>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with coverage of Susic on digital brought to you by Susan. >>Right? Hi. I'm Stew Minuteman. And welcome to the Cube's coverage of Susic on Digital 20. Rather than gathering together in Dublin, we have a larger audience online watching everything digitally, really helping a happy to have on the program. Back to the program. One of our cube alumni. She is fresh off the keynote stage. Melissa DiDonato. She is the CEO of Tuesday. Melissa. So good to see you. Wish it could all be in person. But, you know, thanks for having the Cube in. Ah, >>thank you very much for joining us as well. My third time on the show. I'm really, really pleased to be an important part of our digital experience with Susie. Conditional. So still what? Nice to see you. >>All right. So last time you were on the program, you spoke to Dave. Dave a lot today about how you know you're keeping your employees safe and keeping them productive. The note I heard clearly from you in your keynote presentation is really a sense of optimism. So, like, if you could bring us a little bit inside. You know, I'm sure you're talking to a lot of your customers. What is it even then in these unprecedented Well, I'm giving you that sense of optimism. >>Yeah, there's no denying where we are in the world with Kobe. 19. We have a whole different way of looking at the world. Every business in every industry has been impacted, and not just the working life but our family life. The way we communicate, the way we run our homes, our environments at work is it's been very much integrated now. It's a very different way of adding a whole different level of stress that we didn't have in our business life just a couple of months ago. And I think, as I told Dave, the most important thing for me is number one to make sure that our employees remain self safe and healthy. That's number one, And I think that as we experience negativity across the world of news and social media, etcetera, that my hope is that the community and the Susan family remain optimistic and you know, why do we have the ability to remain optimistic when everyone else is experiencing a lot of doom and gloom. One White House, because you rightly so said, Let me talk about Sousa and how we wouldn't in our community. Our thesis is the power of many. This power of many in a virtual community really drives innovation. We're not like proprietary software and many other tech companies where you have to resign the building to make sure that we maintain and evangelize innovation that you live and deliver to your customers. For us, it's very different. Our community is the basis for innovation. It's the pillar of our community, of our company, our ethos in our value. So it's Susa. This spirit of collaboration and integration is live today more than ever before, with 99% of our employees working from home being engaged a very different way than maybe they're used to. But not so unlike engaging the innovation that we get out of our community. I think you mentioned something else do that's really important. That's productivity. We've moved away as of the first of March and measuring productivity in exchange for measuring the way that we integrate and elaborate and engage with our place. So instead of productivity, we're measuring engagement. Our employees are becoming much more engaged with each other with our customers and our communities. And of course, our partners they're giving back to their community. They're measuring the engagement they're successful means of delivering or how much they can give back to their communities. So we've seen a huge rise and are employees giving back to their communities around them. For example, I met an employee who is donating a very big part of his bonus percentage to a hospital to pay for lunches for frontline health workers near his his home, our nerve of Germany office. They're giving their lunch vouchers and donating that to all of the homeless people around their community. And then we've got employees around Italy, one in particular that's created a virtual classroom for a son school and the community around him. So you know, everyone's really pitching in, I think finally, from a community perspective, we're also sponsoring a numerous amount of hackathons. For example, in Germany, the government has recently held a hackathon for community based solutions to combat code. In 19 our employees participated in engaged with their one day off. We give every employee one day off a year to engage for charitable cause and the results of this hackathon is a better understanding of the data per states about code in 19 across the country. So I think all in all, everything that we're doing is really trying to, you know, utilize the community as we always have, is open source. Open source is developed in a community that often times does not sit together. And now we're trying to really engage with that community as much as possible to keep innovation alive, to keep collaboration alive and not just for the purpose of innovation, but for the purpose of combating the virus and giving hope and first gratitude to this community and across all of our population across the world. I really do believe that in challenging times like today, it's the best way to realize the innovation that we can put together, triggering innovation for good. But also bringing out the best in humanity is it's amazing to see what you know. Thousands and thousands of people in the open source world are giving and delivering and collaborating in which to solve the worlds Problems Cove in 19 but also innovation problems for today and tomorrow >>Yeah, Melissa said some great stories that you have there, you know, we, of course, are huge supporters of communities in general. I've had a great pleasure not only recently but over the last 20 years, watching Linux communities on what's happening in open source. One of the key constituencies, obviously, to your audience, our developers. There are quite a few announcements that I talked about on the keynote stage was wondering if you could help walk through Ah, for our audience. You know, the primary announcements and especially, you know, the impact that it will have on the developer developer community. >>Yeah, that's right. So the developers are entranced, obviously, as part of Susa, where deep open source roots and they're ingrained in our culture. So we just recently focused on a new developer community with content specifically targeted to developer use cases for application platform offering. So over the next couple of months, we're gonna roll out content analytics, open source, Dev >>ops. All >>these things that you are sure loves to micro services, containers, kubernetes edge and and the like. So a lot of innovative technologies as our content. Now what we are offering in the developer community is the SuSE Cloud application platform developer sandbox. We wanted to make it easy for these developers who just spoke of to benefit from the best practices that evolved from the cloud native application delivery that we offer every day. Of course, the customers and now for free to our developers, we want them to be able to easier, easily apply their skills to create applications that can run anywhere, anywhere from on Prem Private Public Cloud and the access is and the developers to get access and hands on experience. That SuSE cloud application platform without having to spend all of their own environment is it is a big test or commitment to the developer community that can explore tests and develop without having any hardware services themselves. It's a really I've signed up myself. Hopefully, you will, too, and join the community and give some feedback and engage in this open source community. For developers, it's really important for everybody. You can find it at developer dot cisco dot com, in addition to the sandbox is I just mentioned you'll also find there are developer forums. It's got getting started guides and other useful examples of how to accelerate the adoption of the cloud application platform and all of the demo tools you can use. It's I can't express the importance enough that we put in place in our developers. Our developer community is a really important part to reach the innovation that we so hoped and live for every day. So we need to provide them the tools to be successful. So I think when you're gonna see Studio is a lot more engagement with our developer community and a lot more integration with them, a collaboration with them. As time goes on, it's a big part of our focus coming in now to 2020 and, of course, the second half of the year. >>So, Melissa, one of the other point that you made in your keynote is that Souza is now, you know, fully independent. It's always been an open source company, a long history there. But what does this one year of independence mean for your customers and that partner ecosystem? >>Yeah, it's a big deal for us, so it's a really big deal. We swung away from micro focus a year ago and mark so just now, Pastor, one year we're now in control of our destiny and the future is very, very bright. I think going forward in the next year, what you can expect from Susan is continued focus and support our customers, of course, the digital transformation efforts that we need to put into helping them go through this transformation. I saw a cartoon, You know, the other day everyone probably saw who's leading your digital transformation. Experts efforts your CEO, your see Iot or Corona virus. And I think we all agree that Corona viruses, but a new effort and focus on the digital transformation of our companies and our customers need to go through. So I think we need to be sure that with this new independence that we focus on that digital transformation effort. Couple that with our open source innovation and no matter where our customers are on their journey, that we give them the enabling tools to get there. We start with simplifying, modernizing and accelerating our customers journey, and you're gonna hear a lot about that in the keynote that I just did, um, simplifying first. So simplifying and optimizing our customer's applications and the data to exist in I T Environment. That's going to help them go on the journey to modernize, modernizing everything about the I T infrastructure as well as their legacy applications, to utilize modernizing, modernized technologies like containers or edge or cloud, or for the like. By simplifying and modernizing, our customers can then begin to accelerate. They can accelerate innovation. They can accelerate growth. They can accelerate delivery of whatever services and applications they want to deliver, for example, capabilities around AI and edge. And they can scale their companies to bring markets product to market faster and even at a lower cost. So I think when you think about Susan our independence, I want our customers to know and understand that our focus will always be to simplify, modernize and accelerate, but also to remain nimble, how our customers, our partners, our community, innovate faster based on customer business requirements and to solve problems of today and tomorrow, not just what we knew before. So we're much more connected with our customers and ever before, and we want to be able to offer them the flexibility that they heard that learned to love it. Enjoy from Susa more some now than ever our customers agenda. Su is our only agenda in a world where everyone wants to be the best at everything. The only thing we want to be number one with is customer satisfaction. We will say number one in the market because we love servicing our customers. We love being maniacally focused on our customers, needs their business problems and creating solutions that are tailored with services that make them more successful. I think you can expect Souza to enter new markets like powering, for example, autonomous vehicles with safety certified legs and other really innovative technologies that were developed every single day in our community with our developers to solve customer business problems. I say to the teams every day, you know, we're big enough for scale, and we're small enough to be nimble and to be flexible to service our customers first. So expecting that from Susa in our independence, but always, of course. >>Yeah, Melissa, you talk about things like ai and Ed and innovation, and you just brought up autonomous vehicles. So, you know, not only is a cool area, but really highlights uh, you know, a lot of these waves coming together. You announced up onstage. Really cool looking company. Electro bit. I noticed there, Green almost matched. Your companies do So. Tell us about this. This is a partnership. Why? It's important. And you know what? What others can learn about it. >>Yeah, sure. So Electra bit. We just partnered with that. Made the announcement today in the keynote there, the leading Internet global international provider of embedded software solutions for automotive. So it's a whole new area for US safety certified Linux is the first for Susan in this industry. I recently met virtually with Alexander coaching the CEO Electra bit to learn more about his company innovation, that we're gonna drive together. We've got a whole session at Susan Con Digital in the platform to talk about what we're doing with safety certified Lennox and what we're doing with Elektra bit. I can't wait to tell you more about, and I've got a 1 to 1 fireside chat with Alex, and I think you're gonna love to learn more about, you know, maybe something else. Wei mentioned in the keynote they may want to know about. And that's the artificial intelligence solution that I specifically talked about launching next quarter. This is I'm super excited about as well. I mean, it's really easy to be excited here, Susan, when you have constant rolling innovation in our community and delivering that to our customers. But this is also an exciting space. The solution that we're launching next quarter is going to benefit both data scientists and I t operations teams by simplifying the integration of key AI building blocks that are going to be required to develop quickly test and then deploy the next generation of intelligence solutions. So keep your eyes open for that to we're gonna have some game changing solutions for Susan and all of our customer promise ai solution next quarter. So two big announcements for us here exclusively. It's music on digital. I can't wait to share all the details Next order with AI, but also with Alex in the fireside chat I had with him during the week. >>Alright, So great, Melissa, A couple of big announcements that you talked about give >>us a >>little bit of a look forward. So, you know, you talked about what? One year of it, and it means what should people be looking at? What goals do you have for the community and the company actually look through the rest of 2020 >>as we look to the rest of 2020. I think, um, it's been a hard year already, and I couldn't have predicted when I took over a CEO of this great company nearly 10 months ago that we'd be having the hard times that we currently have. I can honestly say that there's no place I'd rather be. The fact that we are in the best company in the best industry, with open source at our roots at our heart that will never change but you can expect from us is consistent and constant innovation. You could look for us to be nimble, dependable. You can look for us for growth and there ever were a recession proof company that delivers the best solutions to our customers. I think Susie's in fact, I know it is. We're going to double in size and three years, so we're going to go from just under 1/2 a 1,000,000,000 to a 1,000,000,000 in revenue and what in three years time and we've got the constant trajectory and the means of which to do it. We're really looking from a strategic perspective. The rest of this year. How can we simplify, modernize, accelerate the solutions delivered to our customers to ensure we constantly focus on innovative technologies, keeping open source of value's and ethos to our core? And then also consider how do we ensure a safe, stable quality environment that's building on tools such as optimizing and automating their environment to get the best out of their technology stack? And that's when you should expect to see from some of the rest of this year as we go obviously into 2021. You're gonna want to watch the space to stay tuned for the look at Susa. We're growing like a rocket ship, and we have still intention of going through the crisis and, of course, going into the back half of 2020. But we're accelerating with pace going into 2021. >>Alright, well, Melissa, I'm definitely looking forward to talking to some of your customers, some of your partners in some of your team. So thanks again for joining us, definitely looking forward to catching up with you further down the line. >>I look forward to it. Thank you so much for the time today, and obviously the focus on, Susan. We're super excited to share where we're going, where we've come from and what the journey looks like Ahead. So thanks for the excitement that you're sharing with us throughout this week. Really appreciate you. Thank you. >>Alright. And be sure to stay with us. We've got wall to wall coverage Susic on digital money. Even if we're not at a physical event, we get to do them all remotely digitally. That global digital experience. I'm stew Minimum. And thank you for watching the Cube. >>Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with coverage of Susic on digital brought to you by Susan. Right? >>Welcome back. I'm Stew Minuteman. And this is the Cube's coverage of Silicon Digital 20. Really excited to be digging into some of the cloud discussions. I've got two guests joining me now, one from across the pond and one from across the country. So joining me is Billy Baldwin. She is the senior director of Global CSP Alliance sales with Lisa. Coming from across the pond and coming from California is Mikhail Fradkov, who is a principal business development at Amazon Web services. Thank you both for joining us. >>Thank you to really, really exciting. >>All right, So, Julie, obviously, you know, we know we're limit Been proliferating the cloud something that almost I think really understand. You know, cloud, you know, big piece of the overall soussa discussion. Um, bring us inside a little bit, You know your role. And of course, the long partnership that business ad with AWS. >>Yeah. So? So my role is working with, you know, the major hyper scale is in the public cloud providers in offering solutions that's driving digital transformation. And this modernization even more so in today's current climate. We're seeing, you know, modernization transformation is being driven out of necessity. The necessity now due to the yeah, the code 19 impact. So I really want to draw on. You know, we've been working with AWS for the last 10 years. We've serviced, you know, thousands of customers between us who are looking at how they innovate on D drive, you know, flexibility and agility into into their, you know, the right and then there accounts. So it's really important that, you know, we look at how we support our customers from a, uh, and integrated support perspective and how we can we can move them forward in the in the digital transformation journey. >>Awesome. So Mikhail and I want to hear what Julie talked about. I think about when I when I look at AWS, you talk about builders when you go to the conference that Amazon told, you know, innovation is absolutely something there. So talk to us a little bit about how you know the Linux community in general, and to save costs more specifically are engaged. And you know a piece of what AWS is doing. >>Sure, So in general, it's a bless. I'm responsible for making sure that our customers are successful as they go through there. Well, its information Jordan you or business transformation. Jordan is so those those are all involved transformations. And, um, it's It's actually an interesting position to be in because you see it first hand on the ground for all the challenges and all the all the interesting problems that customers get the soul and then it's a sexual incredibly exciting that we're having this conversation in the framework of silicon because open source is incredibly important for a glass and stable beta last week understand how important open source is for customer success, and therefore we've been involved in contributing to the projects from from very early on, that justly mix and a VM and Java and kubernetes. So we see we see a lot of a lot of proliferation in the space and then another. Another interest in I guess below that, I would say, is if you think about the open source notion, which is largely around community, so there is this sort of like a juxtaposition off the cathedral and the bazaar, right, and then so the bazaar is the vibrant community off people, commentaries with ideas, and they're they're pursuing them and they innovate. And so something similar we see in the um yes, it the blast community with several 1,000,000 customers day today. They're sold in challenges and bring in lots of lots of requests for innovation, and I >>want to call it puts >>pressure on Amazon to innovate. But it's a lot of inspiration, right? And then, therefore it's It's interesting to see right that because of all the innovation and all those requests, customers get access on Amazon toe. All the features such as same was open source, Right? So you capitalize on this on this innovation, and you're there is well, customers can request, let's say, in financial service industry and then so you get a lot of security features. All the only controls would say, like I saw saw some combines and then some of the most stringent compliance already, like product guys that say the blessed, that stuff. That's one of the examples. >>Yeah, I e starts are Julie. That customer flywheel that you talked about is what we really want. They're so Julie, you want wanted to comment on what he was saying. >>I was just kind of just to kind of reinforce, you know, that whole community in that whole innovation based as well because from an open source perspective, you know that that sense of community is really driving those changes on with the AWS platform. It's got a very rich functionality behind it. You know, it's one of the, you know, the first time platform. So it does have that degree of innovation, you know, from from Day One. And that's just being driven by the by, the by, our customers who are pushing the envelope family in everyone more on. That's where you know the relationship between, you know, Souza on AWS is really, really started to excel. Looking at how we we move into that container space now as well, and help the customers, you know, modernize not only their, you know, the the cloud native that's going straight to cloud. But how do they modernize modernize their legacy applications as well? Um, and how today, you know, take, you know, take their on premise environments on, make them more effective and more efficient, and by using public cloud to be able to do that. >>Yeah. Julia, I'm glad you brought that up, because absolutely, there's opportunity. But there's challenges there. Customers really have. You know, it's either hybrid or multi cloud deployment. You know, container ization. Kubernetes are absolutely enable is there? But I wonder if you could bring us inside. What Susie doing? You have any customer examples of you know how they're really making this change? We know that it's still the majority of applications have not been modernized. They've not going cloud native. They're not ready for these environments. So how are customers working through this ultimate journey? >>Yeah, I mean, it's really, really complex. And I did a presentation on our sales summit talking about, you know, Gardner's five. Ours about you know, what applications can move to the cloud, how easy it is to do that. And I think there is some research done last year with for like, one, um, where the previous year there was a lot of customers said, Yeah, we're moving to fired and it's easy. And then this year, when they rerun the survey, it was No, it's really hard. We need partners. We need to look at how we how we do this. And so you know, every application is going to be able to be moved hours, and it's really Orton that they know the customers have a strategy and look at what they're doing on prem it and then start to identify what is you know, what is cloud friendly? What do they need to do to kind of go forward? You know, Do they need to be, you know, rewrite an application? Do they need to re factor it kind of just be a lift and shift. And so what we're doing with with AWS is, you know, we've been working with partners like both, for example, who built out to retail application platform to be able to migrate those customers quickly into a more cost effective and efficient way of delivering businesses because they will say, you know, even more so in the current scenario there, you know margins are being squeezed. They need to be looked at being ableto deliver higher, you know, return on investment and to share with any of their, you know, in with their spend. So, you know, that's that's one area that we are kind of like, Look, you know, looking at as well. We've had great success with it. Um, we've also got a quick start programs with with AWS that allows, you know, customers you need to migrate quickly and easily. To be able todo to take those applications on their environments on DNA, move them on to the public cloud. So that so that those are two key areas that we're really looking at, you know, driving. Yeah, they're driving forward because it's critical because it is complex. Um, you need to have a Roma. You need to have a strategy about how you do, and you need to identify and include the stakeholders when they move. You know, when you're changing your environment to make sure that you haven't missed anything, >>something that would love to hear your viewpoint on this to you know, when you look at the Amazon ecosystem, you've got a huge AWS marketplace. Obviously, the integrators help customers work through their various environments and how to modernize them. How to move there, you know, what are you seeing in the customer base, for example, you can help share as to how they're moving along. >>Sure. One of the way we have to understand right, a little bit off the context. So all this all this talk about, let's say, cloud migration and innovation, it's not. It's not an abstract sort of exercise, an absolute discipline. It happens for its right if we look. If you look at the innovative companies at a fast moving companies, effectively, they they see on average time to value metrics about 420 times faster. Then let's say what people slow companies, right? And then So that's That was a lot of pressure on companies to actually embrace, embrace this innovation and the digital transformation and engage with customers in the way that they have never done before, such as just technology enable so many things, so many protect right and then this. With any opportunity it comes, Here comes a challenge on then, as Julie pointed out, it's a it's a difficult exercise. Let's let's not mince words here. So and therefore we have to make sure that everybody is a line. Let's say customer goes through this exercise right that that they're trying to change their processes. The leadership sets new goals. The leadership says new objectives. They have to change the culture they have to train people. So that is that it's not just the challenge of the patient right there within the hour, then outside of the company, you want to make sure that effectively, everybody, everybody comes to the table is there's a lot of value and very much alive, and that just that this is where we see, I guess a lot of, um, a lot of opportunity because as as you go through this process, um, you have to, right, you have to have the right stakeholders who have you have to have trained people, right? And then if you look at another statistics that just 86 companies or so they have a first step and the other 86 infrastructure spend this to on premise And the reason for that is companies cannot not hire and train and train faster, right? So therefore, on AWS side, we we invest a lot in training programs and certification programs as well as we have the vibrant community off partners who can step in and help us with challenges such as we have a system off JIA size and the size, so we have with both hands off the size M s P s, whatever we have providers. And then effectively back to what results here is that you have the synergy. Not not only the change going from from the inside company. >>They >>also have the support structure. As Joe talked about Big Start, we have training and then we have programmatic support, right cattle, how to navigate passengers for that. And then as the switch swollen, you mentioned their new processes. This is this is where the power of the cloud comes in and part of the community. So all those challenges they have been sold. So you can take some of the blueprints and apply them as is. And >>you can you can >>pick and choose what? What? Your bias. So, for example, you can go with cloud native tools with Amazon Web services at the very same time you can. You can also pick products. For example, SuSE Cloud application platform, which provides you with this. I wouldn't call it, um it's slightly more opinionated approach how to how to implement your develops practices and agile practices. And then it's still making Iran's on top of Amazon elastic container service. So yeah, and then, as as Jules mentioned. We program, for example, in the work of success with it >>and just touching on that point because, you know, we talk about we're not islands, you know, we have to engage with the partners. You know, we want to make sure the customer success is at the heart of everything that we do. Um, and we have to bring in the right skill sets at the right time, you know, to to make make that journey as easy as possible and as quickly as possible on. So that's the you know that that's the beauty of community. That's the beauty of partners on benders coming together with the customer at the heart off of everything that they do on. You know, I know that's a very strong message that you're going to get from, you know, from Susie Con. But it's from message that we showed with Aws as well, about how do we do the right thing for the customer and how do we, you know, and how do we enable that success? But then to be successful, which will drive Ultimate six, you know, successes as partners as well? >>Excellent, Julie. One of the big things we're themes we heard in the keynote was talking about the developer community's obviously to say in AWS A lot of developers, anything specific for the developers out there That that either. The highlight >>s so obviously we've got the cloud application platform on. We've got the quick starts as well. So for May is you know, you've got a proven a proven platform with real aws that, you know, the infrastructure available there, the ease of which, you know, cloud application platform can sit on top of that of the eks elastic. The services is really, really critical. And, you know, for me, it would be just, you know, just try it, um, on and give us your feedback as well. I think that's really important, because the way that you know, we drive innovation is through that, you know, the cut, the feedback from our customers and people actually using that, you know, the services. I think McHale pointed to the earlier as well. You know, the innovation that they've seen has been driven by, you know, customers actually saying we want this feature. We want this put pressure on from a from a dev ops community is you know there are alternatives out there and you know, you should, you know, to try. You should try. Look at you know, if that suit your needs better. I look at how you can use a trusted partner like AWS and and Susie Teoh to actually meet some of those new needs they're coming aboard. >>And it's also to Julius Point right? Way cannot overemphasize the importance off builders off people who own on this innovation within the company. And be because the biggest thing that companies can do for their success is to enable builders and as as we mentioned before, right? So the process is this challenging the other multiple parties involved, but the very same time to empower people to drive this change, it's almost like instead of directing them like, Oh, um, the space is pretty pretty interesting analogy. So instead of if you want people to know how to build the ship so you do not you do not tell them. Oh, go gather wood and then, like, this is how you hammer things together. You just you just make sure that they yearn for the C. And then ultimately this is This is what drives the innovation. And here we have essentially with with, for example, Susak Capital radical enable people and they they practice the develops, they can practice, schedule and essentially align. This was this fast time to value practices, right? So that that is the tooling. And then you take weeks starts and then you put literally innovation into into those people's hands, for example, it So that's one big start allows you to bring up the whole environment and pretty much like minutes. Well, let's say if you want to go to innovate on the sisters again, you take big start and then well, is that the takes takes a little bit more involved. So maybe, Like like in an hour and 1/2 you have a safe environment, and then you have essentially start innovating there and >>excellent. Well, Mikhail and Julie thank you so much for the updates. You know, love hearing about innovation companies. Absolutely. Building is what differentiates us is the companies that are ready for today's modern era. So thank you so much for joining us. >>Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. >>Thank you, Julia. >>Alright. We'll be back with lots more coverage from SuSE icon Digital 20. I'm stew minimum. And thank you for watching the Cube. >>Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with coverage of SUSECON Digital brought to you by SUSE. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of SUSECON Digital '20. I'm Stu Miniman and happy to welcome to the program one of SUSE's partners, we have Marc O'Regan, he is the CTO of EMEA for Dell Technologies. Marc, it is great to see you, we all wish, I know when I talked to Melissa Di Donato and the team, everybody was really looking forward to coming to Ireland, but at least we're talking to you in Ireland so thanks so much for joining us. >> Stu, thanks very much for having me. I'm delighted to be here. You know, really looking forward to getting you guys here, unfortunately it wasn't a beaver, once we're all safe and well, great to talk. >> Yeah, absolutely, that's the important thing. Everybody is safe, we've had theCUBE a couple of times in Dublin. I'd actually, you know, circled this one on my calendar 'cause I wanted to get back the Emerald Isle but, Marc, let's talk first, you know, the Dell and SUSE relationship you know, disclaimer, you know, I've got a little bit of background on this. You know, I was the product manager for Linux at a company known as EMC back before Dell bought them, many moons ago, so I know that, you know, Dell and the Dell EMC relationship with SUSE go back a couple of decades, but, you know, bring us into, you know, what your teams are working together and we'll go from there. >> Yeah, sure, Stu, so, quite correct, nearly a two decade long relationship with SUSE and one that we hold very dear to our heart. I think what both organizations have in common is their thirst and will to innovate and we've been doing that with SUSE for 16, 17 years, right back to, you know, SUSE Enterprise Linux sitting on, you know, PowerEdge architecture way, way back in the day into you know, some of the developments and collaborations that we, that we worked through with the SUSE teams. I remember back 2013, 2014 doing a pretty cool program with our then Fluid Cache technology. So, when you look at, you know, OLTP kind of environments, what you want to kind of get away from is the, you know, the read-write, commits and latency that are inherent in those types of environments. So, as you start to build and get more users hitting the, hitting the ecosystem, you need to be able to respond and SUSE has been absolutely, you know, instrumental to helping us build an architecture then with our Fluid Cache technology back in the day, and the SUSE technology sitting around and under that and then of course, in more recent times, really extending that innovation aspiration, I guess, has been absolutely a pleasure to, to watch and to be involved with, see it mature so some of the cool platforms that we're developing with SUSE together it's a, it's pretty neat so I'm, you know, one of those being-- >> So, Marc, yeah, well, you know, bring us up to speed, you know, right in the early days, it was, you know, Linux on the SUSE side, it was, you know, servers and storage from the Dell side, you know, today it's, you know, microservice architectures, cloud native solutions. So, you know, bring us up to speed as to some of the important technologies and obviously, you know, both companies have matured and grown and have a much broader portfolio other than they would have years ago. >> Yeah, for sure, absolutely. So, I mean, what's exciting is when you look at some of the architectures that we are building together, we're building reference architectures. So we're taking this work that we're doing together and we're building edge architectures that are suitable for small, medium, and you know, and large environments. And the common thread that pulls those three architectures together is that they are all enterprise grade architectures. And the architectures are used as frameworks. We don't always expect our customers to use them, you know, by the letter of the law, but they are a framework and, by which they can look to roll out scalable storage solutions. For example, like the Ceph, the SUSE Enterprise Storage solution that we collaborate with and have built such a reference architecture for. So this is, you know, it's built on Ceph architecture under the hood, but, you know, both ourselves and SUSE have brought a level of innovation, you know, into an arena, where you need cost, and you need low latency, and you need those types of things that we spoke about, I guess a moment ago, and into, you know, this new cloud native ecosystem that you just spoke to a few moments ago. So on the cloud native side, we're also heavily collaborating, and near co-engineering with SUSE on their CaaS technologies. So here it's really interesting to look at organizations like SAP and what we're doing with data hub and SAP, it's all part of the intelligent enterprise for SAP. This is where SUSE and Dell Tech together really get, you know, into looking at how we can extract information out of data, different data repositories. You know, you may have Oracle you may have, you know, you may have HDFS, you may have Excel and you're trying to extract data and information from that data, from those different siloed environments and the CaaS technology brings its, you know, its micro, capability to the forum in that regard, our hardware architecture is the perfect fit to, to bring that scalar platform, cloud native platform into the ecosystem. >> So, you know, Marc, you've got the CTO hat on for the European theater there. When we, we've been talking to SUSE, when they talk about their innovation, obviously, the community and open-source is a big piece of what they're doing. You were just walking through some of the cloud native pieces, give us what you're seeing when it comes to, you know, how is Dell helping drive innovation, you know, and how does that connects with what you're doing with partners like SUSE. >> Yeah, well, you know, innovation is massively, massively important. So there's a number of different factors that, you know, make up a very good innovation framework or a good innovation program. And at Dell Tech we happen to have what we believe to be an extraordinarily good innovation framework. And we have a lot of R&D budget assigned to helping innovate and we get the chance to go out and work with SUSE and other partners as well. What SUSE and Dell Tech do really, really well together is bring other partners and other technologies into the mix. And, you know, this allows us to innovate, co-innovate together as part of that framework that I just mentioned. So on the Dell Tech framework, we'll obviously, you know, take technologies, you know, we'll take them, perhaps into the office of the CTO, look at new, you know, emerging tech and look at, you know, more traditional tech, for example, and we will blend those together. And, you know, as part of the process and the innovation process, we generally take a view on some of the partners that we actually want to get involved in that process. And SUSE is very much one of those partners, as a matter of fact, right now, we're doing a couple of things with SUSE, one in the labs in Walldorf in Germany, where we're looking at high availability solution that we're trying to develop and optimize there right now at this point in time. And another good example that I can think of at the moment is looking at how customers are migrating off, you know, older, more traditional platforms, they need to look at the cloud native world, they need look at how they can, platform for success in this cloud native world. And we're looking at how we can get smarter, I guess about migrating them from that, you know, extraordinarily stealthy world that they had been in the past but that needs to get from that stealthy world into an even stealthier scalable world that is, that is cloud native world. >> Yeah, Marc, you talk about customers going through these transformations, I wonder if you can help connect the dots for us as to how these types of solutions fit into customers overall cloud strategies. So, you know, obviously, you know, Dell has broad portfolio, a lot of different pieces that are on the cloud, you know, I know there's a long partnership between Dell and SUSE and like SAP solutions, we've been looking at how those modernize so, you know, where does cloud fit in and we'd love any of kind of the European insights that you can give on that overall cloud discussion. >> Yeah, sure, so, again, ourselves and SUSE go back on, in history, you know, on the cloud platforming side, I mean, we've collaborated on developing a cloud platform in the past as well. So we had an OpenStack platform that we both collaborated on and you know, it was very successful for both of us. Where I'm seeing a lot of the requirement in this multicloud world that we're kind of living in right now, is the ability to be able to build a performant scalable platform that is going to be able to respond in the cloud native ecosystem. And that is going to be able to traverse workloads from on-prem to off-prem and from different cloud platforms with different underlying dependencies there. And that's really the whole aspiration, I guess, of this open cloud ecosystem. How do we get workloads to traverse across, across those types of domain. And the other is bringing the kind of, you know, performance that's expected out of these new workloads that are starting to emerge in the cloud native spaces. And as we start to look to data and extract information from data, we are also looking to do so in an extraordinary, accurate and in an extraordinary performant way and having the right kind of architecture underneath that is absolutely, absolutely essential. So I mentioned, you know, SAP's data hub a little earlier on, that's a really, really good example. As is, a matter of fact, SAP's Leonardo framework so, you know, my background is HPC, right? So, I will always look to how we can possibly architect to get the compute engineering as close to the data sources as possible as we can. And that means having to, in some way get out of these monolithic stacks that we've been used to over the last, you know, for a number of decades into a more horizontally scaled out kind of architecture. That means landing the right architecture into those environments, being able to respond, you know, in a meaningful way that's going to ultimately drive value to users and for the users and for the providers of the services, who are building these type of, these type of ecosystems. Again, you know, as I said, you know, data hub, and some of the work that Dell Tech are doing with the CaaS platform is absolutely, you know, perfectly positioned to address those types of, those types of problems and those types of challenges. On the other side, as I mentioned, the, you know, the story solutions that we're doing with SUSE are really taking off as well. So I was involved in a number of years ago in the Ceph program on the Irish government network and, so these would have been very big. And one of the earliest to be honest, Ceph firm I was involved with probably around five, six years ago, perhaps. And the overlying architecture, funnily enough, was, as you probably have guessed by now was SUSE Enterprise. And here we are today building, you know, entire, entire Ceph scale out storage solutions with SUSE. So yeah, what we're seeing is an open ecosystem, a scalable ecosystem and a performant ecosystem that needs to be able to respond and that's what the partnership with SUSE is actually bringing. >> So, Marc, I guess the last thing I'd like to ask you is, you know, we're all dealing with the, the ripple effects of what are happening with the COVID-19 global pandemic. >> Sure. >> You know, I know I've seen online lots that Dell is doing, I'm wondering what is the impact that, you know, you're seeing and anything specific regarding, you know, how this impact partnerships and how, you know, tech communities come together in these challenging times? >> Yeah, that's a great question to end on, Stu. And I think it's times like we're living through at the moment when we see, you know, the real potential of, I guess of human and machine collaboration when you think of the industry we're in, when you think of some of the problems that we're trying to solve. Here we are, a global pandemic, we have a problem that's distributed by its very nature, and I'm trying to find patterns, I guess, I'm trying to model, you know, for the treatment of, you know, COVID-19 is something that's very, very close to our heart. So we're doing a lot on the technology side where we're looking to, as I said, model for treatment but also use distributed analytical architectures to collaborate with partners in order to be able to, you know, contribute to the effort of finding treatments for COVID-19. On the commercial side of things then Dell Tech are doing a huge amount so, you know, we're, for instance, we're designing a, we're designing a financial model or framework, if you will, where our customers and our partners have, you know, can take our infrastructure and our partners infrastructure and those collaborations that we spoke about today. And they can land them into their ecosystem with pretty much zero percent finance. And so it's kind of a, it's an opportunity where, you know, we're taking the technology and we're taking the capability to land that technology into these ecosystems at a very, very low cost, but also give organizations the breadth and opportunity to consume those technologies without having to worry about, you know, ultimately paying up front they can start to look at the financial model that will suit them and that will, that will, that will, hopefully, accelerate their time, their time to market, trying to solve some of these problem that we've been speaking about. >> Well, Marc, thank you so much for the updates. Definitely good to hear about the technology pieces as well as some of these impacts that will have a more global impact. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Stu, my pleasure. Thank you, take care and stay safe. >> Thanks, same to you. All right, I'm Stu Miniman, back with lots more covered from SUSECON Digital '20. Thank you, for always, for watching theCUBE. 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>> From around the globe, it's "theCUBE" with coverage of SUSECON Digital. Brought to you by SUSE. >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman and this is CUBE's coverage of SUSECON Digital '20. Happy to welcome back to the program one of our CUBE alumni, Alan Clark, he is in the CTO office of SUSE. He works on emerging technologies and open source. Sits on many of the boards for many of those open source organizations. Alan, nice to chat with you. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Thanks for the invitation. I appreciate the opportunity. It's always fun to chat with you, Stu. >> All right, so Alan, you know, open source of course, you know, had a broad impact on the industry. Lots of talk. You know, we talk about soft breeding the world, the impact of open source. Haas on software. Give us, you know, start us a little bit kind of the state of the state as to what you're seeing broadly when it comes to. >> You know, I'm just, I keep, I enjoy this industry, 'cause it's just booming. I got into open source a long time ago, before my hair was gray, and I just can't, it just continues to surprise me and amaze me at how much it's grown. And even from, not just as projects, right? Those continue to exponentially grow, but think about the adoption, right? And from SUSE's perspective, we've got critical mission infrastructure running on open source and that is just totally amazing, right? And they've got aerospace manufacturing firms, Fortune 100s, Fortune 500s, Fortune 50s, the world's largest banks, four or five of the world's largest banks are running on SUSE Linux, right? Automotive vendors, 12 of the 15 largest automotive vendors are running on open source, running on SUSE Linux, and 10 of the largest telecommunications firms are running on SUSE, and it just goes to show that open source is really growing and is being adopted and used by critical infrastructure for the world. Particularly in these troubling days, right? >> Yeah, I mean, Alan, I've always loved diggin' into the data, you know? I haven't followed it for quite as long as you, but I've been involved for comin' up on 20 years now, and you think back 15 or 20 years it was somebody in the back room contributing some code in their spare time when they have it. When I look at the state of open source today, you mentioned lots of enterprises are using it, but lots of enterprises are contributing to it, and it's not necessarily somebody in their spare time doing it, but more and more it part of my job is leveraging and contributing back, upsource to what's happening there, so how are you seeing that? How does that impact the overall governance of open source? >> So, that's a very good question, 'cause the amount of change is huge, right? So these open source foundations have grown very large and the number of people that are contributing to them, not just in code, but in ideas, in best practices and so forth has exponentially grown, and it's amazing to see that. Plus, I guess the other part of it that I really enjoy is it's gone global, right? It used to be these projects were kind of regional, and perhaps North America to Europe, but it's, they've gone global, so these larger projects'll have 170, 180 countries that are involved. That's truly amazing. And the thing that I find very interesting, particularly given the pandemic era, we're all sitting at our homes right now. As open source developers, we're very used to this environment. We're working from home. We're scattered around the globe. We're used to working in different time zones, different geographies, and we know how to communicate and work together, so having this distance and lack of an office is actually not that much of an impediment for open source. So it's actually kind of to their advantage. >> Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. I'd done lots of interviews with developer communities and remote work is just the way they do things. Contributing code is very much an asynchronous nature of what they were doing. Alan, I love you talked about the global nature. One of the things, I was looking forward to being at this event in person was we were going to go to Dublin, you know, great city. (Alan laughs) Love to travel. When we cover a European show, it's always, "Okay, what is different "about different geographies "compared to North America?" You know, you talk about cloud adoption in general tends to be a little bit higher in North America. Any data or anecdotes that you have globally as to how open source is maybe a little bit different and culturally thought of from organizations that might be based in Europe, Asia, Latin America, or the like? >> Yeah, that's to me one of the strengths of these communities now is the difference in perspectives that you get from the different geographies, right? From Europe to Asia and so forth, and it sometimes surprises you, right? You get so used to a few vendors maybe dominating a certain area, and what you find out is they may be strong in a certain geography, but they're not globally. And as other developers and community members and users come in and start talking about their needs and their use cases, you find that their perspective is different than yours and it's kind of that "Ah ha" moment of "Oh, we need to make sure "the software works for everybody "and fits their need." And I guess the second part of that would be, you know, with this pandemic, it's causing the whole industry dynamics to change, and businesses are finding that they've got to rapidly adapt and change, and open source is one of the ways they're able to do that, right? Our customer sentiments are changing. Their purchasing habits are obviously changed. The way we shop, the way we do business, the way we're meeting people, right? We're all doing it digitally now. That's changing the services that companies need to deliver. And one of the powers of open source is being able to provide that to them and deliver those services very rapidly to them. And another dynamic here that I'm finding is interesting is customers, or consumers of open source, the businesses that are consuming open source are realizing that with these times, you know, you've got to have multiple sources for your supply chain. We have a lot more discussion about being nationalized instead of globalized, you know, when borders shut down and you can't get your supplies from another country, where are you going to get them, right? So those kinds of discussions change your source of supplies and so forth, so you have to diversify a little bit, and that's causing new types of services that are going to be created, needed. The beauty of open source, though, is it's global, and so I can get access to it whether I'm here in Salt Lake City or I'm sitting up in Dublin, wherever I'm at. And it's awesome. It's just amazing. >> Excellent, Alan. So, you know, you talked about some of the impact of what the global pandemic happening. They can leverage remote work. Open source is something that they can get ready access to. I'm curious if there's any other things in the community, you know, rallying points that you're seeing, any good stories or anecdotes that you might be able to share. >> So, I guess the other aspect of this I find extremely encouraging is, open source is amazing for individuals, not just businesses, right, to consume it, but me as an individual to learn new ideas, new technologies, try things out. And it's a great opportunity right now, particularly for home bound to go out and learn new ideas, learn about new concepts, new technologies, learn about Kubernetes, learn about containers, learn about rapid software development, right? And SUSE's actually caught onto this. This is one of the things I find really cool is they've got a couple things that are going on. First, they've created a sandbox out there where I, as an individual, for free can go out there and give rapid application development a try. It's being at home, often I don't have the full equipment that I would have at the office, right? So getting an environment set up, having the equipment and access that I need to get an environment set up to try something out, you know, like Kubernetes or application development. I may not have that at my home. So SUSE's set up some sandboxes out there where, as a developer, I can go out and give SUSE's application platform development a try. It's easy, it's all set up for me. I can go out there and I can play. Try out new concepts, see what Kubernetes is about, see what rapid development is about. And it minimizes my, you know, the task and the equipment that I need to be able to do that. The second part of that is they've opened up a lot of their online training courses for free for developers as well and operators. So it's a great time for, we're stuck at home, it's a great time to take advantage of these resources and learn more about open source. >> Great, yeah, absolutely. Alan, I spoke to your CEO, Melissa, and we talked about the importance of the developer communities. You mentioned the sandbox there. I'm curious, anything else you've seen, kind of the changing dynamic about how developers integrate with the business. One of the constant themes we talk about is IT isn't just something that's on the side, but is a clear partner with the business and often is a driver for the business, so the developers often need some education, they need communication. What do you see and how are the development communities changing? >> Oh, so I think a great part of this, this year is all the events that are going virtual. So we've got tons of resources available within these communities and through companies like SUSE, as we just talked about, and we also have these events that are going virtual, so all this content is now becoming readily accessible. I hear often from developers saying, "Well, my company doesn't give us much "for money for traveling to these events "and conferences and so forth." Now that they're all going virtual it's given 'em great access to amazing materials, and the beauty of these events is that a lot of the material is framed around helping you understand how to develop open source, how to become a part of the community, and then also about what this technology is about, where it's heading. So you, particularly as an IT organization, I get a great insight as to where the technology's going. What's the future look like? What are the ideas that are being formed by all these individuals from around the world? What's their perspectives? And then I can turn, and tying that to the business, is I can take that and take that to my business and say, "Look, here's where the technology is heading. "Here's how we can use it to enhance our business "and deliver better services to our customer." So it's a great opportunity this year. >> Yeah, you're right, Alan. There's often that gap between the people that can attend and what content is available to everyone else, and, you know, seems to be opening up. Everything from, you know, it funny, Disney is giving away the recipes for some of the things that they're doing through the conferences, typically free to attend and on demand soon after doing. All right, Alan, you're in the emerging technologies group. So, last thing I want to ask is give us a little bit look forward. What is your group looking at or the communities that you're involved in? What are some of the things that are exciting you and your peers? >> So, SUSE expanding from the edge to the cloud, to the core, right? And so we're covering things all the way from the gamut. Lot of new exciting stuff happening out on the edge with IoT and with edge services. Pretty excited about that area. SUSE's had a lot of experience in that space, particularly if you look at manufacturing providing, helping them, those businesses, the manufacturing firms meet their SLAs. Had a lot of experience in the retail space, around point of service. That, of course, is pivoting to self-service, to frictionless shopping, that types of stuff, so it's pretty exciting in those areas. So there's a lot going on in the edge. Healthcare, SUSE's been very involved, embedded in a lot of healthcare devices. That business will continue to grow, so we're seeing a lot about, on the edge. We talked a bit about rapid development. So back at the core and the cloud we're trying to make that a seamless experience so you can push those workloads, build those workloads in a containerized, micro-service manner, and distribute those pieces where it makes sense, right? So we talk about artificial intelligence gathering the data out on the edge, doing a bit of filtering and processing, moving that up to the core and the cloud, being able to mine that data, learn intelligently, then orchestrate your services, orchestrate your core appropriately, right? To meet those demands that your customers are putting on you. There's just a lot going on. We got containers. We've got hybrid cloud. We've got multicloud. We got intelligent orchestration. Then we could go on and talk a ton, we could talk for 30 minutes just about what's happening in the data space. So there's a lot to look forward to when it comes to open source and the innovation that's happening out there. >> All right, well, Alan Clark. Great to catch up with you. Thank you so much for giving us a little bit of vision. >> Thank you, Stu. >> Where we've been, and where we're going. >> Thank you very much. >> All right, I'm Stu Miniman and stay tuned for more coverage from SUSECON Digital '20. Thank you for watching "theCUBE." (calm electronic music)

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with coverage of SUSECON Digital, brought to you by SUSE. >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman. And this is theCUBE's coverage of SUSECON Digital '20. Really excited we get to talk to the SUSE executives, their partners and their customers. In this segment, we have one of the customers, he's in the keynote and really excited to talk to him, Günther Tschabushnig and he is the CIO of ZAMG. If you're not familiar with them, they are the Central Institute for meteorology and geodynamics, the oldest weather service in the world, based out of Austria. Günther, thank you so much for joining us. Great to see you. >> Thank you for being here, thank you. >> All right, so obviously weather something we are very interested on theCUBE. We talk how important data is. And data, is it for central to what your service is doing, providing data, the organizations, they can do lots with it. Give us a little bit, we probably don't have time to go through the 150 plus, years history of the organization, but tell us a little bit about what your organization does, and especially your role as CIO. What's involved with that? >> Oh, let me hook you in. One thing you said, we have the oldest, weather service in the world. I always tell people, we are doing big data analytics between until 1851. And actually that's true. We have actually two big data centers based in Austria. We are operating about 20 petabytes of data, 100,000 data sets per minute. What is very, very interesting for tech guys. We have one small data center additional on over 3000 meters above sea level on the observatory. It's in the middle of the glacier. Can't imagine how cool that is. When you go up, into the glacier and yeah, you have a lot of sensors, a lot of measurements and a lot of data collecting, configurations. Actually, we are also using a lot of super-computers. We do simulating, we do a lot of AI. We did big data analytics and the most important thing, we do a lot of cooperation with the people that are out there. >> Yeah, in 1851, wasn't exactly super-computers. You're gathering data from a lot of sources. Help us understand a little bit. What are some of the, asks that the business have for you? What are the kind of challenges? In 2020, that might be a little bit different than they were years ago. >> Weather comes from, but different source, actually in 1851, it was more for the King, for their wars. Nowadays it's much more peaceful, thank, God. It's more for sporting, it's more for producing things. It's a lot for logistics, but it's actually for all the human people are out there, and therefore we have to use a lot of data, a lot of processes and a lot of different customer journeys. Our most important thing is customer first. So we try to produce, our full costs, our, integrated processes, especially for the customers. Justin, quick example is, the Olympic winter games. The ZMAG is doing the forecast for the last two, winter games, because we are doing now casting and we're very good at now casting that means the forecast between the next five minutes to 15 minutes, with, what's it call a breath of 100, 150 meters, which is very, very important for, some kind of events. But we do other forecast as well. The only thing we cannot forecast but we also to, earthquakes, that means naturally earthquakes on the one side, on the other side, artificial earthquakes, which are produced through, normally bombs or nuclear bombs. And, we are working with the CTBTO, the UN organization together to analyze and to measure is illegally, nuclear tests. To make the world a little bit a better place. >> Yeah, so Günther it's interesting you mentioned in the early days it was, weather for the king. One of the things we look about in data, especially in the public sector is what data, where do you collected from? How much hearing is there? Can you talk a little bit about, how it goes kind of beyond your borders and is there, I guess, how do you work with other organizations there any of data that shared any of the models? How does that work together in your organization? >> The most important thing is the link data to link our data to other organizations and to collect other data from other organizations. It's not forecast anymore. It's forecast, integrating into processes, especially in the business processes. Weather doesn't stop at the borders. That's a good thing. So we had a lot of collaboration with our neighbors. We found a weather services from our neighbors. That's one thing. I have them, the big picture. For, our models for our simulations. But what we also do is a lot of crowd data. Because the more data we get, the more data we can assimilate into our model. The better, the higher is the resolution of our forecast, so we do a lot of integration of this crowd source weather, that could be on the one hand, a simple app that could be a weather station, in our, in your home. But that could also be a photograph. What did you do with your smartphone? Well, we do artificial intelligence algorithms. To get out the information about clouds, about damages, what we integrate again in our models, in our simulations. And give you the better forecast as a response. We have a big, cooperation, for example, with, the Austrian fire department. They get the best forecasts we can ever do. A specialist forecast for the emergencies. When does, a fire in the woods, for example, they need a special soil moisture for example, then wind directions. Do we need wind strengths? They can use this on their smartphone. They can, use the smart watch. They do pictures after emergency, send it back to us. We analyze it and do a live modeling through our super-computers. To have a better forecast on this place. >> Excellent, now you talked about a bit about communities, leveraging, a lot of different technologies, I guess that's a good way for us to help connect the dots to us talking here to at SUSECON. Obviously, open-source, the communities, the piece of what we or hearing at the show. Talk to us a little bit about SUSE , what technologies are using them, what's the role of open-source, is that, the piece of how you look at technology. >> Nothing is more boring than they get weather from yesterday. So what we need is a really fast development of our forecasts, to our customers. And SUSE helps us, there. We have special services, especially on our ship of computers. Well, we use the special SUSE ranking system. We use SUSE, on our storage systems on our software defined storage system. To have a, we can develop man, to our customers, to our cooperation partners. And, the last big thing is we use SUSE containering, that forms, and on AI platforms. So the new SUSE AI platform, we tried to do forecasts for avalanches, for snow avalanches and that's a really, really big effort at the moment, because there are people dying every year in Austria and in the Alps, because of avalanches. And maybe we can save some of them, because we do have good forecast together with SUSE. >> Excellent, you talk about moving to containerization, gives a little insight. You are a government agency. How easy it is for you to take advantage of new technologies? Any guidance you can give as to things that you've through that might be able to help? >> Innovation and new technologies, but kind of moving on the edge, because on the one hand we have 24/7, the whole year long, we have to be high availability. We have a very stable, on the other hand, we want to have new technologies, new innovations. So it's really, really working on the edge. We use two groups, two separate data centers. On one hand, we do the all the stable thing. The high availability things on the other things. On the other data center, on other group, they are doing the true new things. They do containerization, they do blockchain and they do artificial intelligent moves. And the thing is they are working together. They are connected, that means tell it this way. We have a very, very experienced, head of our one group, our stable 24/7 group, and very, very young high potential or not innovation group. To be honest, first two weeks they hated each other, because one guy wanted to have the innovation and going forward and forward and forward, and the other one said, "No stop, we have to be stable. "That's the most important thing." After four weeks with a lot of maintenance for sure, and with a lot of guidance, they started to love each other because they can learn from each other. And that's the main point. We learned about all of these things. Now we can combine, stable with technology, with new technology, with cool, new things, which can be proved in the one side and integrate that in the stable side, a little later. >> That's an excellent story to learn from, learning so important, great to hear that the more traditional, reliable group and the new innovation group work together. Of course we can't let you go talking about weather without touching on climate. So, anybody that's watched the space with his global pandemic has some interesting, I guess you'd say, positive side effects, there are parts of the world where pollution's cleaned up, major impacts, on climate that, I'd expect you have some interesting data on. What can you share, when it comes to climate change? Any advice, you'd give for business leaders, that are looking to help contribute in a positive way. >> Okay, sure actually, a data center, we are also data hub for the ESA, the European Space Agency for their sentinel data. This data is very interesting, because it hasn't direct shows and direct impact how the climate is changing. The most important thing I can tell you as a CIO, it is changing. That's the most important thing. What we are looking for is how can we combine data, to stop this climate change. How can we show other leaders, politicians, etc. How to stop it, how can we work against it, and how they can be cooperate, work against. The thing is if we only show us the weather service, our climate data, that's nice to have. You see what a curve that's going to be warmer and warmer and the parameters are changing, but that's not the goal. The goal is, how can we work together? How can we link data together? To stop pollution, to stop several kind of attributes. To stop climate change. We started to do some collaborations with big companies. One of these is SUSE. One of these is Hewlett Packard, to work together. To combine resources, to combine a compute power, to combine storage, to combine knowledge, especially data to stop climate change. >> Excellent, so Günther final question is, anything you've been seeing strange, being a CIO, a question we always have, something we heard in the keynote is the changing role of the CIO. You talked a bit about AI, talked about, you live with actual cloud, and super-computers. So what in 2020 is kind of different about the role of CIO? >> What I really learned is IT, it's the supporting accompany or the supporting department anymore. IT is, the strategic partner of each domain we have, we had all our scientists and they always told us, "We had a scientist and we need IT." From several years now, they started to work together with the IT, with Artificial Intelligence, with big data analytics, with several platforms, both integrations, how to, solve problems. So the CIO especially, is not the IT leader anymore, it's more the management part of the management board. So that means, the integration of the CIO in the whole company is much, much more then it was several years ago. Meg Whitman, I met years ago and we had a good talk, told me there is no company anymore without IT. That's not correct. There's no company anymore that is IT. Even every culture is IT, everything is IT. It's no support anymore, it's linking anymore. >> Excellent, yeah Günther, such an important point to talk about if a company, is going to thrive in the modern era. Data is such a critical piece of that gives you as a CIO, a seat at the table to work closely with them, because if the business needs to be driven by data, the CIO's role of connecting IT in the business, so important. Thank you so much for sharing your stories. Pleasure to talk with you. >> Thank you, it was a pleasure. >> All right, and we'll be back with more coverage from SUSECON Digital '20. I'm Stu Miniman and thank you for watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: From around the globe it's theCUBE, with coverage of SUSECON Digital. Brought to you by SUSE. >> Stu: Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman and this is theCUBE's coverage of SUSECON Digital '20. Apeda Welcome to the program Vincente Moranta, who is the Vice President of Offer Management of Enterprise Linux Workloads on Power. Vincente, pleasure to see you, thanks for joining us. >> Vincente: Hey Stu and thank you for having me. >> All right, so we know that SUSE lives on a lot of platforms. We're going to talk a bit about applications specifically, primarily SAP. Give us a little bit, Vincente, about what you're working on, and the relevance to the partnership with SUSE. >> Sure, absolutely. So, the last five years I've been responsible for offering management at IBM. Focused on solutions that live on IBM powered systems. In particular, we started with SAP HANA, and obviously SAP and SUSE, with their fantastic relationship, was a big part of that and continues to be as we have grown the platform for the last five years. >> Excellent. So, SAP of course, critical workload, we've been seeing SAP go through those transformation. So, help us understand what work needs to be done to integrate these things? Make sure that companies can run their business. >> Yeah, I think primarily as clients are making their transition from a traditional type of an ERP, CRM, and even BW type workloads, they're looking for a way to make those transitions. Really get in to the whole digital transformation and all of the spaces of being able to leverage technology in a way that creates value to the client, in almost real time. But they want to do it with technology partners that are going to enable the client to do it with minimal risk, with high flexibility and with partners who are there for them to, in some cases, do things that are not necessarily all too forwarded or ready to go yet. But really giving the customer the ability to adapt to things. And when we started with SAP HANA, as I mentioned, the customers in the market who were doing HANA on X86 platforms were limited to certain set of capabilities, certain set of support statements, and things like that. And a big part of that was bare metal implementations which still to this day remain the most popular way to deploy HANA in an X86 environment. But when we got together with SUSE and with SAP and we started the partnership around HANA, the thing that became very clear was that customers needed flexibility. They needed to be able to adapt to changing environments, very interesting challenges that they were trying to tackle with these HANA projects. But the capabilities of the servers that they were using, were not allowing them to have that flexibility. And then, even if SUSE was trying to do certain things and give some flexibility to those clients, if the infrastructure cannot handle it, or vice verse, it really just is a one-party trick and it doesn't work. So the focus with SUSE, almost from the beginning, has been on tool innovation. And we've been able to accomplish really amazing things together with them and SAP. Things that could not have been possible without that very strong collaboration. And one of them that is very recent, is shared processor pool. Right? In a world where HANA is deployed bare-metal systems, IBM Power is always doing virtualization, and together with SUSE, we were able to come up with a solution. And with SAP, obviously. That allowed customers to share source in a virtual way across many HANA instances. So completely revolutionizing the DCO and the ROI for clients working with HANA. Without trading out any of the resiliency, any of the performance, and everything else. So, that's the balance that a lot of these customers are looking for is flexibility, and better returns, especially now more than ever. Without trading out all of the things that they need for an S/4 HANA project or an ERP or a BW project. >> You talked about the flexibility and the returns that customers get on this. I wonder if you step back for a second, where is this hitting on a CIO's priority list? What has changed in today's Cloud era? Couple weeks ago, IBM Think was going on, heard a lot about customers, how they're going through their journey in the cloud. We know there's a lot of options there so. SAP solutions specifically, there's a lot of ways that we can do this. So how does a CIO figure out what the best solution for their skill-set and the technology partner that they work with. >> Yeah, I think at a high-level where the CIO's are basing nowadays, is kind of, it's a good time to be a CIO, I think, because you get a chance to have a broad range of deployment options. Without having to trade out from the features. I'm sure some CIO's will disagree and will say there's plenty of other challenges that are making their lives complicated. But if we just focus on the fact that you can deploy HANA - you can deploy it in the cloud, you can deploy it in hybrid, you can deploy it on premises. And the largest then, and especially with our capabilities, and together with SUSE, the CIO doesn't have to make a choice on trade out of things that they have to lose if they make one of the other. I think that is what helps them to feel comfortable to go in to SAP and being able to adapt. If a project becomes too large or the data transfer requirements become too complicated or too expensive, it's easy enough to bring it back and to maybe leave dev test in a cloud and move the rest of the production environment to on premise. Through a number of partnerships that we have done over the last few years, there's a number of very large MSP's and CSP's including SAP HANA Enterprise Crowd - HEC - and very soon IBM cloud as well. Who can provide all of these capabilities that SUSE and Empower allow for a HANA deployment to be done in a Cloud. So from our perspective, even though I'm a hardware guy, and some people may think I only care about on premises business, the reality is when a customer says, or a CIO as you were asking. When a CIO is trying to make a decision we don't want that CIO to be thinking they have to make a decision between IBM supporting them only if it's on premises or only if it's on Cloud. We can do both. And they don't have to do, it's not a hard trade off to decide. You can start with one, you can go to the other one. We can have capacity for them like we're doing with SAP HEC today, SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud. They're using Power9 technology. The customers benefit in regardless of which deployment option they choose. Both with SUSE underneath it. I think we're trying to make it simpler for them to make those choices without infrastructure becoming the sticky point. >> Yeah, and you talked about the support that users can get, of course, from IBM. At SUSECON, a lot of the discussion about the community there. >> Absolutely. >> So, what can you tell us about, you've got thousands of customers that are running SAP HANA on Power, how do you help them rally together and be part of (muted). >> Yeah, so, you and I have known each other for a while and I think when we started working together at a prior company it was around communities practice. And the organizational network and social network. A big part of what we have done is just going to that same approach. Of just connecting people with people. Right? Connecting people from SUSE with people from IBM, with clients and trying to foster valuable interaction between those clients. Whether it's TechU, IBM TechU Conferences, SAP TechEd, SUSECON, you name it. We're always kind of looking for ways to bring people together. And I'll put in a plug for a client entity, a client council called the SAP Power Customer Council, which is a group of clients that decided on their own to get together and bring other customers who are doing SAP deployments on AIX, on Linux, obviously with SUSE and HANA, and come together once a year. We also have almost monthly interlock and workshops with them. But that is one way where the SUSE folks, IBM Power, SAP Development, all come together with a whole bunch of clients and they're giving us feedback. But also identifying things for us to work on next. From a support perspective, as you said, we have thousands of clients nowadays, and the really fantastic thing has been very few issues and the issues that we have had, SUSE, SAP and IBM, all three of us together, have been able to resolve them to the customers satisfaction. So it just kind of demonstrates that regardless of where something is invented SUSE with SLES, SAP with HANA, us with our hardware and our hypervisors, when it comes to the clients we all work very closely together for their success. >> Great. Those feedback loops are so critically important to everyone involved. I guess last thing, maybe if you've got a customer example that might highlight the partnership between IBM and SUSE? >> Yeah, there's a number of them and we have, I think it's over 60 public references together with SUSE of clients who are doing an SAP HANA with SUSE Empower. But a couple that come to mind, obviously Robert Bosch is a fantastic client for all of us. A fantastic partner. And they've been with us almost from the very beginning, together with SUSE and together with us. And they helped us to identify early on some things that they would like to be able to see supported. Some capabilities that they expected to be able to have, especially given that Bosch had a strong knowledge of IBM technology, IBM product. And they wanted to be able to apply some of the same capabilities around Live Partition Mobility and large size L-bars for HANA and things like that. And they worked very closely with SUSE and with us, and with SAP, to not just give us the requirement, but really help us to identify okay, how should this work? Right, it's not just creating the technology and adding more and more features but how do we integrate it, how do we integrate it in to Bosch, who had created a fantastic self-provisioning type of a portal for all of their clients, all of their internal entities around the world. That was really cool and it really kind of helped us to highlight how we could integrate into tools, monetary, and reporting, etc that our clients have. Another example if I can, is Richemont. Richemont International is based in Geneva. Luxury brand. And Helga Delterad who was the Director of Idea at the time, kind of came to me and gave me a challenge. He said, "Look, I love HANA Power. I love that we can do all of these things with it. But I really would like be able to share processors across multiple HANA instances. That would really reduce the bill. It would really reduce the cost. And Richemont would be able to achieve a much quicker return on investment than we had anticipated." So, he gave us a challenge. The challenge went to everybody. It went to SUSE, to us and to SAP, we all got together and again with Helga being the executive sponsor on the client side, he really kind of worked with all of us. Brought us together and it was a power of the possible type of situation that now is generally available to all clients. And it's thanks to Helga, thanks to Richemont, who brought us together and gave us that challenge. >> Excellent. Well Vincenta Morante, great to catch up with you. Thanks so much for sharing the update on IBM Power and the partnership with SUSE. >> Thanks Stu. >> All right, we'll be back with more coverage from SUSECON Digital '20. I'm Stu Miniman and as always, thank you for watching theCUBE. (upbeat music plays)

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with coverage of Susic on digital brought to you by Susan. >>Welcome back. I'm stew minimum in coming to you from our Boston area studio. And this is the Cube's coverage of Silicon Digital 20. Happy to welcome to the program. Two of the keynote president presenters. First of all, we have Dr Mr Giacomo. He is the president of engineering and innovation and joining him, his presenter on the keynote stage, Daniel Nelson, who is the Vice president of Product solutions. Both of you with Souza. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. >>Thank you. Thank you for having us. >>All right, So? So, Dr T let let's start out. You know, innovation, open source. Give us a little bit of the message for our audience that Daniel are talking about on stage. You know how you know we've been watching for decades the growth in the proliferation of open source and communities. So give us the update there, >>Andi. It's not stopping. It's actually growing even more and more and more and more innovations coming from open source. The way we look at it is that our customers that they have their business problems have their business reality. Andi s So we we have to curate and prepare and filter all the open source innovation that they can benefit from because that takes time to understand that. Match your needs and fix your problems. So it's Susa. We've always done that since 27 per sales. So working in the open source projects innovating they are, but with customers in mind. And what is pretty clear in 2020 is that large enterprises, small startups. Everybody's doing software. Everybody's doing, I t. And they all have the same type of needs in a way. They need to simplify their landscape because they've been accumulating investments all the way. Our infrastructure Joseph well, different solutions, different platforms from different bundles. They need to simplify that and modernize and the need to accelerate their business, to stay relevant and competitive in their own industries. And that's what we're focusing on. >>Yeah, it's interesting. I completely agree. When you say simplify thing, you know, Daniel, I I go back in the communities about 20 years, and in those days, you know, we were talking about the operating clinic was helping to, you know, go past the proprietary UNIX platforms. Microsoft, the enemy. And you were talking about, you know, operating system server storage, the application that it was a relatively simple environment and inherited today's, you know, multi cloud ai in your based architecture, you know, applications going through this radical transformation growth, though, give us a little bit of insight as to, you know, the impact this is having on ecosystems. And of course, you know, Susie's now has a broad portfolio that at all >>it's a great question, and I totally get where you're coming from. Like if you look 20 years ago, the landscape is completely different that the technologies were using or you're completely different. The problems were trying to solve with technology are more and more sophisticated, you know, at the same time that you know, there's kind of nothing new under the sun, every company, every technology, you know, every you know, modality goes through. This expansion of capabilities and the collapse around simplification is the capabilities become more more complex, manageable. And so there's this continuous tension between capabilities, ease of use, consume ability. What we see with open source is that that that that's kind of dynamic that still exist, but it's more online of like. Developers want easy to use technologies, but they want the cutting edge. They want the latest things. They want those things within their packets. And then if you look at operations groups or or or people that are trying to consume that technology, they want that technology to be consumable simple. It works well with others. People tend to pick and choose and have one pane of glass field operate within that. And that's where we see this dynamic. And that's kind of what the Susan portfolio was built. It's like, How do we take, you know, the thousands and thousands of developers that are working on these really critical projects, whether it's Linux is like you mentioned or kubernetes or for cloud foundry? And how do we make that then more consumable to the thousands of companies that are trying to do it, who may even be new to open source or may not contribute directly but have all the benefits that are coming to it. And that's where Susan fits and worse. Susan, who's fits historically and where we see us continuing to fit long term, is taking older is Legos. Put it together for companies that want that and then allow them a lot of autonomy and choice and how these technologies are consumed. >>One of the themes that I heard you both talked about in the keynote it was simplifying modernized. Telerate really reminded me of the imperatives of the CIO. You know, there's always run the business they need to help grow the business. And if they have the opportunity, they want to transform the business. I think you know, you said run improve in scale scale. Absolutely. You know, a critical thing that we talk about these days when I think back to the Cloud Foundry summit. You know, on the keynote stage, it was in the old way. If I could do faster, better, cheaper. Ah, you could use two of them today. We know faster, faster, faster is what you want. So >>it was a >>little bit of insight as to who you know, you talked about, you know, cloud foundry and kubernetes application modernization. You know, what are the imperatives that you're hearing from customers? And how are we with all of these tools out there? Hoping, You know, I t not just be responsive to the business, but it actually be a driver for the transformation of the business. >>It's a great question. And so when I talk to customers and Dr T feel free to chime in, you talked. You know, as many or more customers than then Ideo. You know they do have these these what are historically competing imperatives. But what we see with the adoption of some of these technologies that that faster is cheaper, faster is safer, you know, creating more opportunities to grow and to innovate better is the business. It's not risk injection when we change something, it's actually risk mitigation when we get good and changing. And so it's kind of that that that modality of moving from, um, you know, a a simplify model or very kind of like a manufacturing model of software so much more organic, much more permissive, much more being able to learn with an ecosystem style. And so that's how we see companies start to change the way they're adopting the technology. What's interesting about them is that same level of adoption that seemed thought of adoption is also how open source is is developed open source is developed organically is developed with many eyes. Make shallow bots is developed by like, Let me try this and see what happens right and be able to do that in smaller and smaller recommends. Just like we look at red Green deployments or being able to do micro services or binary or any of those things. It's like let's not do one greatly or what we're used to in waterfall, cause that's actually really risk. Let's do many, many, many steps forward and be able to transform an iterative Lee and be able to go faster iterative Lee and make that just part of what the business is good at. And so you're exactly right, like those are the three imperatives of the CIO. What I see with customers is the more that they are aligning those three areas together and not making them separate. But we have to be better at being faster and being transformed. And those are the companies that are really using I t. As a competitive advantage within the rich. >>Yeah, because most of the time they're different starting points. They have a history. They have different business strategy and things they've done in the past, you need to be able to accommodate all of that and the faster micro service, that native developments for sure, for the new APS. But they're also coming from somewhere on diff. You don't take care of that. You get are you can just accelerates if you simplify your existing because otherwise you spend your time making sure that your existing it's still running. So you have to combine all of that together. And, yeah, do you mentioned about funding and communities? And that's really I love those topics because, I mean, everybody knows about humanities. Now. It's picking up in terms of adoption in terms of innovation, technology building ai ml framework on top of it now, what's very interesting as where is that cloud? Foundry was designed for fast software development until native from the beginning, that 12 factor app on several like 45 years ago. Right? What we see now is we can extract the value that cloud foundry brings to speed up and accelerate your stuff by the Romans hikers, and we can combine that very nicely on very smoothly, simple in a simple way, with all the benefits you get from kubernetes and not from one communities from your communities running in your public clouds because you have records. They are. You have services that you want to consume from one public clouds. We have a great silicon fireside chat with open shot from Microsoft Azure actually discussing those topics. You might have also communities clusters at the edge that you want to run in your factory or close to your data and workloads in the field. So those things and then you mentioned that as well, taking care of the I T ops, simplify, modernize and accelerate for the I T ops and also accelerates forward their local themselves. We're benefiting from a combination of open source technologies, and today there's not one open source technology that can do that. You need to bundle, combine them, get our best, make sure that they are. They are integrated, that they are certified to get out of their stable together, that the security aspects, all the technology around them are integrating the services as well. >>Well, I'm really glad you brought up, you know, some of those communities that are out there, you know, we've been saying for a couple of years on the Cube. You know, Kubernetes is getting baked in everywhere. You know, Cisco's got partnerships with all the cloud providers, and you're not fighting them over whether to use a solution that you have versus theirs. I worry a little bit about how do I manage all of those environments. You end up with kubernetes sprawl just like we have with every other technology out there. Help us understand what differentiates Tuesday's, you know, offerings in this space. And how do you fit in with you know, the rest of that very dynamic and defer. >>So let me start with the aspect of combining things together on and Danielle. Maybe you can take the management piece. So the way we are making sure that Sousa, that we don't also just miles into a so this time off tools we have a stack, and we're very happy if people use it. But the reality is that there are customers that they have. Some investments have different needs. They use different technologies from the past. But we want to try different technologies, so you have to make sure that's for communities. Like for any other part of the stack. The I T stock of the stack. Your pieces are model around that you can accommodate different. Different elements are typically at Susa. We support different types off hyper visors. Well, that's focused on one. But we can support KPMG's and I probably this way, all of the of the Nutanix, hyper visor, netapp, hyper visors and everything. Same thing with the OS. There's not only one, we know that people are running, and that's exactly the same. Which humanities? And there's no one, probably that I've seen in our customer base that will just need one vendor for communities because they have a hybrid needs and strategy, and they will benefit from the native communities they found on a ks e ks decay. I remember clouds, you name them Andi have vendors in Europe as well. Doing that so far for us, it's very important that we bring us Sutro. Custom. Males can be combined with what they have, what they want, even if it's from the circle competition. And so this is a cloud. Foundry is running on a case. You can find it on the marketplace of public clouds. It could run on any any any communities. He doesn't have to be sitting on it. But then you end up with a lot of sales, right? How do we deal with that? >>So it's a great question, and I'll actually even broaden that out because it's not like we're only running kubernetes. Yes, we've got lots of clusters. We've got lots of of containers. We've got lots of applications that are moving there, but it's not like all the V M's disappear. It's not like all the beige boxes, like in the data center, like suddenly don't exist. You know, we we we all bring all the sense and decisions in the past word with us wherever we go. And so for us, it's not just that lens of how do we manage the most modern, the most cutting edge? That's definitely a part of it. But how do you do that? Within the context of all the other things you have to do within your business? How do I manage virtual virtual machines? How do I manage bare metal? How do I manage all those? And so for us, it's about creating a presentation layer on top of that where you can look at your clusters. Look at your V EMS. Look at all your deployments and be able to understand what's actually happening with the fire. We don't take a prescriptive approach. We don't say you have to use one technology. You have to use that. What we want to do is to be adaptive to the customer's needs. And so you've got these things here, some of our offerings. You've got some legacy offerings to Let's show you bring those together. Let's show you how you modernize your viewpoints, how you simplify your operational framework and how you end up accelerating what you can do with the staff that you've got in place. >>Yeah, I'm just on the management piece. Is there any recommendation from your team? You know, last year at Microsoft ignite, there was the launch of Azure are on. And, you know, we're starting to see a lot of solutions come out. There are concerns. Is that any of us that live through the multi vendor management days, um, you know, don't have good memories from those. It is a different discussion if we're just talking about kind of managing multiple kubernetes. But how do we learn from the past and you know, What do you recommend for people in this, you know, multi cloud era. >>So my suggestion to customers is you always start with what are your needs? What is strategic problems you're trying to solve, and then choose a vendor that is going to help you solve those strategic problems? So is it going to take a product centric view Isn't gonna tell you use this technology and this technology and this technology, what is going to take the view of, like, this is the problem you're gonna solve? Let me be your advisor within that and choose people that you're going to trust within that, um, that being said, you wanna have relationships with customers that have been there for a while that have done this that have a breath of experience in solving enterprise problems because everything that we're talking about is mostly around the new things. But keep in mind that there are there are nuances about the enterprise. There are things that are that are intrinsically bound within the enterprise that it takes a vendor with a lot of enterprise experience to be able to meet customers where they are. I think you've seen that you know in some of the some of the real growth opportunities with them hyper scaler that they've kind of moved into being more enterprise view of things, kind of moving away from just an individual bill perspective, enterprise problems. You're seeing that more and more. I think vendors and customers need to choose companies that meet them where they are that enable their decisions. Don't prescribe there. >>Okay, go ahead. >>Yes, Sorry. Yeah. I also wanted to add that I would recommend people to look at open source based solutions because that will prevent them to be in a difficult situation, potentially in the three years from now. So there are open source solutions that can do that on book. A viable, sustainable, healthy, open source solutions that are not just one vendor but multi vendor as well, because that leaves those open options open for you in the future as well. So if you need to move for another vendor or if you need to implement with an additional technology, you've made a new investment or you go to a new public clouds. If you based Duke Tracy's on open source, you have a little chance but later left >>I think that's a great point. Dr. T and I would you know, glom onto that by saying customers need to bring a new perspective on how they adjudicate these solutions, like it's really important to look at the health of the open source community. Just because it's open source doesn't mean that there's a secret army of gnomes that, you know in the middle of the night going fixed box, like there needs to be a healthy community around that. And that is not just individual contributors. That is also what are the companies that are invested in this, where they dedicating resources like That's another level. So what level of sophistication that a lot of customers need to bring into their own vendor selection? >>Excellent. Uh, you know, speaking about communities in open source. Want to make sure you have time share a little bit about the AI platform discussed in your >>Yeah, it's very, very interesting. And something I'm super excited about it, Sousa. And it's kind of this this, uh, we're starting to see ai done in these really interesting problems to solve and like, I'll just give you one example is that we're working with um uh, Formula One team around using AI to help them actually manage in car mechanics and actually manage some of the things that they're doing to get super high performance out of their vehicles. And that is such an interesting problem to solve. And it's such a natural artificial intelligence problem that even when you're talking about cars instead of servers or you're talking about race tracks, you know instead of data centers, you still got a lot of the same problems. And so you need an easy to use AI stack. You need it to be high performance. You needed to be real time. You need to be able to decisions made really quickly, easy, the same kinds of problems. But we're starting to see them in all these really interesting wheels in areas, which is one of the coolest things that I've seen in my career. Especially is in terms of I T. Is that I t is really everywhere. It's not. Just grab your sweater and go to the data center because it's 43 degrees in there. You know, it's also getting on the racetrack. It's also go to the airfield. It's also go to the grocery store and look at some of the problems being being being addressed himself there. And that is super fascinating. One of the things that I'm super excited up in our industry in total. >>Alright, well, really good to discussion here, Daniel. Dr B. Thank you so much for sharing everything from your keynote and been a pleasure washing. >>Thank you. >>Alright, Back with lots more coverage from Susan Con Digital 20. I'm stew minimum. And as always, Thank you for watching. >>Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's the CUBE with coverage of SUSECON Digital, brought to you by SUSE. >> Hi, and welcome back. I'm Stu Miniman, and this is the CUBE's coverage of SUSECON Digital '20. Happy to welcome to the program Glenn Fitzgerald, he is the Chief Data Officer for Fujitsu Products in Europe, coming to me from across the pond. Ah, Glenn, great to see you, so thanks so much for joining us. >> Hi Stu, thanks, very glad to be here. >> All right, so, first of all, you know, Fujitsu Products Europe, Chief Data Officer, give us a little bit, your role and responsibility inside Fujitsu. >> Of course, the Fujitsu Products Europe is as the name suggests, that part of the Fujitsu Corporation that is dedicated to delivering our products out through the European geography. Fujitsu's product sets runs the full range of ITC components from... tablets to PCs to servers to big storage devices to networks, which is to integrated systems and the software stacks that sit on top of them. It's a wide profile, yeah. And my role has been to be the Chief Technology Officer for that organization for several years. Recently, we have as an organization adopted a new approach to take to the marketplace. And that has necessitated a slight change in my role to one that's more focused on enabling customers to get value out of their data and their data repositories and the correlation of that data to generate business value. A long description, Stu, but I think necessary. >> Yeah, no, super important, Glenn. One thing we've actually been saying for more than a year on the CUBE now, is when you have that discussion of digital transformation, one of the things that differentiates companies before they've gone digital and if they are truly to call themself, you know, have gone through this transformation, is they need to be data-driven, you know. Data needs to be how they're making their decisions. It was definitely a key theme that we heard from SUSE in the keynote. So maybe talk a little bit about how digital transformation and the partnership with SUSE fits into your world. >> Absolutely. So, in terms of the transformation of our business and the changes that we're trying to make to it, as a product organization, traditionally our relationships with our customers is kind of transactional. You know, we sell stuff and they buy stuff. And that relationship with customers is increasingly less viable. It's increasingly challenged. And I think it's challenged by the many things that have happened in the marketplace. It's a sign of a maturing industry. So, you have the Cloud and you have the ISVs who are providing compute power and storage capacity and network capability to our customers in a different way. They're delivering it on the click of a button on an internet browser. Now, that's suitable for some customers in some situations, it isn't suitable for others, but it's definitely here to stay and it's definitely going to change the way the marketplace works, and it has. So we've recognized inside our organization that we need to leverage some of the capabilities that exists inside the Fujitsu services organizations. Fujitsu is a large company. It also has very significant manage services capabilities, we deliver to huge customers all across Europe in terms of German government, British government, a lot of the big manufacturing industrials in Europe and a lot of the travel and insurance financial sectors. So leveraging some of that to take a more consultant-led approach to our marketplace, to our customers. So what we want to do with them is take them through the story of data transformation. And as you said, and I quite agree, the marketplace is becoming increasingly data-driven. You've only got to look at some of the well-known examples, and I'm not going to rehearse them again because everybody's heard them and knows who they are. But, every organization, however large or small, has to derive business advantage and discrimination from its data. Otherwise, they'll go the way of... I hate to say it, the High Street. You can see, in this recent pandemic, the COVID-19 stuff. I don't know what it's like in the US, but absolutely in the UK and in Europe, those retailers that have been able to provide a online presence have survived, and some of them have thrived. And those retailers that haven't been able to provide that presence aren't here anymore. And that's just, it's a current and rather violent example of this change of how to manage data and get the best value out of it. Now, in order to take that to our customers, the Fujitsu Product team needs to change some of its capabilities, it needs to introduce some of those consulting capabilities into its portfolio, which we do. It needs to work with some of our partners to deliver the capabilities either as an installation or a service and SUSE are one of our prime partners in that sense. Both in terms of delivering the computing platform standards, the SUSE Data Hub, I believe it's changed its name now. The SUSE Data Hub as I know it, is core to our offerings in this space. We have just launched in Germany, for example, a manufacturing optimization application which runs off the SUSE infrastructure and uses the SAP database and database management systems above that to deliver things like predictive maintenance and just-in-time parts delivery, and in-factory automated routine of little robots carrying the bits to the right place. And that's an example of something that was led by a consulting activity between Fujitsu and our customer, in this case, a large manufacturer. We recognized during that consultancy that some of the stuff we needed to do to deliver the solution, that would deliver the data-derived business benefit the customer needed, was not in our immediate scope. We got some of our larger partners, SUSE and SAP in this case, involved in it, and they outcome has been happy for everybody. There are some lessons in all that. The Fujitsu is still learning, if I'm frank, like how to price it. When you have consultant-led activities that are generating very great benefit for your client, it's not too great for the supplier to still be charging that just on consultant day-rate. That can lead you to not getting the value out of what you're providing to your client. So there's lessons there. There's lessons in how to interact between ourselves and some of our services partners and clients. And making sure that the optimum route to market is delivered. But that essentially, Stu, is the story. It's a change from a transactional approach to a consultant-led approach, and the generation of a large ecosystem of partners, like SUSE, like SAP, with the capabilities to build stuff with us and deliver business outcomes to clients, not a stack of tin. >> Excellent. So, Glenn, what about kind of emerging requirements, what you're hearing from your customers, you know, AI is an area that we heard quite a bit in the keynote from SUSE. Where do you see that fitting into the entire discussion? Obviously, the key, leverage of data, when you talk about AI. >> Absolutely, and to talk about that in two ways. The first way, the first issue with that is exactly the point you make, Stu, around data. So, AI, which is not artificial and not intelligent, it's just maths. It's statistical mathematics acting upon a large set of data. And if you have a large set of the right data, it can produce fantastic results for the client. But without that data, it is a relatively meaningless exercise. Once that data are assembled, we're beginning to see very significant results produced by the application of new networking, the machine learning. To technology-based, data-derived solutions for our clients, and there are many examples. I'll give you just one or two. We are working with a large financial institution in the city of London that wants to produce, basically, an artificial knowledge base that will perform the task of insurance underwriting. Don't ask me how that works, I'm not a financial guy. But apparently, insurance underwriting is a relatively mechanical task. You have a set of actuarial tables, you have a set of risks, you compare one with the other and produce a premium. We're working with them on that. There is a lot in the manufacturing space, and a surprising amount in healthcare. One of the most personally rewarding examples I've been involved with was the delivery of intelligent heart monitoring to clients with pacemakers. So, the pacemaker is made intelligent and it dumps to a Bluetooth-connected device in the patient's home, and that uploads to an AI-based knowledge system in the Cloud, and the Cloud says, "Sit down, you're going to have a heart attack." And the important element of that is that it says, "Sit down, you're going to have a heart attack" before you've had the heart attack, so you don't have one. A really fantastic example of human-centric interest. So, I think, as a separate subject, AI is largely of academic interest. But as a component of a data-driven solution for a customer, it's rapidly emerging as an important element in our armory, as indeed some other technologies. Like data annealing, and like data analytics, and to a slightly lesser extent at the moment, but I think it will come, blockchain. >> Excellent. So, Glenn, one of the things we always like talking about when we talk to a CDO is how are companies getting along with their data strategy? And I think back four or five years ago when we were first hearing about CDO as a role, it was, you know, the CDO, where do they fit compared to the CIO, what is the changing role of the CIO? So, like you were saying about some of these things, data often can be an afterthought or not necessarily connected, but just as we were saying, data needs to be a critical piece of how companies plan. You gave a great example of medical, obviously. You know, the data can really help transform lives in that environment. So, bring us inside what you're hearing from customers, how are they structuring, and are they really being, I guess, data-driven is one of the terms that I... >> That's a very good question. And the answer is yes to everything. So, one of the most difficult things to estimate, if you're going in to a customer with a client, especially if it's a client that you don't know very well, is exactly what their point of reference is going to be, what their comfort with some of these things is. As a result, we at Fujitsu invested a good deal of effort in going out to our client base and asking them the necessary questions to generate a thing we call the Data Maturity Model. Now the Data Maturity Model is not a new concept, it's a very solid and sound concept, it's been around for a long time. I think what we're trying to do is bring more rigor to that with a very large sample base of our customers. And the model is what you'd expect. There are five levels within it from at Level 1, what is data? To Level 5, where data is continually monitored, continually exploited, and continually developed as part of the business that the organization delivers. So there's a spectrum. In my experience, slightly controversially perhaps, the state of organizations on that Maturity Index varies with geography. And I think it's something to do with acceptance of risk, I think it's something to do with security concerns and liabilities. It's my observation that in the Anglophone world, in England and in the US certainly, there is a higher average awareness of the importance of data and the need to derive business benefit from it than there is, for example, in the Germanophone world, where there are more concerns around security and more regulations around security. They're quite constraining. And as a result, where organizations are a bit more traditional and a bit less aware of the value to be derived from the data. So, people, organizations hit everywhere on this scope, this plane of awareness of data and its potential. But it's definitely the case that the average is always going up. >> Yeah-. >> You only have to look at some of the public stocks, under the stuff in the public domain, to observe that that's happening all the time. >> Yeah, Glenn, I'm curious with the global pandemic happening, are you seeing any impact on that? I've heard some anecdotal data that you talk about some of the companies that are, you know, might not be interested in doing Cloud adoption because they're concerned about security, and all of a sudden realizing they need to take advantage of certain solutions. Or if you look at something like the tracking and tracing, obviously, people are rightfully concerned about personal information and having rights infringed upon. So, what will, in your opinion, are you seeing any early indications as to what this impact will be on how we think about data? >> I think there, again, there are two different dimensions. There's a Darwinian element in the attitudes towards commercial data. As we said right at the start of the conversation, in the current environment, you can see large retailers disappearing at a rate of knots because they haven't been data-aware and data-adopting. That lesson is not lost on other retailers. So, retailers are beginning to do things that in the past they wouldn't have done because of that sort of security concern, but also because of concerns about things like function and performance... and the sheer security that you have in owning your own stuff and therefore being certain of its ownership by you and your retention of the IPR involved. So there is definitely a slackening of that concern and a faster adoption of data exploitation technologies in the commercial sector. In the domestic sector, I think it's very mixed. And again, extremely geography different. In the UK, we have, if I could just talk about my own country for a second, we have this trial of a smartphone COVID-19 tracking app going on on the Isle of Wight. The British media is full to brimming with discussions of the implications of that upon individual liberty, of whether or not it's the nanny state gone mad, of whether or not we should all be not cooperating with it and catching the damn disease anyway because it's a step too far. In Germany, they just implemented it. And everybody went, "Right." (makes click sound) So there are all these different cultural adoptions of these things. But always and forever the trend is upwards. Similar debates around video surveillance technology. So you've got the pressure of security and protecting the public, against intrusion and violation of individual rights. And that debate has got to the stage now where there have been some pilots for threat detection based on video surveillance in the UK that have been stopped. Not so much in Germany. In the US, I don't know, but I guess, you're even more Libertarian than we Brits are, so it's probably more the other way. But with all of these discussions of differences, of culture and nation and area and geography, the trend is definitely upward. So, however the British people resolve that stress, you have to have a tracking app if you want to beat this disease. And that will happen in due course. >> Excellent. Well, Glenn, I'll give you the final takeaway, SUSECON '20, talk about the importance of the Fujitsu and SUSE partnership. >> I think it's a growing part of the base of an ecosystem that's required for all organizations like Fujitsu, like SUSE, that want to reach out and deliver solutions to our customers' business problems, which is after all, what we're here for and what we're all about. Because let's face it. In any sizable organization, the data landscape is unbelievably complicated. You have different formats of data, in RBDs, in unstructured file store, in whatever floats around employees' devices, on social media, for God's sake. Getting all of that out, understanding its relationship to infrastructure, understanding its relation through infrastructure, through application stacks, and service delivery, and then being able to transform that into new applications and new service paradigms that deliver the business benefits that our customers are looking for, is an incredibly complex act. And no one organization is going to be able to do it on its own. So I see the future as one of these growing ecosystems of people that work together some of the time, compete some of the time. Are in what we might call a frenemy relationship. Because we all have to work together to deliver what the customers need. Fujitsu is working with SUSE and our other partners at the forefront of that trying to build economic and commercial and technical partnerships. And I'm sure that will continue through SUSECON '20 and into the future. >> All right, well, Glenn Fitzgerald, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate the updates. >> I've enjoyed it. Thank you for having me. >> All right, much more coverage from SUSECON '20 Digital. I'm Stu Miniman and thank you for watching the CUBE. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with coverage of SUSECON Digital, brought to you by SUSE. >> Hi and welcome back. I'm Stuart Miniman. And this is theCUBE coverage of SUSECON Digital '20. Getting to the end of a full day wall-to-wall coverage. We've been rather than everyone getting together in Dublin where we talk to SUSE executives, their customers and their partners where they are around the globe, happy to welcome to the program. Rachel Cassidy, she is the Senior Vice President of Global Channel and Cloud. Thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you for having me a pleasure to be here. >> All right, so love getting to talk a little bit about the channel, talk about the whole go to market piece, maybe you start a little bit if you would, Channel and Cloud, how do those two go together? Talk to us a little bit about what your organization does? >> Okay, sure. That's great. So I think this is something new for SUSE. So at the beginning of this calendar year, we actually saw a lot of synergy between how you're going to market with our full end to end ecosystem, and really pulling in all of the different partner type-- around with supporting our customer, digital transformation to the Cloud. So that allowed us to pull all of the alliances together that really support end to end that transformation. So under this charter, we're basically looking to fulfill and support our customers, regardless of what route they want to use to help them through this time of digital transformation, enabling them in whatever type of Cloud environment is best suited for their business, whether it's hybrid, or completely public or born in the Cloud, etc. So that's what our team is is focused to do. >> Excellent, interesting to see how those pieces are coming together. Of course, one of the big discussions is, moving more towards that cloud model we've been saying for years, you know, public Cloud really is that bar that everything gets managed to add everything from the consumption model to price and everything and the like. I know one of the pieces is that you have a new partner program, could you lay out, what's changing? How does that all work? Well, what does it mean that how SUSE is going to work with that ecosystem? >> Great. Yeah. So we're very excited about this. We're releasing or unfolding slowly our SUSE one partner program. And this is one holistic partner across all of SUSEs. I think historically, we had some different programs that address certain go to market routes or what have you. And we're pulling that all together, so we have this larger all encompassing offering. Already today, we've just soft launched a brand new partner portal, so there'll be easier look and feel and ability to use our systems, Coming soon, we'll also have an updated Learning Management System behind the scenes, so you'll have easier and more access to different types of training to support the different roles as you going to build out your panel in cloud strategy within your organization, and all of the supporting services and solutions that support that as well. The other big things that we're doing, and this is a preview of what I mean later towards the end of the summer, so this isn't released yet, but I'm giving you that precursor here. Is a different approach. So we're not going to categorize our partners by I'm an IHV or I'm an ISV, what we're going to do is focus on specialization. So how to sell Are you a seller of a solution? Are you a builder? So you're building integrated solutions that other partners in the downstream channel can sell? Are you a managed service provider or services provider or CSP? Yeah, so we'll have those different areas of specialization. But then our partners can opt into one or more and make their business more impactful to their customers and we'll support them along that journey. >> Sounds like that that move is to kind of align more with what you're seeing customers, I'm assuming. What do you expect that seems to have a ripple effect the SUSE's business? >> Yeah, I think it allows us to have more of an impact with our customers make our end and offerings more strategic, and also allows us to really leverage and create relationships across the full partner ecosystem. So it's not just the a SUSE's specific solution, but we're looking at what are the use cases that our customers are trying to solve? And how do we put the different parts and pieces of the ecosystem together to help them get to that next state of success, whatever that looks like for them, and oftentimes that's the trifecta of a multi partner solution. That then we can package bundle support, and enable our partner ecosystem to support customers on as well. >> Excellent, Rachel, how are you seeing some of the changes in that ecosystem impacting what you're doing? We talked a bit about Cloud, AI, of course, is a big discussion point for the event this week. So how are some of those larger technology trends, impacting your channel and go to market? >> Yeah, I mean, the first piece is I think the different partners are changing their businesses, there were traditional IAT, they're looking and expanding their offerings into more services or MSP type offerings. So they're looking to really engage and support their customers through that digital transformation. And that's what the partner program and how we're aligning our organization is in support (mumbles) And then maybe on the technology roadmap, we're looking to move up the stack and be more more impactful with some of those application-driven solutions. So MLN, AI, etc. And how we can be a bigger part of that and enable our partners to be successful in that as well. And then on top of that, I think the other compelling factor that we have to offer is through source initiative. I think especially now in this marketplace, we're seeing a lot of more, you know, it was already becoming mainstream, if you will, but now with COVID-19, it is a catalyst for innovation. And we are all about through open source opportunities and offerings. And that's what we're also enabling our partner ecosystem and our end customers jointly together around so that they can also be successful. >> Yeah, I've had some great conversations covering SUSECON, with your partner ecosystem, talking about the digital transformation, talking about the date. Is their framework, are there some new training that you're rolling out? Maybe you can expand a little bit on that, that digital transformation discussion, how you make sure that you've got a holistic solution for customers between SUSE and it's in an ecosystem. >> Yeah, great question. So one of the things that we're doing is, we're calling them to the one partner stack. And they're modularized, integrated solutions stack. And we're doing these basically top down and bottom up. So from a market demand perspective, where should we be playing? What are the partners that we should be interlocking with to create those end to end solutions that meet high market demand opportunities and challenges that our customers face today. And at the same time, we're also building and defining these from the ground up. So what are the assets that we're seeing from the field without any marketing support or anything just kind of proactively coming through us, help us solve this problem, and pulling those parts and pieces together, and then also making them very modularized. So that they can be almost like a LEGO Block, if you will. So you can plug and play the pieces that are relevant to your specific solutions. And in the partner world, if you have your own storage offering or whatnot, you can use that or you can use art. So it's very modular. And it also really helps to address very tailored civic solutions. We're starting these kind of a horizontal play. So looking at some of these new technologies, like you mentioned, what are we doing in AI veteran to help support that partner ecosystem and an end to end solution. But then the next wave of this is, what can we do more of that repeatable and scalable to help our healthcare providers or automotive opportunities as well. So the next iteration, our neck neck, will be to have these solutions to one partner stack, if you will, for vertical offerings as well. And then if we're sorry, you also mentioned framing. So all of this it's not just building it in the background. We're doing it in the field, with our customers, with our partners and then all of the different supporting components that you need to be successful from how to support, do it yourself marketing tips so that we can empower our partners to build this into their solutions or services are also part of this. And then enablement is a key table stakes for all of it. And not just on the the parts and pieces but the end to end offering. And also looking at that role base. Like what do I need to really help my customer understand the value of this end to end solution all the way down to the support technician or the deployment architect. >> Excellent, so Rachel is both in the keynote and the conversation that I had with Melissa, there was really a celebration of SUSE being fully independent now, for a year. I'm curious what impact that has on the ecosystem, and how does just being an independent open source company impact the relationship that you have? >> I think we've seen a nice uplift and excitement and opportunity from just that. So when people choose or go or embrace an open source option is because they want choice and we are now the largest independent open source company in the world, and we're offering advice and flexibility. And all those values that are key in the open source, culture and world are part of SUSE's culture, which I also think is really important and it resonates through our partner ecosystem, but also then extends to our customers. >> Excellent, I want to give you any final words you want to share with the ecosystem as to what they should be looking for, you give a little bit of a hint for some things coming out in the summer. But final takeaways from SUSECON. >> Yeah, our logo or tagline, if you will, is the power of many. And this isn't something that any one of us can do on our own. And I think especially in this days, environment, all the challenges that we're facing, we're really seeing people come together. And that is the definition of open source. And I've been in this environment for quite some time. I drank the Kool Aid a long, long time ago, and it's important to us. So for the partner ecosystem, like they say, the power of many and work together as one. And I think that's kind of the the message that resonates, and we want to make working with us, whether you're a customer or a partner, easier to go to market, easier to be innovative and find those solutions together. And, part of our overarching mentality is, to simplify, modernize and accelerate. So everything we do are under those three pillars, which I think is really exciting. And I'm excited to be here and be a part of this, especially at this time. >> Well, Rachel Cassidy, thank you so much for updates, I think perfect note to end things on community, obviously something that a big focus at the show, as well as something that is near and dear to the heart of theCUBE team. So it's been a pleasure for us to participate in SUSECON this year and definitely look forward to many more SUSE events in the future. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Stuart thanks for having me. Have a great day. >> All right, make sure to check out theCUBE dot net for all the interviews that we have. That, well, it shows we will be at future. I'm Stuart Miniman, and thank you for joining us for theCUBE. (upbeat music)

>> Speaker: From around the globe, it's theCube with coverage of SUSECON DIGITAL brought to you by SUSE. >> Welcome back, this is theCube's coverage of SUSECON DIGITAL '20. I'm Stu Miniman and really happy to welcome to the program. We have one of the keynote speakers, Alexander Kocher. He is president and managing director of Elektrobit, really excited to dig in and talk about autonomous vehicles. Alex, thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you Stu Miniman, I'm really excited that you pronounced my family name correct because this is quite difficult for you. It's a German name, thank you very much. >> Well, luckily on theCube, we do have lots of global people we have on the program. I try to do my best. My [mumbles] is all I can say really [mumbles]. >> Very difficult to pronounce it. >> Alright, so Alex, obviously autonomous vehicles is one of those use cases that talk a lot about everything from edge computing, to AI, you know, software eating the world, really one of those transformative technologies. Why don't we start with first, Elektrobit, give us a little bit as to, where Elektrobit fit in kind of the global auto landscape. >> Yeah, thank you Stu. So Elektrobit was founded in the late eighties, 1988. And since then, we are really doing embedded to be a pioneer in the embedded software and, providing solutions, software technologies, for the automotive industry. Since then we are powering more than 1 billion devices in much more than 100 million vehicles worldwide. And we are serving the automotive industry since then. So software is really becoming the single biggest enabler of innovation in the car, and software creation is our passion. So we enjoy solving challenging problems, and providing solutions that drive the mobility ecosystem of the future vehicle, where mobility causes zero fatalities, produces low emissions, and is perceived as quality time. This is also our mission and with that, we are providing services, software technologies, and tools for the automotive industry. >> Yeah, it has been fascinating to watch software in the automotive world. You know, I'm old enough to remember that, when you used to take a car in, the first thing they did was put it up and look under the hood and everything. And now pretty much, they plug a cable into the computer and, go to the diagnostic screens before they do anything else. When we talk about autonomous vehicles, I think many people would be familiar. There's really that five stage model of going from helping to fully autonomous. Give us a little bit as to what you're seeing in the trends out there, and how this market has been mature. >> Yeah, I think, the trend in the autonomous vehicles, we are at the moment at level two level two plus to where you still assisting the driver's behavior with various functions. We are starting to be, to go towards a level three hands-off. In the next, couple of, yeah, hopefully just months or single years, and then going from there to a fully autonomous vehicle, where you not only have hands-off, but also eyes off and then hand over the complete control to the car. But since then, it will still be a path. We just heard recently the announcement of all the, that, not only the functionality within the car, but also then the legal environment needs to be in place, so that you also can check that all of the various functions can be approved. I think the first step, which we will see is that we have it in a kind of a clean room environment, which means highways so the hybrid pilot, where you have to have a kind of insured environment and you can predict certain use cases. And with that we are targeting at, with the next generation of the cars, which can help in one or two years. >> Yeah its really interesting stuff, because of course, you know, it would be really simple if we had nothing, but the autobahn with nothing but autonomous vehicles. I'm sure you can have that running perfectly today, but number one, you start going on different roads and number two, you add that ever unpredictable human element when you have the cars that aren't, on the same system that can cause some issues there. I'm curious, anything from a European standpoint, you know, what's the partnership between government and industry on that, and I guess anything else that's different about Europe then maybe what we'd see in North America? >> Yeah, I think the, one of the biggest differences here is as soon as authorities approve cars, then the liability goes to the authority. And America's there is a complete different behavior in that perspective, liability is taken completely by the companies and the debt, of course. Although there are authorities to control certain environment, but the main liability issue stays with the company itself. And this per se is a complete different approach for that. I think technology-wise, we are here and there, on the same level as on the same technology level. And as you can see already in today's drive assistance functions, technology-wise, we are not far ahead. You can already try certain of those functions, for at least a couple of seconds, but in order to really accept and, calculate all the use cases, you need to start step by step. A highway is one of the perfect measures for that. But when you just go, I'm living here in the in Southern Germany, when you just go to an ancient city, city center, like we do have here Nuremberg, it can be really, really tricky that you consider all the specific use cases. So, here we need to optimize algorithms. The technology are also the horsepower in terms of processing load and of course, security of the census. So here is still for full autonomy still a path to go. >> Alright, so Alex, see, you're part of the keynote, here at SUSECON, obviously, you know, innovation, is a key topic as well as open force and community is a big topic of the show overall. Tell us a little bit about the partnership between Elektrobit and SUSE. >> Yeah, thank you very much for this question. This is really an exciting thing. So two companies like SUSE and Elekrobit, by the way, we have been founded here both, very, very in recent area, so no big area. So SUSE is a leader in delivering mission critical, Linux and container technologies in several industries and Elektrobit brings in the automotive experience. And what we aim for is to really provide the future software platform for automobiles that fulfills all the key requirements around openness, about reuse and, also about a huge pool of open source methodologies, and new modules so that we have a tremendous pool of, patents as well as a tremendous pool of innovation here. So this is the key topic. The automotive industry as such is changing, changing in a way that you continue to develop the technologies along the life cycle of the car in order to really enable our customers to download new functions and new services during the life cycle of the car. This methodology is already used in several other industries. And here we introduced with this partnership exactly the basis for that, in order to really, prepare our customers to focus on their differentiating technology and differentiating features. >> Yeah, fascinating thinking, you brought up, you know, the skill set of course is a key piece. Any industry that's going through change, we wonder who can come along and who's ready for that. It sounded like you were saying that, Linux and the other technologies in this space, there is a large pool of tech of knowledge out there, and that can help really kind of the growth next generation of the automotive industry. Am I getting that right? >> Yes, I mean, for sure the development methodology in open stores and embedded is completely different, but specifically when it comes to liability. So here, there, you need to comply to certain standards of cost, but this is one topic. The other thing is that really the innovation, who the innovation span you have in open source, as well as the modules already existing and the best practices from other industries. This is a tremendous advantage. And also one thing is in terms of changing in our industry, the automotive industry, the development methodology, excuse me, the reuse of, certain platforms is limited as soon as you have to jump to new generations of processes of software modules and so on and so forth. Here, we can with the partnership also leverage the experience we have, technologies which are also for a long period of time, backward compatible and reusable in the essential lower layers of the software, which you need to have by also complying to the relevant standards for a performance as well as a safety requirement. >> Yeah, really interesting mix of balancing that, differentiation in the marketplace while still being an upgradable path. I'm curious, you talked a little bit about the open source model. One of the key things, when you talk about going through a digital transformation is data. There's obviously a lot of data if you talk about autonomous vehicles. We see everybody about, you know, how many gigabytes per hour and all the maps and everything there. What is the role of data in this entire process? Is there sharing of data between some of the different players involved? >> So, yeah, data is I would say data is one is, first of all, data is in channel independent from industry the new currency. This is one thing, also realized in the automotive industry here. Of course we need to consider, certain privacy rules independent from, whether it's the car maker itself or its project or the driver. So we need to respect it, but independent from that, car's one of the most accurate sensors we do have, in our environment. And of course creating data, are we talking about one terabyte per day roundabout? And this is already now reused amongst, common factors amongst the industry. Just think about a certain, here as an acquisition of several players in the industry where they are sharing map data, because it doesn't make a difference, for a GM car, for a Ford car, for a BMW car, for a Daimler car. When you use the same road, the road stays, of course, the brand and the car changes, but the information about the road infrastructure is exactly the same. And this is the first topic which, has to be, or will be shared and is already shared. Second thing is traffic information where you have a mobile providers, in there, and this already is considered, and there are a lot of discussion and, or any business models undergoing or, in preparation for that. >> Yeah, well, you hope the roads don't change. I live in the Boston area, there's a times if you take six months off and all of a sudden you're like, wait, this road used to go a certain way. At least it's a lot easier to update, your software than it is for older vehicles that I'm driving. You talked a little bit about privacy. I know cybersecurity is one of the aspects that Elektrobit involved. Talk to us a little bit about the security aspect and, your company's experiences there. >> The security with transferring data into the car or outside of the car, data security is a key feature. It's just a must. So, in former times as Elektrobit as we are coming from inside the car has an embedded software provider. We protected really the devices within the car, for example, the automator from manipulation and, generated certain securities in the internal bus with our customers. But this is no longer enough. You need to go outside the car. So, when you transfer data from the cloud into the car, or vice versa and therefore cyber security, to predict the whole chain inside the car communication, they're all interfaces where you can connect devices or the backend, from where you transport the information. For them, recently Elektrobit acquired a company in Israel two years ago. But also we know that in the basic technology from the SUSE distribution, there is already a lot of technology in there, which makes data transfer really, really safe, sorry, secure, so that you can trust that the data and really keep the privacy you need to have for specific regions. >> Alright, well, this is a very fast moving industry. Give us a little bit as to what you see happening both the 24 months. What are some of the kind of major opportunities as well as challenges that are being faced? >> Yeah, I think, one of the biggest opportunities we will see in the upcoming directly next generation, is the car really becoming a part of the internet. I think with that, a lot of the business models from the common effector itself, from the suppliers need to change. So that really the common effector enables their customers to continuously update their device mobile device, namely the car. It's very similar to those devices at the moment from technology which you already have then suffocate in our pocket. Of course you cannot put the car into your pocket, but you want to have the same convenience, with new services, with new functions. And I think this is the most of, and the most exciting opportunity of the car. With that you need to have new technologies on platform. You need to have data security, you enable completely new business models. And this has changed our lives completely. Also our business compete. And I think these are the most important and the most exciting changes in the near future, as the next generation already is under preparation and will be launched really, really, really soon. And of course, second topic is the autonomous driving. It goes step by step as just as is testing the beginning. And this is the second opportunity then for many other companies making business with the time when the drivers then, have quality time and, can do something different than just hearing the car. >> Excellent, so much excitement in what is happening in industry. Definitely one we want to watch. Alex wannna give you the final word, SUSECON the partnership between Elektrobit and SUSE the final takeaways that you have for the event. >> Yeah, thanks enough. It's just exciting for us to have such a great partner like SUSECON experienced partner. It brings lots of new aspects into our industry helps us to provide the right solutions. And with that, we are sure that we can generate and we will generate the basis of the next smart cars of our customer in terms of softer platform. Thank you very much. >> Alex, thank you so much for joining us. I'm Stu Miniman, I'll have more coverage here from SUSECON DIGITAL '20. Thank you for watching theCube. (bright music)

(upbeat music) >> Hey, girls and guys. Welcome back to theCUBE. We are live at Stanford University, covering the 8th Annual Women in Data Science Conference. One of my favorite events. Lisa Martin here. Got a couple of guests from Total Energies. We're going to be talking all things data science, and I think you're going to find this pretty interesting and inspirational. Please welcome Alexandre Lapene, Tech Advisor Data Science at Total Energy. It's great to have you. >> Thank you. >> And Myriam Fayad is here as well, product and value manager at Total Energies. Great to have you guys on theCUBE today. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you for - >> Thank you for receiving us. >> Give the audience, Alexandre, we'll start with you, a little bit about Total Energies, so they understand the industry, and what it is that you guys are doing. >> Yeah, sure, sure. So Total Energies, is a former Total, so we changed name two years ago. So we are a multi-energy company now, working over 130 countries in the world, and more than 100,000 employees. >> Lisa: Oh, wow, big ... >> So we're a quite big company, and if you look at our new logo, you will see there are like seven colors. That's the seven energy that we basically that our business. So you will see the red for the oil, the blue for the gas, because we still have, I mean, a lot of oil and gas, but you will see other color, like blue for hydrogen. >> Lisa: Okay. >> Green for gas, for biogas. >> Lisa: Yeah. >> And a lot of other solar and wind. So we're definitely multi-energy company now. >> Excellent, and you're both from Paris? I'm jealous, I was supposed to go. I'm not going to be there next month. Myriam, talk a little bit about yourself. I'd love to know a little bit about your role. You're also a WiDS ambassador this year. >> Myriam: Yes. >> Lisa: Which is outstanding, but give us a little bit of your background. >> Yes, so today I'm a product manager at the Total Energies' Digital Factory. And at the Digital Factory, our role is to develop digital solutions for all of the businesses of Total Energies. And as a background, I did engineering school. So, and before that I, I would say, I wasn't really aware of, I had never asked myself if being a woman could stop me from being, from doing what I want to do in the professional career. But when I started my engineering school, I started seeing that women are becoming, I would say, increasingly rare in the environment >> Lisa: Yes. >> that, where I was evolving. >> Lisa: Yes. >> So that's why I was, I started to think about, about such initiatives. And then when I started working in the tech field, that conferred me that women are really rare in the tech field and data science field. So, and at Total Energies, I met ambassadors of, of the WiDS initiatives. And that's how I, I decided to be a WiDS Ambassador, too. So our role is to organize events locally in the countries where we work to raise awareness about the importance of having women in the tech and data fields. And also to talk about the WiDS initiative more globally. >> One of my favorite things about WiDS is it's this global movement, it started back in 2015. theCUBE has been covering it since then. I think I've been covering it for theCUBE since 2017. It's always a great day full of really positive messages. One of the things that we talk a lot about when we're focusing on the Q1 Women in Tech, or women in technical roles is you can't be what you can't see. We need to be able to see these role models, but also it, we're not just talking about women, we're talking about underrepresented minorities, we're talking about men like you, Alexander. Talk to us a little bit about what your thoughts are about being at a Women and Data Science Conference and your sponsorship, I'm sure, of many women in Total, and other industries that appreciate having you as a guide. >> Yeah, yeah, sure. First I'm very happy because I'm back to Stanford. So I did my PhD, postdoc, sorry, with Margot, I mean, back in 20, in 2010, so like last decade. >> Lisa: Yeah, yep. >> I'm a film mechanics person, so I didn't start as data scientist, but yeah, WiDS is always, I mean, this great event as you describe it, I mean, to see, I mean it's growing every year. I mean, it's fantastic. And it's very, I mean, I mean, it's always also good as a man, I mean, to, to be in the, in the situation of most of the women in data science conferences. And when Margo, she asked at the beginning of the conference, "Okay, how many men do we have? Okay, can you stand up?" >> Lisa: Yes. I saw that >> It was very interesting because - >> Lisa: I could count on one hand. >> What, like 10 or ... >> Lisa: Yeah. >> Maximum. >> Lisa: Yeah. >> And, and I mean, you feel that, I mean, I mean you could feel what what it is to to be a woman in the field and - >> Lisa: Absolutely. >> Alexandre: That's ... >> And you, sounds like you experienced it. I experienced the same thing. But one of the things that fascinates me about data science is all of the different real world problems it's helping to solve. Like, I keep saying this, we're, we're in California, I'm a native Californian, and we've been in an extreme drought for years. Well, we're getting a ton of rain and snow this year. Climate change. >> Guests: Yeah. We're not used to driving in the rain. We are not very good at it either. But the, just thinking about data science as a facilitator of its understanding climate change better; to be able to make better decisions, predictions, drive better outcomes, or things like, police violence or healthcare inequities. I think the power of data science to help unlock a lot of the unknown is so great. And, and we need that thought diversity. Miriam, you're talking about being in engineering. Talk to me a little bit about what projects interest you with respect to data science, and how you are involved in really creating more diversity and thought. >> Hmm. In fact, at Total Energies in addition to being an energy company we're also a data company in the sense that we produce a lot of data in our activities. For example with the sensors on the fuel on the platforms. >> Lisa: Yes. >> Or on the wind turbines, solar panels and even data related to our clients. So what, what is really exciting about being, working in the data science field at Total Energies is that we really feel the impact of of the project that we're working on. And we really work with the business to understand their problems. >> Lisa: Yeah. >> Or their issues and try to translate it to a technical problem and to solve it with the data that we have. So that's really exciting, to feel the impact of the projects we're working on. So, to take an example, maybe, we know that one of the challenges of the energy transition is the storage of of energy coming from renewable power. >> Yes. >> So I'm working currently on a project to improve the process of creating larger batteries that will help store this energy, by collecting the data, and helping the business to improve the process of creating these batteries. To make it more reliable, and with a better quality. So this is a really interesting project we're working on. >> Amazing, amazing project. And, you know, it's, it's fun I think to think of all of the different people, communities, countries, that are impacted by what you're doing. Everyone, everyone knows about data. Sometimes we think about it as we're paying we're always paying for a lot of data on our phone or "data rates may apply" but we may not be thinking about all of the real world impact that data science is making in our lives. We have this expectation in our personal lives that we're connected 24/7. >> Myriam: Yeah. >> I can get whatever I want from my phone wherever I am in the world. And that's all data driven. And we expect that if I'm dealing with Total Energies, or a retailer, or a car dealer that they're going to have the data, the data to have a personal conversation, conversation with me. We have this expectation. I don't think a lot of people that aren't in data science or technology really realize the impact of data all around their lives. Alexander, talk about some of the interesting data science projects that you're working on. >> There's one that I'm working right now, so I stake advisor. I mean, I'm not the one directly working on it. >> Lisa: Okay. >> But we have, you know, we, we are from the digital factory where we, we make digital products. >> Lisa: Okay. >> And we have different squads. I mean, it's a group of different people with different skills. And one of, one of the, this squad, they're, they're working on the on, on the project that is about safety. We have a lot of site, work site on over the world where we deploy solar panels on on parkings, on, on buildings everywhere. >> Lisa: Okay. Yeah. >> And there's, I mean, a huge, I mean, but I mean, we, we have a lot of, of worker and in term of safety we want to make sure that the, they work safely and, and we want to prevent accidents. So what we, what we do is we, we develop some computer vision approach to help them at improving, you know, the, the, the way they work. I mean the, the basic things is, is detecting, detecting some equipment like the, the the mean the, the vest and so on. But we, we, we, we are working, we're working to really extend that to more concrete recommendation. And that's one a very exciting project. >> Lisa: Yeah. >> Because it's very concrete. >> Yeah. >> And also, I, I'm coming from the R&D of the company and that's one, that's one of this project that started in R&D and is now into the Digital Factory. And it will become a real product deployed over the world on, on our assets. So that's very great. >> The influence and the impact that data can have on every business always is something that, we could talk about that for a very long time. >> Yeah. >> But one of the things I want to address is there, I'm not sure if you're familiar with AnitaB.org the Grace Hopper Institute? It's here in the States and they do this great event every year. It's very pro-women in technology and technical roles. They do a lot of, of survey of, of studies. So they have data demonstrating where are we with respect to women in technical roles. And we've been talking about it for years. It's been, for a while hovering around 25% of technical roles are held by women. I noticed in the AnitaB.org research findings from 2022, It's up to 27.6% I believe. So we're seeing those numbers slowly go up. But one of the things that's a challenge is attrition; of women getting in the roles and then leaving. Miryam, as a woman in, in technology. What inspires you to continue doing what you're doing and to elevate your career in data science? >> What motivates me, is that data science, we really have to look at it as a mean to solve a problem and not a, a fine, a goal in itself. So the fact that we can apply data science to so many fields and so many different projects. So here, for example we took examples of more industrial, maybe, applications. But for example, recently I worked on, on a study, on a data science study to understand what to, to analyze Google reviews of our clients on the service stations and to see what are the the topics that, that are really important to them. So we really have a, a large range of topics, and a diversity of topics that are really interesting, so. >> And that's so important, the diversity of topics alone. There's, I think we're just scratching the surface. We're just at the very beginning of what data science can empower for our daily lives. For businesses, small businesses, large businesses. I'd love to get your perspective as our only male on the show today, Alexandre, you have that elite title. The theme of International Women's Day this year which is today, March 8th, is "Embrace equity." >> Alexandre: Yes. >> Lisa: What is that, when you hear that theme as as a male in technology, as a male in the, in a role where you can actually elevate women and really bring in that thought diversity, what is embracing equity, what does it look like to you? >> To me, it, it's really, I mean, because we, we always talk about how we can, you know, I mean improve, but actually we are fixing a problem, an issue. I mean, it's such a reality. I mean, and the, the reality and and I mean, and force in, in the company. And that's, I think in Total Energy, we, we still have, I mean things, I mean, we, we haven't reached our objective but we're working hard and especially at the Digital Factory to, to, to improve on that. And for example, we have 40% of our women in tech. >> Lisa: 40? >> 40% of our tech people that are women. >> Lisa: Wow, that's fantastic! >> Yeah. That's, that's ... >> You're way ahead of, of the global average. >> Alexandre: Yeah. Yeah. >> That outstanding. >> We're quite proud of that. >> You should be. >> But we, we still, we still know that we, we have at least 10% >> Lisa: Yes. because it's not 50. The target is, the target is to 50 or more. And, and, but I want to insist on the fact that we have, we are correcting an issue. We are fixing an issue. We're not trying to improve something. I mean, that, that's important to have that in mind. >> Lisa: It is. Absolutely. >> Yeah. >> Miryam, I'd love to get your advice to your younger self, before you studied engineering. Obviously you had an interest when you were younger. What advice would you give to young Miriam now, looking back at what you've accomplished and being one of our female, visible females, in a technical role? What do you, what would you say to your younger self? >> Maybe I would say to continue as I started. So as I was saying at the beginning of the interview, when I was at high school, I have never felt like being a woman could stop me from doing anything. >> Lisa: Yeah. Yeah. >> So maybe to continue thinking this way, and yeah. And to, to stay here for, to, to continue this way. Yeah. >> Lisa: That's excellent. Sounds like you have the confidence. >> Mm. Yeah. >> And that's something that, that a lot of people ... I struggled with it when I was younger, have the confidence, "Can I do this?" >> Alexandre: Yeah. >> "Should I do this?" >> Myriam: Yeah. >> And you kind of went, "Why not?" >> Myriam: Yes. >> Which is, that is such a great message to get out to our audience and to everybody else's. Just, "I'm interested in this. I find it fascinating. Why not me?" >> Myriam: Yeah. >> Right? >> Alexandre: Yeah, true. >> And by bringing out, I think, role models as we do here at the conference, it's a, it's a way to to help young girls to be inspired and yeah. >> Alexandre: Yeah. >> We need to have women in leadership positions that we can see, because there's a saying here that we say a lot in the States, which is: "You can't be what you can't see." >> Alexandre: Yeah, that's true. >> And so we need more women and, and men supporting women and underrepresented minorities. And the great thing about WiDS is it does just that. So we thank you so much for your involvement in WiDS, Ambassador, our only male on the program today, Alexander, we thank you. >> I'm very proud of it. >> Awesome to hear that Total Energies has about 40% of females in technical roles and you're on that path to 50% or more. We, we look forward to watching that journey and we thank you so much for joining us on the show today. >> Alexandre: Thank you. >> Myriam: Thank you. >> Lisa: All right. For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE Live from Stanford University. This is our coverage of the eighth Annual Women in Data Science Conference. We'll be back after a short break, so stick around. (upbeat music)

(soothing music) >> Hey everyone, welcome to this event, "Build Your Cloud Center of Excellence." I'm your host, Lisa Martin. In the next 15 minutes or so my guest and I are going to be talking about redefining cloud operations, an application modernization for customers, and specifically how partners are helping to speed up that process. As you saw on our first two segments, we talked about problems enterprises are facing with cloud operations. We talked about redefining cloud operations as well to solve these problems. This segment is going to be focusing on how Hitachi Vantara's partners are really helping to speed up that process. We've got Johnson Controls here to talk about their partnership with Hitachi Vantara. Please welcome both of my guests, Prem Balasubramanian is with us, SVP and CTO Digital Solutions at Hitachi Vantara. And Suresh Mothikuru, SVP Customer Success Platform Engineering and Reliability Engineering from Johnson Controls. Gentlemen, welcome to the program, great to have you. >> Thank. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> First question is to both of you and Suresh, we'll start with you. We want to understand, you know, the cloud operations landscape is increasingly complex. We've talked a lot about that in this program. Talk to us, Suresh, about some of the biggest challenges and pin points that you faced with respect to that. >> Thank you. I think it's a great question. I mean, cloud has evolved a lot in the last 10 years. You know, when we were talking about a single cloud whether it's Azure or AWS and GCP, and that was complex enough. Now we are talking about multi-cloud and hybrid and you look at Johnson Controls, we have Azure we have AWS, we have GCP, we have Alibaba and we also support on-prem. So the architecture has become very, very complex and the complexity has grown so much that we are now thinking about whether we should be cloud native or cloud agnostic. So I think, I mean, sometimes it's hard to even explain the complexity because people think, oh, "When you go to cloud, everything is simplified." Cloud does give you a lot of simplicity, but it also really brings a lot more complexity along with it. So, and then next one is pretty important is, you know, generally when you look at cloud services, you have plenty of services that are offered within a cloud, 100, 150 services, 200 services. Even within those companies, you take AWS they might not know, an individual resource might not know about all the services we see. That's a big challenge for us as a customer to really understand each of the service that is provided in these, you know, clouds, well, doesn't matter which one that is. And the third one is pretty big, at least at the CTO the CIO, and the senior leadership level, is cost. Cost is a major factor because cloud, you know, will eat you up if you cannot manage it. If you don't have a good cloud governance process it because every minute you are in it, it's burning cash. So I think if you ask me, these are the three major things that I am facing day to day and that's where I use my partners, which I'll touch base down the line. >> Perfect, we'll talk about that. So Prem, I imagine that these problems are not unique to Johnson Controls or JCI, as you may hear us refer to it. Talk to me Prem about some of the other challenges that you're seeing within the customer landscape. >> So, yeah, I agree, Lisa, these are not very specific to JCI, but there are specific issues in JCI, right? So the way we think about these are, there is a common issue when people go to the cloud and there are very specific and unique issues for businesses, right? So JCI, and we will talk about this in the episode as we move forward. I think Suresh and his team have done some phenomenal step around how to manage this complexity. But there are customers who have a lesser complex cloud which is, they don't go to Alibaba, they don't have footprint in all three clouds. So their multi-cloud footprint could be a bit more manageable, but still struggle with a lot of the same problems around cost, around security, around talent. Talent is a big thing, right? And in Suresh's case I think it's slightly more exasperated because every cloud provider Be it AWS, JCP, or Azure brings in hundreds of services and there is nobody, including many of us, right? We learn every day, nowadays, right? It's not that there is one service integrator who knows all, while technically people can claim as a part of sales. But in reality all of us are continuing to learn in this landscape. And if you put all of this equation together with multiple clouds the complexity just starts to exponentially grow. And that's exactly what I think JCI is experiencing and Suresh's team has been experiencing, and we've been working together. But the common problems are around security talent and cost management of this, right? Those are my three things. And one last thing that I would love to say before we move away from this question is, if you think about cloud operations as a concept that's evolving over the last few years, and I have touched upon this in the previous episode as well, Lisa, right? If you take architectures, we've gone into microservices, we've gone into all these server-less architectures all the fancy things that we want. That helps us go to market faster, be more competent to as a business. But that's not simplified stuff, right? That's complicated stuff. It's a lot more distributed. Second, again, we've advanced and created more modern infrastructure because all of what we are talking is platform as a service, services on the cloud that we are consuming, right? In the same case with development we've moved into a DevOps model. We kind of click a button put some code in a repository, the code starts to run in production within a minute, everything else is automated. But then when we get to operations we are still stuck in a very old way of looking at cloud as an infrastructure, right? So you've got an infra team, you've got an app team, you've got an incident management team, you've got a soft knock, everything. But again, so Suresh can talk about this more because they are making significant strides in thinking about this as a single workload, and how do I apply engineering to go manage this? Because a lot of it is codified, right? So automation. Anyway, so that's kind of where the complexity is and how we are thinking, including JCI as a partner thinking about taming that complexity as we move forward. >> Suresh, let's talk about that taming the complexity. You guys have both done a great job of articulating the ostensible challenges that are there with cloud, especially multi-cloud environments that you're living in. But Suresh, talk about the partnership with Hitachi Vantara. How is it helping to dial down some of those inherent complexities? >> I mean, I always, you know, I think I've said this to Prem multiple times. I treat my partners as my internal, you know, employees. I look at Prem as my coworker or my peers. So the reason for that is I want Prem to have the same vested interest as a partner in my success or JCI success and vice versa, isn't it? I think that's how we operate and that's how we have been operating. And I think I would like to thank Prem and Hitachi Vantara for that really been an amazing partnership. And as he was saying, we have taken a completely holistic approach to how we want to really be in the market and play in the market to our customers. So if you look at my jacket it talks about OpenBlue platform. This is what JCI is building, that we are building this OpenBlue digital platform. And within that, my team, along with Prem's or Hitachi's, we have built what we call as Polaris. It's a technical platform where our apps can run. And this platform is automated end-to-end from a platform engineering standpoint. We stood up a platform engineering organization, a reliability engineering organization, as well as a support organization where Hitachi played a role. As I said previously, you know, for me to scale I'm not going to really have the talent and the knowledge of every function that I'm looking at. And Hitachi, not only they brought the talent but they also brought what he was talking about, Harc. You know, they have set up a lot and now we can leverage it. And they also came up with some really interesting concepts. I went and met them in India. They came up with this concept called IPL. Okay, what is that? They really challenged all their employees that's working for GCI to come up with innovative ideas to solve problems proactively, which is self-healing. You know, how you do that? So I think partners, you know, if they become really vested in your interests, they can do wonders for you. And I think in this case Hitachi is really working very well for us and in many aspects. And I'm leveraging them... You started with support, now I'm leveraging them in the automation, the platform engineering, as well as in the reliability engineering and then in even in the engineering spaces. And that like, they are my end-to-end partner right now? >> So you're really taking that holistic approach that you talked about and it sounds like it's a very collaborative two-way street partnership. Prem, I want to go back to, Suresh mentioned Harc. Talk a little bit about what Harc is and then how partners fit into Hitachi's Harc strategy. >> Great, so let me spend like a few seconds on what Harc is. Lisa, again, I know we've been using the term. Harc stands for Hitachi application reliability sectors. Now the reason we thought about Harc was, like I said in the beginning of this segment, there is an illusion from an architecture standpoint to be more modern, microservices, server-less, reactive architecture, so on and so forth. There is an illusion in your development methodology from Waterfall to agile, to DevOps to lean, agile to path program, whatever, right? Extreme program, so on and so forth. There is an evolution in the space of infrastructure from a point where you were buying these huge humongous servers and putting it in your data center to a point where people don't even see servers anymore, right? You buy it, by a click of a button you don't know the size of it. All you know is a, it's (indistinct) whatever that name means. Let's go provision it on the fly, get go, get your work done, right? When all of this is advanced when you think about operations people have been solving the problem the way they've been solving it 20 years back, right? That's the issue. And Harc was conceived exactly to fix that particular problem, to think about a modern way of operating a modern workload, right? That's exactly what Harc. So it brings together finest engineering talent. So the teams are trained in specific ways of working. We've invested and implemented some of the IP, we work with the best of the breed partner ecosystem, and I'll talk about that in a minute. And we've got these facilities in Dallas and I am talking from my office in Dallas, which is a Harc facility in the US from where we deliver for our customers. And then back in Hyderabad, we've got one more that we opened and these are facilities from where we deliver Harc services for our customers as well, right? And then we are expanding it in Japan and Portugal as we move into 23. That's kind of the plan that we are thinking through. However, that's what Harc is, Lisa, right? That's our solution to this cloud complexity problem. Right? >> Got it, and it sounds like it's going quite global, which is fantastic. So Suresh, I want to have you expand a bit on the partnership, the partner ecosystem and the role that it plays. You talked about it a little bit but what role does the partner ecosystem play in really helping JCI to dial down some of those challenges and the inherent complexities that we talked about? >> Yeah, sure. I think partners play a major role and JCI is very, very good at it. I mean, I've joined JCI 18 months ago, JCI leverages partners pretty extensively. As I said, I leverage Hitachi for my, you know, A group and the (indistinct) space and the cloud operations space, and they're my primary partner. But at the same time, we leverage many other partners. Well, you know, Accenture, SCL, and even on the tooling side we use Datadog and (indistinct). All these guys are major partners of our because the way we like to pick partners is based on our vision and where we want to go. And pick the right partner who's going to really, you know make you successful by investing their resources in you. And what I mean by that is when you have a partner, partner knows exactly what kind of skillset is needed for this customer, for them to really be successful. As I said earlier, we cannot really get all the skillset that we need, we rely on the partners and partners bring the the right skillset, they can scale. I can tell Prem tomorrow, "Hey, I need two parts by next week", and I guarantee it he's going to bring two parts to me. So they let you scale, they let you move fast. And I'm a big believer, in today's day and age, to get things done fast and be more agile. I'm not worried about failure, but for me moving fast is very, very important. And partners really do a very good job bringing that. But I think then they also really make you think, isn't it? Because one thing I like about partners they make you innovate whether they know it or not but they do because, you know, they will come and ask you questions about, "Hey, tell me why you are doing this. Can I review your architecture?" You know, and then they will try to really say I don't think this is going to work. Because they work with so many different clients, not JCI, they bring all that expertise and that's what I look from them, you know, just not, you know, do a T&M job for me. I ask you to do this go... They just bring more than that. That's how I pick my partners. And that's how, you know, Hitachi's Vantara is definitely one of a good partner from that sense because they bring a lot more innovation to the table and I appreciate about that. >> It sounds like, it sounds like a flywheel of innovation. >> Yeah. >> I love that. Last question for both of you, which we're almost out of time here, Prem, I want to go back to you. So I'm a partner, I'm planning on redefining CloudOps at my company. What are the two things you want me to remember from Hitachi Vantara's perspective? >> So before I get to that question, Lisa, the partners that we work with are slightly different from from the partners that, again, there are some similar partners. There are some different partners, right? For example, we pick and choose especially in the Harc space, we pick and choose partners that are more future focused, right? We don't care if they are huge companies or small companies. We go after companies that are future focused that are really, really nimble and can change for our customers need because it's not our need, right? When I pick partners for Harc my ultimate endeavor is to ensure, in this case because we've got (indistinct) GCI on, we are able to operate (indistinct) with the level of satisfaction above and beyond that they're expecting from us. And whatever I don't have I need to get from my partners so that I bring this solution to Suresh. As opposed to bringing a whole lot of people and making them stand in front of Suresh. So that's how I think about partners. What do I want them to do from, and we've always done this so we do workshops with our partners. We just don't go by tools. When we say we are partnering with X, Y, Z, we do workshops with them and we say, this is how we are thinking. Either you build it in your roadmap that helps us leverage you, continue to leverage you. And we do have minimal investments where we fix gaps. We're building some utilities for us to deliver the best service to our customers. And our intention is not to build a product to compete with our partner. Our intention is to just fill the wide space until they go build it into their product suite that we can then leverage it for our customers. So always think about end customers and how can we make it easy for them? Because for all the tool vendors out there seeing this and wanting to partner with Hitachi the biggest thing is tools sprawl, especially on the cloud is very real. For every problem on the cloud. I have a billion tools that are being thrown at me as Suresh if I'm putting my installation and it's not easy at all. It's so confusing. >> Yeah. >> So that's what we want. We want people to simplify that landscape for our end customers, and we are looking at partners that are thinking through the simplification not just making money. >> That makes perfect sense. There really is a very strong symbiosis it sounds like, in the partner ecosystem. And there's a lot of enablement that goes on back and forth it sounds like as well, which is really, to your point it's all about the end customers and what they're expecting. Suresh, last question for you is which is the same one, if I'm a partner what are the things that you want me to consider as I'm planning to redefine CloudOps at my company? >> I'll keep it simple. In my view, I mean, we've touched upon it in multiple facets in this interview about that, the three things. First and foremost, reliability. You know, in today's day and age my products has to be reliable, available and, you know, make sure that the customer's happy with what they're really dealing with, number one. Number two, my product has to be secure. Security is super, super important, okay? And number three, I need to really make sure my customers are getting the value so I keep my cost low. So these three is what I would focus and what I expect from my partners. >> Great advice, guys. Thank you so much for talking through this with me and really showing the audience how strong the partnership is between Hitachi Vantara and JCI. What you're doing together, we'll have to talk to you again to see where things go but we really appreciate your insights and your perspectives. Thank you. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> Thanks Lisa, thanks for having us. >> My pleasure. For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. Thank you so much for watching. (soothing music)

(soothing music) >> Hey everyone, welcome to this event, "Build Your Cloud Center of Excellence." I'm your host, Lisa Martin. In the next 15 minutes or so my guest and I are going to be talking about redefining cloud operations, an application modernization for customers, and specifically how partners are helping to speed up that process. As you saw on our first two segments, we talked about problems enterprises are facing with cloud operations. We talked about redefining cloud operations as well to solve these problems. This segment is going to be focusing on how Hitachi Vantara's partners are really helping to speed up that process. We've got Johnson Controls here to talk about their partnership with Hitachi Vantara. Please welcome both of my guests, Prem Balasubramanian is with us, SVP and CTO Digital Solutions at Hitachi Vantara. And Suresh Mothikuru, SVP Customer Success Platform Engineering and Reliability Engineering from Johnson Controls. Gentlemen, welcome to the program, great to have you. >> Thank. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> First question is to both of you and Suresh, we'll start with you. We want to understand, you know, the cloud operations landscape is increasingly complex. We've talked a lot about that in this program. Talk to us, Suresh, about some of the biggest challenges and pin points that you faced with respect to that. >> Thank you. I think it's a great question. I mean, cloud has evolved a lot in the last 10 years. You know, when we were talking about a single cloud whether it's Azure or AWS and GCP, and that was complex enough. Now we are talking about multi-cloud and hybrid and you look at Johnson Controls, we have Azure we have AWS, we have GCP, we have Alibaba and we also support on-prem. So the architecture has become very, very complex and the complexity has grown so much that we are now thinking about whether we should be cloud native or cloud agnostic. So I think, I mean, sometimes it's hard to even explain the complexity because people think, oh, "When you go to cloud, everything is simplified." Cloud does give you a lot of simplicity, but it also really brings a lot more complexity along with it. So, and then next one is pretty important is, you know, generally when you look at cloud services, you have plenty of services that are offered within a cloud, 100, 150 services, 200 services. Even within those companies, you take AWS they might not know, an individual resource might not know about all the services we see. That's a big challenge for us as a customer to really understand each of the service that is provided in these, you know, clouds, well, doesn't matter which one that is. And the third one is pretty big, at least at the CTO the CIO, and the senior leadership level, is cost. Cost is a major factor because cloud, you know, will eat you up if you cannot manage it. If you don't have a good cloud governance process it because every minute you are in it, it's burning cash. So I think if you ask me, these are the three major things that I am facing day to day and that's where I use my partners, which I'll touch base down the line. >> Perfect, we'll talk about that. So Prem, I imagine that these problems are not unique to Johnson Controls or JCI, as you may hear us refer to it. Talk to me Prem about some of the other challenges that you're seeing within the customer landscape. >> So, yeah, I agree, Lisa, these are not very specific to JCI, but there are specific issues in JCI, right? So the way we think about these are, there is a common issue when people go to the cloud and there are very specific and unique issues for businesses, right? So JCI, and we will talk about this in the episode as we move forward. I think Suresh and his team have done some phenomenal step around how to manage this complexity. But there are customers who have a lesser complex cloud which is, they don't go to Alibaba, they don't have footprint in all three clouds. So their multi-cloud footprint could be a bit more manageable, but still struggle with a lot of the same problems around cost, around security, around talent. Talent is a big thing, right? And in Suresh's case I think it's slightly more exasperated because every cloud provider Be it AWS, JCP, or Azure brings in hundreds of services and there is nobody, including many of us, right? We learn every day, nowadays, right? It's not that there is one service integrator who knows all, while technically people can claim as a part of sales. But in reality all of us are continuing to learn in this landscape. And if you put all of this equation together with multiple clouds the complexity just starts to exponentially grow. And that's exactly what I think JCI is experiencing and Suresh's team has been experiencing, and we've been working together. But the common problems are around security talent and cost management of this, right? Those are my three things. And one last thing that I would love to say before we move away from this question is, if you think about cloud operations as a concept that's evolving over the last few years, and I have touched upon this in the previous episode as well, Lisa, right? If you take architectures, we've gone into microservices, we've gone into all these server-less architectures all the fancy things that we want. That helps us go to market faster, be more competent to as a business. But that's not simplified stuff, right? That's complicated stuff. It's a lot more distributed. Second, again, we've advanced and created more modern infrastructure because all of what we are talking is platform as a service, services on the cloud that we are consuming, right? In the same case with development we've moved into a DevOps model. We kind of click a button put some code in a repository, the code starts to run in production within a minute, everything else is automated. But then when we get to operations we are still stuck in a very old way of looking at cloud as an infrastructure, right? So you've got an infra team, you've got an app team, you've got an incident management team, you've got a soft knock, everything. But again, so Suresh can talk about this more because they are making significant strides in thinking about this as a single workload, and how do I apply engineering to go manage this? Because a lot of it is codified, right? So automation. Anyway, so that's kind of where the complexity is and how we are thinking, including JCI as a partner thinking about taming that complexity as we move forward. >> Suresh, let's talk about that taming the complexity. You guys have both done a great job of articulating the ostensible challenges that are there with cloud, especially multi-cloud environments that you're living in. But Suresh, talk about the partnership with Hitachi Vantara. How is it helping to dial down some of those inherent complexities? >> I mean, I always, you know, I think I've said this to Prem multiple times. I treat my partners as my internal, you know, employees. I look at Prem as my coworker or my peers. So the reason for that is I want Prem to have the same vested interest as a partner in my success or JCI success and vice versa, isn't it? I think that's how we operate and that's how we have been operating. And I think I would like to thank Prem and Hitachi Vantara for that really been an amazing partnership. And as he was saying, we have taken a completely holistic approach to how we want to really be in the market and play in the market to our customers. So if you look at my jacket it talks about OpenBlue platform. This is what JCI is building, that we are building this OpenBlue digital platform. And within that, my team, along with Prem's or Hitachi's, we have built what we call as Polaris. It's a technical platform where our apps can run. And this platform is automated end-to-end from a platform engineering standpoint. We stood up a platform engineering organization, a reliability engineering organization, as well as a support organization where Hitachi played a role. As I said previously, you know, for me to scale I'm not going to really have the talent and the knowledge of every function that I'm looking at. And Hitachi, not only they brought the talent but they also brought what he was talking about, Harc. You know, they have set up a lot and now we can leverage it. And they also came up with some really interesting concepts. I went and met them in India. They came up with this concept called IPL. Okay, what is that? They really challenged all their employees that's working for GCI to come up with innovative ideas to solve problems proactively, which is self-healing. You know, how you do that? So I think partners, you know, if they become really vested in your interests, they can do wonders for you. And I think in this case Hitachi is really working very well for us and in many aspects. And I'm leveraging them... You started with support, now I'm leveraging them in the automation, the platform engineering, as well as in the reliability engineering and then in even in the engineering spaces. And that like, they are my end-to-end partner right now? >> So you're really taking that holistic approach that you talked about and it sounds like it's a very collaborative two-way street partnership. Prem, I want to go back to, Suresh mentioned Harc. Talk a little bit about what Harc is and then how partners fit into Hitachi's Harc strategy. >> Great, so let me spend like a few seconds on what Harc is. Lisa, again, I know we've been using the term. Harc stands for Hitachi application reliability sectors. Now the reason we thought about Harc was, like I said in the beginning of this segment, there is an illusion from an architecture standpoint to be more modern, microservices, server-less, reactive architecture, so on and so forth. There is an illusion in your development methodology from Waterfall to agile, to DevOps to lean, agile to path program, whatever, right? Extreme program, so on and so forth. There is an evolution in the space of infrastructure from a point where you were buying these huge humongous servers and putting it in your data center to a point where people don't even see servers anymore, right? You buy it, by a click of a button you don't know the size of it. All you know is a, it's (indistinct) whatever that name means. Let's go provision it on the fly, get go, get your work done, right? When all of this is advanced when you think about operations people have been solving the problem the way they've been solving it 20 years back, right? That's the issue. And Harc was conceived exactly to fix that particular problem, to think about a modern way of operating a modern workload, right? That's exactly what Harc. So it brings together finest engineering talent. So the teams are trained in specific ways of working. We've invested and implemented some of the IP, we work with the best of the breed partner ecosystem, and I'll talk about that in a minute. And we've got these facilities in Dallas and I am talking from my office in Dallas, which is a Harc facility in the US from where we deliver for our customers. And then back in Hyderabad, we've got one more that we opened and these are facilities from where we deliver Harc services for our customers as well, right? And then we are expanding it in Japan and Portugal as we move into 23. That's kind of the plan that we are thinking through. However, that's what Harc is, Lisa, right? That's our solution to this cloud complexity problem. Right? >> Got it, and it sounds like it's going quite global, which is fantastic. So Suresh, I want to have you expand a bit on the partnership, the partner ecosystem and the role that it plays. You talked about it a little bit but what role does the partner ecosystem play in really helping JCI to dial down some of those challenges and the inherent complexities that we talked about? >> Yeah, sure. I think partners play a major role and JCI is very, very good at it. I mean, I've joined JCI 18 months ago, JCI leverages partners pretty extensively. As I said, I leverage Hitachi for my, you know, A group and the (indistinct) space and the cloud operations space, and they're my primary partner. But at the same time, we leverage many other partners. Well, you know, Accenture, SCL, and even on the tooling side we use Datadog and (indistinct). All these guys are major partners of our because the way we like to pick partners is based on our vision and where we want to go. And pick the right partner who's going to really, you know make you successful by investing their resources in you. And what I mean by that is when you have a partner, partner knows exactly what kind of skillset is needed for this customer, for them to really be successful. As I said earlier, we cannot really get all the skillset that we need, we rely on the partners and partners bring the the right skillset, they can scale. I can tell Prem tomorrow, "Hey, I need two parts by next week", and I guarantee it he's going to bring two parts to me. So they let you scale, they let you move fast. And I'm a big believer, in today's day and age, to get things done fast and be more agile. I'm not worried about failure, but for me moving fast is very, very important. And partners really do a very good job bringing that. But I think then they also really make you think, isn't it? Because one thing I like about partners they make you innovate whether they know it or not but they do because, you know, they will come and ask you questions about, "Hey, tell me why you are doing this. Can I review your architecture?" You know, and then they will try to really say I don't think this is going to work. Because they work with so many different clients, not JCI, they bring all that expertise and that's what I look from them, you know, just not, you know, do a T&M job for me. I ask you to do this go... They just bring more than that. That's how I pick my partners. And that's how, you know, Hitachi's Vantara is definitely one of a good partner from that sense because they bring a lot more innovation to the table and I appreciate about that. >> It sounds like, it sounds like a flywheel of innovation. >> Yeah. >> I love that. Last question for both of you, which we're almost out of time here, Prem, I want to go back to you. So I'm a partner, I'm planning on redefining CloudOps at my company. What are the two things you want me to remember from Hitachi Vantara's perspective? >> So before I get to that question, Lisa, the partners that we work with are slightly different from from the partners that, again, there are some similar partners. There are some different partners, right? For example, we pick and choose especially in the Harc space, we pick and choose partners that are more future focused, right? We don't care if they are huge companies or small companies. We go after companies that are future focused that are really, really nimble and can change for our customers need because it's not our need, right? When I pick partners for Harc my ultimate endeavor is to ensure, in this case because we've got (indistinct) GCI on, we are able to operate (indistinct) with the level of satisfaction above and beyond that they're expecting from us. And whatever I don't have I need to get from my partners so that I bring this solution to Suresh. As opposed to bringing a whole lot of people and making them stand in front of Suresh. So that's how I think about partners. What do I want them to do from, and we've always done this so we do workshops with our partners. We just don't go by tools. When we say we are partnering with X, Y, Z, we do workshops with them and we say, this is how we are thinking. Either you build it in your roadmap that helps us leverage you, continue to leverage you. And we do have minimal investments where we fix gaps. We're building some utilities for us to deliver the best service to our customers. And our intention is not to build a product to compete with our partner. Our intention is to just fill the wide space until they go build it into their product suite that we can then leverage it for our customers. So always think about end customers and how can we make it easy for them? Because for all the tool vendors out there seeing this and wanting to partner with Hitachi the biggest thing is tools sprawl, especially on the cloud is very real. For every problem on the cloud. I have a billion tools that are being thrown at me as Suresh if I'm putting my installation and it's not easy at all. It's so confusing. >> Yeah. >> So that's what we want. We want people to simplify that landscape for our end customers, and we are looking at partners that are thinking through the simplification not just making money. >> That makes perfect sense. There really is a very strong symbiosis it sounds like, in the partner ecosystem. And there's a lot of enablement that goes on back and forth it sounds like as well, which is really, to your point it's all about the end customers and what they're expecting. Suresh, last question for you is which is the same one, if I'm a partner what are the things that you want me to consider as I'm planning to redefine CloudOps at my company? >> I'll keep it simple. In my view, I mean, we've touched upon it in multiple facets in this interview about that, the three things. First and foremost, reliability. You know, in today's day and age my products has to be reliable, available and, you know, make sure that the customer's happy with what they're really dealing with, number one. Number two, my product has to be secure. Security is super, super important, okay? And number three, I need to really make sure my customers are getting the value so I keep my cost low. So these three is what I would focus and what I expect from my partners. >> Great advice, guys. Thank you so much for talking through this with me and really showing the audience how strong the partnership is between Hitachi Vantara and JCI. What you're doing together, we'll have to talk to you again to see where things go but we really appreciate your insights and your perspectives. Thank you. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> Thanks Lisa, thanks for having us. >> My pleasure. For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. Thank you so much for watching. (soothing music)

(soothing music) >> Hey everyone, welcome to this event, "Build Your Cloud Center of Excellence." I'm your host, Lisa Martin. In the next 15 minutes or so my guest and I are going to be talking about redefining cloud operations, an application modernization for customers, and specifically how partners are helping to speed up that process. As you saw on our first two segments, we talked about problems enterprises are facing with cloud operations. We talked about redefining cloud operations as well to solve these problems. This segment is going to be focusing on how Hitachi Vantara's partners are really helping to speed up that process. We've got Johnson Controls here to talk about their partnership with Hitachi Vantara. Please welcome both of my guests, Prem Balasubramanian is with us, SVP and CTO Digital Solutions at Hitachi Vantara. And Suresh Mothikuru, SVP Customer Success Platform Engineering and Reliability Engineering from Johnson Controls. Gentlemen, welcome to the program, great to have you. >> Thank. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> First question is to both of you and Suresh, we'll start with you. We want to understand, you know, the cloud operations landscape is increasingly complex. We've talked a lot about that in this program. Talk to us, Suresh, about some of the biggest challenges and pin points that you faced with respect to that. >> Thank you. I think it's a great question. I mean, cloud has evolved a lot in the last 10 years. You know, when we were talking about a single cloud whether it's Azure or AWS and GCP, and that was complex enough. Now we are talking about multi-cloud and hybrid and you look at Johnson Controls, we have Azure we have AWS, we have GCP, we have Alibaba and we also support on-prem. So the architecture has become very, very complex and the complexity has grown so much that we are now thinking about whether we should be cloud native or cloud agnostic. So I think, I mean, sometimes it's hard to even explain the complexity because people think, oh, "When you go to cloud, everything is simplified." Cloud does give you a lot of simplicity, but it also really brings a lot more complexity along with it. So, and then next one is pretty important is, you know, generally when you look at cloud services, you have plenty of services that are offered within a cloud, 100, 150 services, 200 services. Even within those companies, you take AWS they might not know, an individual resource might not know about all the services we see. That's a big challenge for us as a customer to really understand each of the service that is provided in these, you know, clouds, well, doesn't matter which one that is. And the third one is pretty big, at least at the CTO the CIO, and the senior leadership level, is cost. Cost is a major factor because cloud, you know, will eat you up if you cannot manage it. If you don't have a good cloud governance process it because every minute you are in it, it's burning cash. So I think if you ask me, these are the three major things that I am facing day to day and that's where I use my partners, which I'll touch base down the line. >> Perfect, we'll talk about that. So Prem, I imagine that these problems are not unique to Johnson Controls or JCI, as you may hear us refer to it. Talk to me Prem about some of the other challenges that you're seeing within the customer landscape. >> So, yeah, I agree, Lisa, these are not very specific to JCI, but there are specific issues in JCI, right? So the way we think about these are, there is a common issue when people go to the cloud and there are very specific and unique issues for businesses, right? So JCI, and we will talk about this in the episode as we move forward. I think Suresh and his team have done some phenomenal step around how to manage this complexity. But there are customers who have a lesser complex cloud which is, they don't go to Alibaba, they don't have footprint in all three clouds. So their multi-cloud footprint could be a bit more manageable, but still struggle with a lot of the same problems around cost, around security, around talent. Talent is a big thing, right? And in Suresh's case I think it's slightly more exasperated because every cloud provider Be it AWS, JCP, or Azure brings in hundreds of services and there is nobody, including many of us, right? We learn every day, nowadays, right? It's not that there is one service integrator who knows all, while technically people can claim as a part of sales. But in reality all of us are continuing to learn in this landscape. And if you put all of this equation together with multiple clouds the complexity just starts to exponentially grow. And that's exactly what I think JCI is experiencing and Suresh's team has been experiencing, and we've been working together. But the common problems are around security talent and cost management of this, right? Those are my three things. And one last thing that I would love to say before we move away from this question is, if you think about cloud operations as a concept that's evolving over the last few years, and I have touched upon this in the previous episode as well, Lisa, right? If you take architectures, we've gone into microservices, we've gone into all these server-less architectures all the fancy things that we want. That helps us go to market faster, be more competent to as a business. But that's not simplified stuff, right? That's complicated stuff. It's a lot more distributed. Second, again, we've advanced and created more modern infrastructure because all of what we are talking is platform as a service, services on the cloud that we are consuming, right? In the same case with development we've moved into a DevOps model. We kind of click a button put some code in a repository, the code starts to run in production within a minute, everything else is automated. But then when we get to operations we are still stuck in a very old way of looking at cloud as an infrastructure, right? So you've got an infra team, you've got an app team, you've got an incident management team, you've got a soft knock, everything. But again, so Suresh can talk about this more because they are making significant strides in thinking about this as a single workload, and how do I apply engineering to go manage this? Because a lot of it is codified, right? So automation. Anyway, so that's kind of where the complexity is and how we are thinking, including JCI as a partner thinking about taming that complexity as we move forward. >> Suresh, let's talk about that taming the complexity. You guys have both done a great job of articulating the ostensible challenges that are there with cloud, especially multi-cloud environments that you're living in. But Suresh, talk about the partnership with Hitachi Vantara. How is it helping to dial down some of those inherent complexities? >> I mean, I always, you know, I think I've said this to Prem multiple times. I treat my partners as my internal, you know, employees. I look at Prem as my coworker or my peers. So the reason for that is I want Prem to have the same vested interest as a partner in my success or JCI success and vice versa, isn't it? I think that's how we operate and that's how we have been operating. And I think I would like to thank Prem and Hitachi Vantara for that really been an amazing partnership. And as he was saying, we have taken a completely holistic approach to how we want to really be in the market and play in the market to our customers. So if you look at my jacket it talks about OpenBlue platform. This is what JCI is building, that we are building this OpenBlue digital platform. And within that, my team, along with Prem's or Hitachi's, we have built what we call as Polaris. It's a technical platform where our apps can run. And this platform is automated end-to-end from a platform engineering standpoint. We stood up a platform engineering organization, a reliability engineering organization, as well as a support organization where Hitachi played a role. As I said previously, you know, for me to scale I'm not going to really have the talent and the knowledge of every function that I'm looking at. And Hitachi, not only they brought the talent but they also brought what he was talking about, Harc. You know, they have set up a lot and now we can leverage it. And they also came up with some really interesting concepts. I went and met them in India. They came up with this concept called IPL. Okay, what is that? They really challenged all their employees that's working for GCI to come up with innovative ideas to solve problems proactively, which is self-healing. You know, how you do that? So I think partners, you know, if they become really vested in your interests, they can do wonders for you. And I think in this case Hitachi is really working very well for us and in many aspects. And I'm leveraging them... You started with support, now I'm leveraging them in the automation, the platform engineering, as well as in the reliability engineering and then in even in the engineering spaces. And that like, they are my end-to-end partner right now? >> So you're really taking that holistic approach that you talked about and it sounds like it's a very collaborative two-way street partnership. Prem, I want to go back to, Suresh mentioned Harc. Talk a little bit about what Harc is and then how partners fit into Hitachi's Harc strategy. >> Great, so let me spend like a few seconds on what Harc is. Lisa, again, I know we've been using the term. Harc stands for Hitachi application reliability sectors. Now the reason we thought about Harc was, like I said in the beginning of this segment, there is an illusion from an architecture standpoint to be more modern, microservices, server-less, reactive architecture, so on and so forth. There is an illusion in your development methodology from Waterfall to agile, to DevOps to lean, agile to path program, whatever, right? Extreme program, so on and so forth. There is an evolution in the space of infrastructure from a point where you were buying these huge humongous servers and putting it in your data center to a point where people don't even see servers anymore, right? You buy it, by a click of a button you don't know the size of it. All you know is a, it's (indistinct) whatever that name means. Let's go provision it on the fly, get go, get your work done, right? When all of this is advanced when you think about operations people have been solving the problem the way they've been solving it 20 years back, right? That's the issue. And Harc was conceived exactly to fix that particular problem, to think about a modern way of operating a modern workload, right? That's exactly what Harc. So it brings together finest engineering talent. So the teams are trained in specific ways of working. We've invested and implemented some of the IP, we work with the best of the breed partner ecosystem, and I'll talk about that in a minute. And we've got these facilities in Dallas and I am talking from my office in Dallas, which is a Harc facility in the US from where we deliver for our customers. And then back in Hyderabad, we've got one more that we opened and these are facilities from where we deliver Harc services for our customers as well, right? And then we are expanding it in Japan and Portugal as we move into 23. That's kind of the plan that we are thinking through. However, that's what Harc is, Lisa, right? That's our solution to this cloud complexity problem. Right? >> Got it, and it sounds like it's going quite global, which is fantastic. So Suresh, I want to have you expand a bit on the partnership, the partner ecosystem and the role that it plays. You talked about it a little bit but what role does the partner ecosystem play in really helping JCI to dial down some of those challenges and the inherent complexities that we talked about? >> Yeah, sure. I think partners play a major role and JCI is very, very good at it. I mean, I've joined JCI 18 months ago, JCI leverages partners pretty extensively. As I said, I leverage Hitachi for my, you know, A group and the (indistinct) space and the cloud operations space, and they're my primary partner. But at the same time, we leverage many other partners. Well, you know, Accenture, SCL, and even on the tooling side we use Datadog and (indistinct). All these guys are major partners of our because the way we like to pick partners is based on our vision and where we want to go. And pick the right partner who's going to really, you know make you successful by investing their resources in you. And what I mean by that is when you have a partner, partner knows exactly what kind of skillset is needed for this customer, for them to really be successful. As I said earlier, we cannot really get all the skillset that we need, we rely on the partners and partners bring the the right skillset, they can scale. I can tell Prem tomorrow, "Hey, I need two parts by next week", and I guarantee it he's going to bring two parts to me. So they let you scale, they let you move fast. And I'm a big believer, in today's day and age, to get things done fast and be more agile. I'm not worried about failure, but for me moving fast is very, very important. And partners really do a very good job bringing that. But I think then they also really make you think, isn't it? Because one thing I like about partners they make you innovate whether they know it or not but they do because, you know, they will come and ask you questions about, "Hey, tell me why you are doing this. Can I review your architecture?" You know, and then they will try to really say I don't think this is going to work. Because they work with so many different clients, not JCI, they bring all that expertise and that's what I look from them, you know, just not, you know, do a T&M job for me. I ask you to do this go... They just bring more than that. That's how I pick my partners. And that's how, you know, Hitachi's Vantara is definitely one of a good partner from that sense because they bring a lot more innovation to the table and I appreciate about that. >> It sounds like, it sounds like a flywheel of innovation. >> Yeah. >> I love that. Last question for both of you, which we're almost out of time here, Prem, I want to go back to you. So I'm a partner, I'm planning on redefining CloudOps at my company. What are the two things you want me to remember from Hitachi Vantara's perspective? >> So before I get to that question, Lisa, the partners that we work with are slightly different from from the partners that, again, there are some similar partners. There are some different partners, right? For example, we pick and choose especially in the Harc space, we pick and choose partners that are more future focused, right? We don't care if they are huge companies or small companies. We go after companies that are future focused that are really, really nimble and can change for our customers need because it's not our need, right? When I pick partners for Harc my ultimate endeavor is to ensure, in this case because we've got (indistinct) GCI on, we are able to operate (indistinct) with the level of satisfaction above and beyond that they're expecting from us. And whatever I don't have I need to get from my partners so that I bring this solution to Suresh. As opposed to bringing a whole lot of people and making them stand in front of Suresh. So that's how I think about partners. What do I want them to do from, and we've always done this so we do workshops with our partners. We just don't go by tools. When we say we are partnering with X, Y, Z, we do workshops with them and we say, this is how we are thinking. Either you build it in your roadmap that helps us leverage you, continue to leverage you. And we do have minimal investments where we fix gaps. We're building some utilities for us to deliver the best service to our customers. And our intention is not to build a product to compete with our partner. Our intention is to just fill the wide space until they go build it into their product suite that we can then leverage it for our customers. So always think about end customers and how can we make it easy for them? Because for all the tool vendors out there seeing this and wanting to partner with Hitachi the biggest thing is tools sprawl, especially on the cloud is very real. For every problem on the cloud. I have a billion tools that are being thrown at me as Suresh if I'm putting my installation and it's not easy at all. It's so confusing. >> Yeah. >> So that's what we want. We want people to simplify that landscape for our end customers, and we are looking at partners that are thinking through the simplification not just making money. >> That makes perfect sense. There really is a very strong symbiosis it sounds like, in the partner ecosystem. And there's a lot of enablement that goes on back and forth it sounds like as well, which is really, to your point it's all about the end customers and what they're expecting. Suresh, last question for you is which is the same one, if I'm a partner what are the things that you want me to consider as I'm planning to redefine CloudOps at my company? >> I'll keep it simple. In my view, I mean, we've touched upon it in multiple facets in this interview about that, the three things. First and foremost, reliability. You know, in today's day and age my products has to be reliable, available and, you know, make sure that the customer's happy with what they're really dealing with, number one. Number two, my product has to be secure. Security is super, super important, okay? And number three, I need to really make sure my customers are getting the value so I keep my cost low. So these three is what I would focus and what I expect from my partners. >> Great advice, guys. Thank you so much for talking through this with me and really showing the audience how strong the partnership is between Hitachi Vantara and JCI. What you're doing together, we'll have to talk to you again to see where things go but we really appreciate your insights and your perspectives. Thank you. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> Thanks Lisa, thanks for having us. >> My pleasure. For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. Thank you so much for watching. (soothing music)

>> From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, bringing you data-driven insights from theCUBE and ETR. This is Breaking Analysis with Dave Vellante. >> OpenAI The company, and ChatGPT have taken the world by storm. Microsoft reportedly is investing an additional 10 billion dollars into the company. But in our view, while the hype around ChatGPT is justified, we don't believe OpenAI will lock up the market with its first mover advantage. Rather, we believe that success in this market will be directly proportional to the quality and quantity of data that a technology company has at its disposal, and the compute power that it could deploy to run its system. Hello and welcome to this week's Wikibon CUBE insights, powered by ETR. In this Breaking Analysis, we unpack the excitement around ChatGPT, and debate the premise that the company's early entry into the space may not confer winner take all advantage to OpenAI. And to do so, we welcome CUBE collaborator, alum, Sarbjeet Johal, (chuckles) and John Furrier, co-host of the Cube. Great to see you Sarbjeet, John. Really appreciate you guys coming to the program. >> Great to be on. >> Okay, so what is ChatGPT? Well, actually we asked ChatGPT, what is ChatGPT? So here's what it said. ChatGPT is a state-of-the-art language model developed by OpenAI that can generate human-like text. It could be fine tuned for a variety of language tasks, such as conversation, summarization, and language translation. So I asked it, give it to me in 50 words or less. How did it do? Anything to add? >> Yeah, think it did good. It's large language model, like previous models, but it started applying the transformers sort of mechanism to focus on what prompt you have given it to itself. And then also the what answer it gave you in the first, sort of, one sentence or two sentences, and then introspect on itself, like what I have already said to you. And so just work on that. So it it's self sort of focus if you will. It does, the transformers help the large language models to do that. >> So to your point, it's a large language model, and GPT stands for generative pre-trained transformer. >> And if you put the definition back up there again, if you put it back up on the screen, let's see it back up. Okay, it actually missed the large, word large. So one of the problems with ChatGPT, it's not always accurate. It's actually a large language model, and it says state of the art language model. And if you look at Google, Google has dominated AI for many times and they're well known as being the best at this. And apparently Google has their own large language model, LLM, in play and have been holding it back to release because of backlash on the accuracy. Like just in that example you showed is a great point. They got almost right, but they missed the key word. >> You know what's funny about that John, is I had previously asked it in my prompt to give me it in less than a hundred words, and it was too long, I said I was too long for Breaking Analysis, and there it went into the fact that it's a large language model. So it largely, it gave me a really different answer the, for both times. So, but it's still pretty amazing for those of you who haven't played with it yet. And one of the best examples that I saw was Ben Charrington from This Week In ML AI podcast. And I stumbled on this thanks to Brian Gracely, who was listening to one of his Cloudcasts. Basically what Ben did is he took, he prompted ChatGPT to interview ChatGPT, and he simply gave the system the prompts, and then he ran the questions and answers into this avatar builder and sped it up 2X so it didn't sound like a machine. And voila, it was amazing. So John is ChatGPT going to take over as a cube host? >> Well, I was thinking, we get the questions in advance sometimes from PR people. We should actually just plug it in ChatGPT, add it to our notes, and saying, "Is this good enough for you? Let's ask the real question." So I think, you know, I think there's a lot of heavy lifting that gets done. I think the ChatGPT is a phenomenal revolution. I think it highlights the use case. Like that example we showed earlier. It gets most of it right. So it's directionally correct and it feels like it's an answer, but it's not a hundred percent accurate. And I think that's where people are seeing value in it. Writing marketing, copy, brainstorming, guest list, gift list for somebody. Write me some lyrics to a song. Give me a thesis about healthcare policy in the United States. It'll do a bang up job, and then you got to go in and you can massage it. So we're going to do three quarters of the work. That's why plagiarism and schools are kind of freaking out. And that's why Microsoft put 10 billion in, because why wouldn't this be a feature of Word, or the OS to help it do stuff on behalf of the user. So linguistically it's a beautiful thing. You can input a string and get a good answer. It's not a search result. >> And we're going to get your take on on Microsoft and, but it kind of levels the playing- but ChatGPT writes better than I do, Sarbjeet, and I know you have some good examples too. You mentioned the Reed Hastings example. >> Yeah, I was listening to Reed Hastings fireside chat with ChatGPT, and the answers were coming as sort of voice, in the voice format. And it was amazing what, he was having very sort of philosophy kind of talk with the ChatGPT, the longer sentences, like he was going on, like, just like we are talking, he was talking for like almost two minutes and then ChatGPT was answering. It was not one sentence question, and then a lot of answers from ChatGPT and yeah, you're right. I, this is our ability. I've been thinking deep about this since yesterday, we talked about, like, we want to do this segment. The data is fed into the data model. It can be the current data as well, but I think that, like, models like ChatGPT, other companies will have those too. They can, they're democratizing the intelligence, but they're not creating intelligence yet, definitely yet I can say that. They will give you all the finite answers. Like, okay, how do you do this for loop in Java, versus, you know, C sharp, and as a programmer you can do that, in, but they can't tell you that, how to write a new algorithm or write a new search algorithm for you. They cannot create a secretive code for you to- >> Not yet. >> Have competitive advantage. >> Not yet, not yet. >> but you- >> Can Google do that today? >> No one really can. The reasoning side of the data is, we talked about at our Supercloud event, with Zhamak Dehghani who's was CEO of, now of Nextdata. This next wave of data intelligence is going to come from entrepreneurs that are probably cross discipline, computer science and some other discipline. But they're going to be new things, for example, data, metadata, and data. It's hard to do reasoning like a human being, so that needs more data to train itself. So I think the first gen of this training module for the large language model they have is a corpus of text. Lot of that's why blog posts are, but the facts are wrong and sometimes out of context, because that contextual reasoning takes time, it takes intelligence. So machines need to become intelligent, and so therefore they need to be trained. So you're going to start to see, I think, a lot of acceleration on training the data sets. And again, it's only as good as the data you can get. And again, proprietary data sets will be a huge winner. Anyone who's got a large corpus of content, proprietary content like theCUBE or SiliconANGLE as a publisher will benefit from this. Large FinTech companies, anyone with large proprietary data will probably be a big winner on this generative AI wave, because it just, it will eat that up, and turn that back into something better. So I think there's going to be a lot of interesting things to look at here. And certainly productivity's going to be off the charts for vanilla and the internet is going to get swarmed with vanilla content. So if you're in the content business, and you're an original content producer of any kind, you're going to be not vanilla, so you're going to be better. So I think there's so much at play Dave (indistinct). >> I think the playing field has been risen, so we- >> Risen and leveled? >> Yeah, and leveled to certain extent. So it's now like that few people as consumers, as consumers of AI, we will have a advantage and others cannot have that advantage. So it will be democratized. That's, I'm sure about that. But if you take the example of calculator, when the calculator came in, and a lot of people are, "Oh, people can't do math anymore because calculator is there." right? So it's a similar sort of moment, just like a calculator for the next level. But, again- >> I see it more like open source, Sarbjeet, because like if you think about what ChatGPT's doing, you do a query and it comes from somewhere the value of a post from ChatGPT is just a reuse of AI. The original content accent will be come from a human. So if I lay out a paragraph from ChatGPT, did some heavy lifting on some facts, I check the facts, save me about maybe- >> Yeah, it's productive. >> An hour writing, and then I write a killer two, three sentences of, like, sharp original thinking or critical analysis. I then took that body of work, open source content, and then laid something on top of it. >> And Sarbjeet's example is a good one, because like if the calculator kids don't do math as well anymore, the slide rule, remember we had slide rules as kids, remember we first started using Waze, you know, we were this minority and you had an advantage over other drivers. Now Waze is like, you know, social traffic, you know, navigation, everybody had, you know- >> All the back roads are crowded. >> They're car crowded. (group laughs) Exactly. All right, let's, let's move on. What about this notion that futurist Ray Amara put forth and really Amara's Law that we're showing here, it's, the law is we, you know, "We tend to overestimate the effect of technology in the short run and underestimate it in the long run." Is that the case, do you think, with ChatGPT? What do you think Sarbjeet? >> I think that's true actually. There's a lot of, >> We don't debate this. >> There's a lot of awe, like when people see the results from ChatGPT, they say what, what the heck? Like, it can do this? But then if you use it more and more and more, and I ask the set of similar question, not the same question, and it gives you like same answer. It's like reading from the same bucket of text in, the interior read (indistinct) where the ChatGPT, you will see that in some couple of segments. It's very, it sounds so boring that the ChatGPT is coming out the same two sentences every time. So it is kind of good, but it's not as good as people think it is right now. But we will have, go through this, you know, hype sort of cycle and get realistic with it. And then in the long term, I think it's a great thing in the short term, it's not something which will (indistinct) >> What's your counter point? You're saying it's not. >> I, no I think the question was, it's hyped up in the short term and not it's underestimated long term. That's what I think what he said, quote. >> Yes, yeah. That's what he said. >> Okay, I think that's wrong with this, because this is a unique, ChatGPT is a unique kind of impact and it's very generational. People have been comparing it, I have been comparing to the internet, like the web, web browser Mosaic and Netscape, right, Navigator. I mean, I clearly still remember the days seeing Navigator for the first time, wow. And there weren't not many sites you could go to, everyone typed in, you know, cars.com, you know. >> That (indistinct) wasn't that overestimated, the overhyped at the beginning and underestimated. >> No, it was, it was underestimated long run, people thought. >> But that Amara's law. >> That's what is. >> No, they said overestimated? >> Overestimated near term underestimated- overhyped near term, underestimated long term. I got, right I mean? >> Well, I, yeah okay, so I would then agree, okay then- >> We were off the charts about the internet in the early days, and it actually exceeded our expectations. >> Well there were people who were, like, poo-pooing it early on. So when the browser came out, people were like, "Oh, the web's a toy for kids." I mean, in 1995 the web was a joke, right? So '96, you had online populations growing, so you had structural changes going on around the browser, internet population. And then that replaced other things, direct mail, other business activities that were once analog then went to the web, kind of read only as you, as we always talk about. So I think that's a moment where the hype long term, the smart money, and the smart industry experts all get the long term. And in this case, there's more poo-pooing in the short term. "Ah, it's not a big deal, it's just AI." I've heard many people poo-pooing ChatGPT, and a lot of smart people saying, "No this is next gen, this is different and it's only going to get better." So I think people are estimating a big long game on this one. >> So you're saying it's bifurcated. There's those who say- >> Yes. >> Okay, all right, let's get to the heart of the premise, and possibly the debate for today's episode. Will OpenAI's early entry into the market confer sustainable competitive advantage for the company. And if you look at the history of tech, the technology industry, it's kind of littered with first mover failures. Altair, IBM, Tandy, Commodore, they and Apple even, they were really early in the PC game. They took a backseat to Dell who came in the scene years later with a better business model. Netscape, you were just talking about, was all the rage in Silicon Valley, with the first browser, drove up all the housing prices out here. AltaVista was the first search engine to really, you know, index full text. >> Owned by Dell, I mean DEC. >> Owned by Digital. >> Yeah, Digital Equipment >> Compaq bought it. And of course as an aside, Digital, they wanted to showcase their hardware, right? Their super computer stuff. And then so Friendster and MySpace, they came before Facebook. The iPhone certainly wasn't the first mobile device. So lots of failed examples, but there are some recent successes like AWS and cloud. >> You could say smartphone. So I mean. >> Well I know, and you can, we can parse this so we'll debate it. Now Twitter, you could argue, had first mover advantage. You kind of gave me that one John. Bitcoin and crypto clearly had first mover advantage, and sustaining that. Guys, will OpenAI make it to the list on the right with ChatGPT, what do you think? >> I think categorically as a company, it probably won't, but as a category, I think what they're doing will, so OpenAI as a company, they get funding, there's power dynamics involved. Microsoft put a billion dollars in early on, then they just pony it up. Now they're reporting 10 billion more. So, like, if the browsers, Microsoft had competitive advantage over Netscape, and used monopoly power, and convicted by the Department of Justice for killing Netscape with their monopoly, Netscape should have had won that battle, but Microsoft killed it. In this case, Microsoft's not killing it, they're buying into it. So I think the embrace extend Microsoft power here makes OpenAI vulnerable for that one vendor solution. So the AI as a company might not make the list, but the category of what this is, large language model AI, is probably will be on the right hand side. >> Okay, we're going to come back to the government intervention and maybe do some comparisons, but what are your thoughts on this premise here? That, it will basically set- put forth the premise that it, that ChatGPT, its early entry into the market will not confer competitive advantage to >> For OpenAI. >> To Open- Yeah, do you agree with that? >> I agree with that actually. It, because Google has been at it, and they have been holding back, as John said because of the scrutiny from the Fed, right, so- >> And privacy too. >> And the privacy and the accuracy as well. But I think Sam Altman and the company on those guys, right? They have put this in a hasty way out there, you know, because it makes mistakes, and there are a lot of questions around the, sort of, where the content is coming from. You saw that as your example, it just stole the content, and without your permission, you know? >> Yeah. So as quick this aside- >> And it codes on people's behalf and the, those codes are wrong. So there's a lot of, sort of, false information it's putting out there. So it's a very vulnerable thing to do what Sam Altman- >> So even though it'll get better, others will compete. >> So look, just side note, a term which Reid Hoffman used a little bit. Like he said, it's experimental launch, like, you know, it's- >> It's pretty damn good. >> It is clever because according to Sam- >> It's more than clever. It's good. >> It's awesome, if you haven't used it. I mean you write- you read what it writes and you go, "This thing writes so well, it writes so much better than you." >> The human emotion drives that too. I think that's a big thing. But- >> I Want to add one more- >> Make your last point. >> Last one. Okay. So, but he's still holding back. He's conducting quite a few interviews. If you want to get the gist of it, there's an interview with StrictlyVC interview from yesterday with Sam Altman. Listen to that one it's an eye opening what they want- where they want to take it. But my last one I want to make it on this point is that Satya Nadella yesterday did an interview with Wall Street Journal. I think he was doing- >> You were not impressed. >> I was not impressed because he was pushing it too much. So Sam Altman's holding back so there's less backlash. >> Got 10 billion reasons to push. >> I think he's almost- >> Microsoft just laid off 10000 people. Hey ChatGPT, find me a job. You know like. (group laughs) >> He's overselling it to an extent that I think it will backfire on Microsoft. And he's over promising a lot of stuff right now, I think. I don't know why he's very jittery about all these things. And he did the same thing during Ignite as well. So he said, "Oh, this AI will write code for you and this and that." Like you called him out- >> The hyperbole- >> During your- >> from Satya Nadella, he's got a lot of hyperbole. (group talks over each other) >> All right, Let's, go ahead. >> Well, can I weigh in on the whole- >> Yeah, sure. >> Microsoft thing on whether OpenAI, here's the take on this. I think it's more like the browser moment to me, because I could relate to that experience with ChatG, personally, emotionally, when I saw that, and I remember vividly- >> You mean that aha moment (indistinct). >> Like this is obviously the future. Anything else in the old world is dead, website's going to be everywhere. It was just instant dot connection for me. And a lot of other smart people who saw this. Lot of people by the way, didn't see it. Someone said the web's a toy. At the company I was worked for at the time, Hewlett Packard, they like, they could have been in, they had invented HTML, and so like all this stuff was, like, they just passed, the web was just being passed over. But at that time, the browser got better, more websites came on board. So the structural advantage there was online web usage was growing, online user population. So that was growing exponentially with the rise of the Netscape browser. So OpenAI could stay on the right side of your list as durable, if they leverage the category that they're creating, can get the scale. And if they can get the scale, just like Twitter, that failed so many times that they still hung around. So it was a product that was always successful, right? So I mean, it should have- >> You're right, it was terrible, we kept coming back. >> The fail whale, but it still grew. So OpenAI has that moment. They could do it if Microsoft doesn't meddle too much with too much power as a vendor. They could be the Netscape Navigator, without the anti-competitive behavior of somebody else. So to me, they have the pole position. So they have an opportunity. So if not, if they don't execute, then there's opportunity. There's not a lot of barriers to entry, vis-a-vis say the CapEx of say a cloud company like AWS. You can't replicate that, Many have tried, but I think you can replicate OpenAI. >> And we're going to talk about that. Okay, so real quick, I want to bring in some ETR data. This isn't an ETR heavy segment, only because this so new, you know, they haven't coverage yet, but they do cover AI. So basically what we're seeing here is a slide on the vertical axis's net score, which is a measure of spending momentum, and in the horizontal axis's is presence in the dataset. Think of it as, like, market presence. And in the insert right there, you can see how the dots are plotted, the two columns. And so, but the key point here that we want to make, there's a bunch of companies on the left, is he like, you know, DataRobot and C3 AI and some others, but the big whales, Google, AWS, Microsoft, are really dominant in this market. So that's really the key takeaway that, can we- >> I notice IBM is way low. >> Yeah, IBM's low, and actually bring that back up and you, but then you see Oracle who actually is injecting. So I guess that's the other point is, you're not necessarily going to go buy AI, and you know, build your own AI, you're going to, it's going to be there and, it, Salesforce is going to embed it into its platform, the SaaS companies, and you're going to purchase AI. You're not necessarily going to build it. But some companies obviously are. >> I mean to quote IBM's general manager Rob Thomas, "You can't have AI with IA." information architecture and David Flynn- >> You can't Have AI without IA >> without, you can't have AI without IA. You can't have, if you have an Information Architecture, you then can power AI. Yesterday David Flynn, with Hammersmith, was on our Supercloud. He was pointing out that the relationship of storage, where you store things, also impacts the data and stressablity, and Zhamak from Nextdata, she was pointing out that same thing. So the data problem factors into all this too, Dave. >> So you got the big cloud and internet giants, they're all poised to go after this opportunity. Microsoft is investing up to 10 billion. Google's code red, which was, you know, the headline in the New York Times. Of course Apple is there and several alternatives in the market today. Guys like Chinchilla, Bloom, and there's a company Jasper and several others, and then Lena Khan looms large and the government's around the world, EU, US, China, all taking notice before the market really is coalesced around a single player. You know, John, you mentioned Netscape, they kind of really, the US government was way late to that game. It was kind of game over. And Netscape, I remember Barksdale was like, "Eh, we're going to be selling software in the enterprise anyway." and then, pshew, the company just dissipated. So, but it looks like the US government, especially with Lena Khan, they're changing the definition of antitrust and what the cause is to go after people, and they're really much more aggressive. It's only what, two years ago that (indistinct). >> Yeah, the problem I have with the federal oversight is this, they're always like late to the game, and they're slow to catch up. So in other words, they're working on stuff that should have been solved a year and a half, two years ago around some of the social networks hiding behind some of the rules around open web back in the days, and I think- >> But they're like 15 years late to that. >> Yeah, and now they got this new thing on top of it. So like, I just worry about them getting their fingers. >> But there's only two years, you know, OpenAI. >> No, but the thing (indistinct). >> No, they're still fighting other battles. But the problem with government is that they're going to label Big Tech as like a evil thing like Pharma, it's like smoke- >> You know Lena Khan wants to kill Big Tech, there's no question. >> So I think Big Tech is getting a very seriously bad rap. And I think anything that the government does that shades darkness on tech, is politically motivated in most cases. You can almost look at everything, and my 80 20 rule is in play here. 80% of the government activity around tech is bullshit, it's politically motivated, and the 20% is probably relevant, but off the mark and not organized. >> Well market forces have always been the determining factor of success. The governments, you know, have been pretty much failed. I mean you look at IBM's antitrust, that, what did that do? The market ultimately beat them. You look at Microsoft back in the day, right? Windows 95 was peaking, the government came in. But you know, like you said, they missed the web, right, and >> so they were hanging on- >> There's nobody in government >> to Windows. >> that actually knows- >> And so, you, I think you're right. It's market forces that are going to determine this. But Sarbjeet, what do you make of Microsoft's big bet here, you weren't impressed with with Nadella. How do you think, where are they going to apply it? Is this going to be a Hail Mary for Bing, or is it going to be applied elsewhere? What do you think. >> They are saying that they will, sort of, weave this into their products, office products, productivity and also to write code as well, developer productivity as well. That's a big play for them. But coming back to your antitrust sort of comments, right? I believe the, your comment was like, oh, fed was late 10 years or 15 years earlier, but now they're two years. But things are moving very fast now as compared to they used to move. >> So two years is like 10 Years. >> Yeah, two years is like 10 years. Just want to make that point. (Dave laughs) This thing is going like wildfire. Any new tech which comes in that I think they're going against distribution channels. Lina Khan has commented time and again that the marketplace model is that she wants to have some grip on. Cloud marketplaces are a kind of monopolistic kind of way. >> I don't, I don't see this, I don't see a Chat AI. >> You told me it's not Bing, you had an interesting comment. >> No, no. First of all, this is great from Microsoft. If you're Microsoft- >> Why? >> Because Microsoft doesn't have the AI chops that Google has, right? Google is got so much core competency on how they run their search, how they run their backends, their cloud, even though they don't get a lot of cloud market share in the enterprise, they got a kick ass cloud cause they needed one. >> Totally. >> They've invented SRE. I mean Google's development and engineering chops are off the scales, right? Amazon's got some good chops, but Google's got like 10 times more chops than AWS in my opinion. Cloud's a whole different story. Microsoft gets AI, they get a playbook, they get a product they can render into, the not only Bing, productivity software, helping people write papers, PowerPoint, also don't forget the cloud AI can super help. We had this conversation on our Supercloud event, where AI's going to do a lot of the heavy lifting around understanding observability and managing service meshes, to managing microservices, to turning on and off applications, and or maybe writing code in real time. So there's a plethora of use cases for Microsoft to deploy this. combined with their R and D budgets, they can then turbocharge more research, build on it. So I think this gives them a car in the game, Google may have pole position with AI, but this puts Microsoft right in the game, and they already have a lot of stuff going on. But this just, I mean everything gets lifted up. Security, cloud, productivity suite, everything. >> What's under the hood at Google, and why aren't they talking about it? I mean they got to be freaked out about this. No? Or do they have kind of a magic bullet? >> I think they have the, they have the chops definitely. Magic bullet, I don't know where they are, as compared to the ChatGPT 3 or 4 models. Like they, but if you look at the online sort of activity and the videos put out there from Google folks, Google technology folks, that's account you should look at if you are looking there, they have put all these distinctions what ChatGPT 3 has used, they have been talking about for a while as well. So it's not like it's a secret thing that you cannot replicate. As you said earlier, like in the beginning of this segment, that anybody who has more data and the capacity to process that data, which Google has both, I think they will win this. >> Obviously living in Palo Alto where the Google founders are, and Google's headquarters next town over we have- >> We're so close to them. We have inside information on some of the thinking and that hasn't been reported by any outlet yet. And that is, is that, from what I'm hearing from my sources, is Google has it, they don't want to release it for many reasons. One is it might screw up their search monopoly, one, two, they're worried about the accuracy, 'cause Google will get sued. 'Cause a lot of people are jamming on this ChatGPT as, "Oh it does everything for me." when it's clearly not a hundred percent accurate all the time. >> So Lina Kahn is looming, and so Google's like be careful. >> Yeah so Google's just like, this is the third, could be a third rail. >> But the first thing you said is a concern. >> Well no. >> The disruptive (indistinct) >> What they will do is do a Waymo kind of thing, where they spin out a separate company. >> They're doing that. >> The discussions happening, they're going to spin out the separate company and put it over there, and saying, "This is AI, got search over there, don't touch that search, 'cause that's where all the revenue is." (chuckles) >> So, okay, so that's how they deal with the Clay Christensen dilemma. What's the business model here? I mean it's not advertising, right? Is it to charge you for a query? What, how do you make money at this? >> It's a good question, I mean my thinking is, first of all, it's cool to type stuff in and see a paper get written, or write a blog post, or gimme a marketing slogan for this or that or write some code. I think the API side of the business will be critical. And I think Howie Xu, I know you're going to reference some of his comments yesterday on Supercloud, I think this brings a whole 'nother user interface into technology consumption. I think the business model, not yet clear, but it will probably be some sort of either API and developer environment or just a straight up free consumer product, with some sort of freemium backend thing for business. >> And he was saying too, it's natural language is the way in which you're going to interact with these systems. >> I think it's APIs, it's APIs, APIs, APIs, because these people who are cooking up these models, and it takes a lot of compute power to train these and to, for inference as well. Somebody did the analysis on the how many cents a Google search costs to Google, and how many cents the ChatGPT query costs. It's, you know, 100x or something on that. You can take a look at that. >> A 100x on which side? >> You're saying two orders of magnitude more expensive for ChatGPT >> Much more, yeah. >> Than for Google. >> It's very expensive. >> So Google's got the data, they got the infrastructure and they got, you're saying they got the cost (indistinct) >> No actually it's a simple query as well, but they are trying to put together the answers, and they're going through a lot more data versus index data already, you know. >> Let me clarify, you're saying that Google's version of ChatGPT is more efficient? >> No, I'm, I'm saying Google search results. >> Ah, search results. >> What are used to today, but cheaper. >> But that, does that, is that going to confer advantage to Google's large language (indistinct)? >> It will, because there were deep science (indistinct). >> Google, I don't think Google search is doing a large language model on their search, it's keyword search. You know, what's the weather in Santa Cruz? Or how, what's the weather going to be? Or you know, how do I find this? Now they have done a smart job of doing some things with those queries, auto complete, re direct navigation. But it's, it's not entity. It's not like, "Hey, what's Dave Vellante thinking this week in Breaking Analysis?" ChatGPT might get that, because it'll get your Breaking Analysis, it'll synthesize it. There'll be some, maybe some clips. It'll be like, you know, I mean. >> Well I got to tell you, I asked ChatGPT to, like, I said, I'm going to enter a transcript of a discussion I had with Nir Zuk, the CTO of Palo Alto Networks, And I want you to write a 750 word blog. I never input the transcript. It wrote a 750 word blog. It attributed quotes to him, and it just pulled a bunch of stuff that, and said, okay, here it is. It talked about Supercloud, it defined Supercloud. >> It's made, it makes you- >> Wow, But it was a big lie. It was fraudulent, but still, blew me away. >> Again, vanilla content and non accurate content. So we are going to see a surge of misinformation on steroids, but I call it the vanilla content. Wow, that's just so boring, (indistinct). >> There's so many dangers. >> Make your point, cause we got to, almost out of time. >> Okay, so the consumption, like how do you consume this thing. As humans, we are consuming it and we are, like, getting a nicely, like, surprisingly shocked, you know, wow, that's cool. It's going to increase productivity and all that stuff, right? And on the danger side as well, the bad actors can take hold of it and create fake content and we have the fake sort of intelligence, if you go out there. So that's one thing. The second thing is, we are as humans are consuming this as language. Like we read that, we listen to it, whatever format we consume that is, but the ultimate usage of that will be when the machines can take that output from likes of ChatGPT, and do actions based on that. The robots can work, the robot can paint your house, we were talking about, right? Right now we can't do that. >> Data apps. >> So the data has to be ingested by the machines. It has to be digestible by the machines. And the machines cannot digest unorganized data right now, we will get better on the ingestion side as well. So we are getting better. >> Data, reasoning, insights, and action. >> I like that mall, paint my house. >> So, okay- >> By the way, that means drones that'll come in. Spray painting your house. >> Hey, it wasn't too long ago that robots couldn't climb stairs, as I like to point out. Okay, and of course it's no surprise the venture capitalists are lining up to eat at the trough, as I'd like to say. Let's hear, you'd referenced this earlier, John, let's hear what AI expert Howie Xu said at the Supercloud event, about what it takes to clone ChatGPT. Please, play the clip. >> So one of the VCs actually asked me the other day, right? "Hey, how much money do I need to spend, invest to get a, you know, another shot to the openAI sort of the level." You know, I did a (indistinct) >> Line up. >> A hundred million dollar is the order of magnitude that I came up with, right? You know, not a billion, not 10 million, right? So a hundred- >> Guys a hundred million dollars, that's an astoundingly low figure. What do you make of it? >> I was in an interview with, I was interviewing, I think he said hundred million or so, but in the hundreds of millions, not a billion right? >> You were trying to get him up, you were like "Hundreds of millions." >> Well I think, I- >> He's like, eh, not 10, not a billion. >> Well first of all, Howie Xu's an expert machine learning. He's at Zscaler, he's a machine learning AI guy. But he comes from VMware, he's got his technology pedigrees really off the chart. Great friend of theCUBE and kind of like a CUBE analyst for us. And he's smart. He's right. I think the barriers to entry from a dollar standpoint are lower than say the CapEx required to compete with AWS. Clearly, the CapEx spending to build all the tech for the run a cloud. >> And you don't need a huge sales force. >> And in some case apps too, it's the same thing. But I think it's not that hard. >> But am I right about that? You don't need a huge sales force either. It's, what, you know >> If the product's good, it will sell, this is a new era. The better mouse trap will win. This is the new economics in software, right? So- >> Because you look at the amount of money Lacework, and Snyk, Snowflake, Databrooks. Look at the amount of money they've raised. I mean it's like a billion dollars before they get to IPO or more. 'Cause they need promotion, they need go to market. You don't need (indistinct) >> OpenAI's been working on this for multiple five years plus it's, hasn't, wasn't born yesterday. Took a lot of years to get going. And Sam is depositioning all the success, because he's trying to manage expectations, To your point Sarbjeet, earlier. It's like, yeah, he's trying to "Whoa, whoa, settle down everybody, (Dave laughs) it's not that great." because he doesn't want to fall into that, you know, hero and then get taken down, so. >> It may take a 100 million or 150 or 200 million to train the model. But to, for the inference to, yeah to for the inference machine, It will take a lot more, I believe. >> Give it, so imagine, >> Because- >> Go ahead, sorry. >> Go ahead. But because it consumes a lot more compute cycles and it's certain level of storage and everything, right, which they already have. So I think to compute is different. To frame the model is a different cost. But to run the business is different, because I think 100 million can go into just fighting the Fed. >> Well there's a flywheel too. >> Oh that's (indistinct) >> (indistinct) >> We are running the business, right? >> It's an interesting number, but it's also kind of, like, context to it. So here, a hundred million spend it, you get there, but you got to factor in the fact that the ways companies win these days is critical mass scale, hitting a flywheel. If they can keep that flywheel of the value that they got going on and get better, you can almost imagine a marketplace where, hey, we have proprietary data, we're SiliconANGLE in theCUBE. We have proprietary content, CUBE videos, transcripts. Well wouldn't it be great if someone in a marketplace could sell a module for us, right? We buy that, Amazon's thing and things like that. So if they can get a marketplace going where you can apply to data sets that may be proprietary, you can start to see this become bigger. And so I think the key barriers to entry is going to be success. I'll give you an example, Reddit. Reddit is successful and it's hard to copy, not because of the software. >> They built the moat. >> Because you can, buy Reddit open source software and try To compete. >> They built the moat with their community. >> Their community, their scale, their user expectation. Twitter, we referenced earlier, that thing should have gone under the first two years, but there was such a great emotional product. People would tolerate the fail whale. And then, you know, well that was a whole 'nother thing. >> Then a plane landed in (John laughs) the Hudson and it was over. >> I think verticals, a lot of verticals will build applications using these models like for lawyers, for doctors, for scientists, for content creators, for- >> So you'll have many hundreds of millions of dollars investments that are going to be seeping out. If, all right, we got to wrap, if you had to put odds on it that that OpenAI is going to be the leader, maybe not a winner take all leader, but like you look at like Amazon and cloud, they're not winner take all, these aren't necessarily winner take all markets. It's not necessarily a zero sum game, but let's call it winner take most. What odds would you give that open AI 10 years from now will be in that position. >> If I'm 0 to 10 kind of thing? >> Yeah, it's like horse race, 3 to 1, 2 to 1, even money, 10 to 1, 50 to 1. >> Maybe 2 to 1, >> 2 to 1, that's pretty low odds. That's basically saying they're the favorite, they're the front runner. Would you agree with that? >> I'd say 4 to 1. >> Yeah, I was going to say I'm like a 5 to 1, 7 to 1 type of person, 'cause I'm a skeptic with, you know, there's so much competition, but- >> I think they're definitely the leader. I mean you got to say, I mean. >> Oh there's no question. There's no question about it. >> The question is can they execute? >> They're not Friendster, is what you're saying. >> They're not Friendster and they're more like Twitter and Reddit where they have momentum. If they can execute on the product side, and if they don't stumble on that, they will continue to have the lead. >> If they say stay neutral, as Sam is, has been saying, that, hey, Microsoft is one of our partners, if you look at their company model, how they have structured the company, then they're going to pay back to the investors, like Microsoft is the biggest one, up to certain, like by certain number of years, they're going to pay back from all the money they make, and after that, they're going to give the money back to the public, to the, I don't know who they give it to, like non-profit or something. (indistinct) >> Okay, the odds are dropping. (group talks over each other) That's a good point though >> Actually they might have done that to fend off the criticism of this. But it's really interesting to see the model they have adopted. >> The wildcard in all this, My last word on this is that, if there's a developer shift in how developers and data can come together again, we have conferences around the future of data, Supercloud and meshs versus, you know, how the data world, coding with data, how that evolves will also dictate, 'cause a wild card could be a shift in the landscape around how developers are using either machine learning or AI like techniques to code into their apps, so. >> That's fantastic insight. I can't thank you enough for your time, on the heels of Supercloud 2, really appreciate it. All right, thanks to John and Sarbjeet for the outstanding conversation today. Special thanks to the Palo Alto studio team. My goodness, Anderson, this great backdrop. You guys got it all out here, I'm jealous. And Noah, really appreciate it, Chuck, Andrew Frick and Cameron, Andrew Frick switching, Cameron on the video lake, great job. And Alex Myerson, he's on production, manages the podcast for us, Ken Schiffman as well. Kristen Martin and Cheryl Knight help get the word out on social media and our newsletters. Rob Hof is our editor-in-chief over at SiliconANGLE, does some great editing, thanks to all. Remember, all these episodes are available as podcasts. All you got to do is search Breaking Analysis podcast, wherever you listen. Publish each week on wikibon.com and siliconangle.com. Want to get in touch, email me directly, david.vellante@siliconangle.com or DM me at dvellante, or comment on our LinkedIn post. And by all means, check out etr.ai. They got really great survey data in the enterprise tech business. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE Insights powered by ETR. Thanks for watching, We'll see you next time on Breaking Analysis. (electronic music)

(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to Supercloud 2 this is Dave Vellante. We're here exploring the intersection of data and analytics and the future of cloud. And in this segment, we're going to look at the evolution of cloud, and try to test some of the Supercloud concepts and assumptions with Brian Gracely, is the founder and co-host along with Aaron Delp of the popular Cloudcast program. Amazing series, if you're not already familiar with it. The Cloudcast is one of the best ways to keep up with so many things going on in our industry. Enterprise tech, platform engineering, business models, obviously, cloud developer trends, crypto, Web 3.0. Sorry Brian, I know that's a sore spot, but Brian, thanks for coming >> That's okay. >> on the program, really appreciate it. >> Yeah, great to be with you, Dave. Happy New Year, and great to be back with everybody with SiliconANGLE again this year. >> Yeah, we love having you on. We miss working with you day-to-day, but I want to start with Gracely's theorem, which basically says, I'm going to paraphrase. For the most part, nothing new gets introduced in the enterprise tech business, patterns repeat themselves, maybe get applied in new ways. And you know this industry well, when something comes out that's new, if you take virtualization, for example, been around forever with mainframes, but then VMware applied it, solve a real problem in the client service system. And then it's like, "Okay, this is awesome." We get really excited and then after a while we pushed the architecture, we break things, introduce new things to fix the things that are broken and start adding new features. And oftentimes you do that through acquisitions. So, you know, has the cloud become that sort of thing? And is Supercloud sort of same wine, new bottle, following Gracely's theorem? >> Yeah, I think there's some of both of it. I hate to be the sort of, it depends sort of answer but, I think to a certain extent, you know, obviously Cloud in and of itself was, kind of revolutionary in that, you know, it wasn't that you couldn't rent things in the past, it was just being able to do it at scale, being able to do it with such amazing self-service. And then, you know, kind of proliferation of like, look at how many services I can get from, from one cloud, whether it was Amazon or Azure or Google. And then, you know, we, we slip back into the things that we know, we go, "Oh, well, okay, now I can get computing on demand, but, now it's just computing." Or I can get database on demand and it's, you know, it's got some of the same limitations of, of say, of database, right? It's still, you know, I have to think about IOPS and I have to think about caching, and other stuff. So, I think we do go through that and then we, you know, we have these sort of next paradigms that come along. So, you know, serverless was another one of those where it was like, okay, it seems sort of new. I don't have to, again, it was another level of like, I don't have to think about anything. And I was able to do that because, you know, there was either greater bandwidth available to me, or compute got cheaper. And what's been interesting is not the sort of, that specific thing, serverless in and of itself is just another way of doing compute, but the fact that it now gets applied as, sort of a no-ops model to, you know, again, like how do I provision a database? How do I think about, you know, do I have to think about the location of a service? Does that just get taken care of for me? So I think the Supercloud concept, and I did a thing and, and you and I have talked about it, you know, behind the scenes that maybe the, maybe a better name is Super app for something like Snowflake or other, but I think we're, seeing these these sort of evolutions over and over again of what were the big bottlenecks? How do we, how do we solve those bottlenecks? And I think the big thing here is, it's never, it's very rarely that you can take the old paradigm of what the thing was, the concept was, and apply it to the new model. So, I'll just give you an example. So, you know, something like VMware, which we all know, wildly popular, wildly used, but when we apply like a Supercloud concept of VMware, the concept of VMware has always been around a cluster, right? It's some finite number of servers, you sort of manage it as a cluster. And when you apply that to the cloud and you say, okay, there's, you know, for example, VMware in the cloud, it's still the same concept of a cluster of VMware. But yet when you look at some of these other services that would fit more into the, you know, Supercloud kind of paradigm, whether it's a Snowflake or a MongoDB Atlas or maybe what CloudFlare is doing at the edge, those things get rid of some of those old paradigms. And I think that's where stuff, you start to go, "Oh, okay, this is very different than before." Yes, it's still computing or storage, or data access, but there's a whole nother level of something that we didn't carry forward from the previous days. And that really kind of breaks the paradigm. And so that's the way I think I've started to think about, are these things really brand new? Yes and no, but I think it's when you can see that big, that thing that you didn't leave behind isn't there anymore, you start to get some really interesting new innovation come out of it. >> Yeah. And that's why, you know, lift and shift is okay, when you talk to practitioners, they'll say, "You know, I really didn't change my operating model. And so I just kind of moved it into the cloud. there were some benefits, but it was maybe one zero not three zeros that I was looking for." >> Right. >> You know, we always talk about what's great about cloud, the agility, and all the other wonderful stuff that we know, what's not working in cloud, you know, tie it into multi-cloud, you know, in terms of, you hear people talk about multi-cloud by accident, okay, that's true. >> Yep. >> What's not great about cloud. And then I want to get into, you know, is multi-cloud really a problem or is it just sort of vendor hype? But, but what's not working in cloud? I mean, you mentioned serverless and serverless is kind of narrow, right, for a lot of stateless apps, right? But, what's not great about cloud? >> Well, I think there's a few things that if you ask most people they don't love about cloud. I think, we can argue whether or not sort of this consolidation around a few cloud providers has been a good thing or a bad thing. I think, regardless of that, you know, we are seeing, we are hearing more and more people that say, look, you know, the experience I used to have with cloud when I went to, for example, an Amazon and there was, you know, a dozen services, it was easy to figure out what was going on. It was easy to figure out what my billing looked like. You know, now they've become so widespread, the number of services they have, you know, the number of stories you just hear of people who went, "Oh, I started a service over in US West and I can't find it anymore 'cause it's on a different screen. And I, you know, I just got billed for it." Like, so I think the sprawl of some of the clouds has gotten, has created a user experience that a lot of people are frustrated with. I think that's one thing. And we, you know, we see people like Digital Ocean and we see others who are saying, "Hey, we're going to be that simplified version." So, there's always that yin and yang. I think people are super frustrated at network costs, right? So, you know, and that's kind of at a lot of, at the center of maybe why we do or don't see more of these Supercloud services is just, you know, in the data center as an application owner, I didn't have to think about, well where, where does this go to? Where are my users? Yes, somebody took care of it, but when those things become front and center, that's super frustrating. That's the one area that we've seen absolutely no cost savings, cost reduction. So I think that frustrates people a lot. And then I think the third piece is just, you know, we're, we went from super centralized IT organizations, which, you know, for decades was how it worked. It was part of the reason why the cloud expanded and became a thing, right? Sort of shadow IT and I can't get things done. And then, now what we've seen is sort of this proliferation of little pockets of groups that are your IT, for lack of a better thing, whether they're called platform engineering or SRE or DevOps. But we have this, expansion, explosion if you will, of groups that, if I'm an app dev team, I go, "Hey, you helped me make this stuff run, but then the team next to you has another group and they have another group." And so you see this explosion of, you know, we don't have any standards in the company anymore. And, so sort of self-service has created its own nightmare to a certain extent for a lot of larger companies. >> Yeah. Thank you for that. So, you know, I want, I want to explore this multi-cloud, you know, by accident thing and is a real problem. You hear that a lot from vendors and we've been talking about Supercloud as this unifying layer across cloud. You know, but when you talk to customers, a lot of them are saying, "Yes, we have multiple clouds in our organization, but my group, we have mono cloud, we know the security, edicts, we know how to, you know, deal with the primitives, whether it's, you know, S3 or Azure Blob or whatever it is. And we're very comfortable with this." It's, that's how we're simplifying. So, do you think this is really a problem? Does it have merit that we need that unifying layer across clouds, or is it just too early for that? >> I think, yeah, I think what you, what you've laid out is basically how the world has played out. People have picked a cloud for a specific application or a series of applications. Yeah, and I think if you talk to most companies, they would tell you, you know, holistically, yes, we're multi-cloud, not, maybe not necessarily on, I don't necessarily love the phrase where people say like, well it happened by accident. I think it happened on purpose, but we got to multi-cloud, not in the way that maybe that vendors, you know, perceived, you know, kind of laid out a map for. So it was, it was, well you will lay out this sort of Supercloud framework. We didn't call it that back then, we just called it sort of multi-cloud. Maybe it was Kubernetes or maybe it was whatever. And different groups, because central IT kind of got disbanded or got fragmented. It turned into, go pick the best cloud for your application, for what you need to do for the business. And then, you know, multiple years later it was like, "Oh, hold on, I've got 20% in Google and 50% in AWS and I've got 30% in Azure. And, you know, it's, yeah, it's been evolution. I don't know that it's, I don't know if it's a mistake. I think it's now groups trying to figure out like, should I make sense of it? You know, should I try and standardize and I backwards standardize some stuff? I think that's going to be a hard thing for, for companies to do. 'cause I think they feel okay with where the applications are. They just happen to be in multiple clouds. >> I want to run something by you, and you guys, you and Aaron have talked about this. You know, still depending on who, which keynote you listen to, small percentage of the workloads are actually in cloud. And when you were with us at Wikibon, I think we called it true private cloud, and we looked at things like Nutanix and there were a lot of other examples of companies that were trying to replicate the hyperscale experience on Prem. >> Yeah. >> And, we would evaluate that, you know, beyond virtualization, and so we sort of defined that and, but I think what's, maybe what's more interesting than Supercloud across clouds is if you include that, that on Prem estate, because that's where most of the work is being done, that's where a lot of the proprietary tools have been built, a lot of data, a lot of software. So maybe there's this concept of sending that true private cloud to true hybrid cloud. So I actually think hybrid cloud in some cases is the more interesting use case for so-called Supercloud. What are your thoughts on that? >> Yeah, I think there's a couple aspects too. I think, you know, if we were to go back five or six years even, maybe even a little further and look at like what a data center looked like, even if it was just, "Hey we're a data center that runs primarily on VMware. We use some of their automation". Versus what you can, even what you can do in your data center today. The, you know, the games that people have seen through new types of automation through Kubernetes, through get ops, and a number of these things, like they've gotten significantly further along in terms of I can provision stuff really well, I can do multi-tenancy, I can do self-service. Is it, you know, is it still hard? Yeah. Because those things are hard to do, but there's been significant progress there. I don't, you know, I still look for kind of that, that killer application, that sort of, you know, lighthouse use case of, hybrid applications, you know, between data center and between cloud. I think, you know, we see some stuff where, you know, backup is a part of it. So you use the cloud for storage, maybe you use the cloud for certain kinds of resiliency, especially on maybe front end load balancing and stuff. But I think, you know, I think what we get into is, this being hung up on hybrid cloud or multi-cloud as a term and go like, "Look, what are you trying to measure? Are you trying to measure, you know, efficiency of of of IT usage? Are you trying to measure how quickly can I give these business, you know, these application teams that are part of a line of business resources that they need?" I think if we start measuring that way, we would look at, you know, you'd go, "Wow, it used to be weeks and months. Now we got rid of these boards that have to review everything every time I want to do a change management type of thing." We've seen a lot more self-service. I think those are the things we want to measure on. And then to your point of, you know, where does, where do these Supercloud applications fit in? I think there are a bunch of instances where you go, "Look, I have a, you know, global application, I have a thing that has to span multiple regions." That's where the Supercloud concept really comes into play. We used to do it in the data center, right? We'd had all sorts of technologies to help with that, I think you can now start to do it in the cloud. >> You know, one of the other things, trying to understand, your thoughts on this, do you think that you, you again have talked about this, like I'm with you. It's like, how is it that Google's losing, you know, 3 billion dollars a year, whatever. I mean, because when you go back and look at Amazon, when they were at that level of revenue where Google is today, they were making money, you know, and they were actually growing faster, by the way. So it's kind of interesting what's happened with Google. But, the reason I bring that up is, trying to understand if you think the hyperscalers will ever be motivated to create standards across clouds, and that may be a play for Google. I mean, obviously with Kubernetes it was like a Hail Mary and kind of made them relevant. Where would Google be without Kubernetes? But then did it achieve the objectives? We could have that conversation some other time, but do you think the hyperscalers will actually say, "Okay, we're going to lean in and create these standards across clouds." Because customers would love that, I would think, but it would sub-optimize their competitive advantage. What are your thoughts? >> I think, you know, on the surface, I would say they, they probably aren't. I think if you asked 'em the question, they would say, "Well, you know, first and foremost, you know, we do deliver standards, so we deliver a, you know, standard SQL interface or a SQL you know, or a standard Kubernetes API or whatever. So, in that, from that perspective, you know, we're not locking you into, you know, an Amazon specific database, or a Google specific database." You, you can argue about that, but I think to a certain extent, like they've been very good about, "Hey, we're going to adopt the standards that people want." A lot of times the open source standards. I think the problem is, let's say they did come up with a standard for it. I think you still have the problem of the costs of migration and you know, the longer you've, I think their bet is basically the longer you've been in some cloud. And again, the more data you sort of compile there, the data gravity concept, there's just going to be a natural thing that says, okay, the hurdle to get over to say, "Look, we want to move this to another cloud", becomes so cost prohibitive that they don't really have to worry about, you know, oh, I'm going to get into a war of standards. And so far I think they sort of realize like that's the flywheel that the cloud creates. And you know, unless they want to get into a world where they just cut bandwidth costs, like it just kind of won't happen. You know, I think we've even seen, and you know, the one example I'll use, and I forget the name of it off the top of my head, but there's a, there's a Google service. I think it's like BigQuery external or something along those lines, that allows you to say, "Look, you can use BigQuery against like S3 buckets and against other stuff." And so I think the cloud providers have kind of figured out, I'm never going to get the application out of that other guy's cloud or you know, the other cloud. But maybe I'm going to have to figure out some interesting ways to sort of work with it. And, you know, it's a little bit, it's a little janky, but that might be, you know, a moderate step that sort of gets customers where they want to be. >> Yeah. Or you know, it'd be interesting if you ever see AWS for example, running its database in other clouds, you started, even Oracle is doing that with, with with Azure, which is a form of Supercloud. My last question for you is, I want to get you thinking about sort of how the future plays out. You know, think about some of the companies that we've put forth this Supercloud, and by the way, this has been a criticism of the concept. Charles Fitzer, "Everything is Supercloud!" Which if true would defeat the purpose of course. >> Right. >> And so right with the community effort, we really tried to put some guardrails down on the essential characteristics, the deployment models, you know, so for example, running across multiple clouds with a purpose build pass, creating a common experience, metadata intelligence that solves a specific problem. I mean, the example I often use is Snowflake's governed data sharing. But yeah, Snowflake, Databricks, CloudFlare, Cohesity, you know, I just mentioned Oracle and Azure, these and others, they certainly claim to have that common experience across clouds. But my question is, again, I come back to, do customers need this capability? You know, is Mono Cloud the way to solve that problem? What's your, what are your thoughts on how this plays out in the future of, I guess, PAs, apps and cloud? >> Yeah, I think a couple of things. So, from a technology perspective, I think, you know, the companies you name, the services you've named, have sort of proven that the concept is viable and it's viable at a reasonable size, right? These aren't completely niche businesses, right? They're multi-billion dollar businesses. So, I think there's a subset of applications that, you know, maybe a a bigger than a niche set of applications that are going to use these types of things. A lot of what you talked about is very data centric, and that's, that's fine. That's that layer is, figuring that out. I think we'll see messaging types of services, so like Derek Hallison's, Caya Company runs a, sort of a Supercloud for messaging applications. So I think there'll be places where it makes a ton of sense. I think, the thing that I'm not sure about, and because again, we've been now 10 plus years of sort of super low, you know, interest rates in terms of being able to do things, is a lot of these things come out of research that have been done previously. Then they get turned into maybe somewhat of an open source project, and then they can become something. You know, will we see as much investment into the next Snowflake if, you know, the interest rates are three or four times that they used to be, do we, do we see VCs doing it? So that's the part that worries me a little bit, is I think we've seen what's possible. I think, you know, we've seen companies like what those services are. I think I read yesterday Snowflake was saying like, their biggest customers are growing at 30, like 50 or 60%. Like the, value they get out of it is becoming exponential. And it's just a matter of like, will the economics allow the next big thing to happen? Because some of these things are pretty, pretty costly, you know, expensive to get started. So I'm bullish on the idea. I don't know that it becomes, I think it's okay that it's still sort of, you know, niche plus, plus in terms of the size of it. Because, you know, if we think about all of IT it's still, you know, even microservices is a small part of bigger things. But I'm still really bullish on the idea. I like that it's been proven. I'm a little wary, like a lot of people have the economics of, you know, what might slow things down a little bit. But yeah, I, think the future is going to involve Supercloud somewhere, whatever people end up calling it. And you and I discussed that. (laughs) But I don't, I don't think it goes away. I don't think it's, I don't think it's a fad. I think it is something that people see tremendous value and it's just, it's got to be, you know, for what you're trying to do, your application specific thing. >> You're making a great point on the funding of innovation and we're entering a new era of public policy as well. R and D tax credit is now is shifting. >> Yeah. >> You know, you're going to have to capitalize that over five years now. And that's something that goes back to the 1950s and many people would argue that's at least in part what has helped the United States be so, you know, competitive in tech. But Brian, always great to talk to you. Thanks so much for participating in the program. Great to see you. >> Thanks Dave, appreciate it. Good luck with the rest of the show. >> Thank you. All right, this is Dave Vellante for John Furrier, the entire Cube community. Stay tuned for more content from Supercloud2.