>> Las Vegas. Extensive signal from the noise. It's the Q covering interconnect 2016. Brought to you by IBM. Now your host, John Hurry and Dave Ilan. >> Okay, Welcome back, everyone. We are here live in Las Vegas for exclusive coverage of IBM interconnect 2016. This is Silicon Angles. The Q. That's our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Ferrier with my Coast Day Volante. Our next guest, Steve Robinson News. The GM of client technical engagement before that, in the cloud doing all the blue mix now has the army of technical soldiers out there doing all the action because it's so much robust. So much demand for horizontally scale. The sluices with vertically targeted, prepackaged application development. That's horrible. First you name it big data. Welcome back. Good to see you, John. Thanks. Good to be with you again. Always, like great to have you on because you got a great perspective. You understand the executive viewpoint. A 20 mile stare in the industry. But also you got the in the nuts and bolts in under the hood. >> That's right. A >> lot of action happening under the hood. So let's get that right away. Blue, Mrs Hot Night. Now it's about the developers. What's going on under the hood right now that customers are caring about? >> I always love the Cube. You guys were like one of the first guys talking to us two years ago when we just launched a blue makes on stage. We walked off, got in front of cameras here, and it was great. Over the past year, it's been it's been outstanding. We we're writing about 20,000 folks toe blue mix right now on public, we came out with dedicated and then what people had really been warning was local blue mix as well. So we finally have full hybrid chain that goes from behind the firewall to a single client dedicated cloud all the way up to the public as well. So we've been building that out with service is as well, so have over 106 service is on top of it. You'll see things like Watson, which is unique, our Dash CB analytics, which is unique Internet of things coming in as well. So it's been a great year old building it out and getting more clients on top of it, >> it's like really trying to change the airplane engine in 30,000 feet. Or, in your case, you guys were taken off and from the runway. How has that been? It's been growing pains, of course. Unlearning What? What's going on? What have you learned? Give us the update on >> changing the engine while the plane is flying, and we've used that analogy quite a bit in the labs and way have to show relevance in this market. You know, this market is probably the fastest face technical market I think I've ever been in, and it's moving at such a rapid pace. We had to ship a lot of technology out last year is well, we have every new middleware group in IBM. Putting service is on top of blue mix, so let's get it out there. Let's get it out fast. Now, of course, this year we're gonna harden it up a little bit as well. So more architectures, more points of view. Better look on how this stuff works together hardening up our container strategy, pulling it all the way back to the virtual machine. So both continue to expand it out but let's make it enterprise grade at the same time. >> And also, some differentiation with Watts has been a big play around Catnip. Yeah, really is different because right now with the quote, um, market the way it is court monetization is on number one's mind. Start from startups to enterprises. If you're in business, you want you're top line if you're starting to get monetization. So there's a little bit of IBM in here for people to take in. Well, >> you know, if you look at Watson, you know, when we first started with it, you know, it was this very large big chunk of software that she had to buy. And and we work with Mike Rodents Team toe. Can we chop it up into a set of service is Let's really make this a set of AP eyes, and we started noticing, you know, you saw in Main stage the other day out from Otis. You know, this was a pure startup. He's started picking up the social semantics. Let's pick up the you know, some of the works to text etcetera, conversions, and all of a sudden they're starting to add it in. They said they would have never had access to this technology before way Have that a P I said. Not growing up to 28 we announced a couple cool things this morning. We even showed how would improve your dating life. Probably need some of that with my wife is well to translate between the sexes there, but what people are doing with it now, it's kind of like blowing people. His mind is far beyond what the initial exception waas. >> So your team of your niche is when they get right. It's a large team. It's, but it's a new initiative. New Justice unit, New role for you Talk about that >> way. Kinda had >> a couple pockets of this, but way clearly found that getting clients to the cloud is both a technology challenge as well as a cultural challenge as well. So he brought together some technical experts to kind of help through that entire life chain help up front. You know, many clients are trying to figure out what their overall cloud strategy is, where they truly today and where do they want to get to be? And how can we help him with a road map? That kind of helps them through the transition. Many accounts are very comfortable with the only wanting to be private and only glimpsing forward Thio Public Cloud Helping us bridge across that as well. Then we have the lab service's teams and these air the rial ninjas, the Navy seals. They go as low as you can go and what they're helping. A good way. Yeah, that's good. That's good. That's why they're helping with this very specific technical issue. Technical deployments. A lot of our dedicated local environment. These guys, they're they're really helping it wire in a cz Well, and then we have the garages, you know, we're up Thio. Five of those were going. We announced four new Blockchain garages as well. And this is where firms air coming in to kind of explore do the innovative type project as well. So I think all the way from the initial inception through rolling it out into production, having that team to be able to support him across the >> board. And so this capability existed in IBM previously, But it existed in a sort of bespoke fashion that coordinated >> couple pockets here and there. We always have supports. We had various pockets a lap service's. But we won't really wanna have the capability of seeing that client all the way through their journey, bringing it all under me. We now can easily pass the baton, Handoff says. We need to have that consistent skill there with the clients all the way through their >> journey and is the What's the life cycle of these service is? Is it Is it both pre sales in and post there? Just posted >> many times we'll get involved like our cloud advisers would get involved. Presale. They'll say a specific workload wants to go to the cloud. What are the steps we need to take to make that happen? A CZ well, with our Laps Service's teams, you know, we kind of have, you know, anywhere from a 4 to 6 week engagement. Thio do a specific technology. Let's get it in place. Let's get it wired in et cetera, and then in the garage is you know, we could just take a very novel idea and get it up to, ah, minimal viable product in about a six week period. So again, we're not doing dance lessons for life but strategically placing key skills in with accounts toe. Help him get over that next hump of their journey. >> Steve, when you look at the spectrum from from public all the way down to private and everything in between are you, I wonder if you could describe the level of capability that you are able to achieve with the best practice on Prem with regard to cloud ability. It's service is all the wonderful attributes of child that we've come to know and love. Are you able to, you know, somewhat replicate that roughly replicate that largely replicate, exactly. Replicate that. Where are we today? >> Yeah, I think >> it's a great question. I think. You know, I think most of the clients that we're dealing with have been dealing with some virtualized infrastructure, probably more VMC as they as they've been kind of progressing. That story. One of the things we did it IBM is Could we bring a true cloud infrastructure back behind the firewall? Could we bring an open stack? We bring a cloud foundry base past all the way back through because the goal, of course, is if we could have the same infrastructure private, dedicated and public as they continue to grow and got more comfortable with the public cloud that could start taking work clothes that they had built in one location and start to migrate it out with you. That that local cloud the Maur used for EJ cases. So taking that system of record and building a p i's and allowing to do extensions to that allowing you access into data records that you have today dealing with a lot of extension type cases, you know the core application still needs to be federally regulated. It needs to be under compliance domain. It's gotta be under audit. But maybe I wantto connect it in with a Fitbit or connected in with with a lot Soon are connected in with the Internet of things sensor. I gotta go public cloud for that as well. So locally we can bring that same infrastructure in and then they could doom or service. Is that extended out in the hybrid scenario >> code basis? Because this has come up. Oracle claims this is their big claim to fame. That code base is the same on premise hybrid public. Is that an issue with that? Is that just their marketing, or does it matter what's IBM take on this? >> But we've done ah lot of work with the open standard communities to let's get to a true reference implementation. So on open Stack, we've been doing a lot of work with them, and this is one of the reasons we picked up the Blue box acquisition. Could we really provide a standard open stack locally and also replicate that dedicated and, of course, have it match a reference architecture in public as well? We've also done the same thing with clout. Foundry worked with Sam Ram G to be one of the first vendors, have a certified cloud. Foundry instance is the same local dedicated in public. I think that's kind of the Holy Grail. If you could get the same infrastructural base across all, three, magic can happen. >> But management's important and integration piece becomes the new complexity. I mean, I would say it sounds easy, but it's really hard. Okay, developing in the clouds. Easy, easier ways always used to be right, right well, but not for large enterprises. The integration becomes that new kind of like criteria, right? That separates kind of the junior from the senior type players. I mean do you see the same thing and what we believe >> we do? I think there's usually two issues. We start to see that this model looks great. Let's have the same code base across all three environments. What things? We noticed that a lot of folks, when you get into Private Cloud, had tried to roll their own. You know, open Stack is an open source Project clout. Foundry is an open source project. Let's pull it down and let's see units roll it out and manage it ourselves. These air a little bit you they're very dynamic environments, and they're also a bit punishing if you don't stay current with them, both of them update on a very regular basis. And we found a lot of firms once they applied tenor well, folks to it, they just could not keep up with the right pace of change. So when the technologies we invented was a notion called relay on, this allowed us to actually to use the public cloud is our master copy and then we could provide updates to get down to the dedicated environment and down to the local. This takes the headache completely away from the firm's on trying to keep that local version current. It's not manage service, but it's kind of a new way that we can provide manage patches down to that environment. >> So one of the problems we hear in our community is and presume IBM has some visibility on this. I'm thinking about last year, John, we're at the IBM Z announcement in January, rose 1,000,000 company talked a lot about bringing transaction analytic capabilities together. But one of the problems that our community has practitioners in our community course the data for analytics. A lot of it's in the cloud and a lot of transaction data sitting, you know, on the mainframe, something. How do they bring those two together? Do I remove the data into the data center? Do I do I move pieces in how you see >> we're seeing a lot of that. A lot of it was. Bring the technology down to where the data is, and and now you know the three amount of integration you can do with public data sources, private data sources, et cetera. We're seeing a lot more of the compute want to go out to the cloud as well. You know, we've done some things like around the dash, CB Service's et cetera, where I can start to extract some of that transactional data, but maybe only need a few pieces to really make the data set. That is important to me as I move it out, so I can actually, you know, extract that record. I can actually mask it into being something brand new, and then I could minute we mix it with public data tohave. It do brand new things as well, so I think you're gonna see a lot of dynamic capability across that with or cloud computing technologies coming back behind the firewall and then more ability to release that data be intermixed with public data as well. >> What's the number one thing that you're seeing from customers that you guys were executing on? There's always the low hanging fruit for the easy winds from bringing a team of street team, if you will out. Technical service is out to clients where they really putting that gather, not their five year plans, but their one year. Of course, there's a lot of that agile going on right now. New technologies. You can't isolate one thing and break everything. Za new model. What a customer is caring about, right? What's that? What's the common thing? I think >> over there in 2015 I think the discussion changed and went from Are we going to go to the cloud or we're going to the cloud now? How are we going to do it? And the nice thing about I think a lot of enterprise architecture groups kind of took a step back to say, What do we truly have to do? What is a common platform? What is an integration layer? How do we take some of our old applications and decomposed those into a set of AP eyes? How can we then mix that with public AP eyes? So probably taking one or two projects to be proof points so they could say, this thing really has the magic associated with it. We can really build stuff fast. If we do it the right way, it's gonna be in a catalyst to have the I t. Organization now take the tough steps in what's gonna be the commonality? What common service is are we going to use and how do we start breaking up >> around things you know, we have our own data science and our backcourt operation and one of the things that we always looked at with bloom. It's way start our Amazon. But now, with blue mix, you have a couple things kind of coming together in real time. You said it's getting hard, but those hardened areas are important identity. For instance, where's the data is an instruction and structure. I want a little mongo year or something over there, but with blue mix and compose, I oh, really has a nice fit. I want to explain to the folks we talked before he came on about this new dynamic of composed Io and some of the things that are gluing around blue mix. Could you share this >> William Davis King right? And I think people look to the Cloud Data Service is air. Probably it's the most critical, the most visible, and the one we have to harden up the most is well, even though IBM has been well known for D. B two and we've been a >> wire composed right >> that we did Cognos first, and then we followed up with composed by you because recent waded about, we did compose. I know about eight months ago what we liked about it was all of your favorite flavors, you know? So your your progress, your mongo, you're you're ready. But really having it behave like Like what you would want an enterprise database to do. You can back it up. You can have multiple versions of it. We can replicate itself >> is a perfect cloud need of civic >> class. It has all the cloud properties to it and all the enterprise. Great capabilities with it. Yeah, we've got that now in public, and then you're gonna start seeing dedicated, and you want >> to go bare metal, Just go to soft layer. It's not required right on these things where this will work in the cloud, and then you get the bare metal object you want pushed up the bare metal. No problem. Well, I think >> you know it. Almost hybrid is not gonna get a new definition around it. So it's all gonna be around control and automation, more automation. You need to go all the way up to a cloud foundry where it's managing all the health, checking and keeping your apple. I've etcetera. If you want to go all the way down to bare metal so you can tune it audited et cetera. You can do that as well. I think I've got one of the broader spectrum, is there? >> I'm impressed with the composer. I got to say, Go ahead, get hotel Excited by what? I get excited by just about every way. Just love the whole Dev Ops has been just a game changer in extras. Code has been around for a while, but it's actually going totally mainstream. That's right. The benefits are just off the charts. With Mobile, we have the mobile first guys on. Earlier in the Swift, we had 10 made 12 year old kid. I mean, it's just really amazing. Now that the APS themselves aren't the discussion, it's the under the hood. That's right, so you can have an app look and feel like it's targeted for a vertical, say, retail or whatever. But the actions under the hood yeah, yeah, more than ever. Now >> it's, you know it's funny this year, you know, Dick Tino to the Devil Obsession yesterday and you're the amount of proof points we had around it last year. We were scrambling a little bit and this year it's just we always had to thin out. That's how many guys were having great success with this stuff is coming into its own. >> It totally is. And you guys are give you guys Props were running as fast as you can and you're working hard. And it's not just talk. Yeah, it's It's it's legit. I'm gonna ask you a question. What's the big learnings from last year? This year? What's happened? What do you look back and say? Wow, we really learned a lot or something that might have been Magda ified for you in this journey this past year. >> A lot of it goes back to, you know, this changing culture at IBM, you know, the amount of code we put out in two years was just just unbelievable. But I think also the IBM becoming a true cloud company. Some of that we did with our own shop some, but we did through injecting it with acquisitions. You know, like to compose Io the cloud and team, the blue box guys, et cetera. I think we got the chops now to play it play pro ball way worked very hard, Teoh. How many folks, Can we attract the blue mix? We're getting up to 20,000 week. Right now. We're starting. Get some great recognition and the successes are rolling in as well. So a lot of hard work and a lot of busted knuckles. A lot of guys are tired. Definitely, definitely straight in the game now. >> Ready for the crow bait? Taking the pro GameCube madness starts on cute madness. There were, you know, keep matched all the brackets of the Cube alumni and vote on it turns into a hack a phone because everyone stuffed the ballots. Let's talk about pro ball for next year, a CZ. You guys continue? Sure. The theme here obviously is developer. I mean, the show could be dedicated 100%. The blooming LeBlanc up there kind of going fast at the end of this booth on the clock anymore. Time >> right. Like the Star Wars trailer we had >> going up, he needed more time. So it's good props you got for this year. What's going on the road map this year? What if some of the critical goals that you guys see on your group and then just in general for the thing a >> lot of the activities were gonna be doing again is hardening the stack. I've got a brand new team now called a Solution Architecture, where we're looking at it from top to bottom, taking customer scenarios and really testing it out. How do you do? Back up. How do you do? Disaster recovery? How do you do? Multi geography, You know, things like PC I compliance. The rial enterprise problems are now coming to the class global and their global. And with security and compliance, they're changing in a very dynamic fashion. We have to show how you can do those in the cloud. You'd be amazed on how many conversations we have with Si SOS every single week. Is the cloud secure? How do we do enterprise? Great workloads. IBM is bringing that story to the cloud as well. That's the story of >> a potato that content >> Curation is unbelievable, right? That's the hardest part. And it's not that we have it fixed either. But you were doing more of aggregating it together so that we can really pull it all together. I call it the diamond Mine versus the jewelry store. You know, we always have really did you got yet? The great answers out there somewhere. But if you don't start to pull it together into a single place So one of things we did this year was launched the blue mixed garage methodology where we took all of our best practices. We took text test cases, even sample code, and brought it into a single methodology site where people start to go out, pull it down, use it, etcetera. Previously, we had it scattered all over the place, and we're gonna be doing more things like that. Bring in the assets to the programmers, things that we've tried, things we've tested being more open about it, putting in a single location. >> Well, we certainly would like to help promote that. Any kind of those kind of customer reference architectures. Happy to pump on silicon angle with the bond outlook for the vibe. I'm sorry. Five for the show things year. What's the vibe this year? You know, I think I've >> been very impressed with it, and I think, you know, I've been stepping up its game If you go down to the blue. Mixed garages are motives. A motorcycle on stage, you know, kind of getting a little more hip and happening as well. But I think the clients here and this is always about the customer stories and some of the things that we're hearing from the three guys start ups that are doing GPS logistical management 22 to the big accounts, and the big banks that you really see have embraced the cloud and doing great stories on it as well. I think people come to this show so they see what their peers were doing. And they definitely walk away with a sense that the cloud Israel it's happening and 2016. It is really going to driving it home. That has to be part of everybody. Strategy motorcycles I had put on the Harley Man. We'll take it for a spin guarantee. Come on down >> and give my wife. When I got married, it was terms of conditions. That's right. That's right. Last, Watson that Yeah, Thanks, Steve. Thanks. Taking the time and great to see you again. Congratulations. What? They get technical engagement team that you have all the work that you did that blue mix noted certainly by the cube. Congratulations and continued success with Loomis congratulating >> you guys. Well, always a pleasure. >> Okay. Cube Madness, March 15th Cube Gems go to Twitter. And speaking of jewelry, we have Cube gems hashtag Cube gems. That's the highlights of the videos up there. Real time. And, of course, we're gonna get that TV for all. All the action videos are up there right now. I'll be right back with more coverage after this short break here in Las Vegas.