spending an afternoon, deploying a single villain, for example. >>Awesome. And I think also from my standpoint, I mean, perimeter security is pretty much, I mean, they're out there, it gets the firewall still out there exists, but pretty much they're being breached all the time, the perimeter. So you have to have this new security model. And I think the other thing that you mentioned, the separation between dev ops is cool because the infrastructure is code is about making the developers be agile and build security in from day one. So this policy aspect is, is huge. Um, new control points. I think you guys have a new architecture that enables the security to be handled more flexible. >>Right. >>That seems to be the killer feature here, >>Right? Yeah. If you look at the data processing unit, I think one of the great things about sort of this new architecture, it's really the foundation for zero trust it's. So like you talked about the perimeter is getting breached. And so now each and every compute node has to be protected. And I think that's sort of what you see with the partnership between pluribus and Nvidia is the DPU is really the foundation of zero trust. And pluribus is really building on that vision with, uh, allowing sort of micro-segmentation and being able to protect each and every compute node as well as the underlying network. >>This is super exciting. This is an illustration of how the market's evolving architectures are being reshaped and refactored for cloud scale and all this new goodness with data. So I gotta ask how you guys go into market together. Michael, start with you. What's the relationship look like in the go to market with an Nvidia? >>Sure. Um, I mean, we're, you know, we're super excited about the partnership, obviously we're here together. Um, we think we've got a really good solution for the market, so we're jointly marketing it. Um, uh, you know, obviously we appreciate that Nvidia is open. Um, that's, that's sort of in our DNA, we're about open networking. They've got other ISV who are gonna run on Bluefield too. We're probably going to run on other DPS in the, in the future, but right now, um, we're, we feel like we're partnered with the number one, uh, provider of DPS in the world and, uh, super excited about, uh, making a splash with it. >>I'm in get the hot product. >>Yeah. So Bluefield too, as I mentioned was GA last year, we're introducing, uh, well, we now also have the converged accelerator. So I talked about artificial intelligence or artificial intelligence with the Bluefield DPU, all of that put together on a converged accelerator. The nice thing there is you can either run those workloads. So if you have an artificial intelligence workload and an infrastructure workload, you can warn them separately on the same platform or you can actually use, uh, you can actually run artificial intelligence applications on the Bluefield itself. So that's what the converged accelerator really brings to the table. Uh, so that's available now. Then we have Bluefield three, which will be available late this year. And I talked about sort of, you know, uh, how much better that next generation of Bluefield is in comparison to Bluefield two. So we will see Bluefield three shipping later on this year, and then our software stack, which I talked about, which is called Doka we're on our second version are Doka one dot two. >>We're releasing Doka one dot three, uh, in about two months from now. And so that's really our open ecosystem framework. So allow you to program the Bluefields. So we have all of our acceleration libraries, um, security libraries, that's all packed into this STK called Doka. And it really gives that simplicity to our partners to be able to develop on top of Bluefield. So as we add new generations of Bluefield, you know, next, next year, we'll have, you know, another version and so on and so forth Doka is really that unified unified layer that allows, um, Bluefield to be both forwards compatible and backwards compatible. So partners only really have to think about writing to that SDK once, and then it automatically works with future generations of Bluefields. So that's sort of the nice thing around, um, around Doka. And then in terms of our go to market model, we're working with every, every major OEM. So, uh, later on this year, you'll see, you know, major server manufacturers, uh, releasing Bluefield enabled servers. So, um, more to come >>Awesome, save money, make it easier, more capabilities, more workload power. This is the future of, of cloud operations. >>Yeah. And, and, and, uh, one thing I'll add is, um, we are, um, we have a number of customers as you'll hear in the next segment, um, that are already signed up and we'll be working with us for our, uh, early field trial starting late April early may. Um, we are accepting registrations. You can go to www.pluribusnetworks.com/e F T a. If you're interested in signing up for, um, uh, being part of our field trial and providing feedback on the product, >>Awesome innovation and network. Thanks so much for sharing the news. Really appreciate it. Thanks so much. Okay. In a moment, we'll be back to look deeper in the product, the integration security zero trust use cases. You're watching the cube, the leader in enterprise tech coverage, >>Cloud networking is complex and fragmented slowing down your business. How can you simplify and unify your cloud networks to increase agility and business velocity? >>Pluribus unified cloud networking provides a unified simplify and agile network fabric across all clouds. It brings the simplicity of a public cloud operation model to private clouds, dramatically reducing complexity and improving agility, availability, and security. Now enterprises and service providers can increase their business philosophy and delight customers in the distributed multi-cloud era. We achieve this with a new approach to cloud networking, pluribus unified cloud fabric. This open vendor, independent network fabric, unifies, networking, and security across distributed clouds. The first step is extending the fabric to servers equipped with data processing units, unifying the fabric across switches and servers, and it doesn't stop there. The fabric is unified across underlay and overlay networks and across all workloads and virtualization environments. The unified cloud fabric is optimized for seamless migration to this new distributed architecture, leveraging the power of the DPU for application level micro-segmentation distributed fireball and encryption while still supporting those servers and devices that are not equipped with a DPU. Ultimately the unified cloud fabric extends seamlessly across distributed clouds, including central regional at edge private clouds and public clouds. The unified cloud fabric is a comprehensive network solution. That includes everything you need for clouds, networking built in SDN automation, distributed security without compromises, pervasive wire speed, visibility and application insight available on your choice of open networking switches and DP use all at the lowest total cost of ownership. The end result is a dramatically simplified unified cloud networking architecture that unifies your distributed clouds and frees your business to move at cloud speed, >>To learn more, visit www.pluribusnetworks.com. >>Okay. We're back I'm John ferry with the cube, and we're going to go deeper into a deep dive into unified cloud networking solution from Clovis and Nvidia. And we'll examine some of the use cases with Alessandra Burberry, VP of product management and pullovers networks and Pete Bloomberg who's director of technical marketing and video remotely guys. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. >>Yeah. >>So deep dive, let's get into the what and how Alexandra we heard earlier about the pluribus Nvidia partnership and the solution you're working together on what is it? >>Yeah. First let's talk about the water. What are we really integrating with the Nvidia Bluefield, the DPO technology, uh, plugable says, um, uh, there's been shipping, uh, in, uh, in volume, uh, in multiple mission critical networks. So this advisor one network operating systems, it runs today on a merchant silicone switches and effectively it's a standard open network operating system for data center. Um, and the novelty about this system that integrates a distributed control plane for, at water made effective in SDN overlay. This automation is a completely open and interoperable and extensible to other type of clouds is not enclosed them. And this is actually what we're now porting to the Nvidia DPO. >>Awesome. So how does it integrate into Nvidia hardware and specifically how has pluribus integrating its software with the Nvidia hardware? >>Yeah, I think, uh, we leverage some of the interesting properties of the Bluefield, the DPO hardware, which allows actually to integrate, uh, um, uh, our software, our network operating system in a manner which is completely isolated and independent from the guest operating system. So the first byproduct of this approach is that whatever we do at the network level on the DPU card that is completely agnostic to the hypervisor layer or OSTP layer running on, uh, on the host even more, um, uh, we can also independently manage this network, know that the switch on a Neek effectively, um, uh, managed completely independently from the host. You don't have to go through the network operating system, running on x86 to control this network node. So you throw yet the experience effectively of a top of rack for virtual machine or a top of rack for, uh, Kubernetes bots, where instead of, uh, um, if you allow me with the analogy instead of connecting a server knee directly to a switchboard, now you're connecting a VM virtual interface to a virtual interface on the switch on an ache. >>And, uh, also as part of this integration, we, uh, put a lot of effort, a lot of emphasis in, uh, accelerating the entire, uh, data plane for networking and security. So we are taking advantage of the DACA, uh, Nvidia DACA API to program the accelerators. And these accomplished two things with that. Number one, uh, you, uh, have much greater performance, much better performance. They're running the same network services on an x86 CPU. And second, this gives you the ability to free up, I would say around 20, 25% of the server capacity to be devoted either to, uh, additional workloads to run your cloud applications, or perhaps you can actually shrink the power footprint and compute footprint of your data center by 20%, if you want to run the same number of compute workloads. So great efficiencies in the overall approach, >>And this is completely independent of the server CPU, right? >>Absolutely. There is zero code from running on the x86, and this is what we think this enables a very clean demarcation between computer and network. >>So Pete, I gotta get, I gotta get you in here. We heard that, uh, the DPU is enabled cleaner separation of dev ops and net ops. Can you explain why that's important because everyone's talking DevSecOps right now, you've got net ops, net, net sec ops, this separation. Why is this clean separation important? >>Yeah, I think it's a, you know, it's a pragmatic solution in my opinion. Um, you know, we wish the world was all kind of rainbows and unicorns, but it's a little, a little messier than that. And I think a lot of the dev ops stuff and that, uh, mentality and philosophy, there's a natural fit there. Right? You have applications running on servers. So you're talking about developers with those applications integrating with the operators of those servers. Well, the network has always been this other thing and the network operators have always had a very different approach to things than compute operators. And, you know, I think that we, we in the networking industry have gotten closer together, but there's still a gap there's still some distance. And I think in that distance, isn't going to be closed. And so, you know, again, it comes down to pragmatism and I think, you know, one of my favorite phrases is look good fences, make good neighbors. And that's what this is. >>Yeah. That's a great point because dev ops has become kind of the calling card for cloud, right. But dev ops is as simply infrastructure as code and infrastructure is networking, right? So if infrastructure is code, you know, you're talking about, you know, that part of the stack under the covers under the hood, if you will, this is super important distinction. And this is where the innovation is. Can you elaborate on how you see that? Because this is really where the action is right now. >>Yeah, exactly. And I think that's where, um, one from, from the policy, the security that the zero trust aspect of this, right? If you get it wrong on that network side, all of a sudden you, you can totally open up that those capabilities. And so security is part of that. But the other part is thinking about this at scale, right? So we're taking one top of rack switch and adding, you know, up to 48 servers per rack. And so that ability to automate, orchestrate and manage at scale becomes absolutely critical. >>I'll Sandra, this is really the why we're talking about here, and this is scale. And again, getting it right. If you don't get it right, you're going to be really kind of up, you know what you know, so this is a huge deal. Networking matters, security matters, automation matters, dev ops, net ops, all coming together, clean separation, um, help us understand how this joint solution with Nvidia fits into the pluribus unified cloud networking vision, because this is what people are talking about and working on right now. >>Yeah, absolutely. So I think here with this solution, we're attacking two major problems in cloud networking. One is, uh, operation of, uh, cloud networking. And the second is a distributing security services in the cloud infrastructure. First, let me talk about the first water. We really unifying. If we're unifying something, something must be at least fragmented or this jointed and the, what is this joint that is actually the network in the cloud. If you look holistically, how networking is deployed in the cloud, you have your physical fabric infrastructure, right? Your switches and routers, you'll build your IP clause fabric leaf in spine typologies. This is actually a well understood the problem. I, I would say, um, there are multiple vendors, uh, uh, with, uh, um, uh, let's say similar technologies, um, very well standardized, whether you will understood, um, and almost a commodity, I would say building an IP fabric these days, but this is not the place where you deploy most of your services in the cloud, particularly from a security standpoint, two services are actually now moved into the compute layer where you actually were called builders, have to instrument the, a separate, uh, network virtualization layer, where they deploy segmentation and security closer to the workloads. >>And this is where the complication arise. These high value part of the cloud network is where you have a plethora of options that they don't talk to each other. And they are very dependent on the kind of hypervisor or compute solution you choose. Um, for example, the networking API to be between an GSXI environment or an hyper V or a Zen are completely disjointed. You have multiple orchestration layers. And when, and then when you throw in also Kubernetes in this, in this, in this type of architecture, uh, you're introducing yet another level of networking. And when Kubernetes runs on top of VMs, which is a prevalent approach, you actually just stacking up multiple networks on the compute layer that they eventually run on the physical fabric infrastructure. Those are all ships in the nights effectively, right? They operate as completely disjointed. And we're trying to attack this problem first with the notion of a unified fabric, which is independent from any workloads, whether it's this fabric spans on a switch, which can be con connected to a bare metal workload, or can span all the way inside the DPU, uh, where, um, you have, uh, your multi hypervisor compute environment. >>It's one API, one common network control plane, and one common set of segmentation services for the network. That's probably the number one, >>You know, it's interesting you, man, I hear you talking, I hear one network month, different operating models reminds me of the old serverless days. You know, there's still servers, but they call it serverless. Is there going to be a term network list? Because at the end of the day, it should be one network, not multiple operating models. This, this is a problem that you guys are working on. Is that right? I mean, I'm not, I'm just joking server listen network list, but the idea is it should be one thing. >>Yeah, it's effectively. What we're trying to do is we are trying to recompose this fragmentation in terms of network operation, across physical networking and server networking server networking is where the majority of the problems are because of the, uh, as much as you have standardized the ways of building, uh, physical networks and cloud fabrics with IP protocols and internet, you don't have that kind of, uh, uh, sort of, uh, um, um, uh, operational efficiency, uh, at the server layer. And, uh, this is what we're trying to attack first. The, with this technology, the second aspect we're trying to attack is are we distribute the security services throughout the infrastructure, more efficiently, whether it's micro-segmentation is a stateful firewall services, or even encryption. Those are all capabilities enabled by the blue field, uh, uh, the Butte technology and, uh, uh, we can actually integrate those capabilities directly into the nettle Fabrica, uh, limiting dramatically, at least for east-west traffic, the sprawl of, uh, security appliances, whether virtual or physical, that is typically the way the people today, uh, segment and secure the traffic in the cloud. >>Awesome. Pete, all kidding aside about network lists and serverless kind of fun, fun play on words there, the network is one thing it's basically distributed computing, right? So I love to get your thoughts about this distributed security with zero trust as the driver for this architecture you guys are doing. Can you share in more detail the depth of why DPU based approach is better than alternatives? >>Yeah, I think what's, what's beautiful and kind of what the DPU brings. That's new to this model is a completely isolated compute environment inside. So, you know, it's the, uh, yo dog, I heard you like a server, so I put a server inside your server. Uh, and so we provide, uh, you know, armed CPU's memory and network accelerators inside, and that is completely isolated from the host. So the server, the, the actual x86 host just thinks it has a regular Nick in there, but you actually have this full control plane thing. It's just like taking your top of rack switch and shoving it inside of your compute node. And so you have not only the separation, um, within the data plane, but you have this complete control plane separation. So you have this element that the network team can now control and manage, but we're taking all of the functions we used to do at the top of rack switch, and we're just shooting them now. >>And, you know, as time has gone on we've, we've struggled to put more and more and more into that network edge. And the reality is the network edge is the compute layer, not the top of rack switch layer. And so that provides this phenomenal enforcement point for security and policy. And I think outside of today's solutions around virtual firewalls, um, the other option is centralized appliances. And even if you can get one that can scale large enough, the question is, can you afford it? And so what we end up doing is we kind of hope that of aliens good enough, or we hope that if the excellent tunnel is good enough and we can actually apply more advanced techniques there because we can't physically, you know, financially afford that appliance to see all of the traffic. And now that we have a distributed model with this accelerator, we could do it. >>So what's the what's in it for the customer. I real quick, cause I think this is interesting point. You mentioned policy, everyone in networking knows policy is just a great thing and it adds, you hear it being talked about up the stack as well. When you start getting to orchestrating microservices and whatnot, all that good stuff going on there, containers and whatnot and modern applications. What's the benefit to the customers with this approach? Because what I heard was more scale, more edge deployment, flexibility, relative to security policies and application enablement. I mean, is that what what's the customer get out of this architecture? What's the enablement. >>It comes down to, uh, taking again the capabilities that were in that top of rack switch and asserting them down. So that makes simplicity smaller blast radiuses for failure, smaller failure domains, maintenance on the networks, and the systems become easier. Your ability to integrate across workloads becomes infinitely easier. Um, and again, you know, we always want to kind of separate each one of those layers. So just as in say, a VX land network, my leaf and spine don't have to be tightly coupled together. I can now do this at a different layer. And so you can run a DPU with any networking in the core there. And so you get this extreme flexibility. You can start small, you can scale large. Um, you know, to me, the, the possibilities are endless. Yes, >>It's a great security control plan. Really flexibility is key. And, and also being situationally aware of any kind of threats or new vectors or whatever's happening in the network. Alessandra, this is huge upside, right? You've already identified some successes with some customers on your early field trials. What are they doing and why are they attracted to the solution? >>Yeah, I think the response from customers has been, uh, the most, uh, encouraging and, uh, exciting, uh, for, uh, for us to, uh, to sort of continue and work and develop this product. And we have actually learned a lot in the process. Um, we talked to tier two tier three cloud providers. Uh, we talked to, uh, SP um, software Tyco type of networks, uh, as well as a large enterprise customers, um, in, uh, one particular case. Um, uh, one, uh, I think, um, let me, let me call out a couple of examples here, just to give you a flavor. Uh, there is a service provider, a cloud provider, uh, in Asia who is actually managing a cloud, uh, where they are offering services based on multiple hypervisors. They are native services based on Zen, but they also are on ramp into the cloud, uh, workloads based on, uh, ESI and, uh, uh, and KVM, depending on what the customer picks from the piece on the menu. >>And they have the problem of now orchestrating through their orchestrate or integrating with the Zen center with vSphere, uh, with, uh, open stack to coordinate these multiple environments and in the process to provide security, they actually deploy virtual appliances everywhere, which has a lot of costs, complication, and eats up into the server CPU. The problem is that they saw in this technology, they call it actually game changing is actually to remove all this complexity of in a single network and distribute the micro-segmentation service directly into the fabric. And overall, they're hoping to get out of it, uh, uh, tremendous, uh, um, opics, uh, benefit and overall, um, uh, operational simplification for the cloud infrastructure. That's one potent a use case. Uh, another, uh, large enterprise customer global enterprise customer, uh, is running, uh, both ESI and hyper V in that environment. And they don't have a solution to do micro-segmentation consistently across hypervisors. >>So again, micro-segmentation is a huge driver security looks like it's a recurring theme, uh, talking to most of these customers and in the Tyco space, um, uh, we're working with a few types of customers on the CFT program, uh, where the main goal is actually to our Monet's network operation. They typically handle all the VNF search with their own homegrown DPDK stack. This is overly complex. It is frankly also as low and inefficient, and then they have a physical network to manage the, the idea of having again, one network, uh, to coordinate the provision in our cloud services between the, the take of VNF, uh, and, uh, the rest of the infrastructure, uh, is extremely powerful on top of the offloading capability of the, by the bluefin DPOs. Those are just some examples. >>That was a great use case, a lot more potential. I see that with the unified cloud networking, great stuff, feed, shout out to you guys at Nvidia had been following your success for a long time and continuing to innovate as cloud scales and pluribus here with the unified networking, kind of bring it to the next level. Great stuff. Great to have you guys on. And again, software keeps driving the innovation again, networking is just a part of it, and it's the key solution. So I got to ask both of you to wrap this up. How can cloud operators who are interested in, in this, uh, new architecture and solution, uh, learn more because this is an architectural shift. People are working on this problem. They're trying to think about multiple clouds of trying to think about unification around the network and giving more security, more flexibility, uh, to their teams. How can people learn more? >>Yeah, so, uh, all Sandra and I have a talk at the upcoming Nvidia GTC conference. Um, so that's the week of March 21st through 24th. Um, you can go and register for free and video.com/at GTC. Um, you can also watch recorded sessions if you ended up watching us on YouTube a little bit after the fact. Um, and we're going to dive a little bit more into the specifics and the details and what we're providing in the solution. >>Alexandra, how can people learn more? >>Yeah, absolutely. People can go to the pluribus, a website, www boost networks.com/eft, and they can fill up the form and, uh, they will contact durables to either know more or to know more and actually to sign up for the actual early field trial program, which starts at the end of April. >>Okay. Well, we'll leave it there. Thanks. You both for joining. Appreciate it up next. You're going to hear an independent analyst perspective and review some of the research from the enterprise strategy group ESG. I'm John ferry with the >>Cube. Thanks for watching. >>Okay. We've heard from the folks at networks and Nvidia about their effort to transform cloud networking and unify bespoke infrastructure. Now let's get the perspective from an independent analyst and to do so. We welcome in ESG, senior analysts, Bob LA Liberte, Bob. Good to see you. Thanks for coming into our east coast studios. >>Oh, thanks for having me. It's great to be >>Here. Yeah. So this, this idea of unified cloud networking approach, how serious is it? What's what's driving it. >>Yeah, there's certainly a lot of drivers behind it, but probably the first and foremost is the fact that application environments are becoming a lot more distributed, right? So the, it pendulum tends to swing back and forth. And we're definitely on one that's swinging from consolidated to distributed. And so applications are being deployed in multiple private data centers, multiple public cloud locations, edge locations. And as a result of that, what you're seeing is a lot of complexity. So organizations are having to deal with this highly disparate environment. They have to secure it. They have to ensure connectivity to it and all that's driving up complexity. In fact, when we asked in one of our last surveys and last year about network complexity, more than half 54% came out and said, Hey, our network environment is now either more or significantly more complex than it used to be. >>And as a result of that, what you're seeing is it's really impacting agility. So everyone's moving to these modern application environments, distributing them across areas so they can improve agility yet it's creating more complexity. So a little bit counter to the fact and, you know, really counter to their overarching digital transformation initiatives. From what we've seen, you know, nine out of 10 organizations today are either beginning in process or have a mature digital transformation process or initiative, but their top goals, when you look at them, it probably shouldn't be a surprise. The number one goal is driving operational efficiency. So it makes sense. I've distributed my environment to create agility, but I've created a lot of complexity. So now I need these tools that are going to help me drive operational efficiency, drive better experience. >>I mean, I love how you bring in the data yesterday. Does a great job with that. Uh, questions is, is it about just unifying existing networks or is there sort of a need to rethink kind of a do-over network, how networks are built? >>Yeah, that's a, that's a really good point because certainly unifying networks helps right. Driving any kind of operational efficiency helps. But in this particular case, because we've made the transition to new application architectures and the impact that's having as well, it's really about changing and bringing in new frameworks and new network architectures to accommodate those new application architectures. And by that, what I'm talking about is the fact that these new modern application architectures, microservices, containers are driving a lot more east west traffic. So in the old days, it used to be easier in north south coming out of the server, one application per server, things like that. Right now you've got hundreds, if not thousands of microservices communicating with each other users communicating to them. So there's a lot more traffic and a lot of it's taking place within the servers themselves. The other issue that you starting to see as well from that security perspective, when we were all consolidated, we had those perimeter based legacy, you know, castle and moat security architectures, but that doesn't work anymore when the applications aren't in the castle, right. >>When everything's spread out that that no longer happens. So we're absolutely seeing, um, organizations trying to, trying to make a shift. And, and I think much, like if you think about the shift that we're seeing with all the remote workers and the sassy framework to enable a secure framework there, this it's almost the same thing. We're seeing this distributed services framework come up to support the applications better within the data centers, within the cloud data centers, so that you can drive that security closer to those applications and make sure they're, they're fully protected. Uh, and that's really driving a lot of the, you know, the zero trust stuff you hear, right? So never trust, always verify, making sure that everything is, is, is really secure micro-segmentation is another big area. So ensuring that these applications, when they're connected to each other, they're, they're fully segmented out. And that's again, because if someone does get a breach, if they are in your data center, you want to limit the blast radius, you want to limit the amount of damage that's done. So that by doing that, it really makes it a lot harder for them to see everything that's in there. >>You know, you mentioned zero trust. It used to be a buzzword, and now it's like become a mandate. And I love the mode analogy. You know, you build a moat to protect the queen and the castle, the Queens left the castles, it's just distributed. So how should we think about this, this pluribus and Nvidia solution. There's a spectrum, help us understand that you've got appliances, you've got pure software solutions. You've got what pluribus is doing with Nvidia, help us understand that. >>Yeah, absolutely. I think as organizations recognize the need to distribute their services to closer to the applications, they're trying different models. So from a legacy approach, you know, from a security perspective, they've got these centralized firewalls that they're deploying within their data centers. The hard part for that is if you want all this traffic to be secured, you're actually sending it out of the server up through the rack, usually to in different location in the data center and back. So with the need for agility, with the need for performance, right, that adds a lot of latency. Plus when you start needing to scale, that means adding more and more network connections, more and more appliances. So it can get very costly as well as impacting the performance. The other way that organizations are seeking to solve this problem is by taking the software itself and deploying it on the servers. Okay. So that's a, it's a great approach, right? It brings it really close to the applications, but the things you start running into there, there's a couple of things. One is that you start seeing that the DevOps team start taking on that networking and security responsibility, which they >>Don't want to >>Do, they don't want to do right. And the operations teams loses a little bit of visibility into that. Um, plus when you load the software onto the server, you're taking up precious CPU cycles. So if you're really wanting your applications to perform at an optimized state, having additional software on there, isn't going to, isn't going to do it. So, you know, when we think about all those types of things, right, and certainly the other side effects of that is the impact of the performance, but there's also a cost. So if you have to buy more servers because your CPU's are being utilized, right, and you have hundreds or thousands of servers, right, those costs are going to add up. So what, what Nvidia and pluribus have done by working together is to be able to take some of those services and be able to deploy them onto a smart Nick, right? >>To be able to deploy the DPU based smart SMARTNICK into the servers themselves. And then pluribus has come in and said, we're going to unify create that unified fabric across the networking space, into those networking services all the way down to the server. So the benefits of having that are pretty clear in that you're offloading that capability from the server. So your CPU's are optimized. You're saving a lot of money. You're not having to go outside of the server and go to a different rack somewhere else in the data center. So your performance is going to be optimized as well. You're not going to incur any latency hit for every trip round trip to the, to the firewall and back. So I think all those things are really important. Plus the fact that you're going to see from a, an organizational aspect, we talked about the dev ops and net ops teams. The network operations teams now can work with the security teams to establish the security policies and the networking policies. So that they've dev ops teams. Don't have to worry about that. So essentially they just create the guardrails and let the dev op team run. Cause that's what they want. They want that agility and speed. >>Yeah. Your point about CPU cycles is key. I mean, it's estimated that 25 to 30% of CPU cycles in the data center are wasted. The cores are wasted doing storage offload or, or networking or security offload. And, you know, I've said many times everybody needs a nitro like Amazon nugget, but you can't go, you can only buy Amazon nitro if you go into AWS. Right. Everybody needs a nitro. So is that how we should think about this? >>Yeah. That's a great analogy to think about this. Um, and I think I would take it a step further because it's, it's almost the opposite end of the spectrum because pluribus and video are doing this in a very open way. And so pluribus has always been a proponent of open networking. And so what they're trying to do is extend that now to these distributed services. So leverage working with Nvidia, who's also open as well, being able to bring that to bear so that organizations can not only take advantage of these distributed services, but also that unified networking fabric, that unified cloud fabric across that environment from the server across the switches, the other key piece of what pluribus is doing, because they've been doing this for a while now, and they've been doing it with the older application environments and the older server environments, they're able to provide that unified networking experience across a host of different types of servers and platforms. So you can have not only the modern application supported, but also the legacy environments, um, you know, bare metal. You could go any type of virtualization, you can run containers, et cetera. So a wide gambit of different technologies hosting those applications supported by a unified cloud fabric from pluribus. >>So what does that mean for the customer? I don't have to rip and replace my whole infrastructure, right? >>Yeah. Well, think what it does for, again, from that operational efficiency, when you're going from a legacy environment to that modern environment, it helps with the migration helps you accelerate that migration because you're not switching different management systems to accomplish that. You've got the same unified networking fabric that you've been working with to enable you to run your legacy as well as transfer over to those modern applications. Okay. >>So your people are comfortable with the skillsets, et cetera. All right. I'll give you the last word. Give us the bottom line here. >>So yeah, I think obviously with all the modern applications that are coming out, the distributed application environments, it's really posing a lot of risk on these organizations to be able to get not only security, but also visibility into those environments. And so organizations have to find solutions. As I said, at the beginning, they're looking to drive operational efficiency. So getting operational efficiency from a unified cloud networking solution, that it goes from the server across the servers to multiple different environments, right in different cloud environments is certainly going to help organizations drive that operational efficiency. It's going to help them save money for visibility, for security and even open networking. So a great opportunity for organizations, especially large enterprises, cloud providers who are trying to build that hyperscaler like environment. You mentioned the nitro card, right? This is a great way to do it with an open solution. >>Bob, thanks so much for, for coming in and sharing your insights. Appreciate it. >>You're welcome. Thanks. >>Thanks for watching the program today. Remember all these videos are available on demand@thekey.net. You can check out all the news from today@siliconangle.com and of course, pluribus networks.com many thanks diplomas for making this program possible and sponsoring the cube. This is Dave Volante. Thanks for watching. Be well, we'll see you next time.

>>Hi, everyone. Welcome to the cube and unstoppable domain, special showcase women of web three or well, three I'm super excited for this season. We have three great guests, Sandy Carter, the SVP and channel chief of unstoppable domains. Noel Bailey managing director for the entertainment, AKA disco leper. That's her handle NFT handle. We'll talk more about that. And Kristen Mirabella, Bella director of business development, Gemini all in the web three world here for women of web three. Welcome to the show. So what a great announcement, Sandy? What is the wow three women of web three. And why did you announce it on stumbled domains? Web three. >>Awesome. Well, thanks John. So today we are so excited to announce unstoppable women of web three. And one of the things that we noticed ourselves plus 60 plus companies is that we need more diversity in the web three space. So our mission is to make web three more accessible for everyone to help women with that first step and be very action oriented. So we're going to launch education, networking and events as we move forward. And we're real excited to start today, March 8th, we've got a 24 hour Twitter space. We have a YouTube live. We're going to be auction and off some NFTs to donate to girls in tech, a not-for-profit who is also going to launch a mentoring platform for women in web three. We'll also be announcing a hundred inspirational women's and Webster, and I can take up the entire time talking about all we have in store to make web three accessible to everyone. >>That's awesome. We're going to unpack that lot of things to talk about there. I'm really looking forward to it, neural, your, you got a great story here. What are the lazy lions and, and the queen so to speak and what are you guys doing? And tell us about your handle. >>That's a lot of questions there. John, why don't we start with that? So, I mean, I started my NFT journey about six months ago only, and I got really lucky in entering into the space for the lazy lions to start with and the Kings and existing Queens that were kind of in that space to begin were incredibly welcoming. I literally like, I love being the person in the room that asked the dumb question, because if I, if I can ask it, then, you know, there's, there's a hundred other people there that aren't asking that question. And so when I stepped into the, you know, the pride space with Twitter and discord, getting to know the lazy lions before I even got into my first project, they were incredibly welcoming. Like any question that I asked they had an answer for. And so, you know, why we're kind of wondering with unstoppable and supporting that? >>Well, one, once we, once through that space, I got introduced to queen Sandy as well. You know, she's part of the pride and, and one of the lazy lions and again, yeah, it's that whole symbiotic relationship where you've got, you know, Kings and Queens, men and women kind of in the pride, but it's not just about men and women either. It's the diversity aspect where it's people from all different cultures, backgrounds all around the world. And so, you know, getting in and learning and growing together in this brand new space that we're all part of creating. And then Unstoppables a huge part of that with the gateway to allowing people to kind of get into it, to begin. So it just all makes sense. We're going to expense. >>Okay, we're going to unpack that in a minute, but Kristen w what's going on with Gemini and web three, what's going on in the ecosystem there? How are you supporting the women of web three initiative? >>Really excited. Gemini is an exchange and custodian. We offer access to cryptocurrencies. We are your access points. We're the access point for women who are trying to embrace their own financial freedom and build their own story, be economically empowered and interacting with web three in a way that's going to be increasingly necessary. As, as this continues to build, Gemini is really excited to be able to provide a platform for education for anyone and especially women who are looking to build their knowledge base around what's happening in cryptocurrency. How can they interact with it? How can they make really good financial decisions as they look to interact with networks, you know, within defy, what tokens do they want to be able to, you know, purchase, move off of a centralized platform like Geminis. We are very regulated. We're very secure as an access point to be able to interact with cryptocurrencies and use crypto to interact with this ecosystem that's growing. You can, you know, as a woman decide on a really good idea on how you want to embrace that financial freedom of interacting with the protocol that might unlock your potential to be more financially independent, make really good decisions about the future of what your, your family might need economically, you know, in Gemini as an access point for that, as far as crypto and other digital assets go is where we were really proud that we can power that network. >>So we have to chip and I got the lazy lions. You have the unstoppable, all three of you guys are in the middle of all the action and it's super game-changing. It's also a cultural shift. You seeing a lot of young, the young generation, as well as senior experienced people coming in, certainly technologists are coming in, business leaders are coming in and it just feels like a whole nother cultural shift. So we have to ask you, what are you guys most excited for in this roadmap for women of web three what's on your mind? What do you guys see? What's the vision? >>Well, I'll start first. You know, one of the things that I'm really excited about is getting women to experience web three, not just book learning, but really get in there and interact and play with it. So for example, John, there is a game called de-central land. They sell land. And what they're going to help us do is to build a virtual women of web three headquarters inside of the game. And as women go there, they're going to experience, you know, logging in, they're going to experience crypto, like Kristin does talked about they'll experience. NFT is like disco, just talked about. And so it won't just be book smart. They'll be able to get in there and do and see and play, which I think is the best way to learn about web three. >>For me, I'd say, I mean, honestly, I'm most excited about getting it started. There's been so much work kind of going into this to begin with. And, and this space is, is also new and constantly growing and kind of evolving, changing as we go because we're pioneers kind of in this space, really. Like we all have web three. And so getting it started and it continues to grow and evolve from there, which is, you know, a lot to do with kind of community driven initiatives what's happening in the market and the space at the time as well. So super get it started, build it. And it keeps growing from there. >>Christine, what's your vision to what, how do you see this evolving what's what do you hope for and what are some of the things you're excited about? >>I couldn't agree more. What I think is really exciting is that again, if you're looking to learn about this, you know, Sandy you're so right, you're not gonna learn about really how to unlock the potential of this ecosystem by reading about it. You have to get in there, find crypto, come to Geminis platform, open an account, understand what it means to buy cryptocurrency, buy Bitcoin, understand what you're comfortable with. Use resources like our crypto pedia, to understand the differences between tokens, the differences between layers. Why would you buy this token and transfer it off of the platform where you're looking to interact with three, maybe you're looking at these web three applications and you want to understand what generating income through one of these looks like you really got to start with the basics, but start here, purchase something, move it off. You know, test it, use little, little amounts. >>You don't have to buy a full Bitcoin. I think that that's a common misconception with people who are really starting to get interested in the space, especially as they start to learn about cryptocurrency, buy a tiny piece, you know, you don't need to sell the farm, move it off the platform, learn a little bit about how you can interact, build a community around yourself. There are a lot of women who are learning how to do this and through NFTs and through other interests that you might naturally have, you can really embrace the technology and understand what it can do for you. >>You know, you, you mentioned that in the early days of Bitcoin, even a theory of giving it away was a big part of that kind of early days of community. And Earl, you mentioned the word pride as part of the lazy lions community is a big part of this. Sandy, you know, this you've seen communities develop over the years, this new kind of community dynamic is a network effect, but it's also people centric. It's also about reputation. So it's about being open and collaborative. I mean, it sounds like a bunch of cliches jammed together, but this is kind of the world we're in for web three. Can you guys share your thoughts on that and get a reaction to that? >>Yeah. And I just wanted to jump on kind of what Kristin was mentioning there as well. You know, like, and Sandy, like get in there, get started, like have a little taste, have a little of this watch learn and then kind of tying into your community aspect there, ask the questions, get into, and you know, the two, the couple of main spaces, there are discord and Twitter, which, and again, I signed up my Twitter account in 2014 and I pretty much didn't touch it, like from 2015 kind of onwards, like now learning and getting in and growing with this space, that's kind of where the mediums are to start with with that. So yeah. Get in and get started and, and ask the questions on the way >>Sandy, you see Twitter and discord as the primary. >>Yeah. Yeah. There's so many this guy, right. Because you know, I'm on, I'm now on telegram. I'm on disbarred, I'm on Twitter, I'm on signal. I just got invited to signal groups. So this is one of the areas that we need to work on for web three. I think all of us would agree is just that interface. Part of the reason that we're launching this is because it is hard today, right? Web three is hard. And so there's multiple communications channels, you know, and that's why we love, you know, partners like Jim and I, who are making it easier and lazy lions who are setting up these communities. You know, when you buy in it of T you're really not, I guess you are buying the NFT for value, but you're also buying into the community disco. And I have been meeting actually every Saturday night for a while now with the rest of the Queens, planning out women of web three, Kristin and Jim and I, and I have been meeting together it's about the people and the networking and the tribe that you're part of as well. You really nailed it on the community piece. >>You know, ever since we started talking about it unstoppable, I got to say, I've been wanting to get the cube and FTS going because it is a community dynamic, but it's also this got practical usage of is there's data behind it. There's actually real use cases. Can you guys share your thoughts on how you see the use cases being applied specifically to the world, but also to, to women of web three to Wasn't go first. >>Yeah. We're also polite. We're all quite polite. And do you want to go first? You're one of our partners, we'll let you start us off. >>Sorry. I didn't want to and want to jump in there and they want to get started a real applications of, of what this looks like. I think goes back to an idea I had at the top of the call as there's clarity, as that continues to emerge as web three continues to build. And we understand what this really means. I think many would say that there's, you know, lack of clarity around what web three means. Maybe there are some platforms that are slightly more centralized than others. If we think of what web three in general represents, you know, it's this idea of decentralization empowering you through ownership of your data, empowering you through the ability to do things in a decentralized way, but you're not able to do on web two. And I think the real application of transition of where we are today into what this becomes is, you know, I think we keep nailing it on the head. >>You really have to get out there and practice. You have to understand what this transition means for you and what does it mean for what you're trying to achieve? So if my personal stance is, is really solid in where, you know, your financial future is rooted. And if we're talking about cryptocurrency in your ability to interact with these networks, like we've been saying, you have to practice, you have to understand and learn what you're getting yourself into. But I also think there's this element of being okay with making mistakes, but you are talking about your financial future. You're talking about something that's there really high stakes around making mistakes means starting with really good partners. You can start with platforms like Gemini. You can start with platforms like unstoppable domains and know that the foundation has been laid for you to be able to test these grounds. >>I think that what this becomes and what is really important here is knowing that there are going to be a few centralized points that are your access to this web of three, to this broader ecosystem. But being able to trust that these platforms have security in mind. So the security first mindset that empowers you to then go be in charge of data, privacy, being able to take charge of really what your interaction with the rest of this world means. And being, being able to trust that the foundational layer that you're entering that world through is one that can be trusted. I think that as we look at the real world application of this finding that right starting point is really important. >>Yeah. And I w I would just add John to, to what Kristen just said. There are also B2B use cases here. So we want to make sure that, you know, there's a lot of consumer work, but there's also B to B as well. So, you know, imagine you're in decentral land or you're in sandbox a game. If you're a retailer or in a consumer business, you can place your products or your portfolio inside of that game, there is now decentralized finance that's out there. How does that play a role in your company and the way that you're financing for your company? Not just for yourself, like Kristin mentioned, but also for your company. And then dowels, of course, fractional ownership of different things. We're seeing, you know, funding change. SPACs turning into dowels, all of this. If you look at our 24 hour Twitter space, I'm S I can't wait. I think I'm going to actually do a 24 hour bins for myself because >>That's a college come on. We gotta do. >>Right. I know this guy will be with me. Right. And just that last time I did, that was new. Yeah. >>Well, super exciting. I mean, wow, wow. Three could be a doubt. I mean, the vision here is really amazing. I am so impressed. I think this is a great thing because it could go anywhere. What do you guys see at Dow in the future merging communities and merging tribes together? How do you guys have you guys talked about that? What's the, what's the thought process there? >>We actually did talk about doing a Dow. We decided to kick off first and get everybody up to speed on what it was before we jumped into a doubt, which I think is pretty advanced and sophisticated. And so, you know, part of what we also see is if you look at part of the membership, you'll see women of blockchain, women of data BFF. I mean, all these women's groups coming together to unite as long with, along with a lot of major companies, web to companies, Google Deloitte I'll chair, with the who's, who of web three, you've got Gemini, you've got, you know, consensus, you've got blockchain.com. So, you know, I love this because we are coming together for a movement, not for individual companies, but to have an impact on the industry to really educate women. And John, I forgot one of the really cool things we're also announcing today is our first 100 inspirational women of web three. In fact, disco helped me come up with the name of that, because we do want to highlight as examples, all of these great women that are in the space so that we each can reach back and pull others forward. >>Okay, now we've got to get into the, the disco leopard, let's put the lower third up there so we can see it. And the name that's tell us about the story here. And what does it mean to you? Take us through the thought process, the experience and how you envision this unfolding. Cause it's an NFT. You have one it's >>Yeah, totally. I guess. I mean, starting with, so the disco leopard kind of piece to it as well, like in this new space, in the, in the web space, first of all, you get to like, come up with your own identity. So I got to pick this go leopard, like if he doesn't want to be a disco leopard. And so even just coming up with the journey of like, what is your identity with that? And then, you know, you go through that path of being doxed, meaning being revealed, people kind of know who you are or not, or keeping it, you know, kind of a name on the side, that's all. Okay. Like it's all part of that whole decentralized space, which is super exciting. So just so you know, like the disco leper feeds, you know, optimist glass, half full, you know, pessimist, glass, half empty. And then the third piece to that was disco leopard equals. Awesome. And that's where I saw it. And I'm like, that's me a hundred percent. I'm >>Trying to get your lower third, had your name next to it, >>But that's okay. I'm all right with that. I don't mind. So, you know, getting, getting into that to start with, and then, you know, when we were talking about partners and coming into this safe space as well, and yeah, absolutely kind of technology based partners infrastructure to make sure that we're, we're safe and we've got a smooth gateway kind of coming in, but I'm also gonna put communities into partnerships as well, because there are so many NFT projects, you know, defy gaming projects, et cetera, finding your people, finding the community that resonates with you and it's different for everyone. And that's a beautiful thing, but you get to kind of find like-minded people and join them. >>You know, I've been thinking this for about a long, long time, and I thought I was just weird, but now that it's happening, you guys are in the middle of it. The, your identity is so important now, and you could have a community and tribe to belong to, but yet traverse other tribes and move around. This is kind of the whole prospect of unstoppable, right? So Sandy, this is like a great future. You can be protected in a trusted tribe or community, and then still move around to others and engage. It's almost like a packet moving around a network. It's really about people too, on the internet. This is a total complete game changer. It wasn't really, it's not really possible prior to this. >>Yeah. I mean, if you look at all the members, you can move from a metaverse, you can move into gaming, you can go into defy, we've got NFT communities. And, and I love, you know, like you said, traversing, those communities, like we're going to do an auction and we've had donated NFTs. So disco and lazy lions, the queen of lazy lions are donating a lazy lion. Crypto chicks are gonna donate something. If you don't know what these are, these are all NFT communities that have their own identities as well. We have Deadheads NILAH and the long neck ladies, which is started by a 13 year old girl, who's going to talk on one of our Twitter spaces about how she had 13 earned millions of dollars and became times first artist in residence. So there's just, I mean, there's so much potential here and just look at all these amazing women on the screen. You know, I think web three, the face of web three is female. >>That's awesome. Any final thoughts for you guys and, and the session here, it's amazing. First of all, I'm so excited to, to have this conversation and be included and be included into the group here. Thank you for having me closing thoughts on women of web three, how people can get involved, what you guys aspire to be, what are some of the goals can take us through that? >>I guess for me looking at, you kind of asked the question of, you know, what we're most excited about with what's coming up with the international women's day. And, and, you know, what's beyond that. I'm really excited about what unstoppable are doing in introducing the gateway from web two to web three, because that whole 24, the, the events that we have coming on today is, you know, information, education, openness, how to use it, but what's coming beyond there. And it is that transition from web to, and how to, how do we even, like, I'm about to learn that as well. And as I said, I've been in that, in this NMT journey for six months learning thus far, but what does it look like to get into a web three experience and the web page and that design and look and feel so that next step of learning and getting into it. And again, anyone that's kind of being involved in this conversation now you'll be the first people stepping into that space as web three really comes to life. And it is the new web. Very exciting, >>Great. >>I couldn't agree more neural. What I think excites us the most is the level of interest and the level of engagement that we're seeing an unprecedented levels. These and what's coming next is that you're going to see more and more women and more, more people as part of these communities, as we've talked about wanting to learn, wanting to engage and wanting to be part of this and numbers that we really haven't even seen still yet. We've just scratched the surface. And what I want to ask everyone to do is not to wait not to wait until you feel like you're behind. Take action. Now go to our crypto pedia page, open an account at Gemini, start to interact with cryptocurrencies, understand what it means to take, you know, a crypto or digital asset off of a platform and interact with some of these networks, understand what it means to own, and then empty look at unstoppable domains and understand how you can start to dip your toe in. We really want to empower everyone with the knowledge of what you can do here, and we couldn't be more excited about the future >>Also Sandy final word. >>Yes. So I'm excited about a new world where diversity helps shape the next movement. You know, we've seen web one and web two shaped by, you know, homogeneous groups. And what I'm looking forward to is the future, because we know that innovation is driven by diversity of thought. And so for me, I'm really excited about today international women's day, where we're launching all these educational sessions, you know, Kristen mentioned don't wait, get involved, disco, you know, talked a lot about the potential of going from web two to web three. We hope to see tons of women learning from the web to world. And then I just have to say, I mean, if we could get this across in the virtual world, we're then going to also host an in real life I R L event at south by Southwest. So I'm real excited to be back in person to John so that I can actually give my, my fellow colleagues hugs as well. >>I can't wait to be in person. Thank you so much for coming on this. A great program today is international women's day, but every day is women of web three day. Thanks for sharing great insight. I'm looking forward to more conversations and seeing what happens and participating in any way that I can. And thanks for having me and including me in the conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. This is the cubes conversations here in the showcase women of web three. I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching.

>>Okay. We've heard from the folks at pluribus networks and Nvidia about their effort to transform cloud networking and unify bespoke infrastructure. Now let's get the perspective from an independent analyst and to do so. We welcome in ESG, senior analysts, Bob LA Liberte, Bob. Good to see you. Thanks for coming into our east coast studios. Oh, thanks for having me. It's great >>To be here. Yeah. So >>This, this idea of unified cloud networking approach, how serious is it? What's what's driving it. >>Yeah, there's certainly a lot of drivers behind it, but probably the first and foremost is the fact that application environments are becoming a lot more distributed, right? So the, it pendulum tends to swing back and forth. And we're definitely on one that's swinging from consolidated to distributed. And so applications are being deployed in multiple private data centers, multiple public cloud locations, edge locations. And as a result of that, what you're seeing is a lot of complexity. So organizations are having to deal with this highly disparate environment. They have to secure it. They have to ensure connectivity to it and all that's driving up complexity. In fact, when we asked in one of our last surveys and last year about network complexity, more than half 54% came out and said, Hey, our network environment is now either more or significantly more complex than it used to be. >>And as a result of that, what you're seeing is it's really impacting agility. So everyone's moving to these modern application environments, distributing them across areas so they can improve agility yet it's creating more complexity. So a little bit counter to the fact and, you know, really counter to their overarching digital transformation initiatives. From what we've seen, you know, nine out of 10 organizations today are either beginning in process or have a mature digital transformation process or initiative, but their top goals, when you look at them, it probably shouldn't be a surprise. The number one goal is driving operational efficiency. So it makes sense. I've distributed my environment to create agility, but I've created a lot of complexity. So now I need these tools that are going to help me drive operational efficiency, drive better experiences. >>I love how you bring in the data yesterday. Does a great job with that. A question is, is it about just unifying existing networks or is there sort of a need to rethink kind of a do-over net or how networks are built? >>Yeah, that's a, that's a really good point because certainly unifying networks helps right. Driving any kind of operational efficiency helps. But in this particular case, because we've made the transition to new application architectures and the impact that's having as well, it's really about changing and bringing in new frameworks and new network architectures to accommodate those new application architectures. And, and by that, what I'm talking about is the fact that these new modern application architectures, microservices, containers are driving a lot more east-west traffic. So in the old days used to be easier. And north south coming out of the server, one application per server, things like that right now, you've got hundreds, if not thousands of microservices communicating with each other users communicating to them. So there's a lot more traffic and a lot of it's taking place within the servers themselves. The other issue that you starting to see as well from that security perspective, when we were all consolidated, we had those perimeter based legacy, you know, castle and moat security architectures, but that doesn't work anymore when the applications aren't in the castle, right. >>When everything's spread out that that no longer happens. So we're absolutely seeing, um, organizations trying to, trying to make a shift. And I think much like if you think about the shift that we're seeing with all the remote workers and the sassy framework to enable a secure framework there, this it's almost the same thing. We're seeing this distributed services framework come up to support the applications better within the data centers, within the cloud data centers, so that you can drive that security closer to those applications and make sure they're, they're fully protected. Uh, and that's really driving a lot of the, you know, the zero trust stuff you hear, right? So never trust, always verify. Making sure that everything is, is, is really secure micro-segmentation is another big area. So ensuring that these applications, when they're connected to each other, they're, they're fully segmented out. And that's again, because if someone does get a breach, if they are in your data center, you want to limit the blast radius, you want to limit the amount of damage that's done. So that by doing that, it really makes it a lot harder for them to see everything that's in there. >>I mentioned zero trust. It used to be a buzzword and now it's become a mandate. And I love the mode analogy. You know, you build a moat to protect the queen and the castle, the Queens left the castle, it's just distributed. So how should we think about this, this pluribus and Nvidia solution. There's a spectrum, help us understand that you've got appliances, you've got, you know, pure software solutions. You got what pluribus is doing with Nvidia, help us understand that. >>Yeah, absolutely. I think as organizations recognize the need to distribute the services to closer to the applications, they're trying different models. So from a legacy approach, you know, from a security perspective, they've got these centralized firewalls that they're deploying within their data centers. The hard part for that is if you want all this traffic to be secured, you're actually sending it out of the server up through the rack, usually to in different location in the data center and back. So with the need for agility, with the need for performance, right, that adds a lot of latency. Plus when you start needing to scale, that means adding more and more network connections, more and more appliances. So it can get very costly as well as impacting the performance. The other way that organizations are seeking to solve this problem is by taking the software itself and deploying it on the servers. >>Okay. So that's a, it's a great approach, right? It brings it really close to the applications, but the things you start running into there, there's a couple of things. One is that you start seeing that the DevOps team start taking on that networking and security responsibility, which they don't want to do, they don't want to do right. And the operations teams loses a little bit of visibility into that. Plus when you load the software onto the server, you're taking up precious CPU cycles. So if you're really wanting your applications to perform at an optimized state, having additional software on there, isn't going to, isn't going to do it. So, you know, when we think about all those types of things, right, and certainly the, the other side effects of that is the impact of the performance, but there's also a cost. So if you have to buy more servers because your CPU's are being utilized, right, and you have hundreds or thousands of servers, right, those costs are gonna add up. >>So what, what Nvidia and pluribus have done by working together is to be able to take some of those services and be able to deploy them onto a smart NIC, right? To be able to deploy the DPU based smart NIC into the servers themselves. And then pluribus has come in and said, we're going to unify create that unified fabric across the networking space, into those networking services all the way down to the server. So the benefits of having that are pretty clear in that you're offloading that capability from the server. So your CPU's are optimized. You're saving a lot of money. You're not having to go outside of the server and go to a different rack somewhere else in the data center. So your performance is going to be optimized as well. You're not going to incur any latency hit for every trip round trip to the, to the firewall and back. So I think all those things are really important. Plus the fact that you're going to see from a, an organizational aspect, we talked about the dev ops and net ops teams. The network operations teams now can work with the security teams to establish the security policies and the networking policies. So that they've dev ops teams. Don't have to worry about that. So essentially they just create the guardrails and let the dev op team run. Cause that's what they want. They want that agility and speed. >>Yeah. The point about CPU cycles is key. I mean, it's estimated that 25 to 30% of CPU cycles in the data center are wasted. The cores are wasted doing storage offload or, or networking or security offload. And, you know, I've said many times everybody needs a nitro like Amazon nugget, but you can't go, you can only buy Amazon nitro if you go into AWS. Right. Everybody needs a nitro. So is that how we should think? >>Yeah. That's a great analogy to think about this. Um, and I think I would take it a step further because it's, it's almost the opposite end of the spectrum because pluribus and video are doing this in a very open way. And so pluribus has always been a proponent of open networking. And so what they're trying to do is extend that now to these distributed services. So leverage working with Nvidia is also open as well, being able to bring that to bear so that organizations can not only take advantage of these distributed services, but also that unified networking fabric, that unified cloud fabric across that environment from the server across the switches, the other key piece of what pluribus is doing, because they've been doing this for a while now, and they've been doing it with the older application environments and the older server environments, they're able to provide that unified networking experience across a host of different types of servers and platforms. So you can have not only the modern application supported, but also the legacy environments, um, you know, bare metal. You could go any type of virtualization, you can run containers, et cetera. So a wide gambit of different technologies hosting those applications supported by a unified cloud fabric from pluribus. So what is it, >>I mean, for the customer, I don't have to rip and replace my whole infrastructure, right? Yeah. >>Yeah. Well, think what it does for, again, from that operational efficiency, when you're going from a legacy environment to that modern environment, it helps with the migration helps you accelerate that migration because you're not switching different management systems to accomplish that. You've got the same unified networking fabric that you've been working with to enable you to run your legacy, as well as transfer over to those modern applications. >>Got it. So your people are comfortable with the skillsets, et cetera. All right. I'll give you the last word. Give us the bottom line here. >>So yeah, I think obviously with all the modern applications that are coming out, the distributed application environments, it's really posing a lot of risk on these organizations to be able to get not only security, but also visibility into those environments. And so organizations have to find solutions. As I said, at the beginning, they're looking to drive operational efficiency. So getting operational efficiency from a unified cloud networking solution, that it goes from the server across the servers to multiple different environments, right in different cloud environments is certainly going to help organizations drive that operational efficiency. It's going to help them save money for visibility, for security and even open networking. So a great opportunity for organizations, especially large enterprises, cloud providers who are trying to build that hyperscaler like environment. You mentioned the nitro card, right? This is a great way to do it with an open solution. Love it, >>Bob. Thanks so much for coming in and sharing your insights. Appreciate it. You're welcome. Thanks. All right. In a moment, I'll be back to give you some closing thoughts on unified cloud networking and the key takeaways from today. You're watching the cube you're leader in enterprise tech coverage.

>>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of Veem on 2020 brought to you by beam >>Hybrid. This is Dave alotta and you're watching the cube tenuous coverage of on 20 it's the Veem online version. One of them course, we've had a pivot, the virtual, the large industry here. He's the CEO of IEM and Jim Kruger is the please marketing officer guys. I wish we were face to face. Okay. You know, this'll do so. Thanks for coming on. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you, Dave. Yeah. Thank you Dave. Glad to be here. Well, first of all, bill, I got to congratulate you it the first time. Really? We awesome. The okay. Blockbuster. So acquisition inside capital growth minded, awesome. Private equity. So congratulations on the new role and you know, best of luck. Hey, well, thanks. Very much greatly appreciated. Yeah. I've been with the team since founding in 2006. So it's a, well, it's a new role. It's, it's a good old, it's a good older team that we're very experienced with it. >>Uh, did you, you, you, you know, the, the good, the bad and the ugly and you know, where the skeletons are buried, you know where to go, okay. The ship. So we wish you the best. And then, you know, in the gym, I gotta ask you, I mean, everybody says, okay, it was really hard decision go to it. The virtual, he actually had no choice, but maybe the harder decision was, can we postpone or do we go forward? You guys chose to go forward. Uh, which I think is the right call. And I'd also think, it seems like you're taking the approach of, you know, we're not just going to try to plug the physical into the virtual. We're going to, I think about the halo effect. Yes. Discussion going, but maybe your thoughts on that pivot. Good. The virtual. Yeah. Yeah. It didn't take us too long to decide. >>And we, we felt, uh, rather than postponing it and, and trying to do a, a large event before the end of the year, which not really, really realistic. Uh, we decided to, uh, to go with the virtual and actually for just a month after, for the most part after, uh, um, what the real event was supposed to happen in Las Vegas. And, uh, yeah, we're really looking at it from, okay. Yeah. Keeping the discussion, going with our customers, keeping them updated. We're going to be highlighting some of the new releases that are going to be coming out, making some key announcements. Right. And it actually gives us an opportunity to draw in more of the crowd from around the entire globe. I think we have 148 different, uh, countries that are represented. Uh, so, um, Oh yeah, it's right. It's a, uh, I think a new platform and, uh, I think it's working very well so far. >>So bill, I, you know, you came into this, this role and immediately, okay. You have dealt with it pandemic I want to talk a little bit about, you know, how you're dealing with that. Um, and we'll get into maybe what you're seeing in your business, you know, the, in, in a way there's a silver lining here. Okay. Okay. It really kind of forces change. You said in your keynote, constant. Uh, but you know, you might have, you know, the business obviously very well and you might've had some gut feels as to where you want it, take it, but change is hard. Boy, everybody has. Okay. Now, so in a way that's sort of a, an accelerant change, your thoughts, what was your first move? Hello, coming into this pandemic. Yeah. Coming into the pandemic. It was one of making sure we understood. Well, what the issues were, getting people home and, and safe working environments. >>So big move was, was that some of our team had a desktop, so they did not have laptops. It made it a little more cumbersome multi-screen so it's really physical activity will move these people. So we moved our whole team, 4,300, about 1300 or so of those people were already, uh, our employees were already working out of their house. Uh, so the big move was let's get them home. Let's make sure they're efficient, good connectivity. And, uh, and with that, we were off and running. I don't believe we missed, uh, much of a beat at all. Considering we started this mid March, we were finishing our a first quarter, which came out right about on plan, which we were really excited about. Okay. It was a, that was the first move I would say. We make a few more to go, okay. The big first move I want to get. >>So I'm going to share some data with you guys. If you bring up the first slide, this is data from our data partner quarter, we go out and we talk customers. And this is a survey of over 1200 of practitioners, buyers, and they're about 120 or so Veeam was in there. And what I'm showing here is data though, the gray bar is data from a year ago, April 19 in survey, the blue bar is January, 2020. And the yellow bar is the April 19, uh, April 20 survey. It was taken right at the height of the lockdown. And, and what this is showing is yep. Customers that are spending more by the percentage of those customers that are doing business with them, the theme, and you can see it, the gray was 50%. It dropped slightly to January nods back up within the height of the lockdown. >>And so what you saw is that new adoptions and people spending more, I E more than 6% is actually, Oh, since, uh, the, the pandemic. Yeah. do you have a w or a bill rather? I'd like to start with you. I wonder if this is what you're seeing, kind of in your businesses, a little bit of an uptick, not all businesses, obviously we're seeing that the, it seems like yours is yeah. Our April was, uh, wow. Mmm. Just amazingly. So, and I think it allowed us to get transition out of the way at the end of March. Well, also closing the quarter, but yeah, we had a, um, we had a double digit gain in it. Hold on. It was extremely a nice way to start that the first month is second quarter. So that's exactly what we're seeing very positive and, you know, Mmm. >>I think that if we talk about Jim, some of the data that you showed in your keynote, you talked about some of the challenges that your, your data showed you guys. Yeah. This new survey. And we'll, we'll talk about that. The data protection. Okay. What stood out was cyber threats. The number one challenge came up and, and I often say that the lines, Queens security, cyber cyberspace, security, and data. Okay, good. And backup and recovery are really starting to blur you guys, aren't known as a cyber company, but increasingly people are thinking about data protection and backup recovery as part of their overall cyber strategy. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And, and I think, um, you know, from, from our most recent release version 10, we built in some new capabilities around a ransomware protection and cybersecurity. So yeah, I would say those lines are blurring, but we're definitely not a security company. >>Uh, although as you mentioned, a backup definitely provides us security and customers want to be able to do yeah. Prior to putting things into production. And that's some of the, some of the new capabilities that we've provided our latest version. Well, I mean, and, and cyber obviously is, is expensive to become a board level topic as you well know, it has been here's the later on we're interviewing Gill Vega, who's your, your newly minted CSO. And you're, you're seeing that, that role, you know, expand, it's not just sort of off on the corner. Okay. It's its problem. Or it's this, the security sec ops teams problem. It really is. Yeah. Is it tongue in cheek is it's a team sport, but yeah. You really have to take a broader view of okay. Of cyber don't you and especially bill given something that you shared in your, a keynote talk, you shared some IDC data, you know, a five X increase in zettabytes over a seven year period. >>I think 33 and 2018 up to one 75, 25 and uptake in bets that IDC is probably low and that number. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Probably low. Well, that's what we're saying. You know, you brought up a good point. It's a evolution into a much larger entity in protecting, I think, many more customers, well, over 375,000 customers, and that's bringing a vague on, or a CSO and a major step for us focus on external and internal. Okay. The threats that exist out there. So a major activity for us and bringing, 'em bringing Gil on. So you're right. Our gross, we think that's where it goes for growth continues to evolve. Uh, we have our customers, um, and what we're trying to make sure we do is we protect. Yeah. Talk about security. That's a little bit, little bit of that protect. Awesome. And then make sure they have access to their data and same with our employee count. >>What are we trying to do? Yeah. COVID-19 is that, we're trying to make sure we can your employees as well as make them yeah. Yup. In this whole process. Yeah. The cyber threats playing into the security. Well, bill staying on, on, on the, COVID a discussion for a minute, you talked in your, you know, what about, there were three things. Okay. the resource management security and governance and, and digital transformation all very relevant in the context of this. Yeah. My question is, can you add some color as to beam's role in those areas? Yeah. Well, clearly in the governance each have, that's built in our product. There's an orchestration on all the products, the offerings that we have, I think, right. Our primary concern, those does go back to go back protecting data and making it accessible. So, I mean, I think that's where it's most common place for us to see our focus has been, has been not security as Jim said, we're not a security. >>Yep. It's really availability data availability and its data availability. Wow. Okay. Uh, back to the hybrid class loud conversation that we, uh, we talked about is that, is that we want to be yeah. Yep. That make data available over hydro hybrid cloud. I think with the COVID-19 it's showing that the cloud base activities are going to be more critical. Cool. Uh, versus, um, in addition to right. Okay. Okay. So an answer that one. So Jim, I want to ask you about something you talked about in the keynote, which is the data protection report. I referenced it earlier. Tell us a little bit more about this, the study you guys. Yeah. You guys are like, I am, you love data. Okay. W what was that study all about and what were some of the key takeaways? Yeah. So just, just a few months back. So it's a fresh off the presses. >>Uh, we, um, I surveyed about 1500, uh, uh, it pros across the world and one to just get a good feel for where their head is, uh, what are some of the key concerns they have? Uh, and so we kind of bucket it into three, three key areas. Uh, one was around downtime threats. Uh, what you talked about, the, the security, uh, in ransomware threats is definitely top of mind, uh, for customers. Uh, we also, um, drill down a little bit into the move to the cloud and then also digital transformation. Uh, and what's clear is that, you know, I think in the past, you know, people thought that, um, you know, their most important data was the only data that needed active. And we're seeing, uh, some compression there relative to, uh, you know, customers thinking they need to do okay. It basically yeah. >>Protect all data. Uh, so, um, the, the difference between sort are the critical data and just normal data is really blending together. Uh, and so they're looking to, to drive efficiencies from that perspective. Uh, and, uh, and I think about 49% of the customers are backing up the cloud today. Uh, so a pretty good number. Uh, but that jumps to, I think, around 76. Yeah. Right. In two years, uh, of customers who believe that they'll be using the cloud as a, um, for backup and then on the digital transformation side of things. No, I don't think there's a company out there who doesn't have some sort of digital transformation initiative. Uh, but they are struggling a little bit, they're struggling, uh, with, um, uh, with, uh, the resources that they have that they have, and, and, uh, those resources being competent to, to really take the company's in a new direction because of a lot of those resources are focused on existing projects and keeping the business up and running. >>Uh, so that's a key area that we're, that they're looking to like free up resources, it's focused on digital transformation. And then we get into some of the benefits that they're seeing from that, uh, and so forth. So, yeah, it's a good all around report to really understand the state of the market. I want to stay on the survey for a minute if I can, and then have that bill tied into the property strategy. Mmm. W w one of the other things, the things that stood out was one of the, the blockers you will, uh, the customer sided, they said lack of skills. So, you know, right. A legacy it, or maybe that's technical debt yeah. As well, uh, and then budget constraints. And so, I mean, yeah. Kind, those are good blockers for you guys. You, you, you simplify, you know, the old yeah. Yes. Works. Mmm. You know, you've been amazing that maintaining relevance or whatever, 10 plus year old company. Yeah. You're right there with all the upstarts and the big portfolio companies. And then of course, budget constraints. I was talking to Anton earlier really focused on the economics. Okay. Protecting data, but maybe you could add some color. So those sorts of sure. Customers referenced. Okay. Because there challenges to moving forward. >>Yeah. Yeah. So, um, you mentioned one big one, which is skills. Uh, so I think, uh, training and education, it is definitely, certainly one of them. Uh, I think from, from beam's perspective, we, we definitely help in all of those areas because, uh, our, our solution is easy to use, uh, easy to manage, easy to deploy. Uh, and so when you look at the resources, Harrison does some of the legacy solutions that our customers have. They're typically able to save a significant amount on the budget side, insignificant amounts on the resources. They just don't simply don't need as many people, uh, to, uh, to operate a beam backup solution. So they can redeploy some of those resources into other areas, uh, which, uh, which has been definitely an attraction to them. You mentioned the IDC data and that bill talked about, but that's one of the reasons if you look back in the second half of 2019, we actually grew three times as fast as the market average. >>Uh, I think mainly because of that, and a lot of people are switching from their legacy over to, uh, to Vien because, because of those reasons. Yeah. So, well, bill, I want to tie that into it. The company's strategy you guys have been okay. I'm unapologetic about the core of which is backup. That was kind of, you know, obviously recovery is part of that. Okay. But, you know, there's a lot of discussion about data management trying to sort of, you know, expand the notion of the Tam and you guys obviously dissipate as well. Well, it's sort of three things yeah. Manage and transform. Well, some of the things that you guys talked about in, you know, but the core is protected. You're all about backup recovery, data protection. Okay. You know, the examples of that at GNC, for example, and some of the others do, you know, uh, discussions were all about protecting some of that for data, but then you get into management is that's sort of Tam expansion, if you will. >>And then the transform, you know, I think we, we, I think we get the, the protector pretty well. It's the managing transform that sometimes there's a little bit, yeah, horrible. Hey, the people, but I wonder if you could sort of add some, some texture to that. Yeah. Well, we've always had a very, yeah. Our focus has been on the protect side and the managed, transform is key pieces that we've added on, uh, over the time period. So playing that bigger Tamar, bigger markets. Yeah. A cloud data management market, it's his 30 plus billion dollar marketplace. So I think you'll see. Um, and that's where, we've where we've expanded. It was three 60. Bye. Alright. Protect category. So it is one of 'em moving on up into that, but we will stay. Huh? Okay. Yeah. Core piece of our business tech side, it's extremely important to us. >>We stay focused, it's allowed our development team just stay focused and bring forth Hmm. We believe peer to any of our competitors and, uh, yeah. Okay. Continue to move that way. So bill, I mean, Veem has always been known for punching above its wait glass. I mean, the, you know, the, the very clever naming of the company are you pronounced parties, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But now they a top dog now. So, uh, maybe the strategy is to continue to punch above the weight class. Yeah. Which would be a great thing. Although you're now a mainstream, you mean 375,000 customers. You're adding in a very, very rapidly pace. You're a big dog now. W what can we expect going forward from being well? Well, you know, a big piece of our change was our universal licensing. So we want to make sure, yeah. >>Those licensed portable, take them with you, be able to use them in a different way, uh, in different settings. So I think we'll work on, uh, always punching above our weight that was really started with our founders. Uh and Andre Bernoff. We, uh, clearly we're number one. People might not have believed that in the beginning, but yeah. We rate to it. So I think you'll see us with more products. Yeah. Innovation in that space. And, um, uh, and, and working very aggressively, too, take command to the multicloud environment. Well, you know, your business practices have always been pretty meeting edge and forward thinking. You mentioned the flexibility and from licensing, you know, that's something that, you know, you're, you're known for even partners when I talk to your partners. They, so yeah. You know, Veeam has made it very simple for us new business. I'm not sure worrying about, so much about who gets to paid, where they've sort of made that transparency. >>You get very high marks for that. And so there's a, yeah. You're known for your tech, you're known for that products. Yeah. But there's also some innovation on the, on the business model side as well. Isn't there. Yep. Absolutely. Our partners, the significant number of partners from what's this a long time. Uh, we do like to make sure that everybody in that the distribution channel and we are two tier distribution. Mmm profitability. Yeah. Keeping it simple, becomes more challenging. I think the larger you get yeah. Uh, very hard making it simple. And it takes some time, a little bit of, um, iteration for us. One of our core values, innovate, iterate to make it simple, to keep it that way. We want our partners to be, be comfortable working with us and making good economics and knowing that we're going to bring, we're going to bring that roadmap products, uh, and to them when we get our products ready and they are the products in the market place, that situation in the lab. >>Yep. We're going to work the first time we're going to work well for me. Sure. Well, Jim, I wanted to ask you about some of the customers that you referenced. Okay. I mentioned G GNC, you guys showed a video of that. That was pretty cool. Okay. It was interesting hero motor Corp. Oh. They don't call themselves a motorcycle company, but that's essentially what they are. And then, and then IBM cloud was really interesting to see them in there partner. There, there are customer, I guess. Hm, yup. Editor or one side of the house. So that was kind of an interesting example. Some of the customer takeaways I can share. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, when you look at GNC, uh, you know, some of the things that they referenced was, uh, you know, a, a six figure ROI over, over a three year period. Uh, and again, that was one of the key drivers as to why they went, went with him again, just more efficient. >>Um, and, uh, yeah, Hiro, motor Corp, very interesting. They're the world's largest a manufacturer of two wheel to wheel vehicles and they do produce the, and motorcycle every two seconds. Oh. And they produced over 90 million. So yeah, they're a large organization. I think they have closed. Okay. 10,000 employees, uh, and, um, VJ set the, who is, who is their CIO among other things that their company, um, yeah. Yay. Yeah. As, as you heard, he talks a lot about, uh, how they're managing through COVID-19 and he really is a big believer that number one, you got to take care of your people and make sure that they're safe and make sure that they're set up so that they can work from home and so forth. Uh, but then also really planning for not just managing through the crisis, but also recovery, uh, which, uh, which is really important. >>That was some of the advice that huh, that he gave of course, to a, to the attendees of been, which I think is really good advice. And then IBM cloud has been, yeah, been a great partner, uh, and the customer for, for quite some time, we're working very closely with them backup as a service they're leveraging kind of the full suite of products and getting great traction. And as, as we saw from some of the data, the backup as a service is going to continue to grow. Yeah. That'd be a great opportunity for both IBM and being more contained. Well, it's guys exciting time for you. I mean like many people, I, I bumped into Veeam at a V mug. Ooh, wow. That was, you know, years and years and years ago. And to watch your ascendancy, it has been a pretty astounding products, a very well run company, a good vision, uh, just awesome customer. >>So, so bill, you know, you're on deck, when we get to 2030. Yeah. What do you want this to look like? Uh, well, multi multibillion by 2030, that's a long way out. It'll be interesting in the transformation that is made and we'll see what happens really globally with, um, the whole work from home, how moves, how office space plays into it, product innovation and delivery. We think we're at the forefront back. It started in the virtualization space back in Oh six and, uh, for some really creative projects products, I think we'll continue to S it's extended to see that what's 2030 bring yeah. Multi-billion and we're going to continue to add employees throughout the world. We've got over 4,300 employees, right. You mentioned keynote, uh, that are in them, you know, a multitude of countries. And, uh, it's just an absolute, I'm thrilled to be part of M and M and, uh, help us work as a, uh, a family organization products. Well, we really had a great deal of okay. Following Veem and participating in the beam on, and I really appreciate you guys having us here at the, uh, the, the digital event, but thanks guys for coming on. Yeah. And sharing your insights. Great. Yeah. Thanks very much. Thanks. Thank you for watching the cubes. Continuous coverage of Veem on 2020, the virtual digital version. Keep it right there, right back. Great. The short break.

(upbeat music) >> Hi everybody, welcome back to London. You're watching The Cube, and we have a special coverage here of the pre-day at AWS headquarters in London. I'm Dave Vellante and The Cube, we go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise. Alastair Allen is here, the chief technical officer of Healthcare Kainos Software. It's a Belfast based company, publicly traded company. Alastair, welcome to The Cube. Great to see you, thanks for coming out. You were downstairs earlier addressing the audience, we're gonna talk about that. But first of all, tell us about Kainos. >> So Kainos, Belfast based company, formed in the late '80's a spin out of Queens University in Belfast. We've grown to now over 1300 people and we build digital technology to help people work faster, smarter and better. There's two things we do. We provide digital services, bespoke services for public and private sector organizations across the world, and we provide digital platforms for work day customers and also for healthcare organizations. >> So, when you say digital platforms. What exactly do you mean by that? Tell our audience. >> So, our digital platforms in healthcare is something that we can talk about. So platforms to enable both hospitals to digitize their workflow and also regions, so CCG's , STP's within the NHS. To bring information together using a platform and normalizing that data and making it available to clinicians and patients. >> And this is, your flagship product is called Evolve. Correct? >> Correct. >> And you're one of the sort of founders or inventors of Evolve. Tell us more about Evolve. >> So Evolve, originated just over ten years ago, our first customer was Ipswich Hospital and Ipswich had a big problem with paper, with a large medical records library and they asked us to come in and help them digitize that and make it available in an easy to view, accessible format for their clinicians. >> So tell me more about that. So you digitize it, you take all this mounds of paper and what does that do? Other than reduce the amounts of paper. Does it make it searchable? >> Yeah, we index the content, we apply metadata whenever we capture it, trying to make it accessible for clinicians. I think when you digitize paper , the one good thing paper had going for it was you could pick it up and it was tactile. So we've done a lot of work to try and make it mobile, make it accessible, make it searchable and increasingly now with some of the services that AWS provide, we're able to look at taking that even further and getting more information out of that content. >> Add some color to that. So how has the AWS cloud affected your ability to deliver these capabilities to your customers? >> Well I think, the breathe and depth of services that AWS provide, enables us to be able to innovate quickly, to use services like I've mentioned like comprehend medical. That take the heavy lifting, away from us and helps us focus on delivering better applications for our customers. >> So part of what you do, is you architected the software that's running on the cloud. Can you talk a little bit about the architecture? What you guys have built. Presumably the cloud allows you to scale. >> Alastair Allen: Yeah. >> And take advantage of more innovations. But discuss the architecture if you would. >> So, the product that I originally talked about in 2009 and about four years ago in 2015, we decided to re-platform for the cloud. And that was in response to a number of problems that we were seeing in the market. And moved to patient centered care, a drive to try and standardize care away from the variable nature that was there and also to get away from closed silos of information. And we decided at that point to create our platform natively in the cloud and using the services of Amazon web services. So we created a microservices based architecture that runs in multi-candidate cloud native way. With a AWS. That allows us to adopt disciplines like continuous delivery and cultures like DeVops. We've been able to release value quickly and often to our customers. >> So it was a total rewrite of the platform? >> Yes. So we started again from scratch and we developed that using the modern cloud services. And we've used that then for all use cases as well so we've moved beyond just settings within a hospital. And been able to take that beyond the walls of a hospital, out into the community, into primary care, mental health. And delivering solutions like that, across regions within the NHS, to join up information. Where before clinicians would simply not have had access to those. >> In a sense you're migrating your existing install base to the cloud based platform, as I presume it's a SAS based platform. Is that right? >> So, Evolve Integrated Care is a platform it's a SAS based platform. So we run it, we monitor it, we maintain it and we deliver that as a service to our customers. >> And so your existing customers now have an opportunity to migrate and how does that all work? >> Yeah, so we're talking to our existing customers, how they can leverage the cloud based platform and the breathe of different services that it provides. We very much see an opportunity for helping to digitize a hospital. So how do you optimize the flow of patients through a hospital and making sure that clinicians have access to the information. Many of customers have hundreds of applications, information spread across their estate, bringing that together and orchestrating the workflow for particular pathways or particular conditions. >> Plus they have to manage their own infrastructure, I presume. >> Absolutely, and we want to build applications quickly, they want to focus on delivering healthcare. They don't want to focus on managing ten and server rooms within their hospitals. So, our move to the cloud really came about because of our customers telling us that they're struggling to manage this infrastructure. They wanted us to take some of that burden away from them and to help them with some of their security challenges, availability challenges. Quite often their local infrastructure was not very resilient. And by moving to AWS, we were able to use native cloud services to address many of those challenges. >> So you're taking away that heavy lifting for them. AWS takes it away for you. >> Alastair Allen: Yeah. >> In a large regard as well. While your engineers can obviously program the infrastructure. But how have you seen the customers that have moved and taken advantage of this. What has it done for their business specifically? What's the impact? >> So, what I think, it frees up people within their organization to scale up in other areas to do other things. It frees up physical space as well in many cases. It takes away risks and we've all heard of some of the recent security incidents. Wanna Cry was a huge thing in the NHS not so long ago. Coming around from just simple things like not patching servers and work stations. So, by taking on that responsibility we're freeing up those hospital systems to focus on what they do best. >> How do they do that? Do they kind of retrain folks? What's that been like? I presume it wasn't frictionless but it's an opportunity for people to advance their careers. Do you have any visibility on how your customers have handled that? >> To be honest, not a huge amount. It has, I agree, there has been some friction there. It's not always an easy journey, there's a whole mindset change of what people used to do before and the types of activity that they'll do tomorrow. And it's something that our customers are still on a journey on. And so we're quite early on in that process. >> But I would say to folks in the IT community of your expertise's of managing storage arase, there's probably a better future for you if you can move up the stack and learn more about applications , data, machine intelligence. >> Absolutely, higher up the value chain and getting closer to the user, closer to the customer. >> I mean, that's where the difference is. And it's particularly in healthcare right? You try to balance the cost of healthcare, everybody's aware of the rising cost of healthcare with the patient outcomes. And technology is a way to address that problem. Isn't it? >> Absolutely, and I think never before. I think it's just a great time to work in health IT. We've now got access to some fantastic services the rise of artificial intelligence, the machine learning has never before been so available. And really having organizations such as ourselves to really solve those problems that our customers have and introduce those efficiencies and ultimately better patient outcomes. >> So how are you using the data that lives in Evolve, I presume you're looking at applying artificial intelligence and the like, talk about that. But also, how do you ensure security, privacy, etcetera? >> So, a couple things on data, I think one of the things we've done recently is the adoption of the FHIR standard within healthcare and all the data that we aggregate from the various clinical systems, we normalize that down into a single FHIR data profile and that really helps us then have a common data model that our application can use. But that's only the start, that creates the potential then to use that for secondary usage, such as publishing health data analytics and ultimately machine learning. And we're looking at a number of errors in machine learning, I think there are some ethical challenges there to be aware of and we've started with a recent examples of understanding how we can use machine learning to try and get that structured data out of the documents, that's something that we're working on with data with the AWS team at the minute, to leverage a lot of that scanned content that we have and evolve and be able to create the structured outcome. Really to make it easier for clinicians to find information within the medical record. >> So the AWS reinvent last fall, you know Sage Maker was of course buzzing. Is that something that you're looking at? >> It's something, so we haven't used it in Evolve so far but within Kainos we have an AI practice and we have a group of guys that are focused on the AI capability. Evaluating those tools, working with AWS and helping us understand how we can use that technology to solve the problems of our customers. >> Yeah, it's early days. So you talk about helping solve the problems of the customers. Summarize for us the key problems that you see machine intelligence, AI solving. >> I think there's probably different categories of how you could use it. There's the diagnostic sort of use case where you could use AI to help process imagery, to help with the diagnostic process. There's being able to add personalization to whether that be to patients or to clinicians, helping to provide insight into whatever the use case may be and all the use cases similar to that. >> Last words, so you're addressing the pre-day healthcare reform that's going on here at AWS. What's that like, what's going on downstairs, what did you tell the audience? >> Yeah, great day. So we had a group of healthcare professionals across the NHS in Ireland, very interesting group. We spoke this morning, I spoke with our customer Gloucester CC chief and we talked about the shared care record solution that we've delivered into Gloucester. So that's bringing information together for over 600,000 patients across the region and providing information in a single joined up view that was not available before. So great feedback, great interaction, lots of questions afterwards so looking forward to going back down and chatting some more to the group. >> Excellent. Hard to do that without the cloud I would imagine , accommodating all of the 600,000 customers right. >> Not possible. >> Alastair thanks so much for coming to The Cube. >> Thanks, Dave. >> Appreciate having you. Alright, thanks for watching everybody. Keep it right there, we'll be back with our next guest. You're watching The Cube from AWS headquarter in London. We'll be right back. (upbeat music)

>> From the SiliconANGLE media office, in Boston, Massachusetts, it's the CUBE. Now, here's your host, Stu Miniman. Hi, CUBE nation, I'm Sam Kahane. Thanks for watching the CUBE. Due to popular demand from the community, I will be interviewing the legendary Stu Miniman, here today. He is S-T-U on Twitter. Stu and I are going to be digging in to the 2019 predictions, and also recapping 2018 for you here. So, Stu, let's get into it a little bit. 2018, can you set the stage? How many events did you go to? How many interviews did you conduct? >> Boy, Sam, it's tough to look back. We did so much with the CUBE this year. I, personally, did over 20 shows, and somewhere between 400 and 450 interviews, out of, we as a team did over a 100 shows, over 2000 interviews. So, really great to be in the community, and immerse ourselves, drink from the fire hose, and some of the data. (laughs) >> So, over 400 interviews this year, that's amazing. What about some of the key learnings from 2018? Yeah, Sam,my premise when I'm going out is, how are we maturing? My background, as you know, Sam, I'm an infrastructure guy. My early training was in networking. I worked on virtualization, and I've been riding this wave of cloud for about the last 10 years. So, about two years ago, it was, software companies, how are they living in these public clouds? Amazon, of course, the dominant player in the marketplace, but we know it will be a multi-cloud world. And the update, for 2018, is we've gone from, how do I live in those public clouds, to how are we maturing? We call it hybrid clouds, or multi-cloud, but living between these worlds. We saw the rise in Kubernetes, as a piece of it, but customers have lots of environments, and how they get their arms around that, is a serious challenge out there, today. So, how are the suppliers and communities, and the systems integration, helping customers with this really challenging new environment, that we have today. >> I'd love to hear any OMG moments from you. What surprised you the most this year? >> It's interesting, when I wanna think about some of the big moves in the industry, I mean, we had the largest software acquisition in tech history. IBM, the company you used to work for, Sam, buying Red Hat, a company I've worked with, for about 20 years, for 34 billion dollars. I mean, Red Hat has been the poster child for open source, and the exemplar of that. It was something that was like, wow, this is a big deal. We've been talking for a long time, how important developers are, and how important open source is, and there's nothing like seeing Big Blue, a 107-year-old company, putting in huge dollars, to really, not just validate, cause IBM's been working in open source, working with Linux for a long time, but how important this is to the future. And that sits right at that core of that multi-cloud world. Red Hat wants to position itself to live in a lot of those environments, not just for Linux, but the Middleware, Kubernetes is a big play. We saw a number of acquisitions in the space there. Red Hat bought CoreOS for $250 million. VMware bought Heptio, and was kind of surprised, at the sticker shock, $550 million. Great team, we know the Heptio team well. We talked to them, some of the core people, back when they were at Google. But, some big dollars are being thrown around, in this space, and, as you said, the big one in the world is Amazon. One of the stories that everybody tracked all year was the whole hq2 thing. It kind of struck me as funny, as Amazon is in Seattle. I actually got to visit Seattle, for the first time, this year, and somebody told me, if you look at the top 50 companies that have employees in Seattle, of course, Amazon is number one, but you need to take number two through 43, and add them together, to make them as big as Amazon. Here in Boston, there's a new facility going up, with 5,000 employees. I know they're going to have 25,000 in Long Island City, right in the Queens, in New York City, as well as Crystal City, right outside of DC, 25,000. But, the realization is that, of course, Amazon's going to have data centers, in pretty much every country, and they're going to have employees all around the world. This doesn't just stay to the US, but Amazon, overall. So, Amazon, just a massive employer. I know so many people who have joined them. (laughs) Some that have left them. But, almost everything that I talk about, tends to come back to Amazon, and what there are doing, or how people are trying to compete, or live in that ecosystem. >> You're always talking to the community. What are some of the hottest topics you're hearing out there? >> So, living in this new world, how are we dealing with developers? A story that I really liked, my networking background, the Cisco DevNet team, led by Suzie Wee, is a really phenomenal example, and one of my favorite interviews of the year. I actually got to talk to Suzie twice this year. We've known her for many years. She got promoted to be a Senior Vice President, which is a great validation, but what she built is a community from the ground up. It took about four years to build this platform, and it's not about, "Oh, we have some products, and developers love it.", but it's the marketplace that they live in, really do have builders there. It's the most exciting piece of what's happening at Cisco. My first show for 2019 will be back at Cisco, live in Barcelona, and Cisco going through this massive transformation, to be the dominant networking company. When they talk about their future, it is as a software company. That actually, it blew my mind, Sam. You know, Cisco is the networking company. When they say, "When you think of us, "five to ten years from now, "you won't think of us as a networking company. "You'll think of us as a software company." That's massive. They were one of the four horsemen of the internet era. And, if Cisco is making that change, everything changes. IBM, people said if they don't make this move for Red Hat, is there danger in the future? So, everything is changing so fast, it is one of the things that everybody tries to sort out and deal with. I've got some thoughts on that, which I'm sure we'll get to later on. >> (laughs) As is Suzie Wee one of your top interviews of 2018, could you give your top three interviews? >> First of all, my favorite, Sam, is always when I get to talk to the practitioners. A few of the practitioners I love talking to, at the Nutanix show in New Orleans this year, I talked to Vijay Luthra, with Northern Trust. My co-host of the show was Keith Townsend. Keith, Chicago guy, said, "Northern Trust is one "of the most conservative financial companies", and they are all-in on containerization, modernized their application. It is great to see a financial company that is driving that kind of change. That's kind of a theme I think you'll see, Sam. Another, one, was actually funny enough, Another Nutanix show, at London, had the Manchester City Council. So, the government, what they're doing, how they're driving change, what they're doing with their digital transformation, how they're thinking of IOT. Some of my favorite interviews I've done the last few years, have been in the government, because you don't think of government as innovating, but, they're usually resource-constrained. They have a lot of constituencies, and therefore, they need to do this. The Amazon public sector show was super-impressive. Everything from, I interviewed a person from the White House Historical Society. They brought on Jackie O's original guidebook, of being able to tour the White House. So, some really cool human interest, but it's all a digital platform on Amazon. What Amazon is doing in all of the industry-specific areas, is really impressive. Some of these smaller shows that we've done, are super-impressive. Another small show, that really impressed me, is UiPath, robotic process automation, or RPA, been called the gateway drug to AI, really phenomenal. I've got some background in operations, and one of the users on the program was talking about how you could get that process to somewhere around 97 to 98% compliance, and standardize, but when they put in RPA, they get it to a full six sigma, which is like 99.999%, and usually, that's something that just humans can't do. They can't just take the variation out of a process, with people involved. And, this has been the promise of automation, and it's a theme. One of my favorite questions, this year, has been, we've been talking about things like automation, and intelligence in systems, for decades, but, now, with the advent of AI machine learning, we can argue whether these things are actually artificial intelligence, in what they are learning, but the programming and learning models, that can be set up and trained, and what they can do on their own, are super-impressive, and really poised to take the industry to the next level. >> So, I wanna fast forward to 2019, but before we do so, anything else that people need to know about 2018? >> 2018, Sam, it's this hybrid multi-cloud world. The relationship that I think we spend the most time talking about, is we talked a lot about Amazon, but, VMware. VMware now has over 600,000 customers, and that partnership with VMware is really interesting. The warning, of course, is that Amazon is learning a lot from Vmware, When we joke with my friends, we say, "Okay, you've learned a lot from them means that "maybe I don't need them in the long term." But in the short term, great move for VMware, where they've solidified their position with customers. Customers feel happy as to where they live, in that multi-cloud environment, and I guess we throw out these terms like hybrid, and multi, and things like that, but when I talk to users, they're just figuring out their digital transformation. They're worried about their business. Yes, they're doing cloud, so sassify what you can, put in the public cloud what makes sense, and modernize. Beware of lift and shift, it's really not the answer. It could be a piece of the overall puzzle, to be able to modernize and pull things apart. An area, I always try to keep ahead of what the next bleeding-edge thing is, Sam. A thing I've been looking at, deeply, the last two years, has been serverless. Serverless is phenomenal. It could just disrupt everything we're talking about, and, Amazon, of course, has the lead there. So, it was kind of an undercurrent discussion at the KubeCon Show, that we were just at. Final thing, things are changing all the time, Sam, and it is impossible for anybody to keep up on all of it. I get the chance to talk to some of the most brilliant people, at some of the most amazing companies, and even those, you know, the PhD's, the people inventing stuff, they're like, "I can't keep up with what's going on at my company, "let alone what's going on in the industry." So, that's the wrong thing. Of course, one of the things we helped to do, is to extract the signal from the noise, help people distill that. We put it into video, we put it into articles, we put it into podcasts, to help you understand some of the basics, and where you might wanna go to learn more. So, we're all swimming in this. You know, the only constant, Sam, in the industry is change. >> Absolutely. (laughing in unison) >> So, things are changing. The whole landscape, as you said, is changing. Going into 2019, what should people expect? Any predictions from you? Any big mergers and acquisitions you might see? >> It's amazing, Sam. The analogy I always use is, when you have the hundred year flood, you always say, "Oh gosh, we got through it, "and we should be okay." No, no, no, the concern is, if you have the hundred year flood, or the big earthquake, the chances are that you're going to have maybe something of the same magnitude, might even be more or less, but rather soon. A couple of years ago, Dell bought EMC, largest acquisition in tech history. We spent a lot of time analyzing it. By the way, Dell's gonna go public, December 28. Interesting move, billions of dollars. As Larry Ellison said, "Michael Dell, "he's no dummy when it comes to money.' He is going to make, personally, billions of dollars off of this transaction, and, overall, looks good for the Dell technologies family, as they're doing. So, that acquisition, the Red Hat acquisition, yeah, we're probably gonna see a 10-to-20 billion dollar acquisition this year. I'm not sure who it is. There's a lot of tech IPOs on the horizon. The data protection space is one that we've kept a close eye on. From what I hear, Zeam, who does over a billion dollars a year, not looking to go public. Rubrik, on the other hand, somewhere in the north of 200 million dollars worth of revenue, I kind of remember 200, 250 in run rate, right now, likely going to go public in 2019. Could somebody sweep in, and buy them before they go public? Absolutely. Now, I don't think Rubrik's looking to be acquired. In that space, you've got Rubrik, you've got Cohesity, you've got a whole lot of players, that it has been a little bit frothy, I guess you'd say. But, customers are looking for a change in how they're doing things, because their environments are changing. They've got lots of stuff in sass, gotta protect that data. They've got things all over the cloud, and that data issue is core. When we actually did our predictions for 2018, data was at the center of everything, when I talked about Wikibon. It was just talking to Peter Burris and David Floyer, and they said there is some hesitancy in the enterprise, like, I'm using Salesforce, I'm using Workday I'm using ServiceNow. We hear all the things about Facebook giving my data away, Google, maybe the wrong people own data, there's that concern I want to pull things back. I always bristle a little bit, when you talk about things like repatriation, and "I'm not gonna trust the cloud." Look, the public clouds are more secure, than my data centers are in general, and they're changing and updating much faster. One of the biggest things we have, in IT, is that I put something in, and making changes is tough. Change, as we said, is the only thing constant. It was something I wrote about. Red Hat, actually, is a company that has dealt with a lot of change. Anybody that sells anything with Linux, or Kubernetes, there are so many changes happening, on not only weekly, but a daily basis, that they help bring a little bit of order, and adult supervision, to what most people would say is chaos out there. That's the kind of thing we need more in the industry, is I need to be able to manage that change. A line I've used many times is, you don't go into a company and say, "Hey, what version of Azure are you running?" You're running whatever Microsoft says is the latest and greatest. You don't have to worry about Patch Tuesday, or 08. I've got that things that's gonna slow down my system for awhile. Microsoft needs to make that invisible to me. They do make that thing invisible to me. So does Amazon, so does Google. >> What's your number one company to watch, this upcoming year. Is it Amazon, Sam? Look, Amazon is the company at the center of it all. Their ecosystem is amazing. While Amazon adds more in revenue, than the number two infrastructure player does in revenue. So, look, in the cloud space, it is not only Amazon's world. There definitely is a multi-cloud world. I went to the Microsoft show for the first time, this year, and Microsoft's super-impressive. They focus on your business applications, and their customers love it. Office 365 really helped move everybody towards sass, in a big way, and it's a big service industry. Microsoft's been a phenomenal turnaround story, the last couple of years. Definitely want to dig in more with that ecosystem, in 2019 and beyond. But, Amazon, you know, we could do more shows of the CUBE, in 2019, than we did our first couple of years. They have, of course, Amazon re:Invent, our biggest show of the year, but their second year, it's about 20 shows, that they do, and we're increasing those. I've been to the New York City Summit, and the San Francisco Summit. I've already mentioned their Public Sector Summit. Really, really, really good ecosystems, phenomenal users, and I already told you how I feel about talking to users. It's great to hear what they're doing, and those customers are moving things around. Google, love doing the Google show. We'll be back there in April. Diane Greene is one of the big guests of the year, for us this year. I was sorry to miss it in person, 'cause I actually have some background. I worked with Diane. Back before EMC bought VMware. I had the pleasure of working with Vmware, when they were, like, a hundred person company. Sam, one of the things, I look back at my career, and I'm still a little bit agog. I mean, I was in my mid-20s, working in this little company, of about 100 people, signed an NDA, started working with them, and that's VMware, with 600,000 customers. I've watched their ascendancy. It's been one of the pleasures of my career. There's small ones, heck. Nutanix I've mentioned a couple of times. I started working them when they were real small. They have over a billion in revenue. New Cure, since the early days. Some companies have done really well. The cloud is really the center of gravity of what I watch. Edge computing we got into a bit. I'm surprised we got almost 20 minutes into this conversation, without mentioning it. That, the whole IOT space, and edge computing, really interesting. We did a fun show with PTC, here in Boston. Got to talk to the father of AI, the father of virtual reality. It's like all these technologies, many of which have been bouncing around for a couple of decades. How are they gonna become real? We've got a fun virtual reality place right next door. The guy running the cameras for us is a huge VR enthusiast. How much will those take the next step? And, how much are things stalling out? I worry, was having conversations. Autonomous vehicles, we're even looking at the space. Been talking about it. Will it really start to accelerate? Or have we hit road blocks, and it's gonna get delayed. Some of these are technologies, some of these are policies in place, in governments and the like, and that's still one of the things that slows down crowded options. You know, GDPR was the big discussion, leading into the beginning of 2018. Now, we barely talk about it. There's more regulations coming, in California and the like, but we do need to worry about some of those macro-economical and political things that sometimes get in the way, of some of the technology pieces. >> I'd love to put something out into the universe, here. If you could interview anyone in the world, who would it be? Let's see if we can make it happen. It's amazing to me, Sam, some of the interviews we've done. I got a one-on-one with Michael Dell this year. It was phenomenal, Michael was one. It took us about three or four years before we got Michael on the program, the first time. Now, we have him two or three times a year. Really, to get to talk to him. There is the founder culture John Furrier always talks about. Some of these founders are very different. Michael, amazing, got to speak to him a couple of times. There's something that makes him special, and there's a reason why he's a billionaire, and he's done very well for himself. So, that was one. Furrier also interviewed John Chambers, who is one of the big gets I was looking at. I was jealous that I wasn't able to get there. I got to interview one of my favorite authors this year, Walter Isaacson, at the shows. When I look at, Elon Musk, of course, as a technologist, is, I'm amazed. I read his bio, I've heard some phenomenal interviews with him. Kara Swisher did a phenomenal sit-down on her podcast with him. Even the 60 Minutes interview was decent this year. >> The Joe Rogan one was great >> Yeah, so, you'd want to be able to sit down. I wouldn't expect Elon to be a 15-minute, rapid-fire conversation, like we usually have. But, we do some longer forms, sit down. So he would be one. Andrew Jassy, we've interviewed a number of times now. Phenomenal. We've got to get Bezos on the program. Some of the big tech players out there. Look, Larry Ellison's another one that we haven't had on the program. We've had Mark Hurd on the program, We've had lots of the Oracle executives. Oracle's one that you don't count out. They still have so many customers, and have strong power in new issues, So there are some big names. I do love some of the authors, that we've had on the program, some thought leaders in the space. Every time we go to a show, it's like, I was a little disappointed I didn't get to interview Jane Goodall, when she was at a show. Things like that. So, we ask, and never know when you can get 'em. A lot of times, it's individual stories of the users, which are phenomenal, and there's just thousands of good stories. That's why we go to some small shows, and make sure we always have some editorial coverage. So that, if their customers are comfortable sharing their story, that's the foundation our research was founded on. Peers sharing with their peers. Some of the most powerful stories of change, and taking advantage of new technologies, and really transforming, not just business, but health care and finance, and government. There's so much opportunity for innovation, and drivers in the marketplace today. >> Stu, I love it. Thanks for wrapping up 2018 for us, and giving us the predictions. CUBE nation, you heard it here. We gotta get Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Larry Ellison on the CUBE this year. We could use your help. Stu, thank you, and CUBE nation, thank you for watching. (electronic techno music)

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: Live from Vancouver, Canada, It's theCUBE. Covering OpenStack Summit, North America, 2018. Brought to you by Red Hat, the OpenStack Foundation, and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of OpenStack Summit 2018, here in Vancouver. Three days wall-to-wall coverage. I'm Stu Miniman with my cohost, John Troyer. Happy to welcome back to the program, Radhesh Balakrishnan, who is the general manager of OpenStack with Red Hat. Radhesh, great to see you. It's been a week since John talked to you, and always good to have you on at the show. >> Great to be on. Good to be here talking about OpenStack at OpenStack Summit. >> Yeah so, look, OpenStack is in the title of your job. I believe, did we have a birthday cake and a party celebrating a certain milestone? >> That is indeed true; so it's the fifth anniversary of that fact that we've had a product, Red Hat OpenStack Platform, on the market. And so, we've been doing a little bit of a look back at how far we have come in the last five years as well as looking ahead at, you know, how does the next three to five years shape as well. >> Yeah, Radhesh, I'm going to date myself and when I think back to, gosh it was 18 years ago, I was working with Linux, and there were kernels all over the place and things like that. And then, I worked for an enterprise storage company and was like, ugh, like keeping up with Chrome.org was a pain in the neck. There came out this thing called Red Hat Advanced Server that was like, oh wait, we can glom onto this, we can support this with our customers, and that eventually turned into RHEL, which, of course, kind of becomes the main standard for how to do Linux. I feel like we have a lot of similarities. >> Radhesh: Absolutely, absolutely. >> In how we did. RHOSP, I believe, is the acronym, so. >> That's exactly right, and we like to have long names. >> Which are very descriptive, but Red Hat OpenStack Platform, fundamentally, to your point brings the same valid proposition that RHEL brought to Linux, to OpenStack, with the twist that, it's not just curated OpenStack, but it's a co-engineered solution of Linux and Cavium and OpenStack. And along the way we learned that, look, it's not just OpenStack and the infrastructure solution. It's done in conjunction with the software-defined storage solution or it's done in conjunction with software-defined networking. Or, fast-forward all the way now, it's being done in conjunction with cloud-native applications running on top of it, right? But regardless, in five years we've been able to grow to address these different demands being placed at infrastructure level, and at the same time evolved to address new-use cases as well; Telco is an example of that. >> Radhesh, let's spend a couple of minutes, though, on the OpenStack Platform itself from Red Hat. Some of the things, guys, that you were bringing to market, I know we talked about, here at the show, fast-forward upgrades, for instance were, they were just introducing, and maybe some other things in the Queens release that you all are bringing forward and have engineered. >> Yeah, thanks for that question, very topical, in the sense that yesterday we launched OSP 13, which is the latest and greatest version based on Queens release. If you look at the innovation packed in that it fundamentally falls in three buckets. One is the bread part that you talked about, whereby, anybody who is standing on OSP 10, which was the prior, long-release lifecycle product, over to 13, how do you kind of get over there in a graceful manner is the first area that we have addressed. The second area is around security, because how do you make sure that OpenStack-based clouds are secure by default, from the day you roll out all the way to until you retire it, right? I don't know if there's going to be a retirement, but that's the intent of all the security enablements that we have in the product as well. And the third one, how do we make sure that containers in OpenStack can come together in a nice manner. >> Yeah, the container piece is something else that, so a lot of effort, here at the show. They announced Kata containers, which, trying to give the security of a VM, lightweight VM. How does Red Hat look at Kata containers? I know Red Hat, you know Linux's containers, you know, very strong position, fill us in on that. >> Yeah, to maybe pull back a little bit and then look at the larger picture of there is the notion of infrastructure or the open infrastructure that you need and OpenStack is a good starting point for that. And then, you overlay on top of that an application deployment management configuration, lifecycle management solution that's the container platform called OpenShift, right. These are the two centers of gravity for the stack. Now, aspects such as Kata containers or Hubbard, which is for again, similar concept of addressing how do you use virtualization in addition to containers to bring some of the value around security et cetera, right? So we are continuing to engage in all these upstream projects, but we'll be careful and methodical in bringing those technologies into our products as we go along. >> Okay, how about Edge is the other kind of major topic that we're having here, I know I've interviewed some Red Hat customers looking at NFV solutions, so some of the big telcos you know specifically that use various pieces. What do you hear from your customers and help us kind of draw that line between the NFV to the Edge. Yeah, so Edge has become the center is kind of the new joke in the sense that, from an NFV perspective, customers have already effectively addressed the CORD errors and the challenges, now it's about how do you scale that and deploy that on a massive scale, right? That's a good problem to have. Now the goodness of virtualization can be brought all the way down to the radio Edge so that a programmable network becomes the reality that a telco or a carrier can get into. So in that context, Edge becomes a series of use cases. You know, it's not just one destination. Another way to say it is there is Edge an objective and there is Edge as a noun. Edge as the objective is a set of technologies that are enabling Edge, Edge networking, right. Edge management, for example, and then Edge as a destination where you have a series of Edge locations starting from CORD error center going all the way to radio. Now, the technology answers for all these are just being figured out right now. So you can say, you know, put crudely, KBM, OpenStack, containers, and Ansible will be all good elements that will come into the picture when it comes to a solution for all these footprints. >> Nice. Radhesh, maybe let's switch over to talk about the summit here, and the people here, filled with people being productive with OpenStack, right? Either looking at it, upgrading it, inheriting it. We talked to people in a bunch of different scenarios Red Hat, huge installed base, and you are good at helping and supporting, and uplifting, and upskilling a set of operators who started with Linux and now have to be responsible for an entire cloud infrastructure. Plus, now, at this conference, we've been talking about containers, we've been talking about open dev, right. That's again broadening the scope of what an operator might have to deal with. How does Red Hat look at that? How are you and your team helping upskill and enhance the role of the operator? >> Yeah, so I think it comes down to, how do we make sure that we are understanding the journey that the operator himself or herself is taking from a career perspective, right, the skill set of evolving from Linux and core automation-related skills to going to being able to understand what does it mean to live with cloud implementation on a day-to-day basis. What does it mean to live with network function virtualization as the way in which new services are going to be deployed. So, our course curriculum has evolved to be able to address all these needs today. That's one dimension, the other dimension is how do we make sure that the product itself is so easy that the journey is getting to a point where the infrastructure is invisible, and the focus is on the application platform on top. So I think we have multiple areas of focus to get to the point where it's so relevant that it's invisible, if that paradox makes sense. That's what we're trying to make happen with OpenStack. >> Radhesh, Red Hat has a very large presence at the show here; we were noting in the keynote the underlying infrastructure didn't get a lot of discussion because it is more mature, and therefore, we can talk about everything like VGPUs and containers, and everything like that. But Red Hat has a lot in the portfolio that helps in some of those underlying pieces. So maybe you can give us some of the highlights there. >> Absolutely, so we aren't looking at OpenStack as the be-all end-all destination for customers, but rather an essential ingredient in the journey to a hybrid cloud. So when you have that lens it becomes natural to you that a portfolio of our offerings, which are either first-party or in conjunction with our partners --we have over 400 partners with whom we have joint solutions as well -- so you naturally take a holistic view and then say, "How do you optimize the experience of ceph plus OpenStack for example." So we were talking about Edge recently, right, in the context of Edge we realize that there is a particular use-case for hyperconverged infrastructure whereby you need to collocate, compute, and store it in a way that the footprint is so small and easy to manage plus you want to have one life-cycle both for OpenStack and ceph right, so to address that we announced, right at hypercloud infrastructure for cloud, as an offering that is co-engineered between ceph team, or our storage team, and the OpenStack team. Right, that's just an example of how, by bringing the rest of the portfolio, we're able to address needs being expressed by our customers today. Or you look forward in terms of use-case, one thing that we are hearing from all our large customers, such as the Amadeus's of the world is, make the experience of OpenShift on OpenStack, easy to deploy and manage, as well as reduce the penalty of running containers on VMs. Because we understand the benefits of security and all of that, but we want to be able to get that without having any penalty of using a virtual infrastructure so that's why we're heavily focused on OpenShift, on OpenStack, as the form-factor for delivering that while continuing to work on things such as Kata containers as well as, you know, Kuryrs, as technology is evolving to make communities much richer as well as the infrastructure management at OpenStack level richer. >> You brought up an interesting point, we spoke a little bit yesterday with John Allessio and Margaret Dawson, about really that kind of multi-cloud world out there, because pieces like Kubernetes and Ansible, aren't just in the data center with this one stack, it's spanning across multiple environments and when we talk to customers, they do cloud, and cloud is multiple things in multiple places and changing all the time. So I'd love to get your viewpoint on what you hear from customers, how Red Hat's helping them across all those environments. >> Absolutely, so the key differentiation we see in being able to provide to our customers is that unlike some of the other providers out there, they're where they are stitching you with a particular private cloud, with the particular public cloud, and then saying, "Hey, this is sort of the equivalent of the AOL walled gardens, if you will, right, that's being created for a particular private and public cloud. What we're saying is fundamentally three things. First is, the foundation of Linux skills from RHEL that you have is going to be what you can build on to innovate for today and tomorrow, that's number one. Secondly, you can invest in infrastructure that is 100% open using OpenStack so that you can use commodity hardware, bring in multiple use-cases which are bleeding it, such as data lags, big data, Apache Spark, or going all the way to cloud-native application, development on top of OpenStack. And then last but not least, when you are embarking on a multi-cloud journey it is important that you're not tied to innovation speed of one particular public cloud provider, or even a private cloud provider, for that matter, so being able to get to a container platform, which is OpenShift, that can run pretty much everywhere, either on PREM or on a public cloud, and give you that single pane of consistency for your application, which is where business and IT alignment is the focus right now, then I think you've got the best of all the worlds. You know, freedom from vendor-lock in, and a future-proof infrastructure and application platform that can take you to where you need to go, right. So pretty excited to be able to deliver on that consistently as of today, as well as in the coming years. >> All right, we just want to give you the final word, for people out there that ... you know, often they get their opinion based on when they first heard of something. OpenStack's been around for a number of years, five years now, with your platform. Give us the takeaway for 2018 here from OpenStack Summit as to how they should be thinking about OpenStack, in that larger picture. >> The key takeaway is that OpenStack is rock-solid, that you can bring into your environment, not just to power your virtual machine infrastructure, but also baremetal infrastructure on which you can bring in containers as well. So if you're thinking about an infrastructure fabric, either to power your telco network or to power your private cloud in its entirety OpenStack is the only place that you need to be looking at and our OpenStack platform from end to end delivers that value proposition. Now the second aspect to think about is, OpenStack is a step in the journey of a hybrid future destination that you can get to. Red Hat not only has the set of surround products and technologies to round-up the solution, but also have the largest partner ecosystem to offer you choice. So what's your excuse from getting to a hybrid cloud today if not tomorrow? >> Well, Radhesh Balakrishnan, thank you for all the updates appreciate catching up with you once again. For John Troyer, I'm Stu Minimam, getting near the end of three days wall-to-wall coverage here in Vancouver, thank you so much for watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Vancouver, Canada. It's theCUBE covering OpenStack Summit North America 2018, brought to you by Red Hat, the OpenStack Foundation and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman and my cohost John Troyer and you're watching theCUBE, the worldwide leader in tech coverage and this is exclusive coverage from OpenStack Summit 2018 in Vancouver. Usually this time of year it is a little bit overcast, but for the second time the OpenStack Summit has been here, the sun is shining. It has been gorgeous weather but we are in here really digging in and understanding it One of the people I have gotten to know through this community especially, is our wrap up guest today, Sean Michael Kerner, who is a senior editor with eWeek, amongst other bi-lines that you have. Pleasure to see you. >> Great, good seeing you too Stu. >> Alright, so we let you keep on the Toronto Bluejays hat >> Thank you, there we go. >> We have had quite a few Canadians on our program here. >> Well, seeing as how you're here in Canada, it's not all that surprising. >> It's lovely. They have you working on Victoria Day. >> Yeah, that's unfortunate but I will take Memorial Day off in a week, so it works out. >> Excellent. So Sean, for our audience that might not know you, give us a little bit about your background. You've been to umpteen of these shows. >> Sure. I have been with the same publication roughly, I guess 15-16 years at this point. I've been writing before there was cloud, core living and Opensource stuff, networking. And then through the magic of technology, I shifted a little bit to security, which is a core focus for me. I have been to every OpenStack Summit since the San Diego Summit, I guess, 2011. Somebody can correct me afterwards. I did miss the Sydney Summit for various reasons, but yeah, I've been to a bunch of these things, so interesting to see how things have shifted over the years from nothing to certain heights to where we are now. >> Alright, so bring us up to that, as to where we are now. Attendance is down a little bit. They haven't been talking a lot about it but quality I guess is here. Sessions, they've broadened down a bit of the scope. We have been digging into it, but want to get your take so far. >> Yeah, well it's like anything else, there are standard hype cycles, as it were and there's a trough of disillusionment. I wouldn't call this a trough of disillusionment, but when you get to a certain plateau, people just, there'sn't as much interest. In the early days, I remember the San Diego Summit I went to. They didn't schedule it properly. They didn't know how many people they were going to have, and they had to line up around the corner and stuff. That was six years ago, but that is when OpenStack was new. There was no such thing as the Foundation, and everyone was trying to figure out what was what. And, there was no clue at this point. Cloud is a well understood thing. There are competitive efforts or complimentary efforts, as the Foundation would probably like to put it; whether it's CNCF, there's the public cloud and it's different. There is, with all respect to the OpenStack Foundation and its member projects, there's not as much excitement. This in now a stable, mature ecosystem and because of that, I don't think there's as much of a draw. When something is brand new and shiny, you get more of a draw. If they would have put the name Blockchain somewhere, maybe, maybe they would have had a few more. They put Kubernetes in there, which is fine, but no machine learning or artificial intelligence quite yet, though that's a topic somewhere in there too. >> Yeah, John, you've been making a lot of comments this week talking about we've matured and the lower layer pieces just work a bit more. Give us your take about that. >> Sure. That's the way it seems. There wasn't a whole lot of talk about the release, news release, and all the different components, even the keynotes. But, the people we have talked to, both on the vendor and the customer side, they have working production OpenStack environments. They're very large. They require very few admins. They work. They're embedded in telecom and banking, et cetera. It's here and it's working. >> Yeah, that's so something that happened, maybe three cycles ago at this point, because they used to have the release the same time as the Summit and the Design Summit. It was together, so, there was essentially a celebration of the release. People would talk about the release and then they desegrigated that. I think that took a lot of steam out of the reason why you got developers to attend. So, when you don't have the Design Summit, there's this separate open endeavor, there's the forum, I don't quite understand how that works here now. There isn't as much momentum. Yeah, I agree with you. There has been very little talk about Queens. In each of the project update sessions I have been to, and I have been to a couple, there has always been a slight on Rocky, what's coming. I think we are on the second milestone of Rocky, at this point, so there's some development, but at this point it is incremental featurettes. There is no whiz bang. OK, we're going to have flying cars, you know send a Tesla to outer space kind of Earth shattering kind of news, literally, because that's not where it's at. It's just incremental tuck in features in stability and that kind of thing. >> Alright, you talk space and thinks like that and it brings to mind a certain attendee of the program that has actually been to outer space and maybe one of the more notable moments of the show so far. Give us your take on Mr. Shuttleworth. >> Well, I'm a big fan of Mr. Shuttleworth, top to bottom. Hey Mark. Big fan, always have been. He has his own opinion on things of course. Usually in a keynote you don't tend to take direct aim at competitors and he chose to do that. It made some people a little uncomfortable. I happened to be sitting in the front row, where I like to sit, and there was some Red Hat people, and there were some frantic emails going back and forth. And people were trying to see what was going on et cetera. I think, for me, a little bit of drama is okay. You guys go to more shows than I do, and sometimes you get these kind of sales kind of things. But in an open community, there's almost an unwritten rule, which perhaps will be written after this conference, that whether or not everybody is a business competitor or not, is that this is neutral territory as it were and everybody is kind of friendly. In the exhibit hall, you can say this and that, we are better, whatever, but on the stage you don't necessarily do that, so there was some drama there. Some of my peers wrote about that and I will be writing about it as well. It's a, I prefer to write about technology and not necessarily drama. Whether somebody is faster, better, stronger than others, you let the number prove them out. When we talk about Opensource, Opensource Innovation without Canonical, there probably wouldn't have been an OpenStack. All the initial OpenStack reference and limitations are on Canonical. They got a number of large public clouds, as does Red Hat. I think they both have their tactical merits and I'm sure on some respects Red Hat's better and on some respects Canonical is better, but him standing up there and beating on the competition was something that across the 13 summits I have been I have never seen before. One guy I talked to my first OpenStack Summit was in San Diego and the CTO of VMware at the time came up to, VMware was not an OpenStack contributor at the time, they were thinking about it, and he was fielding questions about how it was competitive or not and he was still complimentary. So there has always been that kind of thing. So, a little bit of an interesting shift, a little bit of drama, and gives this show something memorable, because you and I and others will be able to talk about this five years from now, et cetera. >> You talked about something you would write up. I mean part of your job is to take things back to the readers at eWeek. >> Yeah. >> What are the things, highlights you're going to be covering? >> The highlights for me, Stu and I talked about this at one point off the camera, this is not an OpenStack Summit necessarily, they're calling it Open Infrastructure. I almost thought that they would change, we almost thought that they would change the name of the entire organization to the Open Infrastructure Foundation. That whole shift, and I know the foundation has been talking about that since Sydney last year, that they're going to shift to that, but, that's the take away. The platform itself is not the only thing. Enabling the open infrastructure is nice. They're going to try and play well and where it fits within the whole stack. That gets very confusing because talking about collaboration is all fine and nice, but that is not necessarily news. That is how the hot dog is made and that's nice. But, people want to know what's in that dog and how it is going to work. I think it's a tougher show for me to cover than it has been in past years, because there has been less news. There's no new release. There was Kata 1.0 release and there was the Zuul project coming out on its own. Zuul project, they said it was 3.0, it was actually March was Zuul 3.03. Kata Container project, okay, interesting, we'll see how it goes. But a tougher project, tougher event for me to cover for that reason. Collaboration is all fine and nice. But, the CNCF CloudNativeCon KubeCon event two weeks ago, or three weeks ago, had a little bit more news and a lot it's same kind of issues come up here. So, long winded answer, tough to come up with lessons learned out of this, other than everyone wants to be friends, well some people want to be. And, collaboration is the way forward. But that is not necessarily a new message. >> When I think about Kubernetes, we are talking about the multi cloud world and that's still, the last few years, where it's been. Where does OpenStack really fit in that multi cloud world? One of the things I have been a little disappointed actually, is most of the time, when I'm having a conversation, it's almost the, yeah, there's public cloud, but we are going to claw things back and I need it for governments, and I need all of these other things. When I talk to customers, it is I'm going to choose what I put in my data center. I'm going to choose how I use probably multiple public cloud finders. It is not an anti-public cloud message, and it feels a little bit on the anti-public cloud mass. I want to work with what you're hearing when you >> talk to users? >> When I talk to users, vast majority of people, unless it's something, where there's regulatory issues or certain legacy issues or private cloud, public cloud period. The private cloud idea is gone or mostly gone. When I think about private clouds, it's really VmWare. We have virtualized instances that sitting there. >> What's OpenStack? >> OpenStack is fine, but how many are running OpenStack as a private cloud premise? >> Yeah, so what's OpenStack then? >> When I think of OpenStack, Oracles public cloud. Oracle is not here surprisingly. Oracle's public cloud, Larry Ellison, who I know you guys have spoken to more than once on theCUBE at various points on Oracle World and other things. Oracle's public cloud, they want to compete against AWS. That's all. OpenStack IBM cloud, all OpenStack. The various big providers out of China are OpenStack based. OEH is here. So that's where it fits in is that underlying infrastructure layer. Walmart uses it. Bestbuy, all these other places, Comcast, et cetera; ATT. But individual enterprises, not so much. I have a hard time finding individual enterprises that will tell me we are running our own private cloud as OpenStack. They will tell me they're running VmWare, they will tell me they're running REV or even some flavor of Citrix end server, but not a private cloud. They may have some kind of instances and they will burst out, but it's not, I don't think private cloud for mid tier enterprises ever took off the way some people thought five years ago. >> That's interesting. Let's go meta for a second. You talked about things you do and don't write about, you don't necessarily write the VC's are not here necessarily, but you don't write about necessarily financial stuff. >> Sometimes. There was actually at the Portland summit, I did a panel with press and analysts at the time and afterwards there might have been four different VC's that came up to me and asked me what I thought about different companies. They were looking at different things where they would invest. And I remember, we looked at the board and one VC who shall remain nameless, and I said you know what, we'll look at this board with all these companies and five years from now, three quarters of them will not be here. I think I was probably wrong because it is more than that. There are so many. I wrote a story, I don't remember the exact name of it, but I wrote a story not that long ago about OpenStack deadpool. There are so, multiple companies that raised funding that disappeared. In the networking space, there were things like Plumgrid, they mminorly acquired for assets by Vmware, if I'm not mistaken. There was Pivotal, Joshua McKenzie, one of the co-founders of OpenStack itself, got acquired by Cisco. But they would have collapsed perhaps otherwise. Nebula Computing is perhaps, it still shocks me. They raised whatever it was 50 odd million, someone will correct me afterward. Chris Kemp, CTO of NASA who helped start it. Gone. So, there has been tremendous consolidation. I think when VC's lose money, they lose interest really fast. The other thing you have to think about, from the VC side, they don't write too much on the financial. My good friend Fredrick, who didn't make it, Where are you, Fredrick, where are you? Does more on that funding side. But has there been a big exit for an OpenStack company? Not really, not really. And without that kind of thing, without that precedence it's a tough thing, especially for a market that is now eight years old, give or take. >> Even the exits that had a decent exit, you know that got bought into the say IBM's, Cisco's of the world, and when you look a couple of years later, there's not much left of those organizations. >> Yeah. It's also really hard. People really don't want to compete against, well, some people want to compete against AWS. But, if you're going to try to go toe to toe with them, it's a challenge. >> Okay, so what brings you back here every year? You're speaking at the show. You're talking to people. >> What brings me back here is regardless of the fact that momentum has probably shifted, it's not in that really hype stage, OpenStack's core infrastructure, literally, core infrastructure that runs important assets. Internet assets, whether it certain public cloud vendors, large Fortune 500 companies, or otherwise. So it's an important piece of the stack, whether it's in the hype cycle or not, so that brings me back, because it's important. It brings me back because I have a vested interest. I have written so much about it so I'm curious to see how it continues to evolve. Specifically, I'm speaking here on Thursday doing a panel on defending Cloud Counsel Security as a core competence, a core interest for me. With all these OpenStack assets out there, how they're defended or not is a critical interest. In the modern world, cyber attacks are a given. Everybody should assume they're always under a constant state of attack and how that security works is a core area of interest and why I will keep coming back. I will also keep coming back because I expect there to be another shift. I don't think we have heard the end of the OpenStack story yet. I think the shift towards open infrastructure will evolve a little bit and will come to an interesting conclusion. >> Alright, last thing is what's your favorite question you're asking at this show. Any final things you want to ask us as we wrap? >> Yeah, my favorite, well, I want to ask you guys, what the most interesting answer you got from all the great people you interviewed because I'm sure some of it was negative and you got mostly positive as well. >> Well, we aren't used to answering the questions Stu. >> I'm used to being on the other side here, right. >> Well, I do say we got a lot of stuff about some interesting and juicy cases, like I say, the practitioners I talked to were real. I was always impressed by how few administrators it takes to run a huge OpenStack based cloud once it's set up. I think that's something interesting to me. You asked some folks about a public cloud a lot. >> Yeah, so it has been interesting. For me, it's, we've reached that certain maturity level. I was looking at technology. What's kind of the watermark that this is going to come to? We had said years ago, I don't think you're going to have somebody selling a billion dollars worth of distribution on OpenStack. So, that story with how Kubernetes and Containers and everything fits in, OpenStack is part of the picture, and it might not be the most exciting thing, but then again, if you watch Linux as long as most of us have, Red Hat took a really long time to get a billion dollars and it was much more than just Linux that got them there. This still has the opportunity to be tooling inside the environment. We have talked to a number of users that use it. It's in there. It's not that the flagpole, we're an OpenStack company anymore because there really aren't many companies saying that that is the core of their mission, but that is still an important piece of the overall fabric of what we are covering. >> Exactly right. >> Alright, we on that note, Sean Michael Kerner, we really appreciate you joining us. Please support good technology journalism because it is people like him that help us understand the technology. I read his stuff all the time and always love chatting with him off the record and dragged him on here and Fredrick from Techron Show we are disappointed you could not join us, but we'll get you next time. For Jon Troyer, I'm Stu Miniman, be sure to join us for the third day tomorrow of three days of wall to wall live coverage here from OpenStack Summit 2018 in Vancouver. And once again, thank you for watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: Live from Vancouver, Canada. It's the Cube. Covering OpenStack Summit, North America, 2018. Brought to you by Redhat, the OpenStack foundation and it's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to the Cube. I'm Stu Miniman with my co-host John Troyer, and your watching the Cube, the worldwide leader in tech coverage. Happy to welcome back back to the program, Arturo Suarez, who is with Canonical, program director. Haven't have him on for a couple of hours, Arturo, thanks for joining me again. >> Thanks for having me. >> Alright and David Safaii who is the CEO of Trilio Data. We introduced your company to our community last year at the show in our backyard in Boston, so, thanks for joining us here in beautiful Vancouver. >> Thanks for having me again, good to see ya. >> Alright so, David, let's start with you. It's you know, a year since we talked to you, you know data management, absolutely, you know, such a hot space. Bring us into that update as to your company, what's happening in OpenStack and lets get into it from there. >> Sure. It's been an exciting year since I seen you last, you know. I think part of it's been the evolution and the maturity of this ecosystem that we're seeing. More business units are now moving production workloads into this environment. So the call to Trilio has really taken place. A lot of the times your seeing these cloud teams having to scramble to find the proper data protection solution. Trilio being a cloud native backup solution, you know, for this environment, its just a logical selection. >> Yeah, its one of those things I scratch my head, maybe you can explain to me, is, remember back in I was like, when we did virtualization, it was like took a little while before we had a good backup, you know, solution for there. When we go to cloud its like, wait, oh wait, lets not forget that there are things like security and backup. Why does it take a little bit while for that to kind of catch up into the market and have good solutions? >> So if you think about it this way, when people start this journey, right, the initial intent a lot of the time is to have some stateless workloads. We know that's not the case. Perception and reality. And your going to see it in the container market as well. So that's kind of the evolution that you see, that's kind of the draw that we see. >> Okay, Arturo, explain to us how Canonical fits. >> So, obviously Canonical powers more OpenStack than anyone else does. So OpenStack foundation survey would like to say it. But that's a fact, that's what I'll write. So, we're happy to partner with Trilio. We've always been very keep to accommodate the ecosystem in our story. Trilio vault matches very well our idea of having better economics as well for the data center. And it opens up OpenStack, not only for the original goal of OpenStack, like the hyper scalers or the scale out applications, right, which are cloud native if you want and are born on OpenStack. And OpenStack is born for them right, for that type of application. But now it opens that to a wide range of existing, I wouldn't call it legacy, but, you know what I mean like old applications that are really not going to be refreshed, you know. You'll only refresh that many applications year after year. 10% of your applications, 15% if you have a good devops team. Those still are suffering lock in from being in that virtualization world, or not even there, right. And with OpenStack and the addition of Trilio as a backup DR solution, just somebody provide what a pet VM needs right. So somebody opens up to a large real state of a data center to be accommodated in OpenStack seamlessly. >> It's great, Chris, here at OpenStack Summit this year, kind of the customers your seeing, someone said to me the other day that, you know the people here this year are people with mortgage to pay. And they meant that in a complimentary way, in that they're not like the cloud astronauts or they're not arguing about the philosophy of what is a true cloud. They actually have business to do. So I don't know, your talking about some of what your seeing here at this show and you know the kinds of people or maybe, you know, who are the folks that are using or kind of folks that are using Trilio today? >> Yeah and I think the conversation has been, the high quality conversations, higher caliber conversation where its a lot of day two conversations that have taken place, so, it's been engaging. People need to act, they need to move. They've got these fabulous clouds that's slicing and dicing, they're expanding in every which way possible. Now they say, alright, we have to codify this. You know the journey to the cloud doesn't have to be painful. And that's one of the great things that Canonicals done well, right. Build, operate, manage - here's your cloud, we're going to stand it up, you know, it's everything you need. Now with Trilio its not "Can I add back up to it?", like fries, it's just not like that. It's adding data protection to codify that and again that's why we're seeing these people start, are coming. They're asking that kind of, they're asking that question. >> Are you mostly talking to folks over in the enterprise space? I mean with OpenStack right, a lot of the conversations in the carrier space, they have some slightly different needs. Or how is that working for you? >> No, it's broadened. I'd say our customer base is everything from manufacturing to receiving financial services all over the world, adopt OpenStack. So, again it goes to the testament of adopting and building much easier than every before and the economics are big benefit. >> In terms of building on top of OpenStack or you know so directly with the APIs. And OpenStack has a number of components all with APIs and component, so how is that relationship been working with Canonical and the state of both Canonical's OpenStack as well as the standard, you know, getting used to the standard parts of the OpenStack stack. >> Yeah so we certify ourselves across the distribution, but you know, part of this is a seamless integration through leveraging juju charms for example. The lifecycle management of that cloud. So whether your going through an upgrade process or staying up a new cloud, Trilio just fits hand and glove with Canonical. >> Yeah at the end of the day APIs are APIs, OpenStack are OpenStack, right. That is very well defined. It's how you build it. When you build it to just take a picture of it and have an OpenStack up and running, or, when you build it to have an OpenStack that's going to be in your data center for ten years, for 20 years, right, that is a credible data center right. So that is our main difference. The OpenStack and the end of the day, the API is just consumable just for us as well as for the other guys, its exactly the same API. We don't modify, not everybody, right, but we do not modify anything from OpenStack. It's pure appstring OpenStack, right, there's no real difference there. >> Okay, what about I think service providers would be key market for this, how does that play in for both of you? >> I mean the service provider market of course is a big adapter of OpenStack and then now your seeing also with NFV environment, the rapid adoption there. It's been an important add to the OpenStack cloud if you think about how do I recover my configurations in that environment, so. >> Exactly and we mentioned before like right, the expansive real estate even in the world of service providers when you move out of the core, right, and they're challenging SLAs, right. So DR is effectively and that data protection as well because the VNFs that their running are effectively managing data that is prone to be protected, specially you know, in countries in Europe for instance, with the GDPR etc., you really need to have accountability of what data is in your data center without, you know, taking into account the economics of having an extra data center there, right. So the DR and data protection elements are key to the cloud strategy of service providers, right. >> What are folks looking at is cross cloud strategies and backup. Like what is the target right, I'm assuming either, cross data center or also up to the public cloud. How are people looking at that? Either one. >> So we see it, as far as the backend store of the target, we really have certified ourselves across any backup target. Within Canonical they're using self storage. If they added benefit of geo replication, right, so the DR story starts to evolve there. So site goes down, you have geo replication, you have Trilio there to spin backup that other site back up again. Relative to the public cloud, you know, as the hybrid world continuously evolves, you know, we're ready for that. We have qualified against S3 for example. But no ones banging down the door just at this moment. I think a lot of people just need to get the blocking and tackling done and leverage really the assets that they have, to make the most out of it, get the ROI there. And then we'll see if the demand evolves. >> So the beauty is to have the choice right, the freedom of choice. Which is what some of the private infrastructure software doesn't allow you to do. Like this is a one thing you can eat today, right. So that freedom of choice, whether you want to put that in a public cloud, if it's security compliant and what not, or you want to have that in another region or replicated somewhere else, another storage backend that is colder and cheaper and you know, so. That freedom of choice is a great asset. >> Arturo, what are you looking forward to in terms of the evolution of OpenStack storage and data capabilities? >> So, OpenStack is already opened up for absolutely everything, right. Storage in fact in OpenStack was, this is my 15th OpenStack, so I've been following it from the very very beginning right. So the storage in OpenStack is actually was the project that was mature first... >> Well I didn't want to start the question off with well, OpenStack storage is kind of done right. But... >> But it is right. At the end of the day when you look at all the existing, more legacy type of a storage filers, already have an integration with OpenStack. OpenStack made a turn few years ago, again, I'm telling my old stories of OpenStack, but when we started doing Cinder. And the Cinder drivers would apply in that to Neutron and the Neutron plugins now for network. But the Cinder drivers actually are a very easy way to plug in literally any other storage solution that you might find out there. And the beauty of it is that you can, you don't have to choose one. You can have many storage back ends in your data center right. So that is there. And then it will be, as we talked before, it be just a decision on the per use cases. Canonical will be part of that. Canonical will have a solution ready for each of those use cases by enabling partners. And obviously there will be some of them that will be more adequate to with the compliance and security terms, right. >> David, I'd love you to follow up on that. So there is the companies that have gone through the alphabet from A through Queens, and have the bumps and bruises. What's it like being a startup, getting into the ecosystem you know more recently. What's the opportunities? >> Yeah, I mean, I think for us the customers are at various points in their journeys right. So we have be able to qualify whether your kilo or your on queens. And we have to be able to deliver a service that you know is rock solid. So that's an onus on us. To deliver all that, make sure it's bullet proof. So it takes a lot of work. But, the community's been great to work with, the customers view us as partners. And they're willing to work with you, which has been fantastic, you know. >> Okay. Want to give you both a final take aways from the event. David you want to start? >> Sure. So as I was saying before I think the conversations been high caliber conversations, right. It's been interesting for us, because if you think about back up and DR, data protection is actually a much broader term and I think it evolves. And I think we're on a great spot for it to evolve even further. We take a workload, a point in time, right, if the conversation becomes about workload mobility inside your cloud, I can move it to any part, and that's some of the conversations that we've had using back up for resource management, right, I want to move tenants from one availability zone to another availability zone. Or I'm standing up a new cloud. That's just part of the by product of backup and recovery. One of the things that we're actually, we're exploring and we'll give you guys a nice showcase of this in Berlin is that we'll be running scanners through our back ups. Doing more with points in time, to give your tenants and your customers the ability to go back to the best last known state, you know it's clean. All the patches, the configurations, the anti-virus type stuff. So this is going to be a great evolution it's going to be a great journey. Having the ability of being a startup gives us the flexibility and we can be nimble, where a legacy data protection has 30 year old code and they don't have that ability. So, it's been great. >> So as you know, following up on what David said, right, the flexibility of having a data protection solution finally on OpenStack, being able to compare and win against all the private cloud infrastructure is a great asset. The fact that OpenStack now you see is ready for prime because it gets less media attention its not shiny anymore it's not that interesting to talk about OpenStack. But everyone needs an OpenStack solution, right. The ecosystem landscape where come from the digital wars back in the day, we're not wasting time right there right. So it's more of a filling a need that OpenStack opens up for. And Trilio has done that very well in the data protection domain. >> It's been a really great relationship. >> Alright, David Safaii, Arturo Suarez, thank you so much for joining us again. And check out thecube.net. If you go to the site, not only can you search by events and by guest but if you put in keyword, for example, getting ready for this event, I typed OpenStack in and there were hundreds of interviews that we've done over the years, not only at this OpenStack summit, but many other shows that have talked about it. Go find them, poke around, you know, so much content to be able to dig in. For John Troyer, I'm Stu Miniman, back with a lot more coverage here at OpenStack Summit 2018 in Vancouver. Thanks for watching the Cube. (Background music)

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live from Vancouver, Canada. It's The Cube covering Openstack Summit, North America, 2018. Brought to you by Red Hat, The Open Stack Foundation, and it's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to The Cube's coverage of Openstack Summit 2018 in Vancouver. I'm Stu Miniman with cohost of the week, John Troyer. Happy to welcome back to the program Stephan Fabel, who is the Director of Ubuntu product and development at Canonical. Great to see you. >> Yeah, great to be here, thank you for having me. Alright, so, boy, there's so much going on at this show. We've been talking about doing more things and in more places, is the theme that the Open Stack Foundation put into place, and we had a great conversation with Mark Shuttleworth, and going to dig in a little bit deeper in some of the areas with you. >> Stephan: Okay, absolutely. >> So we have the Cube, and we're go into all of the Kubernetes, Kubeflow, and all those other things that we'll mispronounce how they go. >> Stephan: Yes, yes, absolutely. >> What's your impression of the show first of all? >> Well I think that it's really, you know, there's a consolidation going on, right? I mean, we really have the people who are serious about open infrastructure here, serious about OpenStack. They're serious about Kubenetes. They want to implement, and they want to implement at a speed that fits the agility of their business. They want to really move quick with the obstrain release. I think the time for enterprise hardening delays an inertia there is over. I think people are really looking at the core of OpenStack, that's mature, it's stable, it's time for us to kind of move, get going, get success early, get it soon, then grow. I think most of the enterprise, most of the customers we talk to adopt that notion. >> One of the things that sometimes helps is help us lay out the stack a little bit here because we actually commented that some of the base infrastructure pieces we're not talking as much about because they're kind of mature, but OpenStack very much at the infrastructure level, your compute, storage, and network need to understand. But then we when we start doing things like Kubernetes as well, I can either do or, or on top of, and things like that, so give us your view as to what'd you put, what Canonical's seeing, and what customers-- how you lay out that stack? >> I think you're right, I think there's a little bit of path-finding here that needs to be done on the Kubernetes side, but ultimately, I think it's going to really converge around OpenStack being operative-centric, and operative-friendly, working and operating the infrastructure, scaling that out in a meaningful manner, providing multitenancy to all the different departments. Having Kubernetes be developer-centric and really help to on-board and accelerate the workload that option of the next gen initiatives, right? So, what we see is absolutely a use case for Kubernetes and OpenStack to work perfectly well together, be an extension of each other, possibly also sit next to each other without being too incumbenent there. But I think that ultimately having something like Kubernetes contain a based developer APIs that are providing that orchestration layer are the next thing, and they run just perfectly fine on Canonical OpenStack. >> Yeah, there certainly has been a lot of talk about that here at the show. Let's see, let's go a level above that, things we run on Kubernetes, I wanted to talk a little bit about ML and AI and Kubeflow. It seems like we're, I'd almost say that we're, this is like, if we were a movie, we're in a sequel like AI-5; this time, it's real. I really do see real enterprise applications incorporating these technologies into the workflow for what otherwise might be kind of boring, you know, line of business, can you talk a little bit about where we are in this evolution? >> You mean, John, only since we've been talking about it since the mid-1800s, so yeah. >> I was just about to point that out, I mean, AI's not new, right? We've seen it since about 60 years. It's been around for quite some time. I think that there is an unprecedented amount of sponsorship of new startups in this area, in this space, and there's a reason why this is heating up. I think the reason why ultimately it's there is because we're talking about a scale that's unprecedented, right? We thought the biggest problem we had with devices was going to be the IP addresses running out, and it turns out, that's not true at all, right? At a certain scale, and at a certain distributed nature of your rollout, you're going to have to deal with just such complexity and interaction between the underlying, the under-cloud, the over-cloud, the infrastructure, the developers. How do I roll this out? If I spin up 1000 BMs over here, why am I experiencing dropped calls over there? It's those types of things that need to be self-correlated. They need to be identified, they need to be worked out, so there's a whole operator angle just to be able to cope with that whole scenario. I think there's projects that are out there that are trying to ultimately address that, for example, Acumos (mumbles) Then, there is, of course, the new applications, right? Smart cities to connect to cars, all those car manufacturers who are, right now, faced with the problem: how do I deal with mobile, distributed inference rollout on the edge while still capturing the data continually, train my model, update, then again, distribute out to the edge to get a better experience. How do I catch up to some of the market leaders here that are out there? As the established car manufacturers are going to come and catch up, put more and more miles autonomously on the asphalt, we're going to basically have to deal with a whole lot more of proctization of machine-learning applications that just have to be managed at scale. And so we believe for all certain good company in that belief that having to manage large applications at scale, that containers and Kubernetes is a great way to do that, right? They did that for web apps. They did that for the next generation applications. This is one example where with the right operators in mind, the right CRDs, the right frameworks on top of Kubernetes managed correctly, you are actually in a great position to just go to market with that. >> I wonder if you might have a customer example that might go to walk us through kind of where they are in this discussion, talk to many companies, you know, the whole IOT even pieces were early in this. So what's actually real today, how much is planning, is this years we're talking before some of these really come to fruition? >> So yeah, I can't name a customer, but I can say that every single car manufacturer we're talking to is absolutely interested in solving the operational problem of running machine-learning frameworks as a service, making sure those are up running and up to speed at any given point in time, spin them up in a multitenant fashion, make sure that the GPU enablement is actually done properly at all layers of the virtualization. These are real operational challenges that they're facing today, and they're looking to solve with us. Pick a large car manufacturer you want. >> John: Nice. We're going down to something that I can type on my own keyboard then, and go to GitHub, right? That's one of the places to go where it is run, TensorFlow of machine-learning framework on Kubernetes is Kubeflow, and that little bit yesterday on stage, you want to talk about that maybe? >> Oh, absolutely, yes. That's the core of our current strategy right now. We're looking at Kubeflow as one of the key enablers of machine-learning frameworks as a service on top of Kubernetes, and I think they're a great example because they can really show how that as a service can be implemented on top of a virtualization platform, whether that be KVM, pure KVM, on bare metal, on OpenStack, and actually provide machine-learning frameworks such as TensorFlow, Pipe Torch, Seldon Core. You have all those frameworks being supported, and then basically start mix and matching. I think ultimately it's so interesting to us because the data scientists are really not the ones that are expected to manage all this, right? Yet they are the core of having to interact with it. In the next generation of the workloads, we're talking to PHDs and data scientists that have no interest whatsoever in understanding how all of this works on the back end, right? They just want to know this is where I'm going to submit my artifact that I'm creating, this is how it works in general. Companies pay them a lot of money to do just that, and to just do the model because that's where, until the right model is found, that is exactly where the value is. >> So Stephan, does Canonical go talk to the data scientists, or is there a class of operators who are facilitating the data scientists? >> Yes, we talk to the data scientists who understand their problems, we talk to the operators to understand their problems, and then we work with partners such as Google to try and find solutions to that. >> Great, what kind of conversations are you having here at the show? I can't imagine there's too many of those, great to hear if there are, but where are they? I think everybody here knows containers, very few know Kubernetes, and how far up the stack of building new stuff are they? >> You'd be surprised, I mean, we put this out there, and so far, I want to say the majority of the customer conversations we've had took an AI turn and said, this is what we're trying to do next year, this is what we're trying to do later in the year, this is what we're currently struggling with. So glad you have an approach because otherwise, we would spend a ton of time thinking about this, a ton of time trying to solve this in our own way that then gets us stuck in some deep end that we don't want to be. So, help us understand this, help us pave the way. >> John: Nice, nice. I don't want to leave without talking also about Microcades, that's a Kubernetes snap, you code some clojure download, Can we talk a little bit about that? >> Yeah, glad to. This was an idea that we conceived that came out of this notion of alright, well if I do have, talking to a data scientist, if I do have a data scientist, where does he start? >> Stu: Does Kubernetes have a learning curve to date? >> It does, yeah, it does. So here's the thing, as a developer, you have, what options do you have right when you get started? You can either go out and get a community stood up on one of the public clouds, but what if you're in the plane, right? You don't have a connection, you want to work on your local laptop. Possibly, that laptop also has a GPU, and you're a data scientist and you want to try this out because you know you're going to submit this training job now to a (mumbles) that runs un-prem behind the firewall with a limited training set, right? This is the situation we're talking about. So ultimately, the motivation for creating Microcades was we want to make this very, very equivalent. Now you can deploy Kubeflow on top of Microcades today, and it'll run just fine. You get your TensorBoard, you have Jupyter notebook, and you can do your work, and you can do it in a fashion that will then be compatible to your on-prem and public machine-learning framework. So that was your original motivation for why we went down this road, but then we noticed you know what, this is actually a wider need. People are thinking about local Kubernetes in many different ways. There are a couple of solutions out there. They tend to be cumbersome, or more cumbersome than developers would like it. So we actually said, you know, maybe we should turn this into a more general purpose solution. So hence, Microcades. It works like a snap on your machine, you kick that off, you have Kubernetes API, and under 30 seconds or little longer if your download speed plays a factor here, you enable DNS and you're good to go. >> Stephan, I just want to give you the opportunity, is there anything in the Queens Release that your customers have been specifically waiting for or any other product announcements before we wrap? >> Sure, we're very excited about the Queens Release. We think Queens Release is one of the great examples of the maturity of the code base and really the knot towards the operator, and that, I think was the big challenge beyond the olden days of OpenStack where the operators took a long time for the operators to be heard, and to establish that conversation. We'd like to say and to see that OpenStack Queens has matured in that respect, and we like things like Octavia. We're very exciting about (mumbles) as a service, taking its own life and being treated as a first-class citizen. I think that it was a great decision of the community to get on that road. We're supporting as a part of our distribution. >> Alright, well, appreciate the update. Really fascinating to hear about all, you know, everybody's thinking about it and really starting to move on all the ML and AI stuff. Alright, for John Troyer, I'm Tru Miniman. Lots more coverage here from OpenStack Summit 2018 in Vancouver. Thanks for watching The Cube. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Vancouver, Canada it's theCUBE, covering OpenStack Summit North America 2018. Brought to you by Red Hat, the OpenStack foundation, and its Ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman and my cohost John Troyer and you're watching theCUBE's coverage of OpenStack Summit 2018 here in Vancouver. Happy to welcome first-time guest Roland Cabana who is a DevOps Manager at Vault Systems out of Australia, but you come from a little bit more local. Thanks for joining us Roland. >> Thank you, thanks for having me. Yes, I'm actually born and raised in Vancouver, I moved to Australia a couple years ago. I realized the potential in Australian cloud providers, and I've been there ever since. >> Alright, so one of the big things we talk about here at OpenStack of course is, you know, do people really build clouds with this stuff, where does it fit, how is it doing, so a nice lead-in to what does Vault Systems do for the people who aren't aware. >> Definitely, so yes, we do build cloud, a cloud, or many clouds, actually. And Vault Systems provides cloud services infrastructure service to Australian Government. We do that because we are a certified cloud. We are certified to handle unclassified DLM data, and protected data. And what that means is the sensitive information that is gathered for the Australian citizens, and anything to do with big user-space data is actually secured with certain controls set up by the Australian Government. The Australian Government body around this is called ASD, the Australian Signals Directorate, and they release a document called the ISM. And this document actually outlines 1,088 plus controls that dictate how a cloud should operate, how data should be handled inside of Australia. >> Just to step back for a second, I took a quick look at your website, it's not like you're listed as the government OpenStack cloud there. (Roland laughs) Could you give us, where does OpenStack fit into the overall discussion of the identity of the company, what your ultimate end-users think about how they're doing, help us kind of understand where this fits. >> Yeah, for sure, and I mean the journey started long ago when we, actually our CEO, Rupert Taylor-Price, set out to handle a lot of government information, and tried to find this cloud provider that could handle it in the prescribed way that the Australian Signals Directorate needed to handle. So, he went to different vendors, different cloud platforms, and found out that you couldn't actually meet all the controls in this document using a proprietary cloud or using a proprietary platform to plot out your bare-metal hardware. So, eventually he found OpenStack and saw that there was a great opportunity to massage the code and change it, so that it would comply 100% to the Australian Signals Directorate. >> Alright, so the keynote this morning were talking about people that build, people that operate, you've got DevOps in your title, tell us a little about your role in working with OpenStack, specifically, in broader scope of your-- >> For sure, for sure, so in Vault Systems I'm the DevOps Manager, and so what I do, we run through a lot of tests in terms of our infrastructure. So, complying to those controls I had mentioned earlier, going through the rigmarole of making sure that all the different services that are provided on our platform comply to those specific standards, the specific use cases. So, as a DevOps Manger, I handle a lot of the pipelining in terms of where the code goes. I handle a lot of the logistics and operations. And so it actually extends beyond just operation and development, it actually extends into our policies. And so marrying all that stuff together is pretty much my role day-to-day. I have a leg in the infrastructure team with the engineering and I also have a leg in with sort of the solutions architects and how they get feedback from different customers in terms of what we need and how would we architect that so it's safe and secure for government. >> Roland, so since one of your parts of your remit is compliance, would you say that you're DevSecOps? Do you like that one or not? >> Well I guess there's a few more buzzwords, and there's a few more roles I can throw in there but yeah, I guess yes. DevSecOps there's a strong security posture that Vault holds, and we hold it to a higher standard than a lot of the other incumbents or a lot of platform providers, because we are actually very sensitive about how we handle this information for government. So, security's a big portion of it, and I think the company culture internally is actually centered around how we handle the security. A good example of this is, you know, internally we actually have controls about printing, you know, most modern companies today, they print pages, and you know it's an eco thing. It's an eco thing for us too, but at the same time there are controls around printed documents, and how sensitive those things are. And so, our position in the company is if that control exists because Australian Government decides that that's a sensitive matter, let's adopt that in our entire internal ecosystem. >> There was a lot of talk this morning at the keynote both about upgrades, and I'm blanking on the name of the new feature, but also about Zuul and about upgrading OpenStack. You guys are a full Upstream, OpenStack expert cloud provider. How do you deal with upgrades, and what do you think the state of the OpenStack community is in terms of kind of upgrades, and maintenance, and day two kind of stuff? >> Well I'll tell you the truth, the upgrade path for OpenStack is actually quite difficult. I mean, there's a lot of moving parts, a lot of components that you have to be very specific in terms of how you upgrade to the next level. If you're not keeping in step of the next releases, you may fall behind and you can't upgrade, you know, Keystone from a Liberty all the way up to Alcatel, right? You're basically stuck there. And so what we do is we try to figure out what the government needs, what are the features that are required. And, you know, it's also a conversation piece with government, because we don't have certain features in this particular release of OpenStack, it doesn't mean we're not going to support it. We're not going to move to the next version just because it's available, right? There's a lot of security involved in fusing our controls inside our distribution of OpenStack. I guess you can call it a distribution, on our build of OpenStack. But it's all based on a conversation that we start with the government. So, you know, if they need VGPUs for some reason, right, with the Queens release that's coming out, that's a conversation we're starting. And we will build into that functionality as we need it. >> So, does that mean that you have different entities with different versions, and if so, how do you manage all of that? >> Well, okay, so yes that's true. We do have different versions where we have a Liberty release, and we have an Alcatel release, which is predominant in our infrastructure. And that's only because we started with the inception of the Liberty release before our certification process. A lot of the things that we work with government for is how do they progress through this cloud maturity model. And, you know, the forklift and shift is actually a problem when you're talking about releases. But when you're talking about containerization, you're talking about Agile Methodologies and things like that, it's less of a reliance on the version because you now have the ability to respawn that same application, migrate the data, and have everything live as you progress through different cloud platforms. And so, as OpenStack matures, this whole idea of the fast forward idea of getting to the next release, because now they have an integration step, or they have a path to the next version even though you're two or three versions behind, because let's face it, most operators will not go to the latest and greatest, because there's a lot of issues you're going to face there. I mean, not that the software is bad, it's just that early adopters will come with early adopter problems. And, you know, you need that userbase. You need those forum conversations to be able to be safe and secure about, you know, whether or not you can handle those kinds of things. And there's no need for our particular users' user space to have those latest and greatest things unless there is an actual request. >> Roland, you are an IAS provider. How are you handling containers, or requests for containers from your customers? >> Yes, containers is a big topic. There's a lot of maturity happening right now with government, in terms of what a container is, for example, what is orchestration with containers, how does my Legacy application forklift and shift to a container? And so, we're handling it in stages, right, because we're working with government in their maturity. We don't do container services on the platform, but what we do is we open-source a lot of code that allows people to deploy, let's say a terraform file, that creates a Docker Host, you know, and we give them examples. A good segue into what we've just launched last week was our Vault Academy, which we are now training 3,000 government public servants on new cloud technologies. We're not talking about how does an OS work, we're talking about infrastructures, code, we're talking about Kubernetes. We're talking about all these cool, fun things, all the way up to function as a service, right? And those kinds of capabilities is what's going to propel government in Australia moving forward in the future. >> You hit on one of my hot buttons here. So functions as a service, do you have serverless deployed in your environment, or is it an education at this point? >> It's an education at this point. Right now we have customers who would like to have that available as a native service in our cloud, but what we do is we concentrate on the controls and the infrastructure as a service platform first and foremost, just to make sure that it's secure and compliant. Everyone has the ability to deploy functions as a service on their platform, or on their accounts, or on their tenancies, and have that available to them through a different set of APIs. >> Great. There's a whole bunch of open-source versions out there. Is that what they're doing? Do you any preference toward the OpenWhisk, or FN, or you know, Fission, all the different versions that are out there? >> I guess, you know, you can sort of like, you know, pick your racehorse in that regard. Because it's still early days, and I think open to us is pretty much what I've been looking at recently, and it's just a discovery stage at this point. There are more mature customers who are coming in, some partners who are championing different technologies, so the great is that we can make sure our platform is secure and they can build on top of it. >> So you brought up security again, one of the areas I wanted to poke at a little bit is your network. So, it being an IS provider, networking's critical, what are you doing from a networking standpoint is micro-segmentation part of your environment? >> Definitely. So natively to build in our cloud, the functions that we build in our cloud are all around security, obviously. Micro-segmentation's a big part of that, training people in terms of how micro-segmentation works from a forklift and shift perspective. And the network connectivity we have with the government is also a part of this whole model, right? And so, we use technologies like Mellanox, 400G fabric. We're BGP internally, so we're routing through the host, or routing to the host, and we have this... Well so in Australia there's this, there's service from the Department of Finance, they create this idea of an icon network. And what it is, is an actually direct media fiber from the department directly to us. And that means, directly to the edge of our cloud and pipes right through into their tenancy. So essentially what happens is, this is true, true hybrid cloud. I'm not talking about going through gateways and stuff, I'm talking about I speed up an instance in the Vault cloud, and I can ping it from my desktop in my agency. Low latency, submillisecond direct fiber link, up to 100g. >> Do you have certain programmability you're doing in your network? I know lots of service providers, they want to play and get in there, they're using, you know, new operating models. >> Yes, I mean, we're using the... I draw a blank. There's a lot of technologies we're using for network, and the Cumulus Networking OS is what we're using. That allows us to bring it in to our automation team, and actually use more of a DevOps tool to sort of create the deployment from a code perspective instead of having a lot of engineers hardcoding things right on the actual production systems. Which allows us to gate a lot of the changes, which is part of the security posture as well. So, we were doing a lot of network offloading on the ConnectX-5 cards in the data center, we're using cumulus networks for bridging, we're working with Neutron to make sure that we have Neutron routers and making sure that that's secure and it's code reviewed. And, you know, there's a lot of moving parts there as well, and I think from a security standpoint and from a network functionality standpoint, we've come to a happy place in terms of providing the fastest network possible, and also the most secure and safe network as possible. >> Roland, you're working directly with the Upstream OpenStack projects, and it sounds like some others as well. You're not working with a vendor who's packaging it for you or supporting it. So that's a lot of responsibility on you and your team, I'm kind of curious how you work with the OpenStack community, and how you've seen the OpenStack community develop over the years. >> Yeah, so I mean we have a lot of talented people in our company who actually OpenStack as a passion, right? This is what they do, this is what they love. They've come from different companies who worked in OpenStack and have contributed a lot actually, to the community. And actually that segues into how we operate inside culturally in our company. Because if we do work with Upstream code, and it doesn't have anything to do with the security compliance of the Australian Signals Directorate in general, we'd like to Upstream that as much as possible and contribute back the code where it seems fit. Obviously, there's vendor mixes and things we have internally, and that's with the Mellanox and Cumulus stuff, but anything else beyond that is usually contributed up. Our team's actually very supportive of each other, we have network specialists, we have storage specialists. And it's a culture of learning, so there's a lot of synchronizations, a lot of synergies inside the company. And I think that's part to do with the people who make up Vault Systems, and that whole camaraderie is actually propagated through our technology as well. >> One of the big themes of the show this year has been broadening out of what's happening. We talked a little bit about containers already, Edge Computing is a big topic here. Either Edge, or some other areas, what are you looking for next from this ecosystem, or new areas that Vault is looking at poking at? >> Well, I mean, a lot of the exciting things for me personally, I guess, I can't talk to Vault in general, but, 'cause there's a lot of engineers who have their own opinions of what they like to see, but with the Queens release with the VGPUs, something I'd like, that all's great, a long-term release cycle with the OpenStack foundation would be great, or the OpenStack platform would be great. And that's just to keep in step with the next releases to make sure that we have the continuity, even though we're missing one release, there's a jump point. >> Can you actually put a point on that, what that means for you. We talked to Mark Collier a little bit about it this morning but what you're looking and why that's important. >> Well, it comes down to user acceptance, right? So, I mean, let's say you have a new feature or a new project that's integrated through OpenStack. And, you know, some people find out that there's these new functions that are available. There's a lot of testing behind-the-scenes that has to happen before that can be vetted and exposed as part of our infrastructure as a service platform. And so, by the time that you get to the point where you have all the checks and balances, and marrying that next to the Australian controls that we have it's one year, two years, or you know, however it might be. And you know by that time we're at the night of the release and so, you know, you do all that work, you want to make sure that you're not doing that work and refactoring it for the next release when you're ready to go live. And so, having that long-term release is actually what I'm really keen about. Having that point of, that jump point to the latest and greatest. >> Well Roland, I think that's a great point. You know, it used to be we were on the 18 month cycle, OpenStack was more like a six month cycle, so I absolutely understand why this is important that I don't want to be tied to a release when I want to get a new function. >> John: That's right. >> Roland Cabana, thank you the insight into Vault Systems and congrats on all the progress you have made. So for John Troyer, I'm Stu Miniman. Back here with lots more coverage from the OpenStack Summit 2018 in Vancouver, thanks for watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live, fro-- >> Announcer: Live from Vancouver, Canada it's theCUBE! Covering OpenStack Summit North America 2018. Brought to you by Red Hat, the OpenStack Foundation, and it's ecosystem partners. >> Hi and welcome to SiliconANGLE Media's production of theCUBE here at OpenStack Summit 2018 in Vancouver. I'm Stu Miniman with my cohost, John Troyer. We're here for three days of live wall-to-wall coverage at the OpenStack Foundation's show they have it twice a year John, pleasure to be with you again, you and I were together at the OpenStack show in Boston, a year ago, little bit further trip for me. But views like this, I'm not complaining. >> It's a great time to be in Vancouver, little bit overcast but the convention center's beautiful and the people seem pretty excited as well. >> Yeah so if you see behind us, the keynote let out. So John, we got to get into the first question of course for some reason the last month people are always Hey Stu where are you, what're you doing and when I walk through the various shows I'm doing when it comes to this one they're like, why are you going to the OpenStack show? You know, what's going on there, hasn't that been replaced by everything else? >> I got the same thing, there seems to be kind of a almost an antireligious thing here in the industry maybe more emotional perhaps at other projects. Although frankly look, we're going to take the temperature of the community, we're going to take the temperature of the projects, the customers, we got a lot of customers here, that's really the key here is that our people actually using this, being productive, functional, and is there enough of a vendor and a community ecosystem to make this go forward. >> Absolutely, so three years ago, when we were actually here in Vancouver, the container sessions were overflowing, people sitting in the aisles. You know containers, containers, containers, docker, docker, docker, you know, we went through a year or two of that. Then Kubernetes, really a wave that has taken over, this piece of the infrastructure stack, the KubeCon and CloudNativeCon shows, in general, I think have surpassed this size, but as we know in IT, nothing ever dies, everything is always additive, and a theme that I heard here that definitely resonated is, we have complexity, we need to deal with interoperability, everybody has a lot of things and that's the, choose your word, hybrid, multi-cloud world that you have, and that's really the state of opensource, it's not a thing, it's there's lots of things you take all the pieces you need and you figure out how to put 'em together, either buy them from a platform, you have some integrator that helps, so somebody that puts it all together, and that's where, you know, we live here, which is, by they way, I thought they might rename the show in the open, and they didn't, but there's a lot of pieces to discuss. >> Definitely an open infrastructure movement, we'll probably talk about that, look I loved the message this morning that the cloud is not consolidating, in fact it's getting more complicated, and so that was a practical message here, it's a little bit of a church of opensource as well, so the open message was very well received and, these are the people that are working on it, of course, but yeah, the fact that, like last year I thought in Boston, there was a lot of, almost confusion around containers, and where containers and Kubernetes fit in the whole ecosystem, I think, now in this year in 2018 it's a lot more clear and OpenStack as a project, or as a set of projects, which traditionally was, the hit on it was very insular and inward facing, has at least, is trying to become outward facing, and again that's something we'll be looking at this week, and how well will they integrate with other opensource projects. >> I mean John, you and I are both big supporters of the opensource movements, love the community at shows like this, but not exclusively, it's, you know, Amazon participating a little bit, using a lot of opensource, they take opensource and make it as a service, you were at Red Hat Summit last week, obviously huge discussion there about everything opensource, everything, so a lot going on there, let me just set for, first of all the foundation itself in this show, the thing that I liked, coming into it, one of the things we're going to poke at is, if I go up to the highest level, OpenStack is not the only thing here, they have a few tracks they have an Edge computer track, they have a container track, and there's a co-resident OpenDev Show happening a couple floors above us and, even from what the OpenStack Foundation manages, yes it OpenStack's the main piece of it, and all those underlying projects but, they had Katacontainers, which is, you know, high level project, and the new one is Zuul, talking about CI/CD, so there are things that, will work with OpenStack but not exclusively for OpenStack, might not even come from OpenStack, so those are things that we're seeing, you know, for example, I was at the Veeam show last week, and there was a software company N2WS that Veeam had bought, and that solution only worked on Amazon to start and, you know, I was at the Nutanix show the week before, and there's lots of things that start in the Amazon environment and then make their way to the on-premises world so, we know it's a complex world, you know, I agree with you, the cloud is not getting simpler, remember when cloud was: Swipe the credit card and it's super easy, the line I've used a lot of times is, it is actually more complicated to buy, quote, a server equivalent, in the public could, than it is if I go to the website and have something that's shipped to my data center. >> It's, yeah, it's kind of ironic that that's where we've ended up. You know, we'll see, with Zuul, it'll be very interesting, one of the hits again on OpenStack has been reinvention of the wheel, like, can you inter-operate with other projects rather than doing it your self, it sounds like there's some actually, some very interesting aspects to it, as a CI/CD system, and certainly it uses stuff like Ansible so it's, it's built using opensource components, but, other opensource components, but you know, what does this give us advantage for infrastructure people, and allowing infrastructure to go live in a CI/CD way, software on hardware, rather than, the ones that've been built from the dev side, the app side. I'm assuming there's good reasons, or they wouldn't've done it, but you know, we'll see, there's still a lot of projects inside the opensource umbrella. >> Yeah, and, you know, last year we talked about it, once again, we'll talk about it here, the ecosystem has shifted. There are some of the big traditional infrastructure companies, but what they're talking about has changed a lot, you know. Remember a few years ago, it was you know, HP, thousand people, billion dollar investment, you know, IBM has been part of OpenStack since the very beginning days, but it changes, even a company like Rackspace, who helped put together this environment, the press release that went was: oh, we took all the learnings that we did from OpenStack, and this is our new Kubernetes service that we have, something that I saw, actually Randy Bias, who I'll have on the show this week, was on, the first time we did this show five years ago, can't believe it's the sixth year we're doing the show, Randy is always an interesting conversation to poke some of the sacred cows, and, I'll use that analogy, of course, because he is the one that Pets vs Cattle analogy, and he said, you know, we're spending a lot of time talking about it's not, as you hear, some game, between OpenStack and Kubernetes, containers are great, isn't that wonderful. If we're talking about that so much, maybe we should just like, go do that stuff, and not worry about this, so it'll be fun to talk to him, the Open Dev Show is being, mainly, sponsored by Mirantis who, last time I was here in Vancouver was the OpenStack company, and now, like, I saw them a year ago, and they were, the Kubernetes company, and making those changes, so we'll have Boris on, and get to find out these companies, there's not a lot of ECs here, the press and analysts that are here, most of us have been here for a lot of time so, this ecosystem has changed a lot, but, while attendance is down a little bit, from what I've heard, from previous years, there's still some good energy, people are learning a lot. >> So Stu, I did want to point out, that something I noticed on the stage, that I didn't see, was a lot of infrastructure, right? OpenStack, clearly an infrastructure stack, I think we've teased that out over the past couple years, but I didn't see a lot of talk about storage subsystems, networking, management, like all the kind of, hard, infrastructure plumbing, that actually, everybody here does, as well as a few names, so that was interesting, but at the end of the day, I mean, you got to appeal to the whole crowd here. >> Yeah, well one of the things, we spent a number of years making that stuff work, back when it was, you know, we're talkin' about gettin' Cinder, and then all the storage companies lined up with their various, do we support it, is it fully integrated, and then even further, does it actually work really well? So, same stuff that went through, for about a decade, in virtualization, we went through this in OpenStack, we actually said a couple years ago, some of the basic infrastructure stuff has gotten boring, so we don't need to talk about it anymore. Ironic, it's actually the non-virtualized environments, that's the project that they have here, we have a lot of people who are talking bare metal, who are talking containers, so that has shifted, an interesting one in the keynote is that you had the top level sponsors getting up there, Intel bringing around a lot of their ecosystem partners, talking about Edge, talking about the telecommunications, Red Hat, giving a recap of what they did last week at their summit, they've got a nice cadence, the last couple of years, they've done Red Hat Summit, and OpenStack Summit, back-to-back so that they can get that flow of information through, and then Mark Shuttleworth, who we'll have on a little bit later today, he came out puchin', you know, he started with some motherhood in Apple Pi about how Ubuntu is everywhere but then it was like, and we're going to be so much cheaper, and we're so much easier than the VMwares and Red Hats of the world, and there was a little push back from the community, that maybe that wasn't the right platform to do it. >> Yeah, I think the room got kind of cold, I mean, that's kind of a church in there, right, and everyone is an opensource believer and, this kind of invisible hand of capitalism (laughs) reached in and wrote on the wall and, you know, having written and left. But at the end of the day, right, somebody's got to pay for babies new shoes. I think that it was also very interesting seeing, at Red Hat Summit, which I covered on theCUBE, Red Hat's argument was fairly philosophical, and from first principles. Containers are Linux, therefore Red Hat, and that was logically laid out. Mark's, actually I loved Mark's, most of his speech, which was very practical, this, you know, Ubuntu's going to make both OpenStack and containers simpler, faster, quicker, and cheaper, so it was clearly benefits, and then, for the folks that don't know, then he put up a couple a crazy Eddy slides like, limited time offer, if you're here at the show, here's a deal that we've put together for ya, so that was a little bit unusual for a keynote. >> Yeah, and there are a lot of users here, and some of them'll hear that and they'll say: yeah, you know, I've used Red Hat there but, you can save me money that's awesome, let me find out some more about it. Alright, so, we've got three days of coverage here John, and we get to cover this really kind of broad ecosystem that we have here. You talked about what we don't discuss anymore, like the major lease was Queens, and it used to be, that was where I would study up and be like oh okay, we've got Hudson, and then we got, it was the letters of the alphabet, what's the next one going to be and what are the major features it's reached a certain maturity level that we're not talking the release anymore, it's more like the discussions we have in cloud, which is sometimes, here's some of the major things, and oh yeah, it just kind of wraps itself in. Deployments still, probably aren't nearly as easy as we'd like, Shuttleworth said two guys in under two weeks, that's awesome, but there's solutions we can put, stand up much faster than that now, two weeks is way better than some of the historical things we've done, but it changes quite a bit. So, telecommunications still a hot topic, Edge is something, you know what I think back, it was like, oh, all those NFE conversations we've had here, it's not just the SDN changes that are happening, but this is the Edge discussion for the Telcos, and something people were getting their arms around, so. >> It's pretty interesting to think of the cloud out on telephone poles, and in branch offices, in data centers, in closets basically or under desks almost. >> No self-driving cars on the keynote stage though? >> No, nothing that flashy this year. >> No, definitely not too flashy so, the foundation itself, it's interesting, we've heard rumors that maybe the show will change name, the foundation will not change names. So I want to give you last things, what're you looking for this week, what were you hearing from the community leading up to the show that you want to validate or poke at? >> Well, I'm going to look at real deployments, I'd like to see how standard we are, if we are, if an OpenStack deployment is standardized enough that the pool of talent is growing, and that if I hire people from outside my company who work with OpenStack, I know that they can work with my OpenStack, I think that's key for the continuation of this ecosystem. I want to look at the general energy and how people are deploying it, whether it does become really invisible and boring, but still important. Or do you end up running OpenShift on bare metal, which I, as an infrastructure person, I just can't see that the app platform should have to worry about all this infrastructure stuff, 'cause it's complicated, and so, I'll just be looking for the healthy productions and production deployments and see how that goes. >> Yeah, and I love, one of the things that they started many years ago was they have a super-user category, where they give an award, and I'm excited, we have actually have the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research is one of our guests on today, they won the 2018 super-user group, it's always awesome when you see, not only it's like, okay, CERN's here, and they're doing some really cool things looking for the Higgs boson, and all those kind of things but, you know, companies that are using technology to help them attack the battle against cancer, so, you know, you can't beat things like that. We've got the person from the keynote, Melvin, who was up on stage talking about the open lab, you know, community, ecosystem, definitely something that resonates, I know, one of the reasons I pulled you into this show in the last year is you're got a strong background there. >> Super impressed by all the community activity, this still feels like a real community, lots of pictures of people, lots of real, exhortations from stage to like, we who have been here for years know each other, please come meet us, so that's a real sign of also, a healthy community dynamic. >> Alright, so John first of all, I want to say, Happy Victoria Day, 'cause we are here in Vancouver, and we've got a lot going on here, it's a beautiful venue, hope you all join us for all of the coverage here, and I have to give a big shout out to the companies that allowed this to happen, we are independent media, but we can't survive without the funding of our sponsors so, first of all the OpenStack Foundation, helps get us here, and gives us this lovely location overlooking outside, but if it wasn't for the likes of our headline sponsor Red Hat as well as Canonical, Kontron, and Nuage Networks, we would not be able to bring you this content so, be sure to checkout thecube.net for all the coverage, for John Troyer, I'm Stu Miniman, thanks so much for watching theCUBE. 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>> Announcer: Live, from Vancouver, Canada, it's theCUBE, covering OpenStack Summit North America 2018. Brought to you by Red Hat, the OpenStack Foundation, and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of OpenStack Summit 2018 here in Vancouver. I'm Stu Miniman with my cohost, John Troyer. And happy to welcome back to the program, fresh off the keynote stage, Mark Collier, who's the chief operating officer of the OpenStack Foundation. >> Thank you. Thanks for having me back. >> Thank you for having us back and thank you again for doing the show in Vancouver, so-- >> Oh man, such an amazing place. Like this convention center, I don't think it's fair to call it a convention center because it's like a work of art, you know? >> And it's my second time here for this show, and I think kudos to your team because you have good enough content that people aren't just wandering around, taking pictures of the mountains. My wife is off seizing the whale watching right now, but everybody else here, they're engaged. And that's what you want in the community. >> Yeah, definitely. I guess you have to make sure you don't lose their attention to the whales and the sea planes, but so far everyone seems to be gettin' down to business. >> You know, I think it would be fair to say that there's some transitions going on in the marketplace in general, and at this show I notice when I got the invitation, it's like the OpenStack slash open infrastructure summit. Got a big track on edge computing, got another one on containers, been talking about containers for a few years at this show, which really interesting to talk about. And I mean, the edge stuff, we were talking about it as NFV and the telcos and all that stuff in the past. What is the OpenStack Summit these days, Mark? >> Yeah, I mean I think that it's evolving to reflect what people are doing with open source when it comes to infrastructure. And so we call it open infrastructure, but basically it's just a world of possibilities have been opened up by, of course, OpenStack, but also many, many other components, some of which came before like Linux and things like that, and some of which started after, like Kubernetes, and there's many other examples, TensorFlow for AI machine learning. So there's kind of this like embarrassment of riches these days if yo want to automate your infrastructure in a cloud-like fashion. You can do so many more things with it, and OpenStack solves a very specific, very important layer which is that kind of traditional infrastructure as a service layer, compute storage and networking. But once you automate that, it's proven, it's reliable, you could run millions of cores with it like some of our users are doing. You want to do more and that means layering other things on top or sort of connecting them in different ways. So just trying to help users get something more out of the technology is really what we're about and OpenStack becomes like an enabler rather than kind of like the whole conversation. Yeah, one of the things I always say in this industry, sometimes we just don't have the right expectations going into these environments. You know, when I think back 15 years ago as to what we thought Linux was going to do. Oh it's going to crush Microsoft. It's like, well, Microsoft is still doing quite well and Linux has done phenomenal. We wouldn't have companies like, Google if it wasn't for the likes of Linux. In an open source you've got a lot of tools out there. So while there are the CERNs and Walmarts of the world that take a full OpenStack distribution and put out tons of cores, I've run into software companies where when I dig into their IP, oh what do ya know, there's a project from OpenStack in there that enables what they're doing. So I've seen at a lot of shows they're like, there's companies that are like, yes, I want it, and then there's like, oh no, there's this piece of it I want, there's that piece what I want. And that's kind of the wonder of OpenStack that I can do all of those things. >> Yeah exactly. I think we've talked before about sort of calling it composable open infrastructure, and making, OpenStack's always been architecturally designed from, in terms of the goals around it, to be pluggable so from the beginning you could plug multiple hypervisors kind of underneath and you could plug different backends for storage and networking, so that sort of concept of being something, integration engine that plugs things in is part of the OpenStack kind of philosophy, but now you see that the OpenStack services themselves are sort of, you can think of them as microservices, and like if you just need block storage you can use sender. And that may make sense for some specific environments, and are you running OpenStack? Well, you are, but it gets a little bit fuzzy in terms of are you running all of it or part of it? And the reality is the things are not as simple as a binary yes or no. It's just that the options are much greater now. >> Well Mark, that has been some of the discussion in the community over the last few years, the core versus the big tent, and now of course with all this interoperability, conversations with both OpenStack participating in other communities and other communities here today, this week. I mean, what's the current state of that conversation about what is OpenStack and how does it interrelate? I think you kind of touched on it with this composable idea. >> Yeah, I mean I think that basically it's kind of like OpenStack is as OpenStack does, you know? So what are people doing with it and that tells you kind of what it is and what people are doing with it. There are a lot of different patterns. There's no like one specific deployment pattern that everyone uses, but probably by and large, by far the most common pattern is OpenStack plus Kubernetes. And so when you talk about the interop piece, this is a really good example where OpenStack has evolved to become a better, kind of better citizen, I guess, of open infrastructure by having more reliable APIs, kind of being a target that tools that build on top can rely on and not sort of have to worry about the snowflakes of different clouds and there's still more work to be done in that area, but we talked about OpenLab, which is an initiative, this morning, that puts together OpenStack, Kubernetes, and other pieces like Terraform and things like that, and does constant end-to-end testing on it, and that's really how you make sure that you know kind of what combinations work well together, and sometimes you just find bugs, and it turns out a couple of changes need to be made upstream in Kubernetes or in OpenStack or in gophercloud or in Terraform, and just if you don't know, then the user kind of with the some assembly required model, finds out and they're like, I don't know, it doesn't work, it's broken. Well, is it OpenStack's fault or Kubernetes's fault, and they don't, they just want it to work. >> So you're saying >> Identified upstream we can fix it. >> You're saying OpenStack has become more of a stable layer of the (mumbles). >> Yes exactly, yes. It has become a much more stable layer. >> Which means there wasn't a whole lot of flashy storage network and compute up on stage actually. >> A lot of the talk-- >> Yeah, it's a really good point. I think it's just really proven in that way, and you know, one of the things that was highlighted was like the virtual GPUs, right? So, if OpenStack is designed to be pluggable, what do people want to have as an option now in terms of compute storage and networking, on the compute side is they want GPUs, because that gives an AI machine learning much faster, if they're bit coin miners, like I'm sure you all are in your basement, they're going to want GPUs. And what was really interesting is that the PTL, like the technical leader of the Nova Project, got up and talked about virtual GPUs. I was back in the green room and like three of the other keynote speakers were like, oh man, we are so excited about this VGPU support. Like, our customers are asking for it, the guy, Mohammad from Vexos, is the CEO of Vexos, he said, our customers are demanding this queens release, which is the latest OpenStack, and we were kind of surprised, they just really want this queens release. So we asked them why and they're like well they want VGPU. So that's kind of an example of an evolution in OpenStack itself, but it's an extension, enabler for things like GPUs, and that's kind of an exciting area as well. >> You know, it's interesting because in previous years it was the major release was one of the main things we talked about. Queens, as you mentioned, other than the VGPUs and that little discussions, spent a lot more time outside, talked to a lot of the users. You talked about the new tracks that were there. And something I heard a lot this year that I hadn't heard for a few years was, get involved, we're looking to build. And I was trying to think of a sports analogy, and maybe it was like, okay, we're actually building more of a league here and we're looking to recruit as opposed to or is it rebuilding what exactly OpenStack 2.0 is in the future? >> Yeah, that's a really interesting point. You're absolutely right, and I can imagine or can remember sort of talking to some of the speakers as they were working on their content, and I don't think I totally picked up that that was a big trend, but you're absolutely right, that was a major call to action from so many different people. I think it's because when we think about what we are as a community, I talked about how we're a community of people who build and operate open infrastructure, and it's really about solving problems, and if you're as open to community collaboration and you want to solve problems, you can't be afraid to stand up and say we have problems. And sometimes maybe that feels awkward. It's like the tech 101 is get up and say you solved all the problems and you should buy it today. It's online or downloaded or whatever. And I think we just realized that the magic of our community is solving problems. There's always going to be more problems to solve, now you're putting more pieces together, which means the pieces themselves have to evolve and the testing and integration has to evolve. Like it's just a new set of challenges and sort of saying, here's what we're trying to solve, it's not done, help us, actually is more, I think, true to kind of what the community is all about. >> I'm wondering, do we know how many people are at the show this year? >> I don't have the exact count. I think it's around 2600, something like that. >> Yeah, so fair to say it might be a little bit less than last year's North America show? >> Yeah, it is a little bit less. >> And what are you hearing from the user? What are the main things they come for? That you got the new tracks, you've got the open dev conference co-located. What kind of key themes can you get from the users? >> Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that we found is that we have twice as many cloud architects this year than a year ago. So I think there's always this period of time where conference attendance is driven by curiosity. Like, I've heard about this thing, what is it, or it's the cool factor, hype curves and all that stuff, I want to learn about it. At this point people know what OpenStack is. We've got tons of ways you can learn about it. There's local meetups, there's OpenStack Days all over the world, there's content, videos online. It's just not like a mystery anymore. Like the mystery draws in kind of the people that are just poking around to learn. Now we're at that point of, okay I know what it is, I know what it's for, I want to architect a solution around it, so seeing twice as many cloud architects I think is an interesting data point to think about how we're shifting more towards, people are not asking if it's proven, they're like it's been proven for whatever, two, three years, however, the perception is, but the technology is just very, very solid. It's running infrastructure all over the world, the largest banks and so on and so, I think that's kind of how things are shifting to what else can we do and put on top of it, now that it's a solid foundation. >> I wonder, sometimes there's that buzz as to what's going on out there. There was a certain large analyst firm that wrote a report a couple months ago that wasn't all that favorable about OpenStack. There's others that watching on Twitter during the keynote, and they're like, they're spending all their time talking about containers, why isn't this just part of the Cloud Native Con, KubCon show? What's the foundation's feedback on, what are you hearing kind of, what's your core deliverables? And why this show should continue in the future? >> Sure, I mean I think that what we're hearing generally from users and seeing in our data as well as from analysts like 451 and IDC, those are a couple of different reports coming out, like right now or just came out, that Jonathan mentioned this morning, I think is adoption just continues to grow, and so you know, I think people are not looking at just one technology stack. And maybe they never were, but I think there was this kind of temptation to just think of it, is it containers versus VMs or is it Kubernetes versus OpenStack? And it's like, no one who really runs infrastructure thinks like that because they might have thought it until they tried it, they realized these things go together. So I think the future of this conference is just becoming more and more centered around what are the use cases? What are the technical challenges we're trying to solve? And to the extent we're getting patterns and tools that are emerging like the lamp stack of the cloud, so to speak. How can people adopt them? So you think about cloud as taking all kinds of new forms, edge computing, those are the kinds of things that I think will become a bigger part of the conference in the future. I do like the open infrastructure angle on this. I mean, as infrastructure folks, right, you know that that storage compute network doesn't manage itself, doesn't configure itself. >> Mark: Totally. >> Doesn't provision itself. And so a lot of the app layer things should rely on this lower layer. And I thought last year in Boston there was this kind of curious OpenStack or containers conversation, which seemed odd at the time, and that's clarified, I think, at a number of levels from a number of camps and vendors. >> Yeah I agree, I think we have done our best from our point of view, from the foundation, myself, and the others that are involved in our community to try to dispell those myths or tamper down that kind of sense of a rivalry, but it takes time and I do feel like there is kind of a sea change now. There are just so many people running in production with various container tools, predominantly Kubernetes and in OpenStack that I think that that sort of myth that they're, that one's replacing the other, it's hard for that cognitive dissonance to last forever when you're given like the hundredth example of like somebody running in production at scale. Like they must be doing it for a reason, and then people start to go, well why is that? >> And I did like the comment you did make about cloud is not consolidating and simplifying, right? Even at the Dell Technologies World show, Michael Dell got up and talked about the distributed core, which is a little bit of an oxymoron, but the fact is compute and compute is everywhere, right? And it's not only, it's on the edge, it's on telephone poles, it's in little boxes in our, you know, going to be on our walls, in our walls, right? And this open infrastructure idea can play everywhere. It's not just about an on-prem data center anymore. >> Yeah and I think that's a big part of why we started to say open infrastructure instead of cloud, just because, I mean, you know, I guess we spent 10 years arguing over the definition of cloud, now we can argue over open infrastructure. But to me it's a little more descriptive and a little less kind of, I don't know, a little less baggage than the term cloud. >> Yeah, definitely differentiates it as to where you sit in the marketplace. And one thing I definitely want to give the foundation great kudos on, the diversity of this show is excellent. Not just that there was a welcome happy hour and there's a lunch, but look at all the PTLs, the project leads that are there, a lot of diversity, up on stage. It's just evident. >> Mark: Thank you. >> And it's just something kind of built into the community, so great job there. >> Thank you, I'm very proud of the fact that we had just so many excellent keynote speakers this morning, and you know, that's always something that we strive for, but I feel like we got closer to the goal than ever in terms of just getting broad representation up on the stage. And some amazing leaders. >> It's always nice from our standpoint because we always say give us your keynote speakers and give us some of the main people making things happen, and it just naturally flows that we have a nice diversity, from gender, from geography. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> From various backgrounds, so that's good. All right, want to give you the final word. Take aways that you want people after the show or maybe some things that people might not know if they didn't make it here for the show. >> I mean, I think, you know, the number one take away is it's all about the people, and we want to make it about the headlines or the technology, and even the technology is about the people, but certainly the operators are not, like I said, logos don't operate clouds or infrastructure, people do, so getting to meet the people, seeing what they're doing, like the Adobe I mentioned, they're marketing cloud. They have 100,000 cores of compute with four people operating it. So if you've got the right four people and the right playbook, you can do that, too. But you got to meet those people and find out how they're doing it, get their recipe, get their playbook, and they're happy to share it, and then you can run at that kind of scale, too, without a big team and you can change the way you operate. >> Yeah, I know I said in my last question, but the last thing, I know there's been a big emphasis to not just do the two big shows a year, but the OpenStack days and other events globally, give people, how do they get involved and where can they come to find out more? >> Yeah, that's a great question. I'm glad you asked because, there are so many ways to get involved and of course it's online, it's IRC, it's mailing lists 24/7, but there's no substitute when it's about the people for meeting in person. So we have the two summits a year. We're also having an event which is called the PTG, which is really for the developers and some of the operators will be coming this fall as well where we're having it in Denver, but the summits are the big shows twice a year, but the OpenStack days are really important. Those are annual, typically one to two day events, in 15 plus countries around the world. One in particular that is going to be really exciting this year is in Beijing. You know, we've had that for the last couple of years. Huge event, but of course, others throughout Europe and Asia. Tokyo is always an awesome OpenStack day, and then there are quite a few in Europe as well. So that's another way you can get involved. Not necessarily have to fly around the world, but if you do have to fly around the world, being in Vancouver is not a bad spot, so. >> Yeah, absolutely, and boy we know there's a lot of OpenStack happening in China. >> Yes there is. >> So Mark Collier, thanks again to the foundation for allowing theCUBE to cover this. >> Sure. >> And thanks so much for joining us. >> Mark: Thank you. >> For John Troyer, I'm Stu Miniman, back here with lots more of three days wall-to-wall coverage here from OpenStack Summit 2018. Thanks for watching theCUBE. (techno music) (shutter clicks)