>>live from Denver, Colorado. It's the Q covering com vault. Go 2019. Brought to you by combo. >>Welcome to the Cube. Lisa Martin with student A man we're covering Day one of convo go 19 from Colorado. Stew and I are pleased to welcome to the Cube one of combo longtime customers from AstraZeneca. We have Scott 100 global infrastructure surfaces. Director. Hey, Scott. >>Good afternoon. >>Good afternoon. Welcome to the Cube. AstraZeneca is a name that probably a lot of folks know in the bio medical pharmaceutical space. But for those that don't give us an overview of AstraZeneca. What you guys are what you d'oh! >>Obviously we're we're, ah, bio pharmaceutical company with global presence way be used. The primary care takes off. Medicines be sale throughout the world. So everything from Kearney care to tiu oncology onda also are massive. That diabetes franchise, as well as other core core therapies that are used by our patients, were like, >>All right, So, Scott, maybe bring us inside. What is data mean to your organization? >>And it means loss. Lots of things taxes and cut through our organization from go boat framed in that next molecules to discover them bleeding edge medicines for our patients all the way to have our sales People commercial use data to identify the patients for further rate kid as well and ofcourse, backoffice tree I t enabling functions like each HR and finances. Well, therefore, is this apartment for business >>you've got Global infrastructure service could just lay out a little bit what that entails and how data fits into the picture, what's in your purview and what you have to work with other groups on. >>So my idea looks after architecture, designing governance and for cyber security infrastructure, savage seas, AstraZeneca. So So we be like after within either on premise within their own try our own data centers are in the public load as well. So as you can imagine, their movement on Deron realms and that can environment is pivotal to the coming been successful go forward >>when every time we, you know, you talk about data being the life blood of an organization or the new oil when we're talking about a patient information and the information that could be used to find the next, you know, cure for a particular disease, this it's this is literally life and death data on the ability to have access to it, but also to make sure that it's protected and secure table stakes. Right, so talk to us about when you came on board, he said. Around six years ago, before we went live knowing how critical data is toe AstraZeneca's business, What was the data strategy like a few years ago? >>It was pretty convoluted six years ago when am I fought during the actual Danica over largely exhaust to various companies? So their strategy basically that have one. We don't really have much of a strategy for looking after our deal with five or six different backup products, but then the cinnamon on lane their storage products is now. So over the last 56 years, can stealing that down to one key data storage provider in the APP and also for backup from the store combo. We do still have some leg. It's a very fast environments, but they're being decommissioned. That moved over combo. I speak >>from a what can I t. An initial initiative perspective. A few years ago, six years ago, we didn't have a date, a strategy. What was some of the you know from the top, down from the C suite down, maybe from the board down saying, Hey, guys, we have to get our hands around. I mean, this is before GDP are But in terms of the opportunities that I provided the company, where did that initiative come from? And a new year old come about now. But you guys want a couple of different routes, Talk to us a little bit about that initiative and the initial directions to where you are now. >>Yes, O. R. Xia Old Smalley obviously had a vision for how the country is going to progress. Set sail in his tenure on a massive pile that was understanding with our data waas how it was used on but most importantly have it was protected as well. And so that kind of drove the insertion from likes of HCL Congress and emphasis into looking after our own environment. You can, after our own idea for choosing strategies as well, so that organically company could grow based on best directions for using that there that we could meet from what we had the radio through collaboration with other bio farmers is a game just for the greater good of fame than that. That next medical molecules to help proficient. All right, >>Scott, have you been toe the combo Cho shows before? >>Second thing second time. Tell us a >>little >>bit about you know what brings you to the show? A lot of announcements here. Anything jump out so far? >>Yeah, it is interesting to see some of the new collaborations are Sorry. Party sees it comes I'll be making over the last little well Hedvig acquisition looks looks breaks on the metallic venture that, doomed for public sass is, well, looks like equals x, a n and ammunition and came environments that convo play on. So I think things to very good moves. >>So you're leveraging Public Cloud. How does Khan Vault fit into that? You're to be used babies >>convoked for for M backing up on restoring and our public load environments. Whether we need a B s robotics, start watching in the jury's there with You're in the club zero stack as well. And then we're in the process of bringing on lane production environments and Google Cloud Platform zone. So having that one back up in the store strategies pivotal Isabella's enabling us to move our day off using visibility solution to get calm. Boulders now, which is very powerful, is >>one of the things I noticed when I watched the video that combo has done with you. And they actually shared a quote from you during the keynote before Actually, before everyone walked. It is, you said this constant evolution that come about is delivering was one of the things that that you really like. From a business perspective, Combo has done a lot of evolving in the last nine months with the new leadership. It's too. And you were talking about some of the new technology, some of the new announcements from that evolutionary perspective and what you guys like about it. What are you seeing in terms of them going forward? Are you saying hey, there really listening? They're looking at use cases like ours, learning from it to not only make the technology is better, but to expand their portfolio. >>I mean, for a lot of it's based in the constant evolution of the FBI's that convo used for access and videos need parts. Technology will be backing up of the M two, backing up kubernetes containers and using that in the Secret Service's environment is Val to Tolliver's to ensure that whatever it comes to get from Lourdes cannot feel like several. It's computing environments that don't understand what what they put watch. So we can either reuse it, destroy, are used different manner, so that for us, that's great. Because obviously for our own C A c d pay planes, they're all FBI driven on to be able to use a convert production. The same kind of fashion is >>so, Scott, do you keep up on the quarterly cadence that combo doing and is there anything, uh, kind of either on the road map for things that you're asking for that would make your environment even better? >>And we're kind of used the 90 day cadences for ourselves to ensure that our own strategies are kept in check and we could take advantage off in your aunties are coming not only from convo but for other parts of our the infrastructure really be now for our only storage or a video. Various other providers that be used for insurance are dead as a decibel and used in a proper fashion. I >>want to get into a little bit of the use case, I knew that you had a number of different competing backup solutions in place. Did you start from a data started perspective, like within one division or one part of the company to maybe pilot, because you ended up with a whole bunch of different software solutions in there. Now you standardize on combo, walk us through that process, those decisions and what you're getting by having this now single pane of less >>some of the populated back up in the store sprawl was caused by individual parts of his had been able to do a little thing having little ineighty budget. So give it up. Some parts of business want to use a backup from Veritas or the emcee products that were in play at the time when we source between IBM and HDL chores each pdp for a pre media centers. So I decided another another backup restore productive in the mix. So for us, it just became untenable when we started insourcing, you know, to build a support team support organization to work after that many technologies was pretty difficult hands by way to go for 11 stop strategy. >>You said in the video. That combo had a pretty significantly higher success rate compared to some of the other solutions, so that must have made it a no brainer. >>So our backup critical applications is 99.8% successful to stay on, and that's that. That's what come won't get themselves. So that was a great comfort on the series. Is more and more of our applications move over on the convo platform, then have ah more wrong deeds approached, You know, backup success, but success in the store and say the things as well as Bella's, you know, using the analytics on a more timely fashion again for for drug and manufacturing research. >>So I know that you guys looked at our sorry spoke with a number of combat customers before you made this decision. And now here you are, on the other side of the coin, talking to a lot of combo customers. What advice would you give companies in any industry who in almost 2020 may not have a really robust data strategy? Your recommendations >>should look it over, not just our backup in the store solution. You know, the could base, which has put together for involves very powerful from the beta index. Ease with information going through construe the product to you can use out for things like D. R H A and also immigration off records. Two different defense centers are different parts of public low dreamer, you know, And the new new vision that I have for the analytics is very powerful as well. Forget the name of this tour today that someone that, you know, maybe we've started to use ourselves in a big way. We've got a little science team within my operation, which is made in that they are not coming, that they're more efficient manner. Feed that into our. Praised the architecture so that they could take advantage of what? Worried they got their own confines and makes out with what they need to do for for new discoveries. >>Scott, thank you for joining. Stewing me on the cube today, sharing with us what you're doing at AstraZeneca and looking forward to hearing the next molecule that discovers some great breakthrough. >>Thank you. >>First to Minutemen. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cue from combo go 19

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering VMworld 2017. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners! (electronic music) >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman and my co-host John Troyer, you're watching SiliconANGLES' production of theCUBE here at VMworld 2017 in Las Vegas. Happy to welcome to the program two first-time guests, but from a company we've talked to many times. Rex Backman and Rob Young, both with Red Hat. Rex is the senior principal marketing manager and Rob is the senior manager of Red Hat product management, gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thanks for having us, we're happy to be here! >> So sorry, tripping over, sometimes, titles and things like that, just like acronyms go out there, sometimes. So you know, I go back, I started working with Red Hat before Red Hat Advanced Server came out, which became Red Hat Enterprise Server, then, when we talk about virtualization, it used to be RHEV, R-H-E-V, and now it's RHV! >> Yup, making it simpler! >> Sometimes the people stay in the same place and, you know, the badges change, other times things change a lot. So why don't we start with Rob, tell us a bit about how long you've been at Red Hat, your role there? >> So I've been with Red Hat now for two years, almost to the date. I come from an open source pedigree, so I worked with companies like MySQL, MongoDB, to develop not only the open source model but a community around those products, and a commercialized version that people trust in running their data centers. >> Alright, and Rex, yourself? >> I'm fairly new to Red Hat, joined about three months ago. Virtualization background, really, from the world of Microsoft. So happy to be at Red Hat, we've got a strong offering with RHEV, and we just want to help get people more educated on it and the opportunities we have to help solve their problems. >> Alright, it's always an interesting dynamic. You talk, you know, virtualization, we spent a decade, you know, VMware's ascendancy and the threat of Microsoft, you know, KVM and RHEV and everything were going to be there. There's a nice Red Hat booth on the show floor. Always, customers have had Linux sitting as guests in there and lots of those, I'm sure you probably have stats for me as to how much of that's been Red Hat over the years, but tell us about the relationship, you know, VMware, Red Hat, virtualization? >> So we see the relationship with VMware and other, you know, companies and partners within our ecosystem as very positive. If you look at the workloads that are running on VMware primarily, a lot of those are Red Hat Enterprise Linux, applications that are running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, so we see it as a very positive relationship. And moving ahead, we see a challenge in maintaining a virtualization footprint within VMware, within the market, because of the evolution of the market. And we see that virtualization is becoming more of a commodity-based feature and the challenges that it poses to partners like VMware, going forward, to evolve along with that model in the market. >> Well, if virtualization is a commodity, and it's becoming a commodity, what's the Red Hat approach with KVM et al in terms of, it is, parts of it are commodity, but certainly, the stack and the system it plugs into is not. >> Yeah. >> I would say, it's also very foundational. Virtualization is everywhere, and I think the value that Red Hat brings to it is, you know, the capabilities we have in our team, the capabilities we derive from the open source model. And then virtualization with RHEV, bundled in with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, it's foundational. And then if you bring in other aspects of the Red Hat stack, around manageability, cloud, things of that nature, I think we have a strong offering, a good offering that people can choose from. And I think that's really important for us, is our customers have choice. And us, we differentiate ourselves on the open source model, primarily. >> Rob, it keeps becoming a more and more complex world. We've been watching, for years, it was the pull of cloud against the data center, now we're even seeing Edge pulling at the cloud. But let's go back to the data center. What's Red Hat's viewpoints, what are you hearing from customers, what do they need in the data center, and how are they viewing that these days? >> So what we see in the modern data center, one, the workloads that we see around Mode One applications or Legacy applications, that footprint is not going away. It's going to continue to have a bare metal footprint as well as a virtualized and private cloud. So what we're doing, and what our customers are asking us for, is a transition from pure virtualization or bare metal to virtualization to hybrid cloud. And what we're doing now, with our engineering efforts, not only upstream but also from a proprietary and configuration standpoint, all open source by the way, is we are giving customers the option to standardize on that virtualization platform built on KVM that shares components with hybrid cloud technologies from Mode Two. So what we see, from our customers, is that they're maintaining a Mode One, but buying and planning for Mode Two. And that's how we see the on-premise data center market heading at this point. >> Okay, I'd like you to unpack that for our audience. Because, big discussion this week is, public cloud, yeah sure, it has virtualization, but it's not VMware. So now we've got this one option, VMware and AWS starting to roll out, are you saying that my data center can really be compatible with the public clouds and, you know, the Red Hat pieces on both sides, or is it native to what AWS and Google are doing? How does that dynamic work? >> So the way we're approaching it is, we look at it, not only as a software solution, but also as a paradigm shift in more openness, APIs, things are more generic. So if you want to plug into a common framework for management, as an example, or deployment, you can easily do that via the open APIs that are available in the open source community. So as an example, we provide a management solution called Cloud Forms. And with that platform, it's part of the Red Hat stack and solution, we allow customers to manage not only the virtualized environment but also, their hybrid or private clouds, but also AWS as well. So if they've got instances running on AWS, they can manage it through one pane of glass. And this is our strategy going forward, but it's not tomorrow, this is happening today with our Red Hat Stack platform. >> Rex, you've got a background in networking, networking front and center, and networking and security even more than ever, that I've seen at VMworld. How does that fit into Red Hat's whole story? >> You know, if you look at the world of virtualization, obviously, we've gone from the story of server virtualization, network virtualization, storage virtualization, and those are the antes into the game now, and I think, Red Hat, with what we provide, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, obviously the foundation started with, you know, the knowledge that our R&D team brings from their open source background around RHEV and server virtualization. But also, now, network virtualization capabilities, and also, what Red Hat has around storage. So I think we cover those three antes into the game of virtualization, and then, you know, it adds to the equation Rob was talking about, which is the whole Red Hat Stack, which I think is a good story, and a choice for our customers. >> I think, actually, 2017 is actually a really interesting year for virtualization. We're at an interesting era, right? 10 years ago you had some market dominance, you're looking at Microsoft and VMware like we talked about, we had Zen and KVM came up, and they were a little scary for people, right? They were developing, they weren't as mature of a stack. I do think, now, that the average admin in an average, you know, IT estate, is actually dealing with the fact that, oh, I could actually manage multiple hypervisors, look at a mixed estate, it's not as scary anymore, the technology is more mature, more manageable. Can you talk a little bit about that scenario of a mixed estate? Like, if you have, part of your data center is running VMware, what kinds of use cases and what kinds of management scenarios would you, as you start to add Red Hat virtualization to the mix? >> So the dynamic that we see and play right now is, there's a huge install-base on VMware. And a lot of customers, a lot of clients, a lot of partners are looking at that relationship now and deciding if they should invest elsewhere in other solutions. So what we provide is the ability to manage those environments, the clients for hyper-V, for VMware, for Red Hat, all within one pane of glass. But it allows customers who want the choice to manage that heterogeneous environment built on multiple hypervisors, but it allows them to evaluate if, maybe, the Red Hat solution is better for them. And if we can help them with V to V migrations as well, workload migration, mobility, I think that's the perfect scenario for Red Hat, an open source company, and choice. >> And I think some of the customers, you know, public case studies that we've promoted, some of the attributes that they've been looking at that shifted them over towards the Red Had side was performance, you know, was very important. Scalability was very important. So I think, it depends, customer to customer. >> I was actually wondering about, so do we see re-platforming as people are re-architecting? Are these green field opportunities? I imagine, again, it's all across the board. But have you seen any particularly common patterns of people standing up, maybe a new business-critical app on a new platform, maybe they're re-architecting it to be a little bit more cloud-native, any particular directions like that? >> I think, some of the things I've seen recently is an enterprise IT organization has decided to go down an open source path for their world. And then that kind of is a strong point for us. Mountain Health is a company that there's some news on, from last week, is an example of that. British Airways is another customer like that. And, you know, as Rob said. It's large companies, big brands, down to commercial companies as well, or governments, or education. So I think it could be performance, it could be open source, open source is definitely one of the drivers though. >> Yeah, and what we're seeing there with open source is, the more trust is built in open source, the more enterprise adoption, and the cost-effectiveness of working with a development team that's worldwide, a QE team that's worldwide, really helps to build the stability of the products that companies like Red Hat build subscription models around. So there's no vendor lock-in, as well, for proprietary licensing models. And we find that many customers are very open to that discussion, as opposed to, you know, the alternatives. >> One of the other discussions we've been having at VMworld for the last couple years is this whole containers discussion. VM versus containers, is it containers inside VMs, Red Hat Summit, there was huge discussion, there was the super popular t-shirt, on one side it said, Linux is containers, and on the other side it said, Containers are Linux. So where do you see that discussion? What do you think about how VMware's been looking at things? There was a big announcement about VMware and, through the pivotal activity, kind of embracing Kubernetes, Red Hat's, I'm sure, saying, welcome to the party, right? (laughing) >> So there's an interesting dynamic with containers, because containers, Kubernetes, you know, you name the project, is purely an open source play. And if you look at the projects, the contributors, most of this is going to be built on an open source model. So proprietary software companies, like VMware, are going to be challenged to adapt and evolve how they develop, how they contribute, their presence within those communities. Now, Red Hat is uniquely positioned in that our model has been, for the last 25 years, that we're purely open source. Everything we do is out in the community. And it lends itself very naturally, not only the way we've done commercialization of Linux, but we're doing that now with containers as well. And if you look at the dynamic in the market, a lot of people believe that there's VM or containers, and this is really a symbiotic or complimentary relationship. 85% of the workloads for containers runs within a virtualized environment, and containers and virtualization fill gaps for each other that's just a natural complement, and just because Red Hat is already comfortable operating in the open source environment in this way, we think we're just in a very good position to lead in both areas. >> You mentioned open source commercialization. And Jim Whitehurst, the CO of Red Hat, has been on theCUBE, Stu and I talked with him at the last Open Stack Summit. I was super impressed by his insight and grasp into the economics of open source and how Red Hat has been able to build a model like that. Can you talk at all about data centers, or IT spend in general, and capex, opex, where it's going in a more open source driven world? Where do you put your money then? >> So do you want to answer? (laughs) >> I'll take a stab at it. >> Can you now invest your money, that's a little better. >> Yeah, I think it's really interesting. And I'm going to answer this question from the perspective of a three-month Red Hat employee, but with, you know, a lot of experience in the industry with proprietary companies, if you will. I think the value, the commercialization of what Red Hat has done, there's the upstream aspects of open source and the programs available there. And then there's the downstream commercialization of what Red Hat has done, which is wrapping the value of a Red Hat subscription around that open source project. And I think what we see in our customers in terms of budget spend, you know, more on the opex side than the capex side, in our case, is looking at that price point. Because some of our customers, well, many of our customers, if not all of our customers, there is a price sensitivity. I think a lot of our customers right now, maybe this might be a crazy thing to say, may not be as price-sensitive as they used to be. Now it's more about innovation, agility, speed to market. But still, the economics is important. And I think the value Red Hat provides and the uniqueness in the model that Jim and his crew cracked early on to start Red Hat, is the ability to provide that Red Hat subscription at value for open source, and, what we see is that, most of the time, in cases, it's an attractive price point and that's how we win customers. So I think, long-winded answer to your question is, I think there's a strong future. You see more and more companies adopting open source in their programs. I think Red Hat is the leader of that and in good shape! >> Rob, why don't you just give us the final word. Conversations you're having at the show, how are people here in the VMware community embracing, is it an open source discussion, is it the innovation, and kind of, the new features, what's bringing them by to talk to Red Hat? >> I think it's a mixture. So what we're seeing is a lot of interest in Red Hat Solutions, the Red Hat Stack. And I think customers are now looking at Red Hat as a good enough alternative to more pricey alternatives, or more pricey options. And if you look at what we've done from a strategic standpoint is, much like we've done with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we are now using Enterprise Linux as a foundational support pillar, so to speak, for the Red Hat Stack. If you look at the APIs that we generated, a lot of the interest I'm getting, the question I'm getting not only from customers, but from folks out on the show floor, other vendors, is, what's your API look like? Can I learn more about it? And to me, that's the leading edge of a wave of, maybe that partner's looking a little more red (laughs) in the days to come. So, just, my opinion. >> Absolutely, I know John Troyer and I have been talking for a few years now, that API economy, something that's been coming into this world, and that intersection between what all the Linux admins have known for a long time as to their operational model matches a lot of what we're seeing in the cloud. So Rob Young, Rex Backman, really appreciate you joining us. For John Troyer, I'm Stu Miniman, we'll be back with lots more coverage here from VMworld 2017. You're watching theCUBE. (futuristic music)