>> Narrator: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE covering Microsoft Ignite. Brought to you by Cohesity. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite. We are wrapping up a three, the first day of a three-day show. I'm your host Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host Stu Miniman. We are joined by Scott Lowe. He is the CEO of ActualTech Media. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you for having us. >> And also David Davis, director of events at ActualTech Media. Thank you so much for coming on. >> Thank you. >> So, you are a former CIO that started ActualTech Media in 2012, tell our viewers, a little bit about Actual, what was the vision and what did you set out to create? What kind of content were you setting out to create? >> You know what we started and what we have today are actually very, very different things. We started off to create sort of an empire of websites that provide content to people. What we do now is we're helping connect enterprise IT vendors with buyers, that's really what we've settled on over the years. We've found our path about six years ago, five years ago, and we've been executing on that ever since. And that's our mission, is to help buyers find the right enterprise IT solutions. >> So how do you do that? I mean, what's the lead generation that it takes? >> Sure. I mean we basically for our clients who are companies including Cohesity and companies like it, we do event series we call MegaCast, EcoCast, virtual summits, webinars, things like that. We have a significant audience that we draw from to drive those events. And we also created our own content series, we call Gorilla Guide, which is a series of books to help educate IT buyers about solutions on the market about different technologies and try to help them understand the lay of an ever-evolving landscape that seems to be changing faster than it ever has before. >> Yeah, and actually one of the reasons I invited the two of you is, you both have deep background in this environment. Scott, before the Gorilla Guides, you wrote big books about Microsoft, and David, you've been training people on this ever environment but the pace is faster. You're talking about it's changing all the time. So I'd love for both of you, just here 2019 Microsoft Ignite, first impressions, how you think of Microsoft in the ecosystem. David, let's start with you. >> I mean, it's my third Microsoft Ignite and every time I come here I'm really blown away by kind of the scope of the show compared to the typical infrastructure shows that I go to. Those shows are more you know, the plumbing of the data center. This show is the keynote, is like using AI and ML to cure cancer and provide food for the world and it's just, like, really empowering and exciting and I find it very personally exciting. And Microsoft Azure just seems to be on a breakneck pace to catch up with AWS and Office 365 and all these innovations they keep coming out with, have been really impressive so I've been excited about the show, what about you Scott? >> Same, I mean, I think that when we talk about other shows, we are really looking at plumbing. That's a good word. When we're here we're looking at real solutions that are helping solve big problems. And because Microsoft has such a wide ecosystem from which to, in which it participates, from productivity and enterprise to driving quantum computing, to artificial intelligence to help tractors talk to the internet. I mean just, it does everything and it does it increasingly well. Microsoft hasn't always been thought of as the most innovative company in the world but I think in the last few years we've seen a different Microsoft and I think that has a lot to do with Satya, and the leadership change but it also has to do with just a renewed vision for what the future looks like in the terms of IT. >> And what does that future look like? I mean it is interesting because Microsoft is a middle-aged company compared to all these young upstarts that really, that much more DNA of innovation, of course Microsoft has innovation in its DNA but how would you describe what is driving the change at Microsoft? This is not your father's Microsoft. >> Honestly, the Microsoft we see today and the Microsoft we saw 10 years ago are not the same company. This is, I feel like Microsoft is almost a startup again. And I think if you look at Microsoft as a company, it has its hands in so much that each individual silo is almost a startup feel in the way it's brought to market. Let's just look at Azure. I mean, Azure has been playing catch up in a lot of ways to AWS for a lot of years just like a lot of smaller companies are playing catch up to some of their bigger cousins in the market. But Azure has proven itself, it's still not quite as capable as its bigger, you know, its bigger sibling AWS but it's more capable than GCP for example. But as Microsoft continues to iterate that service, it gets ever more capable, it gets ever deeper into the organization and I think it's something that I see that across Microsoft and everything that it's doing. It's not just Azure that's like this. It's like this with, you know, we've been looking at Windows virtual desktops. That's not all that sexy and exciting on the surface, no pun intended on surface, sorry. But it's something that the world needs at this point. And how we're trying to handle computing in the enterprise as we move into 2020. >> There's so much, you know, there's a few shows I go to every year where you just drink from the fire hose when you go to the keynote. This absolutely is one. Amazon absolutely is one where you come through in the breath and depth of what they offer. So we've spent a lot time saying something like Azure Arc, it is early. And still trying to understand exactly where that fits, by the end of the day, I'm like, wait, it's management but actually it's highly tied to the application, which really is the strength of Microsoft if you talk about what Microsoft knows. Microsoft knows your apps, you're running so many of those apps, not just Office but SQL and some of the various pieces. I'd love to hear what, give me one or two things that jumped out at you either that you want to dig into or that you've been saying "Oh I've been waiting for that." >> I mean I was really impressed with the technical keynote where they talked about Azure Stack Edge and they have this mini server that can be ruggedized or even put in a backpack, and he had the demo going with the server, a person sitting next to him using the server and he said "It has battery power," so he pulled the power plug on it and it kept working and then he said "And it's rugged," and he just dropped it on the ground and it bounced on the ground and he said "See, the demo just keeps on running." So I was like okay, that's cool, that's pretty impressive. >> Yeah we actually had the HPE, an HPE representative on the program. They're super excited to have their gear in the keynote and those of us with a hardware background do like to wrap our arms around some sheet metal every once in a while and touch this thing, software might be eating the world. >> We call you server huggers too. >> Exactly, am I an Edge hugger now? >> I guess you probably are. >> Yeah it's free shruggs. >> When it comes to, in my opinion, Arc and Edge, I'm sorry, Azure Stack, I think it shows some incredible opportunity for Microsoft moving forward. I mean Microsoft has a formidable presence in the enterprise and not just the enterprise, from the SMB to the mid-market to the enterprise. Everybody, almost, has something Microsoft. So there's an opportunity for Microsoft to further that incursion into the enterprise that can help them be a driver for Azure. Because when you think about a lot of the challenges people have with cloud it's around adoption and integration. That's not quite a soft problem but close enough when you start thinking about the myriad of technologies that Microsoft is bringing out. >> Yeah, so Scott I think your background, you worked in some of the commercial markets, you talk about the education space, areas where Microsoft had a strong history. Are they still as prominent today as they might've been back in the days when you were a CIO? >> Yes and no, it depends on the organization. If I look K12, I think Google's had a lot of inroads there because of Google Apps for Education, whether that's good or bad is really a different opinion but I think Google's taken a lot of Microsoft's market share there. And higher education, we still see a lot of Google colleges and universities of course, but we see a lot with O365. And a lot of that is because of the pricing which you can't beat free. But it also has to do with the capability that the Stack brings to bare. So I think that Microsoft is playing differently than they used to, not necessarily, probably a little bit more strongly in some ways and weaker in others. >> Another, I'd love to hear you say, think about is, the Microsoft of old I think of as rather proprietary and you will do all Microsoft. We had one of the Microsoft partner executives on the program today and he was talking about embracing VMware, embracing Red Hat, not something that you would've thought of Microsoft in the past. How do you think of Microsoft just as a trusted partner in the ecosystem today? >> Yeah, you bring up that word trust and in fact we were talking about that at lunch, Microsoft, we feel like has so much more trust when it comes to our data, when it comes to our applications. I mean there's another cloud provider that starts with a G that's well-known for selling data, selling data that they own, you know. And he talked about in the keynote today, we protect your data and the security around your data and I feel like trust is going to be a big factor in the future when people think about which cloud should I trust? Microsoft seems like they have a leg up on some other competitors. >> I may be naive but I actually trust Microsoft and I have for a long time. There's other companies I don't trust. And Microsoft I actually do trust because for Microsoft, our data is not their resource to mine. They're using it to give me things but they're not using it to sell things to other people. Does that make sense? I mean, that is we're not the product of Microsoft. And it might be a little more expensive because of that in some ways but I think it provides that layer of trust that you're not necessarily going to get from other providers in the near term. >> So we're nearing the end of 2019, what is on deck for IT pros in 2020? I'll start with you, I want to hear both your impressions but I'll start with you. >> That's a great question, we're actually doing a big event this week. In fact and that's the topic is the pillars of IT for 2020. >> I might've done some research. >> Yeah, yeah. So I mean, in fact, I was at a local user group recently and I was asking IT professionals that very question. You know, where are you going to spend your budget in 2020? What are you going to re-architect? And there was a lot of answers around security. That was I think probably the most popular one that I heard. Automation, some people were interested in that and improving the efficiency of their infrastructure I think overall. No matter how they do it, hyperconvergence or something like that, just overall improving things to make their life easier. >> For me, I look at the role of the CIO and to look into 2020, I think we see a lot legacy challenges that are still not solved. Some new opportunities is probably a good word. Some of the legacy challenges are what's the role of IT? That's the age old question. I think we saw the next phase of IT business align with digital transformation and now we're going to look for what's next, right? 'Cause that phrase is now going out of style. But we're still looking for ways that we can do more with technology than we ever have. And as I look at some of the things that happened at the show this morning that were announced, I see a lot opportunity for CIOs and for organizations as a whole to do more than they ever have before without having to bring a whole lot more complexity to the organization. But I also think to see some of the things that have to be addressed. Security is a board level issue and it's a top issue for the CIO, it's a make or break your career type issue at this point. And I think going into 2020 as we look at some of these technologies, it becomes even more important because it's going to all require new focus on security. We have an opportunity around to actually solve the data analytics problem at some point here in the near future. That hasn't always been possible and now we have the tools to do it. And we have tools that can do it without having to hire a whole bunch of IT experts through some of things like companies like Microsoft can bring into market. >> Would love to get your viewpoint on the future of work. We've been saying what is the role of IT? And we say in its best light, IT helps drive innovation and actually can be a leader inside the business. But we know that the roles have been changing inside a company. Microsoft talks rather aspirationally about citizen developers, and we're going to empower everyone to be their best out there. But what does that mean to the person that has been a Cis Admin or going through certifications or trying to learn the latest on hyperconvergence infrastructure and Kubernetes and the latest buzzword that they heard of? >> I mean, I think that's exciting, especially for people who are new in IT or people who have the time to invest in learning development, they were talking about power apps in the keynote. I was excited, I wanted to try it for myself, it looks fun and easy. But in reality, in the real world of IT organizations, things take time. I mean I talked to a CIO at a large bank and he said "Hey, I have 10 stand administrators "and we're going to move to hyperconvergence "when they die or retire." So things take time, that's my take, Scott. >> For me, I think it's the enabling new ways to work. If you look at ActualTech Media, we're 100% virtual. We don't have, people ask where we're headquartered, we have a PO box in North Charleston, South Carolina and the rest of us work in Microsoft Teams. For me one of the most exciting things I've looked at in the last year is Teams. I absolutely adore the tool. >> I've heard a couple of people talking about you know people thought Teams was dying and Slack was killing it but Teams is really good. What is it about it that drives your business? >> So we used to use Slack, we used Skype, and then we used Slack. And Slack was good for what it was, it's an instant messaging tool that makes sure that you can get in touch with people right away and you can share a file. What it lacks is context. Once something is scrolled off the screen, that's it, you don't ever look at it again. And what we get with Teams is an ability to provide context for the work we do. So we were working on one of our Gorilla Guide books this week collaboratively inside Teams. We had the document open in one window and we were chatting about it in a chat in Teams in the other window. But the document lived in the same channel that we were having the conversation. So enabled a great degree of collaboration that we just couldn't get with Slack. That's not to say Slack's not a great tool, for what it is, it's a great tool and I still use it for other teams, which sounds weird. But I love the ability that we've had to bring additional tools into Teams that we didn't have before. When we bought, when we bought, when we deployed Teams, we got rid of Slack, we got rid of Smartsheet and we're in the process of getting rid of Dropbox. And it wasn't 'cause we wanted to save money, I mean it's nice, but at the end of the day it's about improving workflows especially when you don't live in the same office. You don't get to talk to each other over the water cooler. >> So particularly for distributed virtual teams, Microsoft Teams. >> It's a beautiful thing >> It's a beautiful thing. >> And also even with clients, now that Teams has guest capability, we have guest teams that we work on, work with clients in the same way we work internally. So it's become a central hub for just about everything we do. Literally Teams is open on my laptop and on my phone 24/7. It's an app that never closes. >> That's a powerful endorsement. >> It is. >> Scott, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE, David thank you so much. >> Thank you for having us. >> Thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman, we will see you tomorrow for more of theCUBE's live coverage from Microsoft Ignite.

>> Narrator: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE, covering Microsoft Ignite. Brought to you by, Cohesity. >> Good morning everyone and welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite. We are here in the Orange County Convention Center. I'm your host Rebecca Knight, along with Stu Miniman. Stu, this is Microsoft's Big Show. 26,000 people from around the globe, all descending on Orlando. This is the big infrastructure show. Thoughts, impressions, now that we're on day two of a three day show. >> Yeah, Rebecca. Last year I had this feeling that it was a little bit too much talking about the Windows 10 transition and the latest updates to Office 365. I could certainly want to make sure that we really dug in more to what's going on with Azure, what's happening in 6the developer space. Even though they do have a separate show for developers, it's Microsoft build. They actually have a huge partner show. And so, Microsoft has a lot of shows. So it's, what is this show that is decades old? And really it is the combination of Microsoft as a platform today. Satya Nadella yesterday talked about empowering the world. This morning, Scott Hanselman was in a smaller theater, talking about app devs. And he came out and he's like, "Hey, developers, isn't it a little bit early for you this morning?" Everybody's laughing. He said, "Even though we're kicking off at 9:00 a.m., Eastern." He said, "That's really early, especially for anybody coming from the West Coast." He was wearing his Will Code For Tacos shirt. And we're going to have Scott on later today, so we'll talk about that. But, where does Microsoft sit in this landscape? Is something we've had. I spent a lot of time looking at the cloud marketplace. Microsoft has put themselves as the clear number two behind AWS. But trying to figure out because SaaS is a big piece of what Microsoft does. And they have their software estate in their customer relationship. So how many of those that are what we used to call window shops. And you had Windows people are going to start, Will it be .NET? Will it be other operating systems? Will it come into Azure? Where do they play? And the answer is, Microsoft's going to play a lot of places. And what was really kind of put on with the point yesterday is, it's not just about the Microsoft solutions, it is about the ecosystem, they really haven't embraced their role, very supportive of open source. And trust is something that I know both you and I have been pointing in on because, in the big tech market, Microsoft wants to stand up and say, "We are the most trusted out there. And therefore, turn to us and we will help you through all of these journeys." >> So you're bringing up so many great points and I want to now go through each and every one of them. So, absolutely, we are hearing that this is the kinder, gentler Microsoft, we had Dave Totten on yesterday. And he was, as you just described, just talking about how much Microsoft is embracing and supporting customers who are using a little bit of Microsoft here, a little bit of other companies. I'm not going to name names, but they're seemingly demanding. I just want best to breed, and this is what I'm going to do. And Microsoft is supporting that, championing that. And, of course we're seeing this as a trend in the broader technology industry. However, it feels different, because it's Microsoft doing this. And they've been so proprietary in the past. >> Yeah, well, and Rebecca, it's our job on theCUBE actually, I'm going to name names. (laughs) And actually Microsoft is-- >> Okay. >> Embracing of this. So, the thing I'm most interested in at the show was Azure Arc. And I was trying to figure out, is this a management platform? And at the end of the day really, it is, there's Kubernetes in there, and it's specifically tied to applications. So they're going to start with databases specifically. My understanding, SQL is the first piece and saying, it sounds almost like the next incarnation of platform as a service to our past. And say, I can take this, I can put it on premises in Azure or on AWS. Any of those environments, manage all of them the same. Reminds me of what I hear from VMware with Hangzhou. Vmworld, Europe is going on right now in Barcelona. Big announcement is to the relationship with VMware on Azure. If I got it right, it's actually in beta now. So, Arc being announced and the next step of where Microsoft and VMware are going together, it is not a coincidence. They are not severing the ties with VMware. VMware, of course partners with all the cloud providers, most notably AWS. Dave Totten yesterday, talked about Red Hat. You want Kubernetes? If you want OpenShift, if you are a Red Hat customer and you've decided that, the way I'm going to leverage and use and have my applications run, are through OpenShift, Microsoft's is great. And the best, most secure place to run that environment is on Azure. So, that's great. So Microsoft, when you talk about choice, when you talk about flexibility, and you talk about agility cause, it is kinder and gentler, but Satya said they have that tech intensity. So all the latest and greatest, the new things that you want, you can get it from Microsoft, but they are also going to meet you where you are. That was Jeremiah Dooley, the Azure advocate, said that, "There's, lots of bridges we need to make, Microsoft has lots of teams. It's not just the DevOps, it's not just letting the old people do their own thing, from your virtualization through your containerization and everything in between microservices server list, and the like. Microsoft has teams, they have partners. Sure that you could buy everything in Microsoft, but they know that there are lots of partners and pieces. And between their partners, their ecosystem, their channel, and their go-to-market, they're going to pull this together to help you leverage what you need to move your business forward. >> So, next I want to talk about Scott Hanselman who was up on the main stage, we're going to have him on the show and he was as you said, adorned in coder dude, attire with a cool t-shirt and snappy kicks. But his talk was app development for everyone. And this is really Microsoft's big push, democratizing computing, hey, anyone can do this. And Satya Nadella, as we've talked about on the show. 61% of technologist's jobs are not in the technology industry. So this is something that Microsoft sees as a trend that's happening in the employment market. So they're saying, "Hey, we're going to help you out here." But Microsoft is not a hardware company. So how does this really change things for Microsoft in terms of the products and services-- >> Well right, >> It offers. >> So really what we're talking about here, we're talking about developers right? 61% of jobs openings for developers are outside the tech sector. And the high level message that Scott had is your tools, your language, your apps. And what we have is, just as we were talking about choice of clouds, it's choice of languages. Sure they'd love to say .NET is wonderful, but you want your Java, your PHP, all of these options. And chances are, not only are you going to use many of them, but even if you're working on a total solution, different groups inside your company might be using them and therefore you need tools that can spam them. The interesting example they use was Chipotle. And if there's a difference between when you're ordering and going through the delivery service, and some of the back-end pieces, and data needs to flow between them, and it can't be, "Oh wait, I've got silos of my data, I've got silos of all these other environments." So, developer tools are all about, having the company just work faster and work across environments. I was at AnsibleFest show earlier this year. And, Ansible is one of those tools that actually, different roles where you have to have the product owner, the developer, or the the operations person. They all have their way into that tool. And so, Microsoft's showing some very similar things as to, when I build something, it's not, "Oh, wait, we all chose this language." And so many of the tools was, " Okay, well, I had to standardize on something." But that didn't fit into what the organization needed. So I need to be able to get to what they all had. Just like eventually, when I'm picking my own taco, I can roll it, bowl it, soft or hard shell-- >> It was a cool analogy. >> And choose all my toppings in there. So it is Taco Tuesday here-- >> Yes. >> At Microsoft Ignite and the developers like their choices of tools, just like they like their tacos. >> And they like their extra guac. So going back to one of the other points you made at the very opening. And this is the competitive dynamic that we have here. We had David Davis and Scott Lowe on yesterday from a ActualTech Media. Scott was incredibly bullish about Microsoft. And saying it could really overtake AWS, not tomorrow, but within the next decade. Of course, the choice for JEDI certainly could accelerate that. What do you make of it? I mean, do you think that's still pie in the sky here? AWS is so far ahead. >> So look, first of all, when you look at the growth rates, first of all, just to take the actual number, we know what AWS's, revenue is. Last quarter, AWS did $9 billion. And they're still growing at about a 35% clip. When I look at Microsoft, they have their intelligent cloud bucket, which is Azure, Windows Server, SQL Server and GitHub. And that was 10.8 billion. And you say, "Oh, okay, that's really big." But last year, Azure did about $12 billion dollars. So, AWS is still two to three times larger when you look at infrastructure as a service. But SaaS hugely important piece of what's going on in the cloud opportunity. AWS really is more of the platform and infrastructure service, they absolutely have some of the PaaS pieces. Azure started out as PaaS and has this. So you're trying to count these buckets, and Azure is still growing at, last quarter was 64%. So if you look at the projection, is it possible for Azure to catch up in the next three years? Well, Azure's growth rate is also slowing down, so I don't think it matters that much. There is a number one and a number two, and they're both clear, valid choices for a customer. And, this morning at breakfast, I was talking to a customer and they are very heavily on Microsoft shop. But absolutely, they've got some AWS on the side. They're doing Azure, they've got a lot of Azure, being here at our Microsoft show. And when I go to AWS, even when I talked to the companies that are all in on AWS, " Oh, you got O 365?" "Of course we do." "Oh, if you're starting to do O 365, are there any other services that you might be using out of Azure?" "Yeah, that's possible." I know Google is in the mix. Ali Baba's in the mix. Oracle, well, we're not going to talk about Oracle Cloud, but we talked about Oracle, because they will allow their services to run on Azure specifically. We talked about that a lot yesterday, especially how that ties into JEDI. So, look, I think it is great when we have a healthy competitive marketplace. Today really, it is a two horse race. It is, AWS and Azure are the main choices for customers. Everyone else is really a niche player. Even a company like IBM, there's good solutions that they have, but they play in a multi cloud world. Google has some great data services, and absolutely a important player when you talk about multi cloud for all they've done with Kubernetes and Istio. I'm going to be at Kube Con in a couple of weeks and Google is front and center there. But if you talk about the general marketplace, Microsoft has a lot of customers, they had a lot of applications and therefore, can they continue to mature that market and grow their environment? Absolutely. AWS has so many customers, they have the marketplace is stronger. It's an area that I want to dig in a little bit more at this show is the Azure Marketplace, how much we talked about the ecosystem. But, can I just procure through the cloud and make it simpler? Big theme we've talked about is, cloud in the early days was supposed to be cheap and simple. And it is neither of those things. So, how do we make it easier, so that we can go from the 20% of applications in the public cloud, up to 50% or more? Because it is not about all everything goes to the public cloud, but making customers put the applications and their data in the right place at the right time with the right services. And then we haven't even talked about edge computing which Microsoft has a big push on, especially with their partners. We talked to HP, a little bit about that yesterday. But really the surface area that this show and Microsoft covers is immense and global. >> It is indeed, and we are going, this is our second day of three days of coverage and we're going to be getting into all of those things. We've got a lot of great guests. We have Cute Host, Keith Townsend, Dave Cahill, a former Wikibon guy, a lot of other fantastic people. So I'm excited to get it on with you today, Stu. >> Thank you, Rebecca. Great stuff. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, for Stu Miniman. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite. (upbeat music`)

>> Live, from Barcelona Spain, it's theCUBE, covering Cisco Live! Europe. Brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, here at Cisco Live! 2019 in Barcelona, Spain, I'm Stu Miniman, happy to welcome to the program a first-time guest, but someone I've known for many years, Jason Edelman, who is the founder of Network to Code. Jason, great to see you, and thanks for joining us. >> Thank you for having me, Stu. >> Alright, Jason, let's first, for our audiences, this is your first time on the program, give us a little bit about your background, and what led to you being the founder of Network to Code. >> Right, so my background is that of a traditional network engineer. I've spent 10+ years managing networks, deploying networks, and really, acting in a pre-sales capacity, supporting Cisco infrastructure. And it was probably around 2012 or 13, working for a large Cisco VAR, that we had access to something called Cisco onePK, and we kind of dove into that as the first SDK to control network devices. We have today iPhone SDKs, SDKs for Android, to program for phone apps, this was one of the first SDKs to program against a router and a switch. And that, for me, was just eye-opening, this is kind of back in 2013 or so, to see what could be done to write code in Python, Seer, Java, against network devices. Now, when this was going on, I didn't know how to code, so I kind of used that as the entrance to ramp up, but that was, for me, the pivot point. And then, the same six-week period, I had a demo of Puppet and Ansible automated networking devices, and so that was the pivot point where it was like, wow, realizing I've spent a career architecture and designing networks, and realizing there's a challenge in operating networks day to day. >> Yeah, Jason, dial back. You've some Cisco certifications in your background? >> Sure, yes, CCIE, yeah. >> Yeah, so I think back, when this all, OpenFlow, and before we even called it Software-Defined Networking, you were blogging about this type of stuff. But, as you said, you weren't a coder. It wasn't your background, you were a network guy, and I think the Network to Code, a lot of the things we've been looking at, career-wise, it's like, does everyone need to become coders? How will the tools mature? Give us a little bit about that journey, as how you got into coding and let's go from there. >> Yeah, it was interesting. In 2010, I started blogging OpenFlow-related, I thought it was going to change the world, saw what NICRO was doing at the time, and then Big Switch at the time, and I just speculated and blogged and really just envisioned this world where networks were different in some capacity. And it took a couple years to really shed light on management and operations of networking, and I made some career shifts. And I remember going back to onePK, at the time, my manager then, who is now our CEO at Network to Code, he actually asked, well, why don't you do it? And it was just like, me? Me, automate our program? What do you mean? And so it was kind of like a moment for me to kind of reflect on what I can do. Now, I will say I don't believe every network engineer should know how to code. That was my on-ramp because of partnership with Cisco at the time, and learning onePK and programming languages, but that was for me, I guess, what I needed as that kick in the butt to say, you know what? I am going to do this. I do believe in the shift that's going to happen in the next couple years, and that was where I kind of just jumped in feet first, and now we are where we are. >> Yeah, Jason, some great points there. I know for myself, I look at, Cisco's gone through so much change. A year ago, up on stage, Cisco's talking about their future is as a software company. You might not even think of us as networking first, you will talk to us about software first. So that initial shift that you saw back in 2010, it's happening. It's a different form than we might have thought originally, and it's not necessarily a product, but we're going through that shift. And I like what you said about how not everybody needs to code, but it's this change in paradigms and what we need to do are different. You've got some connections, we're here in the DevNet Zone. I saw, at the US show in Orlando last year, Network to Code had a small booth, there were a whole bunch of startups in that space. Tell us how you got involved into DevNet, really since the earliest days. >> Yes, since the early days, it was really pre-DevNet. So the emergence of DevNet, I've seen it grow into, the last couple years, Cisco Live! And for us, given what we do at Network to Code, as a network-automation-focused company, we see DevNet in use by our clients, by DevNet solutions and products, things like, mentioned yesterday on a panel, but DevNet has always-on sandboxes, too. One of the biggest barriers we've seen with our clients is getting access to the right lab gear on getting started to automate. So DevNet has these sandboxes always on to hit Nexus API or Catalyst API, right? Things like that. And there's really a very good, structured learning path to get started through DevNet, which usually, where we intersect in our client engagement, so it's kind of like post-DevNet, you're kind of really showing what's possible, and then we'll kind of get in and craft some solutions for our clients. >> Yeah, take us inside some of your clients, if you can. Are most of them hitting the API instead of the COI now when they're engaging? >> Yeah, it's actually a good question. Not usually talked about, but the reality is, APIs are still very new. And so we actively test a lot of the newer APIs from Cisco, as an example. IOS XE has some of the best APIs that exist around RESTCONF, NETCONF, modeled from the same YANG models, and great APIs. But the truth is that a lot of our clients, large enterprises that've been around for 20+ years, the install base is still largely not API-enabled. So a lot of the automation that we do is definitely SSH-based. And when you look at what's possible with platforms, if it is something like a custom in Python, or even an ANSEL off the shelf, a lot of the integrations are hidden from the user, so as long as we're able to accomplish the goal, it's the most important thing right now. And our clients' leaderships sometimes care, and it's true, right? You want the outcome. And initially, it's okay if we're not using the API, but once we do flip that switch, it does provide a bit more structure and safety for automating. But the install base is so large right now that, to automate, you have to use SSH, and we don't believe in waiting 'til every device is API-enabled because it'll just take a while to turn that base. >> Alright, Jason, a major focus of the conference this year has been around multi-cloud. How's that impacting your business and your customers? >> So, it's in our path as a company. Right now, there's a lot of focus around multi-cloud and data center, and the truth is, we're doing a lot of automation in the Campus networking space. Right, automating networks to get deployed in wiring closets and firewalls and load balancers and things like that. So from our standpoint, as we start planning with our clients, we see the services that we offer really port over to multi-cloud and making sure that with whatever automation is being deployed today, regardless of toolset, and look at a tool chain to deploy, if it's a CI/CD Pipeline for networking, be able to do that if you're managing a network in the Campus, a data center network, or multi-cloud network, to make sure we have a uniform-looking field to operations, and doing that. >> Alright, so Jason, you're not only founder of your company, you're also an author. Maybe tell us about the, I believe it's an update, or is it a new book, that recently got out. >> Yes, I'm a co-author of a book with Matt Oswalt and Scott Lowe, and it's an O'Reilly book that was published last year. And look, I'm a believer in education, and to really make a change and change an industry, we have to educate, and I think the book, the goal was to play a small part in really bringing concepts to light. As a network engineer by trade, there's fundamental concepts that network engineers should be aware of, and it could be basics and a lot of these, it could be Python or Jinja templating in YAML and Git and Linux, for that matter. It's just kind of providing that baseline of skills as an entrance into automation. And once you have the baseline, it kind of really uncovers what's possible. So writing the book was great. Great opportunity, and thank you to Matt and Scott for getting involved there. It really took a lot of the work effort and collaborated with them on it. >> Want to get your perception on the show, also. Education, always a key feature of what happens at the show. Not far from us is the Cisco bookshop. I see people getting a lot of the big Cisco books, but I think ten years ago, it was like, everybody, get my CCIE, all my different certifications updated, here. Here in the DevNet Zone, a lot of people, they're building stuff, they're building new pieces, they're playing in the labs, and they're doing some of these environments. What's your experience here at the show? Anything in particular that catches your eye? >> So, I do believe in education. I think to do anything well, you have to be educated on it. And I've read Cisco Press books over the years, probably a dozen of them, for the CCIE and beyond. I think when we look at what's in DevNet, when we look at what's in the bookstore, people have to immerse themselves into the technology, and reading books, like the learning labs that are here in the DevNet Zone, the design sessions that are right behind us. Just amazing for me to have seen the DevNet Zone grow to be what it is today. And really the goal of educating the market of what's possible. See, even from the start, Network to Code, we started as doing a lot of training, because you really can't change the methodology of network operations without being aware of what's possible, and it really does kind of come back to training. Whatever it is, on-demand, streaming, instructor-led, reading a book. Just glad to see this happen here, and a lot more to do around the industry, in the space around community involvement and development, but training, a huge part of it. >> Alright, Jason, want to give you the final word, love the story of network engineer gone entrepreneurial, out of your comfort zone, coding, helping to build a business. So tell us what you see, going forward. >> So, we've grown quite a bit in the past couple years. Right now, we're over 20 engineers strong, and starting from essentially just one a couple years ago, was a huge transformation, and seeing this happen. I believe in bringing on A-players to help make that happen. I think for us as a business, we're continuing to grow and accelerating what we do in this network automation space, but I just think, one thought to throw out there is, oftentimes we talk about lower-level tools, Python, Git, YAML, a lot of new acronyms and buzzwords for network engineers, but also, the flip side is true, too. As our client base evolves, and a lot of them are in the Fortune 100, so large clients, looking at consumption models of technology's super-important, meaning is there ITSM tools deployed today, like a ServiceNow, or Webex teams, or Slack for chat integration. To really think through early on how the internal customers of automation will consume automation, 'cause it really does us no good, Cisco, vendors, or clients no good, if we deploy a great network automation platform, and no one uses it, because it doesn't fit the culture of the brand of the organization. So it's just, as we continue to grow, that's really what's top of mind for us right now. >> Alright, well Jason, congratulations on everything that you've done so far, wish you the best of luck going forward, and thank you so much, of course, for watching. We'll have more coverage, three day, wall-to-wall, here at Cisco Live! 2019 in Barcelona. I'm Stu Miniman, and thanks for watching theCUBE. (electronic music)

(energetic music) >> Narrator: Live from Boston, Massachusetts it's the Cube, covering OpenStack Summit 2017 brought to you by the OpenStack Foundation, Red Hat, and additional ecosystem support. >> Hi and welcome back to SiliconANGLE TV's production of the Cube here at OpenStack Summit 2017 in Boston. I'm Stu Miniman joined with my co-host for the week, John Troyer. As you can see behind us, the day 2 keynotes letting out. John, it's always interesting to look at these shows. They had some demos that were awesome, a couple of demos were the demo gods were not smiling on them. They had Edward Snowden live via Q&A. They had Brian Stevens, who we're going to be talking with in a little bit, the CTO of Google, who was on The Early Start. For me, they're a little up and down. There's some of the vendor pitches in there, people are like, "Oh I have a great demo," and then you say, "Come to my booth "and see a bunch of my sessions." So, a little bit uneven and disjointed, which has been a some of the feedback you get about OpenStack in general over the last few years as to all those pieces come together. But yeah, what are your early thoughts coming out of the day 2 keynote? >> Well, it was definitely a keynote focused at the OpenStack community. We started off with open source and talking about the importance of open source, which is a little bit odd, because everyone here know that. I did like the message that OpenStack was composed of different projects, that it was a piece of the puzzle, not the whole puzzle. You and I both noted VMware's Scott Lowe tweeted, "It's good to the OpenStack Foundation talking about being a part of the overall solution, not the overall solution." I mean, as one example, they mentioned using etcd, which is a distributed key value store, instead of writing their own. Etcd powers Kubernetes. Your would be insane in 2017 to rewrite or distribute a key value pair, sorb at this point. Because, it's just out there, it's mature. You know, OpenStack has been around for seven years. There's been a lot of ecosystem grown up around them. >> Yeah, yeah. A couple of pieces on that. One is, there was a message about like, oh I can now take the individual components of OpenStack. I could actually do that before. I've noted, I've talked to a number of software companies, that when you did down into what they're doing, oh what do you know, there's, you know, there's Syndrr. Or, there's, you know, something in there, just as when I use AWS, I can use some of the individual components, same thing with OpenStack. It's not a monolith. There are the individual pieces. But, they're highlighting that a little bit more. They're saying use some of the pieces. The other thing, on the open source in general, they noted that like, in the artificial intelligence machine learning space, like, everyone that you see is using open source. Everything from Google and TensorFlow, is one that gets highlighted a lot. Amazon made a big push at their show about what they're doing with, you know, some of the machine learning. I can't remember right now, the program on there. But, right, in some of these emerging spaces, open source is the defacto way to do that. We had, in one of the conversations we had yesterday with one of the Cysco Distinguished Engineers, you know, it used to be standards. Now, open source really drives a lot of that. I actually got a quick conversation with Martin Casado, who had, you know, worked on a lot of open source things before Vmware acquired him. And, now he's at Andreessen Horowitz looking at all the open source models. So, unfortunately Martin didn't have enough time to come on the program, but we've had him on many times. Yeah, so sometime he's going to do that. >> Stu, I have a question. >> Stu: Yeah. >> The message today of being part of an ecosystem and being a componentized, open source set of projects, does that detract or add to this conversation around OpenStack Core versus Big Tent? >> I think Big Tent is dying. We talked to a number of the participants yesterday and said it was a little overblown. It does not mean that some pieces might still get worked on, but it's the core components. And you know, when dug into the survey, how many of the pieces do we really need? We want to make sure the Core works. I can have that distribution if I want to do what is OpenStack. When they highlighted those components, it wasn't 27 different projects there. You know, I think it was a handful of like six. >> Yeah. >> That were there. So, you know Swift and Syndrr, some interesting, cool little graphics. It was ironic, I tell you. The little graphic there, that was like a scary looking bear. It's like, I wouldn't want to run into him in a cartoon alley. Uh, but (laughs). >> Yeah, I did tweet. Yeah, there was an angry bear, kind of a poisonous spider, and a horse's behind. So, I'm not quite sure about the marketing there. But (laughs). >> What is the message you're sending? But, there's some fun. We've got, you know, Mark Collier and Jonathan Bryce coming on soon. We can ask them, you know, was this the community? And are there just some people that have a funny sense of humor, and this is how they show it? >> I did love the demos in today's talk, Stu. I especially liked, they spun up, live on stage, 15 from scratch, OpenStack clouds. And then, had them all join a CockroachDB cluster. I thought that was kind of cool and amazing. >> Yeah, absolutely. You talk about that hybrid, multi cloud world, showing it, you know, in reality, how that works. Pretty neat, and you know, you can actually see some applicability as to how that would fit into a customer environment. And, kudos to all the people. I mean, these were live, no net demos, not Camtasia, not some prerecorded things. Because like, oh wait, this thing's not quite ready to be able to be bootable, or you know, let me come in. I mean, they're up there on stage doing it. The wifi all seemed to work fine. That wasn't a challenge, but yeah, it was pretty cool. >> Well again, trying to give the message that OpenStack is indeed not a science project. That it's live, that it's configurable, that it's stable, that it's installable. And, I think that kind of message of stability, and configurability, and simplicity maybe is one of the ones they're trying to hit here today. >> Yeah, last thing I want to hit on, John, is I want to get your opinion. We throw out the term "open" a bunch. And, I'm watching some of the other industry things, and they say "open" when they mean "choice," as opposed to "open" as in "open source." So, you know, we see Google here, and Google talks about open. So many things that are now open source, a lot of times started out as a Google white paper or something. As we all say, we're all using open source which Google was using 10 years ago, right? You know, MapReduce, and Borg, and Spanner, and some of those things eventually get their way out. I've got some view points on this, but love to get your take first, yeah. >> Well, I mean, definitely it was an homage to open source this morning. In some ways, it was kind of a dig at AWS and Amazon, which uses a lot of open source tools, but does not share back. You know, OpenStack is clearly open source, and they were emphasizing that. I don't know. What are your thoughts, Stu? >> Yeah, it's, customers now, it used to be if you said open source, you know, go back 10, 15 years, and it was like, ooh, no. Now, open source is, a lot of times, a plus, something that they're asking for. Many companies are contributing and engaging in that. OpenStack is a great example of companies that have participated, you know, in helping to build OpenStack. That being said, you know, I always go to, you know, what's the problem to be solved, what's the solution that solves it. And, if it happens to be a little bit pre standard, or not 100% open source, most companies are fine with that. We were at Red Hat Summit last week with the Cube though, and everything they do is 100% open source. They're building their business. Their customers are really happy. So, you know, open source still has a little bit of a double edged sword as to how you do it. But, you know, open source absolutely, there's no question of if open source, it's how much, and to what extent, and where it fits. >> Sure, there is an ecosystem of providers here. There's always lock-in when you make a technical choice. But, in this case, I think they've successfully were trying to show off that there is a choice of clouds. There is an open, a set of open source components that you can mix and match. And so, that actually ties in very well to the interview with Edward Snowden. >> Yeah, absolutely, yeah. It was, and last point. Edward Snowden, towards the end he said fear is, I think the quote was, "the most powerful weapon in the world today." From a political statement, is what he's doing. Fear in IT is a powerful weapon. We know that, you know, enterprise and inertia, you know, tend to go together. With my background in networking, I used to draw these timelines. And, say, from when the time the standard was done to when, you know, the early majority adopt, is often times a decade. So, the technology adoption, moving the operational, we know the people piece is always tough to do, moving my applications. We think people are definitely moving faster, but fear is definitely something that holds them back. What do you see, john? >> Sure, I think the through line of the whole morning was about choice and diversity. Edward Snowden talked about the centralization of information services like Facebook, Google, and Twitter. And I think, and I think by implication, Amazon. And, I think the message that he was giving to the OpenStack crowd was look, you are enabling a multitude of services and a multitude of clouds, and that actually is a lever, a cultural lever against the over centralization of commercial forces, which are a little bit outside people's control. >> Yeah, so John, thanks for helping me wrap up day one. As always, we welcome our audience to please send us feedback. John and I are both pretty active on Twitter, very easy to get in touch with. We are at so many shows. You can check out SiliconANGLE TV. See where we're at. If we're not at a show that you think we should be at, reach, there's contact information at the top. If there's guests that we should have on our program, we're always looking for feedback. Love to get, especially those end user stories, talking about with interesting startups. So, we've got two more days of live coverage. So, for John and myself, stay with us. And, thanks, as always, for watching The Cube. (exciting music)